Andre Habet  

Throughout the conversation, we discuss the vision and organizational strategy of  Tet Kole as a community-based  organization founded in the context of state crises and violence, and seeking food sovereignty as a basic right against vulnerability to disasters and disaster capitalism

Kristinia 

To assist in this conversation, Edouard Carl Joseph is providing Haitian Creole to English interpretation. You’ll hear Edouard speaking in English in response to our questions following the initial introduction to Pierre. Join us for that conversation now.

Kristinia Doughorty  

The first question is, what is Tet Kole? Can you describe your role in this movement and its missions?

Pierre Louis Marie: Wi, Non mwen se Louis Pierre Marie, Mwen se manm Tèt Kole ti Peyizan Ayisyen, Mwen soti nan Rejyon Sid , pli presizeman nan depatman Grandans,

 Edouard Carl Joseph (Interpreting for Pierre) 

My name is Louis Pierre Marie. Okay. And I’m Haitian. I’m from the South region of Haiti. I’m a member of the National Executive Committee of Tet Kole. 

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre) 

I play the role of the General Secretary in the committee of Haitian small peasant association of Tet Kole. My mission in this executive committee, National Executive Committee is to execute and make sure that all the decisions from the National Congress and assemblies are being executed to ensure like the administration of the national movement, to ensure that the international and external relations of the movement are being ensured, and to save the archives of the movement,  control all the assets of the movement and all the departments where it’s present. I also take care of the day-to-day functions of the organization, so this is my role as the General Secretary of the National Committee of Tet Kole.

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre) 

Tet Kole is a national movement of small peasants that was born, and well founded, in September of 1986, six months after February 7, which marks the end of the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier. But way before this period of 1986 the movement of Tet Kole already started to flourish in several geographical departments of the country such as Northwest, North, Latibonit, Plateau Central, South and South East. So from 1970 to 1985 is when we started having Tèt Ansanm Group, Karitas Bitasyon Group, Group of Ti Legliz TKL. At that time there were some Catholic laymen and priests from the Catholic Church who really contributed to build the foundation of these peasant organizations. At that time, that was [a] very strong stream of liberation theology that was crossing the church.

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre) 

And that’s why there are a lot of lawyers, sociologists that agreed to join the fight for liberation, the fight to open the eyes of the poor masses, in particular the peasant masses with the gospel of liberation. The deep awareness work that we were doing at that time made the people feel the need to set up a national movement of small peasants in the country to allow the organization to lead the fight to change the bad living conditions they lived in, and to contribute and participate in the global struggle in the country.

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre) 

There were other organizations that existed at that time. Squad organization, organizations of work. Douvanjou Organization, which would be translated as “Dawn Organization at dawn for example.  Mass Sangha organization. These organizations were basically for fieldwork. And also we can’t forget the traditional organization like the Rara organization for example. When Tèt ansanm, Caritas Group Organization and Ti Legliz group started flourishing, they started facing an organization called Community Council that was directly linked to Jean-Claude Duvalier’s Power at that time. So it would always be the big guns, the people with a lot of resources that were always at the head of the Community Council organization that would later be transformed into KONAJEK, [editorial note: KONAJEK is an acronym for Kominite Nasyonal Jesyon Kriz, translated to National Committee of crisis management] which is another organization, during Jean-Claude Duvalier’s term.

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre) 

The eye-opening work that was being done at that time during the development of Tèt Ansanm and Caritas group allowed the small peasant to begin to discover that the community council was their enemy. We must also say that, from February 7 of 1986, the suffering of the masses, well of the people in general, and the mass of the peasant in particular were always under exploitation, injustice and arbitrary arrest, physical abuse, plots of the bourgeoisie and swindlers, the army, the imperialist countries against the small peasants, and the mass of the people in the country. It was just very bad.

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre) 

Tet Kole is a national movement based on three stages to be able to function. There’s a community assembly that meets every three months. Departmental assembly that meets every six months, and a national Confederation that meets every two years. Each structure has a coordination committee and executive committee.

