Haiti: Hidden costs of the industrial zone

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Workers’ rally outside the Port-au-Prince industrial park, Oct. 8. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill Clinton, US special envoy to Haiti, were both on hand for the opening of the new Caracol Industrial Park, a 617-acre tax-exempt factory complex in Haiti’s rural northeastern corner that promoters say will bring as many as 65,000 jobs to the country. But peasants who were displaced from their lands for the project have protested it, saying such land-grabs exacerbate food scarcity. And  labor organizers with Batay Ouvriye (Workers’ Struggle) say plant managers violate Haiti’s minimum wage law with impunity. 

Photo courtesy of Marty Goodman/Socialist Action.

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