Can Sean Penn save Haiti?

A couple of lifetimes ago I had a job producing a little propaganda tract for the University of Guelph that was intended to brag up the school's role in international development.

Part of my job involved interviewing University big shots, smug Rolex-wearing twats who spent most of their time flying off to United Nations' conferences on the taxpayers dime, and whose interest in the worlds' poor extended no further than how another study about them would enhance their career.

The more I learned about "international development" the more I became convinced that most of the so-called developing world would be better off if we cleared the hell out and allowed them to proceed with development at their own pace and in their own way.

While there are occasional exceptions, I still believe this is the case today.

That's why I'm a little bit conflicted about the news that Sean Penn has been named Haiti's "Ambassador at Large."

In the two years since the great earthquake, Sean Penn has made Haiti aid and reconstruction his life's work. I have no doubt about his sincerity.

He's practically lived in the country and invested plenty of his own money and time. He's a genuine A-list Hollywood star who neither needs nor seeks the PR that is so often associated with the charity efforts of the rich and famous.

His past record of activism further enhances his bona fides. Sean Penn has spoken out consistently for human rights of every stripe. He was one of the most high-profile protesters against the Iraq war.

Yet, I have to wonder, is he really helping the Haitians? The Haitian elite have more than enough resources to fix Haiti if they were so inclined, which by and large they have more than proven themselves not to be. Haiti's elite see their country as a cash cow to be milked in perpetuity.

As long as that elite controls the country, aid is little more than a subsidy that allows them to shirk their responsibilities to their own people. It further entrenches the dependency that is already endemic in Haitian culture.

When the Haitian people democratically elected a president who the elite saw as a threat, they called in their cronies in the US and France and Canada to have him removed, a request we were happy to oblige. We're not that keen on democratically elected leaders if they might upset the status quo and threaten "our" interests, which happen to coincide with the interests of the indigenous elite.

In short, we are interested in profits before people.

Ninety miles across the Caribbean lies the reason American policy makers need to keep Haiti down: Cuba.

Cuba chose a different road fifty years ago: people before profits. That's just not the American way. And Washington has suffered fifty years of acute paranoia over the possibility that Cuba's example might inspire Haitians to reject our capitalist model and try something else.

So can Sean Penn make a difference?

No, he's just another well-intentioned dupe propping up the status quo.