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The state concentrated everything in Port-au-Prince.
Universities, state institutions...
Many of the things you need you can't find in the countryside.
And people believe when you are in Port-au-Prince
you are superior to rural people.
When you call someone a peasant, you offend them.
But when you say you're from the city, you find superiority in it.
This kind of domination comes from slavery.
When they taught us to 'own' another person.
And we find superiority in it.
Since the 1950s, concrete has been very popular in Haiti.
Concrete became a sign of wealth and success.
Now everyone has the tendency to put all of their things inside the house.
But if we look at the life of the Haitian peasant
there is a different model of what we call "divided housing,"
in which the kitchen, where food is prepared, is in one place,
and you sleep in a different place.
The peasant life is more in harmony with nature,
because they're always in and relating to nature.
So we can see why a natural disaster especially affects the modern city.
And, as of the 1980s, there has been a mass of migrants
from the countryside to the city hoping to find work.
This migration was the result of a development model
that focused on the growth of outsourcing between the 1970s and 1982.
It is the same model - wearing new clothes -
that they call the H.O.P.E. Act,
in which the principal offer is to turn Haiti into a Free Trade Zone.
And what's worse is that while they say "Free Trade Zones will save this country,"
they liberalize the economy.
That means they open up the economy to imports
and many sectors, many productive industries,
are going to disappear simply because many of these products
are not subsidized like imports.
This has caused many people to lose their jobs.
I would say that's about 80% of the reason
that caused the small farmers that used to be here,
producing on their farms and doing other agricultural activities,
to leave this area. There isn't this work anymore.
They are obligated to leave the countryside
and concentrate on areas near Port-au-Prince
in little corners, little corridors.
There aren't toilets. There aren't places for them to sleep.
They don't have places to bathe.
This is the context that we live in
and the reason that the earthquake hit us so hard.
When there's aid for Port-au-Prince, it's only for Port-au-Prince.
They might send aid for the whole country,
but once it hits Port-au-Prince, it's only for Port-au-Prince.
They don't know us.
We'll never get any real help.
Like the people you can see living on this mountain.
These people are abandoned.