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre) 

The national Confederation has four structures. There’s the National Congress, which is one of the biggest ones within Tet Kole. There’s the National Assembly, which is the second biggest. There’s a national coordination which is the third biggest one and there is also the National Executive Committee of Tet Kole which works permanently and for which I’m the General Secretary and it works permanently. It carries out all the activities of the organization.

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre) 

The Objective of Tèt Kole is to motivate and raise awareness of all the small peasants in the country so they join forces in food, as well as a social force in the country, and the second mission is to continue to keep the demands of the small peasants in mind. [The] third objective is to help the small farmers to identify the economic issues they’re facing as a social class and a society, such as economic, social, cultural, political and environmental problems.

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre) 

Another mission is the fight for the peasants to get land to work. Modern tools to work, quality seeds, good agricultural credit, if I may say, water to irrigate the land, great technical support. And good agrarian reform, if I may say. Another mission is to fight for food sovereignty, fight for decentralization and the deconcentration of the country for all the basic services to reach the small peasants. 

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre) 

I  already talked about the agrarian reform to promote agricultural production and breeding. Now we’re gonna talk about the quality of the work that Tet Kole is doing in the country. Tet Kole works in promoting mutual solidarity of the cooperators and the producer groups. We also work in promoting youth activities in the community. We work also in promoting women peasants. We also work in promoting the agricultural products of small farmers either by finding the resources for farmers to produce more or by finding places for them to sell their products at a good price. The head of the association encourages its members and the rest of the population to value the products of small farmers in their garden.

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre)  

We also work in keeping the memory of all the little peasants and all the militants who fell in the fight against impunity and injustice in all forms. And we also work to fight against the exploitation of the little business, siding for their lands, and etc.

Kristinia Doughorty  25:24

Tet Kole speaks about the struggles they face supporting peasants due to limited support from the Government 

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre)  28:06

So I do believe that what we’re trying to do in helping the population and helping the peasants is not really enough, due to the absence of the government. We tried our best with the bare minimum to carry out all the activities but because of the fact that the government is so absent, it is very hard for us to actually complete and actually measure the response of the communities, you know, that are seeing the work that … that we’re doing in the community. So it’s very hard for us to measure that. Because there are so many structures that are not in place, so we can’t really evaluate the response of the communities.

Andre Habet 

Thank you very much for the reply. We’d like to move it now then to talking more specifically about disasters and wanting to know how are the communities that Tet Kole works with, vulnerable to disaster? And what, in addition to the actual hazards themselves, drive the vulnerability of the community?

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre) 

Yeah, the communities are very vulnerable when faced with disasters. Misfortunes hang over their head because there’s no basic structures in the community, and there’s no basic services that ensured that the peasant needs are being met in the communities. and there’s no infrastructure in the communities such as hospital, road, agricultural credit nor technical support.

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre)  

The absence of the state of the government is what is causing this form of vulnerability because they do not offer the basic social services in the country. There’s no direct link. There’s no togetherness between the government and the peasants. They don’t even care about their well-being, really, in the communities. All they care about is you know when they need them at the time of election so they can vote for them. This cause[s] that whenever there’s a natural disaster that strikes this particular group of people are the ones that are the most vulnerable. And sometimes they’re victim [s], like even you know, twice or three times during the same period.

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre) 

So they’re the ones who suffer every time there are, like natural disasters -they’re the ones who loses their housing, they lose their land, they lose everything and even when some organizations wants to help due to the fact that you can’t really access those regions because there are no roads so it becomes very difficult. And when these types of situations happen, those people from the government, they capitalize from our misfortunes. They capitalize from everything that we’re going through. So the poorer we get the richer they get.

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre) 

Although Tet Kole is serving 77 communities around the country we have people helping us out but it’s the bare minimum that allows us to carry out activities. It does not help us, you know,   pay for whatever that was lost or natural disasters there, you know the resources are not enough for that; they’re just things, resources that we use in order to carry out activities for the communities in the country.

Kristinia Doughorty 

We have seen in the media, external organizations, for example, USAID, saying that it works in Haiti. What support do they provide? And what additional support do Haitians and the peasants require from the Caribbean region?

