“On a plain high in the mountains of Haiti one day a week thousands of people still gather. This is the marketplace of my childhood…The sights and the smells and the noise and the colour overwhelm you. Everyone comes. If you don’t come you will miss everything…Goods are displayed in every direction: onions, leeks, corn, beans, yams, cabbage, cassava, and avocados, mangoes and every tropical fruit, chickens, pigs, goats and batteries, and tennis shoes, too. People trade goods, and news. This is the centre; social, political and economic life rolled together.” – Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization. In March 2017, a massive fire broke out in Haiti’s Croix-des-Bossales market near the centre of Port-au-Prince. Fierce flames ravaged a section of the market where hundreds of ti machan [small merchants] sold used clothing, with heavy losses to vendors, mostly women, who rely on commerce for day-to-day survival.
Market fires have become a routine occurrence in Haiti , calling attention to the significance of Haiti’s market system, the main vehicle for commerce throughout the country, and to the essential role of women, who are its engine. Haiti’s market system is the backbone of the economy, as well as “the centre: social, political and economic life rolled together.” Most trade is in the hands of women. In trying to make a life for themselves, market women confront foreign policymakers, a hostile government and big business interests out to undermine the economic power represented by these resourceful women traders. The purposeful labour of market women offers material and symbolic resistance to powerful forces who aim to control Haiti’s market economy. Continue Reading…
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