December 18, 2019
TRAVESTY is an anthropologist's personal story of working with foreign aid agencies and discovering that fraud, greed, corruption, apathy, and political agendas permeate the industry. It is a story of failed agricultural, health and credit projects; violent struggles for control over foreign aid; corrupt orphanage owners, pastors, and missionaries; the nepotistic manipulation of research funds; economically counterproductive food aid distribution programs that undermine the Haitian agricultural economy; disastrous social engineering by foreign governments, international financial and development organizations--such as the World Bank and USAID-- and the multinational corporate charities that have sprung up in their service, CARE International, Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, and the dozens of other massive charities that have programs spread across the globe, moving in response not only to disasters and need, but political agendas and economic opportunity. TRAVESTY also chronicles the lives of Haitians and describes how political disillusionment sometimes ignites explosive mob rage among peasants frustrated with the foreign aid organizations, governments and international agencies that fund them. TRAVESTY recounts how some Haitians use whatever means possible to try to better their living standards, most recently drug trafficking, and in doing so explains why at the service of international narcotraffickers and Haitian money laundering elites, Haiti has become a failed State. TRAVESTY reads like a novel. It takes the reader from the bowels of foreign aid in the field; to the posh and orderly urban headquarters of charities such as CARE International; to the cold, distant heights of Capitol Hill policy planners. The journey is marked by true accounts involving violence, corruption, appalling greed, sexual exploitation, disastrous social engineering, and the inside world of drug traffickers. But TRAVESTY it is not a novel. It is founded on 15 years of academic and field experience, research, and hard data. It entertains the reader with vivid first-hand accounts while treating seriously the problems inherent not only in international aid but the sabotaging effects of the drug war on economic development in remote and impoverished areas of the hemisphere.
September 1, 2017
U.S. Marines have been sent to Haiti many times since 1800, including as recently as 1995, but one of the most intriguing operations has�until now�been the least known. The 1959-63 mission exposed America's Cold War domino theory to the quagmire of Third World political tyranny. This revealing firsthand account of the operation is a tale of good intentions gone bad. Charles Williamson offers a captivating and instructive look back at America stumbling toward costly foreign adventures and policies that continue to challenge the nation today.
September 1, 2017
The Contest for Healing Power (Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology)
Medicine and morality in rural Haiti are shaped both by different local religious traditions and by biomedical and folk medicine practices. People who become ill may seek treatment from Western doctors, but also from herbalists and religious leaders. This study examines the decisions guiding such choices, and considers moral issues arising in a society where suffering is associated with guilt but where different, sometimes conflicting, ethical systems coexist. It also reveals how in the crisis of illness people rework religious identities and are forced to address fundamental social and political problems.
September 1, 2017
A brief history of Haiti from the discovery of the island by Columbus to the slave trade by the French, the subsequent revolt by the slaves and the rise of three prominent Haitians who would control the island after defeating the French. The correspondence between Henry Christophe, the Republic of Haiti’s leader, and Thomas Clarkson a slave abolitionist gives keen insight into the deep relationship formed between the two individuals.
September 1, 2017
Placing the West's failure to acknowledge the most successful slave revolt in history alongside denials of the Holocaust and the debate over the Alamo, Michel-Rolph Trouillot offers a stunning meditation on how power operates in the making and recording of history.
July 27, 2017
A profile of Haitian radio journalist and human rights activist, Jean Dominique, which weaves: historical footage of Haiti's vivid and tumultuous past; interviews with Dominique, himself and with Michele Montas--his heroic wife, life-long love, and extraordinary partner; and incorporates footage shot before Dominique's assassination on April 3, 2000.