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre)  

USAID and the European Union usually come to the country indeed. When they come here, they negotiate with the government. You know, they just bring projects to negotiate with the government. They don’t negotiate with us who are fighting for the country’s sovereignty, who are trying to carry out the activities for the most vulnerable. masses. So they negotiate with them. They do not negotiate with us, so we do not benefit … directly from anything that they do when they come in the country.

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre) 

Okay, so another part of this question is that these agencies when they come here in the country, all they care about is food security. So they bring food from anywhere, from Taiwan and other stuff just given us for food. But us, what we care about is food sovereignty. We care about food sovereignty. We want to be able to grow our own food because then again, what happens after a month when we don’t have, you know, the food that they brought us? So we want to be able to work in agroecology to be able to have land to fight for good seeds. So we can just grow our own food so we can promote food sovereignty because that’s, …  that’s the only way for us to survive. That’s the dynamic that we want to push in the country in this movement.

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre) 

So another thing, the type of support that we need is to be able to raise awareness you know, in the peasant community so they can produce more food, you know, from their own land and to also promote training you know, because I assume that if they know about climate change and every other thing that we’ll be able to respond to their needs and they will be able to face disasters in a better way. Although we do not have the sufficient funds to carry out our activities throughout the 77 communities that we serve, we just want to be able to promote again, like we said, the food sovereignty and we want to be able to make sure that all the needs are being met, and that all the peasants can rely on their own products, you know,  so they can carry out their activities and so they can live a better life.

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre) 

And also it would be very important for us if we could find if the Caribbean community could help us organize exchanges so, so we could get training, and about the environment, on agroecology. And so we know what’s at stake and how to respond to different kinds of situations. So those help would be very, very good for us from the community.

Andre Habet

 So I just want to end off here by asking if there’s any final words the people from Tet Kole would like to share. What is  an aspect about happening in Haiti that is being misunderstood by most people outside of Haiti?

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre)  

So Haiti, as we know, is one of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. And there are a lot of organizations that say that they’re willing to help. And while we have like 6 million people that are suffering from hunger, there are still like a lot of millions [of funds, editor’s note], a lot of resources in the country and we don’t see them. We’re not seeing anything we can’t even benefit from any of that money. What we would like, what we would like is unity and solidarity and collaboration. And for our peasant class, we would like to have a voice and the resources so we can carry out all the activities and satisfy our needs.

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre)  49:48

Also, it would be great if they could facilitate projects that would actually last,  durable projects that  will cause us to become very … [ word unclear- editor’s note] … so we could carry out our own activities. And that’s what we would need because we know  that Tet Kole has like three classes. We have three groups of people, we have the women, we have the youth and also have a mix of both and the most vulnerable are the women and  the youngest ones. So you know, projects, you know, durable projects,  projects that would last..all right

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre)   51:16

I would like to announce to you guys that we’re celebrating the massacre of 139 peasants that the army you know the army carried out in the city of Jan Rabel and Port-de-Paix so that’s what we’re working on right now. That’s what we’re celebrating right now as we speak. 

Edouard (Interpreting for Pierre) 

Tet Kole thank you guys for everything that you’ve been doing. And we hope to solidify our relations so we can bring, you know, better results to help us go through everything that we’re going through. Thank you very much. 

Andre Habet 

You’re welcome.

Kristinia Doughorty  

And thank you, Eduoard. For being an amazing interpreter. 

Kristinia Doughorty

Thanks again to Pierre for joining us and to Edouard for providing interpretation to make this conversation accessible in English. And thank you for listening to the Stronger Caribbean Together podcast.

André Habet

To learn more about the work of the Tet Kole, visit our website strongercaribbeantogether.org where we feature regular updates from all our regional partners.

Kristinia Doughorty

Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter @CaribeTogether and on Facebook at Stronger Caribbean Together. And be sure to join André and I next month for another conversation demonstrating the everyday work done by people United Against Disaster Capitalism.

André Habet  

Thanks to Alexander Evans for providing our theme song. This podcast was made possible by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.