Challenges to Solidarity across Multiple Borders: Haiti's Free Trade Zone

Abstract

Introductioncreated in 2003 with a US$23 million World Bank loan to a private Dominican company, Haiti's Free Trade Zone (FTZ) promised an economically depressed region thousands of well-paying jobs and 'development' to the poor border town of Ouanaminthe. However, the realities were more complex; many peasants lost their land, and factory owners and unions had a long struggle. Haitian workers were ultimately granted rights to unionise, and won a contract signed in January 2006. However, workers' rights remained challenged, in part because of deep socio-racial and political-economic divisions across the Massacre River that forms the border.David Harvey argued that global capitalism entails the strategic use of space in a process of uneven accumulation of capital.1 Nowhere is this phenomenon of what he called 'uneven geographical development' more evident than in border areas. Heavily policed and militarised, where national identity is paramount to one's access to mobility and organisation, national borders play an integral role within the development of maquihdoras, a general term arising from subcontracted, mostly-textile factories just south of the US-Mexico border.2 The FTZ, created on the northern district of the Haiti-Dominican border, provides a rich case for examining the multiple sources of inequality highlighted and exacerbated by its location on the border. Following a brief recap of the events, this article examines the cultural, national, linguistic, and identity differences impeding solidarity. Actors across a range of differences inherited a legacy of mistrust that impeded open communication and collaboration, prolonging the crisis and its resolution. Communication was thus based on prejudice and rumour, preventing the collection of facts that would verify claims. Solidarity, both South-South and North-South, is therefore inherently fragile, as it presupposes acknowledged identities, respect for differences in place, and open communication^ the very conditions that are most difficult to obtain across cultural, national and geopolitical divisions. These prejudices and political identities prevented particular groups within the North American solidarity community from lending crucial support. This article analyses lessons not learned about solidarity, arguing against what I call 'leftwing imperialism', and distils lessons from this experience.Background: The building of the FTZAs scholars have noted, the global economy relegates certain provinces, nation-states, or even regions to marginal positions whereby their 'comparative advantage' is a combination of extremely low wages and proximity to large consumer markets.4 This model of development is firmly rooted in the neoliberal ideology of free-market capitalism, free trade and specialisation, justified by the need for foreign exchange in the global financial market triggered by an uneven exchange and structural debt. Portrayed as a 'win-win' situation whereby transnational corporations and Northern consumers benefit with cheaply made goods and Southern countries gain desperately needed jobs, the export-processing subcontracting model has a long history in the Caribbean, and particularly Haiti (Operation Bootstrap). In the 1970s, dictator JeanClaude Duvalier, whose 'economic revolution' would turn Haiti into the 'Taiwan of the Caribbean', approved a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and World Bank plan to create an export-processing zone near Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. At its peak, the industrial park built next to Haiti's new international airport employed an estimated seventy to eight thousand factory workers. 5 In recent years, certainly following the earthquake, this strategy has increasingly been promoted as a cornerstone to Haiti's economic reconstruction. The Interim Haiti Reconstruction Committee, co-chaired by the United Nations' special envoy for Haiti, former president Bill Clinton, prioritised an industrial park in Caracol, minutes away from the Ouanaminthe site, which was opened in October 2012. …