“Why is Haiti so poor?” That’s what deceased Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez asked, over and over, in a video shown at a recent memorial at the State University of Haiti. In the courtyard of the School of Social Sciences, a repository of radical intelligentsia and organizers, professors and students took the stage to sing, drum, and recite poetry, and to make impassioned speeches about Chávez’s opposition to privatization and the US empire. The next morning, youth basketball coach Silfaitbeau brought his mother to see me in the hopes that I could connect her with medical care. She appeared 20 years older than I, though in fact our ages are close; it’s one effect of a life of exaggerated poverty. Her body was as thin and insubstantial as a wisp of cloud. After describing her health problems in depth, she gave me a smile that could break any but the hardest heart, and said, “Really, the problem is just one of food. When I eat, I feel okay.” Late afternoon, walking to a hotel to access internet, I heard a small voice behind me say, “Oh, my stomach hurts.” I turned around to find a girl in a yellow party dress, thin as a straw, her body bent sideways to compensate for the heavy plastic sack she was carrying. “Are you okay_?_” I asked. “It’s just that I haven’t eaten since this morning,” she replied. I learned that her name was Fabiola, she was 11 years old, and she had just walked about four miles from her uncle’s house with the sack, by herself, on foot. He hadn’t offered her any food, I chose to believe for lack of any to offer. Why is Haiti so poor? Some parts of that answer can be found in the nation’s history of structural violence, the policies and systems that reflect colonialism, imperialism, neglect, racism, and patriarchy since Haiti freed itself first from slavery, and second from the French. But we needn’t look that far back. The offshore assembly industry with its poverty wages; the low import tariffs forced as a condition of IMF loans, with the ensuing destruction of domestic food production; disaster capitalism of corporations and foreign governments; and other factors have created an economy which helps explain Fabiola’s empty stomach. Also culpable are the long line of .001% – those whom aid workers dubbed “morally repugnant elites,” or MRE’s – who control most of the wealth, and the Haitian governments who have served them. I ended up that night at a swank apartment high above Port-au-Prince, at a feast which included imported smoked salmon and Chilean white wine. The view from the balcony showed a spectacular view of the city far below, in which all human suffering was reduced to vista. At the end of the evening, a driver took the guests down the hill. When only he, the cook, and I remained in the car, I struck up a conversation and they let loose. “The system sucks us dry,” the cook said. The driver added, “Everything started when we came on the slave ships. Now, everything we try fails. It’s a virus. But if we don’t believe we can change things, we won’t.” The next day I found myself investigating the murder of a boy, likely by the Haitian police. Leaving the scene, I cut through a small, crowded street, past groups of men fixing metal chairs, oven grilles, car engines. I reached a corner park with a plaster statue of a white-faced Toussaint Louverture, one of Haiti’s liberators, flanked by two pigs, one of them now headless. A young man selling cell phone cards for a few cents of profit per card lounged against the revolutionary hero. I pulled out my camera and told the man I wanted to photograph the statue, and that he could stay or leave as he pleased. “No, you don’t have a right to,” he told me. I reminded him that it was a public statue. A man next to him turned wild with a rage I’ve only experienced in run-ins with Tontons Macoutes, the omnipotent thugs from days under the Duvalier dictatorship, and death squads under subsequent regimes. “Maybe you can do what you want in your country, but you can’t in ours,” he shouted. He informed me that if I took a picture, he would seize the camera. As I put the camera back in my bag and walked away, he shouted a graphic directive regarding my mother. It made sense. For the three years since the 7.0 earthquake, Haitians have been trod over, made promises that were later broken, and exploited by foreign nations, the United Nations, international development banks, contractors, and other shysters, often represented locally by people who look a lot like me. Since the disaster, little of substance has improved for the vast majority. The nine billion dollars raised from star-studded telethons and pledged in Obama’s speeches remain as ephemeral as the _lwa, _spirits, who sometimes come to mount vodouisant, the vodou faithful, in midnight ceremonies. It’s hard times, all but the MRE will tell you. But most will also cite “Nou p ap bay legen,” we won’t give up, or one of the many equivalent Creole expressions. At this moment, social movements are organizing for: * Enforcement of the newly raised minimum wage, along with fair working conditions and the right to unionize in factories; * Parliamentary elections. President Michel Martelly has stonewalled on elections, meaning that the Senate has functioned with only two-thirds of its members for more than one year. As part of an unconstitutional slide toward concentration of power, Martelly’s administration has failed to hold elections at local levels, too, instead hand-picking 130 municipal governments; * An end to forced displacement, and the right to affordable housing, for the 350,000 who still live under shredded pieces of plastic in camps; * A ban on mining. The government has granted permission to a wave of companies to search for gold, silver, and copper across one-third of Haiti’s northern provinces. Two exploratory permits have recently been quietly transferred into permits for mining, despite the absence of approval from the Haitian parliament; *A full withdrawal of the UN occupation forces which, beyond violating Haiti’s sovereignty, have been involved in many human rights abuses; * Reparations from the UN for the introduction of cholera by its troops in October 2010, which has since killed or sickened almost 650,000 people. The UN claims diplomatic immunity against the charges; * Tightened laws against sexual violence, and for increased protection and access to services for women and girls suffering such violence; * Recognition and protection of LGBT rights; and * Conviction of former dictator Duvalier for crimes against humanity. For five days in late March, hundreds of farmers, advocates, and international allies celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the Peasant Movement of Papaye (MPP), one of Haiti’s two oldest and largest small-farmer organizations. In the verdant eco-community which doubles as the group’s headquarters, the meeting opened with a recounting of what more than 40,000 members have achieved since they began organizing underground in 1973. They are still poor and still fighting for their right to land and livelihood. And yet, speaker after speaker said, their collective strength has forced local authorities and landlords to stop committing violence and imprisoning them. The farmers have strengthened their bonds of solidarity, so that though mutual assistance, they can all survive better and accomplish more than anyone could alone. They have become proud to be peasant producers. The farmers are committed to a more just future, and are sure their continued popular pressure and advocacy will win it. As I listened to them talk about their advances, the refrain of a poem by Jean-Claude Martineau echoed in my mind. “Ou ka pèdi moun, ou ka pèdi batay, men pèdi Haïti, sa se lòt bagay.” You can lose people, you can lose battles, but losing Haiti, that is something else.   Stay tuned for Beverly Bell’s new book, Fault Lines: Views across Haiti’s Divide, coming out in June from Cornell University Press. Read more from Other Worlds here, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter! _Beverly Bell has worked for more than three decades as an advocate, organizer, and writer in collaboration with social movements in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the U.S. Her focus areas are just economies, democratic participation, and gender justice. Beverly currently serves as associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and coordinator of Other Worlds. She is author of _Walking on Fire: Haitian Women Stories of Survival and Resistance _and of the forthcoming Fault Lines: Views Across Haiti’s Divide.  _ Copyleft Beverly Bell. You may reprint this article in whole or in part. Please credit any text or original research you use to Beverly Bell, Other Worlds.