Had American statesman Lyndon LaRouche’s program to rebuild Haiti been implemented, in response to the devastating Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, which killed between 250,000 and 300,000 people, this impoverished nation would not be suffering the level of death and destruction so far wrought by the Aug. 14 earthquake, which measured 7.2 on the Richter scale. And the carnage will become much greater as a series of tropical storms hits, storms which are expected to be rolling in, perhaps one after another.
As of Aug. 17, reports are that 1,900 people are dead, 10,000 injured, and that 37,000 homes have been destroyed. Homes, schools, supermarkets were leveled and roads ruined in the southern and western parts of the country. People are terrified. They have once again been abandoned by the United States and its international partners, and left to perish in extreme poverty, disease, and misery.
Lyndon LaRouche immediately responded to the 2010 earthquake by calling for an emergency reconstruction program for Haiti, to which, he said, the U.S. had a special responsibility. He called on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to first deploy to rescue and relocate up to 1 million homeless Haitians from Port-au-Prince to higher ground before the rainy season arrived and unleashed a dangerous health and sanitation crisis for these destitute citizens; he then proposed a comprehensive program to focus on building infrastructure—for sanitation, water management, irrigation, earthquake-proof housing, transportation, agriculture, etc.
LaRouche also recommended that the U.S. sign a 25-year treaty with Haiti, “a treaty agreement to reestablish the efficient sovereignty of the nation of Haiti, after the destructive effect of this and preceding difficulties. We make a contract with the government, as a treaty agreement, between the United States and Haiti, to assure the rebuilding of their country, in a form in which it will actually be a functioning country which can survive.” Those proposals are available at https://larouchepub.com/pr/2010/100222lar_haiti.html
President Barack Obama rejected LaRouche’s proposals, and instead removed crucial economic and military aid, encouraging what became known as the “Republic of NGOs” — a large, unwieldy network of foreign NGOs that had a lot of money to throw around but did nothing of any real substance.
Years later, in 2017, when China’s Southwest Engineering Municipal Design Research Institute joined with the Haitian firm Bayti Ayiti to propose a $30 billion program to completely rebuild Haiti, with $4.7 billion to rebuild the capital, Port-au-Prince, with sanitation infrastructure, housing, and transportation, the IMF reportedly stepped in—EIR was told at the time—to make sure the proposal went nowhere.
On March 10, 2010, EIR published a 20-page package that detailed the programmatic solutions Haiti required and identified those monetarist political forces committed to keeping in place the Malthusian economic policies that had made Haiti so vulnerable to disaster, and which remain in effect today. That package is available at https://larouchepub.com/other/2010/3710hatians_die_obama.html
