Digging Up Haiti

Matraco-Colorado Projects, a Haitian-American joint venture in Haiti are in Cap Haitian, Gonaives, Petite Goaves and Hinche. – They are digging up aggregate in Mole St. Nicholas to export for road construction abroad. Matraco-Colorado has a marble quarry in Gonaives; an aggregate quarry in Cap Haitien or the North Coast of Haiti; a lignite mine and power plant in Hinche; a chalk quarry in Petit Goaves.

The Haitian people are under occupation and have no one representing their interests. The gate is open with no guard at the door to mind the store: to make sure that there’s as little environmental degradation to Haiti as possible from these diggings, minings and prospectings; that the companies, after their done mining, have a responsibility for the reconstruction of the infrastructure of the areas they’ve dug up and exploited; that the people, living in these areas, are given jobs from these Matraco-Colorado Haiti Projects (and other such mining companies taking out Haiti’s natural resources (gold, copper, granite, coal, limestone, et al) that pays a livable, or at least minimum wage, with safe, eco-friendly and non-toxic work conditions and that the Haitian nation gets to duly increase its tax base while getting a fair share in the Haiti Project profits so the masses in Haiti may feed themselves, become self-reliant and successfully remove the financial shackles of the Internationals currently funding Haiti’s national budget and the salaries of Haiti’s political class. Thus, calling all the shots while the masses in Haiti starve, suffer famine, die from curable diseases, dirty water, are without Haitianist schooling, Kreyol literacy opportunities, basic health care, roads, electricity, housing, suffer the humiliation and tyranny of foreign occupation and die trying to escape in shark infested waters?

Haiti cannot afford for Matraco-Colorado Haiti Projects or any other company in Haiti digging, mining and prospecting (Hidalgo Mining International, Copper Mining in Haiti /KWG Resources Inc, St. Genevieve Resources and KWG Resources, Eurasian Minerals…et al) to do as Reynolds Aluminium did to Haiti – dig up Haiti, take out all its wealth and resources, piece by piece, coal rock by wealthy coal rock, precious marble by precious Haitian marble, aggregate by aggregate and then leave devastated areas, un-replenish areas, toxic holes. Leave no sustainable economy for the people of the area to benefit from the wealth of that land that was theirs. (See,
Map of mining resources in Haiti and showing five oil/gas sites in Haiti.)
Ezili Danto
June 17, 2008