The Trouble with Hispaniola

Photo caption: Even "wealthier" Haitian immigrants live segregated lives in the Dominican Republic (photo: R.W. High, 2007)

Planes flying to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, also fly on to Port au Prince, Haiti before third-legging it back to Miami, Florida, the original point of origin. Dr. Dennis Sullivan, now a professor at Cedarville University, practiced medicine in Haiti for almost four years in the 1980s, but 20 years later nothing much has changed in the country.

“Let me tell you a little bit about that trip from Miami to Santo Domingo to Port au Prince,” he says, sitting back in his chair and keeping an eye on the audio recorder in front of him. “[You’re flying in] low altitude planes. As you fly from Santo Domingo to Port au Prince you’re flying right over the center of Hispaniola and so you’ll see this beautiful lush green mountainous country below you, which is Dominican Republic, and as you approach the country of Haiti you can see, at the frontier, this abrupt border as the green completely gives way to brown. It’s one of the most incredible sights from air that you can imagine. As you look from the air you will see that the terrain below is nothing but desert-covered mountains. Furthermore, if you look at the waters around the Caribbean Ocean around Haiti, you will see the rivers, which are very, very muddy—brown muddy rivers—you can see the rivers washing out to the ocean and you can see the dark brown eddies . . .”

Sullivan is not the first to call Haiti an ecological disaster. Blamed primarily on government mismanagement, the country is the poorest in the Western Hemisphere and has more than once been brushed off as being beyond hope. Noted anthropologist Jared Diamond noted Everyone familiar with Haiti whom I asked about its prospects use the words “no hope” in their answer. Most of them answered simply that they saw no hope (Collapse 354). Sullivan himself left Haiti after several years of seeing very little progress. Across the border, however, the Dominican Republic, while certainly no Caribbean Dubai, is slowly improving in infrastructure and boasts increasing tourism revenue.

Ever since Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for microfinance self-sustainability research in 2006, microfinance has taken off in the international arena. Some are seeing the possibilities for these pragmatic economics to alleviate poverty in both Dominican Republic and Haiti. Hundreds of MFIs, or Microfinance Institutions, which make small loans to impoverished entrepreneurs, have sprouted up world wide since the 1970s. Many publications and studies are touting microfinance as the solution to alleviating world poverty. Even the United Nations named 2005 the International Year of Microcredit, saying,

Microcredit and microfinance have changed the lives of people and revitalized communities in the world's poorest and also the richest countries. We have seen the enormous power that access to even modest financial services can bring people. With access to a range of financial tools, families can invest according to their own priorities — school fees, health care, business, nutrition or housing.

The International Year of Microcredit also stated that of four billion people who live on less than $1400 a year, only a fraction have access to basic financial services. “With this huge unmet demand, the Year of Microcredit 2005 called “To build inclusive financial sectors and strengthen the powerful, but often untapped, entrepreneurial spirit existing in impoverished communities.” (www.yearofmicrocredit.org)

However, studies show that despite massive global poverty, often microfinance cannot even be implemented until structural and institutional changes are made within the country to ensure a stable and self-sustainable environment. Studies in the Caribbean have shown that often programs do not work on Hispaniola because of the typically paltry loan sizes or because countries do not want to work to implement structure after depending so long on aid handouts. Additionally, cultural insensitivity and poor strategy have contributed to untargeted relief waste. In fact, according to Haiti in the Balance, and analysis of aid in Haiti, the reason aid has often failed in Haiti is because t aid programs often target it as if it were a better-off Latin American country, and ignore the socioeconomic, racial and historical differences: “Donors seemed to go on to adopt an assistance model more appropriate to Latin America. Such a model assumed economic, social, and political stability. In reality, Haiti was more like a least-developed, fragile, post-conflict sub-Saharan African country” (6). Once again we are reminded of the parallels between Haiti and Africa, where anti-democratic, oppressive, self-serving leadership are common. (Harrison 32)

Among other problems, borrowers who cannot make enough profit to ever repay the loans fully and expand their businesses maintain the cycle of poverty. This is especially problematic in Haiti but is also stagnating in development and progress in the Dominican Republic. However, the DR is years ahead in terms of progress and so is able to better tackle problems and build self sustainability on top of subsistence. In determining whether microfinance has been a noticeably effective deterrent to poverty and alternative to traditional aid in alleviating poverty on the Caribbean island and whether there is home for economic progress in Hispaniola, it is important to examine the two nations of Hispaniola and analyses historical and current trends that compare and contrast aid, relief, and infrastructure in the two countries and how they now affect attempts to build self-sustainability through micro-financial enterprise and entrepreneurship, particularly for women.

[Editor's Note: Given the recent chaos in Haiti, I thought I'd go out on a limb and publish my undergrad senior thesis project regarding the devastation of Haiti, the disparity between it and the country with which is shares an island, and whether anything can be done to save the country. I particularly focused on the relatively recent (and Nobel-winning) theory microcrofinance, and spent four months of my life buried in books and papers and telephone/email interviews regarding the subject. I have since used Haiti as an illustration in multiple Korean elementary classrooms for social studies discussions, and now have spent a lot of time re-reflecting on the country. When my contract in Korea is up, I hope to make my way there and dive into reconstruction.]
This thesis will be examined in four parts: Introduction, history, microfinance, and conclusion. For the full PDF, click here: Hispaniola