Who would have thought it could come to this? The government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide now wants to sell off a strategic swath of Haitian territory, roughly twice the size of the islands of Gonâve and Tortue combined. The territory would be controlled by foreign businessmen and patrolled by foreign troops. In return, Haiti would get sweatshop jobs.

The proposed sale is outlined in a hush-hush international agreement exposed this week by the National Popular Party (PPN) in press conferences on Jul. 2 and Jul. 9.

The 21-page "Trilateral Cooperation Agreement Between the Government of the Dominican Republic, the Government of Haiti and the Government of the United States of America" appears to be the foundation for the "Hispaniola Fund," a scheme concocted in recent years by Dominican and U.S. officials to convert the $800 million Dominican bilateral debt to the U.S. into capital to set up "free trade zone" industrial parks along the Haitian-Dominican border.

In the accord, Haiti commits to "expropriate those lands and buildings held by private proprietors" up to 5 km inside Haiti along the entire length of the 375 km border. This 5 km corridor, amounting to 1875 square kilometers, would be dubbed a "Border Zone" of "Public Utility" to accommodate "the construction of an international customs expressway and other bilateral border projects." The Dominican Republic (DR) also commits to give up an equal size territory along its border.

While dispossessing peasants to create lands of "Public Utility" might at first look like privatization in reverse, the accord makes clear that in the "Border Zone" is not for public use. "Priority should be given to the construction of a private international customs expressway linking the ports of Manzanillo and Cabo Rojo and all customs posts in between," the accord states, "as well as to private tourism projects in Anse-à-Pitres and Bahia de la Aguilas. Priority should also be given to private industrial parks, private dams for irrigation and energy, construction and reconstruction of private seaports and airports." (our emphasis)

The "Border Zone" would be the property of the "Dominican-Haitian Investment Funds Bilateral Holding Corporation" (DHIFBHC) in which Haiti and the DR would receive shares in exchange for the territory turned over to it. Despite the misleading name, the controlling shareholder of the "Dominican-Haitian Investment Fund" would be the U.S., which would receive the lion’s share of shares in exchange for the the DR’s bilateral debt and Haiti’s $427 million debt to the U.S.-controlled Interamerican Development Bank (IDB).

Furthermore, the accord stipulates that the IDB will "administrate the Dominican-Haitian Investment Funds Bilateral Holding Corporation and its subsidiaries." It should be noted that the U.S. government is presently vetoing the disbursement of $213 million in approved IDB loans to Haiti.

Of course, much of the accord is devoted to listing the "100% exemption from all taxes" which the DHIFBHC will enjoy, including immunity from "corporate income taxes... payment of construction taxes, taxes on loan agreements, and on the recording and transfer fo real property... tax on the formation of corporations and on the increase in their capital... municipal taxes... all import duties... consular charges... taxes on exports and re-exports... [and] business tax."

Most ominously, the accord calls for the "development of mechanisms that promote and protect the investments made by nationals of the Parties" and "to protect public order."

"The message is clear," said Ben Dupuy, the PPN’s secretary general, in the Jul. 2 press conference. "These gentlemen want an armed force to protect their investments, and of course Haiti has no armed forces now. But the Dominican army is big and will surely be deployed. We’ve already seen proof of it. During the ceremony and preparations on [Haiti’s] Marie Bahoux plain, the Dominican army was marshaled." He was referring to the Apr. 8 ground-breaking ceremonies near the northeastern town of Ouanaminthe for a new "free trade zone" which would fall within the proposed "Border Zone" (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 20, No. 4, Apr. 10, 2002).

Furthermore, it is possible that U.S. troops might become one of the protection "mechanisms," since the U.S. would be the most dominant of the "Parties" controlling the "Border Zone."

"So practically we can say that this is territory we have ceded," Dupuy said.

Dupuy charged that Aristide must have signed the accord in secret when he visited the DR on Jan. 16, and that the first fruit of the accord was the Apr. 8 ground-breaking in Marie Bahoux. "Perhaps this is why Luigi Einaudi [assistant secretary general] of the Organization of American States [OAS] has become so soft on the Aristide and his Lavalas Family party [FL] in recent weeks," Dupuy speculated about the government’s on-going OAS-mediated negotiations with the Democratic Convergence opposition front. "Einaudi is putting more pressure these days on the Convergence to make a deal with FL. Perhaps this explains why Einaudi now sees Aristide as a good student and has no problem with the Lavalas."

Nonetheless, the accord is illegal, Dupuy asserted. Citing the Constitution, he noted that Haitian "territory is inviolable and cannot be transferred either completely or in part by any treaty or convention" (Art. 8:1). Furthermore, Dupuy continued, any treaty or international agreement signed by the president is "subject to ratification by the National Assembly," which in turn "cannot ratify any treaty, convention, international agreement which includes clauses contrary to the present constitution" (Art. 276).

Finally Dupuy observed that the government is "obligated to publicize by means of the spoken, written and televised press, in Creole and French, all laws, proclamations, decrees, international agreements, treaties, conventions, that effect national life" (Art. 40). To the contrary, he noted, this accord "has been negotiated under the table."

If the accord were ever to be implemented, the "Border Zone" would constitute the world’s largest "free trade zone." The DR already has 52 such tax-free, cheap-labor havens.

The accord also calls on the Haitian government to "compensate... adequately and promptly" the thousands of people whom it would expropriate. But such a notion is absurd. Already Aristide has widely distributed unfulfilled promises around Haiti that his government will compensate people ranging from opposition politicians whose houses and headquarters were destroyed in riots following a failed presidential assassination on Dec. 17, 2001 to victims of landslides in hillside capital slums to depositors who are daily losing their life-savings as dozens of shady "cooperative" banks collapse.

Furthermore, the Haitian people are unlikely to ever accept such a ceding of national territory. Throughout Haitian history, various Haitian presidents have sealed their doom by proposing to raise money and create jobs by selling off national territory such as the northwestern port of Môle St. Nicolas for a military base or the northern Island of Tortue as a walled-off tourist resort (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 7, No. 11, Jun. 14, 1989). In the coming weeks, we will see what the Haitian people’s reaction is to Aristide’s planned "Border Zone."