Publications

This past March in the Rayburn Foyer Room, here on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, images and stories of Haitians were exhibited as a “commemorative piece that captures the ongoing plight of Haitians, their spirit of perseverance, and how grassroots and other civil society leaders are striving to create a more equitable Haiti." 

As Church World Service reported, this exhibit was promoted in conjunction with “Haiti Advocacy Days” in which 50 civil society leaders from Haiti, the Haitian diaspora and U.S. humanitarian agencies came to DC to meet with officials in the U.S. State Department, Obama Administration and U.S. Congress.

This exhibit was sponsored by the Haiti Advocacy Working Group (HAWG) which was formed shortly after the devastating January 12th, 2010 earthquake to coordinate advocacy efforts for effective and just disaster relief, reconstruction and long term U.S. development policy toward Haiti.

View more photos and read stories from the catalogue here.

President Obama was elected with a campaign of hope, and change.  Those of us who care about Latin America hoped that U.S. foreign policy towards the region, too often unilateral and focused on military solutions, would also change.

A year ago, at a summit of Latin America’s leaders, President Obama hit a note that resonated well with his counterparts: “I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership. There is no senior partner and junior partner in our relations.”

After that hopeful moment, though, the new administration stumbled at the starting gate. 2009 was a rough year for U.S. policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean. Latin American governments and civil society groups were disappointed by the Obama Administration’s inattention, vacillation on democracy and human rights, and failure of imagination in creating more humane policies, especially after it secretly negotiated a defense agreement with Colombia and backed off from efforts to urge resignation of the coup regime in Honduras despite an admirably united Latin American and OAS response to protect the democratic order.

“It's important to talk about the terrible things that are happening, but the media always covers the negative. It’s more important to talk about what is rarely discussed—that the people are organizing themselves. Not much has been said about how the country is different now, or at least that there are new ideas now about what policies should be like and how we can change things. I wanted to bring that sense of hope and possibility here. The belief that a new America is possible, a different order is possible.”

"With the Clinton Administration, Cuban artists were more able to come to the US.... There was a wonderful event in Cuba in the 1999 when a large number of musical artists from the US came to Cuba and met with Cuban artists. It produced songs, new working relationships, wonderful paths and bridges—projects that were all terminated with the Bush Administration. It was very telling that when I was denied a visa in 2004 to do a tour in United States, and many Cuban youth protested in Miami. How could it have been that they left Cuba looking for the land of the free and they weren’t even allowed to listen to their own musicians?”

The international community initially celebrated an agreement negotiated  in Honduras, on October 28th, between coup regime leader Roberto Micheletti and deposed President Manuel Zelaya, which could have put an end to the crisis. But, less than a week later, the accord started crumbling apart.

On November 5th, 2009, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) sponsored a briefing of civil society leaders and activists on Capitol Hill to talk about the human rights violations that have been occurring in Honduras since the coup and give their vision for the future.  The leaders’ visits were coordinated by the Quixote Center and Just Associates, and LAWGEF pitched in to help. The following quotes were taken from that briefing.

We need democracy now, not later.  And while all of us tell stories, time is going on, and it is the poor people who are suffering from torture and persecution.  My last message is do not be silent during this time.  To be silent is to be complicit.  We need people speaking out; we need people like you to speak up for the Honduran people.