The lure of Caracol and thousands of assembly plant jobs resulted in 366 families and 720 agricultural workers losing their land and with only a few days' notice to vacate for the bulldozers. A Potemkin village was shaping up to be more akin to a forced labor camp that leaves the inhabitants with enough money to occasionally go out and feed themselves. When you can only afford to feed yourself and put a roof over your head you are a slave. You have no options, no way out.
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) began studying USAID's efforts, and in particular shelter projects in the development of the Caracol Industrial Park. Cuban-born Ros-Lehtinen was the first Hispanic woman elected to Congress and serves Florida's 27th Congressional District. Her district, in and around Miami is less than a two-hour flight from Port-au-Prince.
Reports from watchdog groups who were trying to follow the aid money were troubling, and a grass roots' outcry for accountability was becoming a deafening drumbeat. International donors had pledged $13 billion for immediate relief, recovery, and reconstruction. Private charities and NGOs pledged another $3 billion, while Congress approved $1 billion in appropriations for Haiti of which $651 million was provided to the Agency for International Development (USAID).
What the GAO found was far worse than what was suspected. As of March 31, 2013, (USAID) had obligated $293 million (45 percent) and disbursed $204 million (31 percent) of $651 million in funding for Haiti from the Supplemental Appropriations Act, of 2010. Obligations are bills that are not yet paid. Disbursements are the actual withdrawal of cash from the Bureau of the Treasury. $204 million should have accomplished something, but Haiti was still reeling with 320,000 still homeless and a cholera epidemic that was raging out of control.
The homeless were caught in the third circle of hell with no way out. USAID's 2010 housing plans were downscaled by 80 percent. Of the 15,000 houses originally planned, today only 2,649 were left on the drawing boards. Instead of housing for 90,000, only16,000 people would benefit, and those homes were being built outside of the earthquake zone.
The planned port facility had no engineer and USAID had not been involved in port construction since the 1970s. In short, Haiti's homeless were screwed and the $204 million flowed down a rabbit hole. Three years post-catastrophe hundreds of thousands still remained in wretched displacement camps. Everyone was to blame and no one was responsible. The fingers pointed again at the Haitian people, weak property rights, high unemployment, and a poor business climate. The vague notion of "corruption" became the catch basin for all that was wrong with Haiti. Delays were blamed on the difficulty of securing land titles in a country where titling was rare and what records that existed were still buried in Port-au-Prince. USAID cited a "possible lack of economic opportunities" and a lack of "community cohesion."
The release of the 50-page GAO Report was fodder for the media, but what about the grand bargain of Caracol? GAO gave the project "mixed" results, due to the port debacle, housing cut backs in the Port-au-Prince, St-Marc, and Cap-Haà ¯tien areas, and the shaky power facility. Cap-Haà ¯tien was a critical leg of the housing triad, since it meant housing for the promised immediate 20,000 direct jobs and grand potential of 65,000 jobs. Cap-Haà ¯tien would get only a portion of the 2,649 houses left in the plan.
But Caracol was still on track and 3,753 sewing machines began humming.
Enter the Gap, Inc. and More Pay-for-Play
The Clinton Foundation website offers access to its list of donors, but the list is searchable only if you know the exact name of the donor AND the amount of money donated.
Caracol's anchor tenant, Sae-A Trading, is a major supplier to American retailers like Walmart, Ralph Lauren and Gap Inc. There are approximately 181 donors to the Clinton Foundation that lobbied the U.S. State Department, and Gap, Inc. is one of them. A web search uncovered the dollar parameter of $100,000 -250,000 for Gap, but Gap is not listed on the Clinton Foundation website. However, the Fisher Foundation is listed as a donor in that category. The Doris and Donald Fisher Fund is a San Francisco-based philanthropic organization created by Doris and Donald Fisher, founders of Gap, Inc.
Why would a philanthropy with its own focus on educational projects donate up to $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation? Perhaps the answer can be found in the appointment a Latin American Gap executive, Mark D'Sa, to an influential State Department post in Haiti. D'Sa is a Senior Advisor for Haiti at U.S. Department of State and the person who recruits companies on behalf of the U.S. and Haitian governments to the Caracol Industrial Park. Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton's Chief of Staff, recruited him as part of the Clinton Initiative's "Aid for Trade." click here
According to his LinkedIn resume, D'Sa worked for Gap from June 2002 to October 2010, when he was first tapped as a consultant to the State Department. SAE-A and Gap have very troubled labor histories. At that time, he was overseeing trade in 12 countries in Latin America and 4 in Asia. D'Sa's resume includes a stint as a Director at Ralph Lauren from January 1998 -- October 1999.
The Gap had profits totaling $15.9 billion in 2007. In the same year, a raid on a New Delhi factory found children as young as eight sewing clothes destined for Gap stores.
In 2000, a Senate subcommittee hearing revealed that the Gap and Ralph Lauren were contracting work out to Chinese and Korean-owned factories on the U.S. commonwealth of Saipan. Saipan is the largest island of the Northern Mariana Islands, in the western Pacific Ocean. This loophole allowed the Gap to cut labor costs drastically while still producing clothes that are technically "Made in USA." The factories employed mainly young Chinese women to work in poor conditions and forced pregnant workers to get abortions in order for them to keep working, according to an ABC News 20/20 special investigation.
Let's also look at Sae-A in Nicaragua, where The Nation click here reported an April 2013 memo to Walmart and other retailers. The Workers Rights Consortium wrote that its preliminary investigation "finds that Sae-A brutally violated these workers' associational rights by directing and paying a mob of more than 300 other workers--while on paid company time--to attack these employees with scissors and metal pipes."
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