|
When Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper
completed his tour of Latin
America and the Caribbean with
a brief stopover in Haiti on July
20, he yielded a revealing photo-op. The picture published in the
Toronto Star showed Harper posing with a wan smile amidst a number of
Haitian patients and relatives at a Canadian-funded hospital in the impoverished
slum of Cite Soleil. The Haitians seem to be completely ignoring
Harper, fixing their weary gaze in other directions.
Haitian President Rene Preval called Harper’s six-hour sojourn
a “doctor’s visit”, and pleaded for more aid money. Preval
neglected to mention that most of the money already spent by the Canadian
state in Haiti
has been devoted to shoring up repressive institutions – the United Nations
military occupation force (MINUSTAH) which has the blood of hundreds on
its hands, the even more brutal Haitian National Police, and the prison
system which holds thousands of inmates, many of them political prisoners
incarcerated for years in utterly horrid conditions without trial.
Toronto Star writer Allan Woods dispensed the usual
whitewash journalism of ‘embedded’ tour reporters by praising the arrest
of Haitian “gang leaders”. But he did concede that “there is still
lingering resentment in some quarters around the 2004 overthrow of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide”. Woods noted that “On the walls
of buildings pocked by bullets, is the spray-painted phrase: ‘Vive la
retour d’Aristide.’ It outnumbered those urging Haitians to ‘Vote
Preval’.” His report omitted that Canadian officials hosted a
conference near Ottawa
in early 2003 where the coup was planned, that they sent Canadian
soldiers to secure the airport at the capital Port-Au-Prince while U.S. Marines kidnapped
Aristide and transported him to the Central African Republic, and then had their
soldiers and police participate in the occupation force which murdered
and jailed innocent thousands.
Another revealing item appeared in the July 21 Toronto
Star titled “Haiti’s
future glitters with gold”. It tells the story of Keith Laskowski,
a geologist prospecting for gold for his Vancouver-based mining company
Eurasian Minerals. Laskowski says the company hopes to find
billions of dollars worth of gold in the hills above La Miel in
north-eastern Haiti,
the extraction of which seems to depend mostly on ‘political stability’.
Steve Lachapelle, a Quebec lawyer who is now chair of
another prospecting firm called St. Genevieve Haiti, derides the exiled
populist Aristide. But he expresses confidence in Rene Preval, once an
ally of Aristide. “Haitians are realizing that they no longer have
a choice. With all the problems the country has had, they realize
that they have to play the game with investors or things are going to
keep getting worse.”
Local residents may have a different idea. The
article reports one Suzanne Louis, a community leader and wife of a
farmer, saying that the mining companies must deliver development to the
area, not just a few temporary jobs. She and her neighbours may
have more to say about the environmental catastrophes and social upheaval
often associated with gold mining in poor countries.
Stephen Harper certainly had gold on his mind
when he was in Chile.
He paid a visit to the headquarters of Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold
in Santiago. Harper said he is confident Barrick is following all
of Chile’s
laws. In the case of the Pascua-Lama project, a massive gold and
silver mine near the border with Argentina, Chilean lawmakers have called for
a review based on findings that three glaciers near the site have already
shrunk by 70 per cent ostensibly as a result of Barrick’s actions.
The human rights arm of the Organization of American
States has been asked to rule on a complaint from the local indigenous
population that the environmental damage from the mine will force them
off their traditional lands high in the Andes mountains. These
concerns were echoed by protesters who demonstrated outside the offices
of Barrick Gold bearing signs that included the slogans “Canada: What’s HARPERing here” and
“Harper Go Home”, as RCMP and heavily armed local police stood guard.
In an effort to portray his tour as not just about
trade and private investment, Harper told a big business audience in
Santiago that he strives for “democracy, accountability and free markets”,
not domination. "It is not in our past, nor within our power,
to conquer or dominate", said Harper in a remark seen as a dig at
the United States.
However, to re-assure the business elite, he reserved his venom for Venezuela and its
Bolivarian allies. He denounced “the return of the syndrome of
economic nationalism, political authoritarianism and class
warfare”. Harper asked his audience to believe that there is
a third way between the Washington
and Caracas
models – his Canadian way, which is apparently one of exploitation
behind a smiley-face decal.
With assets in Latin America worth $96 billion, Canadian
business is the second largest investor in the region. This
includes Enbridge Inc., the operator and part-owner of a major Colombian
oil pipeline, and Scotiabank, about one-third of whose 57,000 employees
worldwide are Spanish-speaking. As front man for Canadian big
business, Harper knows his duty well.
His tour’s avoidance of Cuba, and his embrace of the right wing,
paramilitaries-linked regime of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, leaves
no doubt as to where Harper stands as he prepares to host the Security
and Prosperity Partnership of North America summit at Montebello, Quebec on August
19-21. Compared to Uribe, his two guest leaders (who managed to
steal their own elections), U.S. President George Bush and Mexican President
Felipe Calderone, may look clean and righteous. Regardless, what
really matters is their common political agenda -- increased
militarization, along with de-regulation of public services, food safety
and environmental protection. In promoting that agenda, Harper’s
assumed role as the ‘soft’ imperialist cop in the hemisphere can be
useful to his capitalist partners in crime as they collectively try to stem
the revolt against their policies and against their system across Latin America and the
Caribbean.
|