Cholera detected in the Dominican Republic

A case of cholera has been detected in the Dominican Republic, the first sign that the worsening epidemic in neighboring Haiti could be crossing the border shared by the island nations. The cholera case was diagnosed in a 32-year-old Haitian man who works in the Dominican Republic and visited Haiti between Oct. 31 and Nov. 12, reports said.

A cholera case has also been detected in Florida, involving a woman who recently returned from Haiti.

The man's diagnosis in the Dominican Republic sent authorities scrambling to identify any other possible cholera cases; several suspected cases have turned out negative. The Dominican Republic has tightened control of its border with Haiti, including temporarily shutting down a traditional cross-border market in the Dominican border town of Dajabon.

At least 1,100 people in Haiti have succumbed to cholera since the outbreak began last month.

The Dominican government said Wednesday that it would ask employers in the tourism and construction sectors to temporarily stop hiring Haitian workers. Carpets doused with chlorine were being placed on border bridges to disinfect tires and shoes, reported Dominican Today. The man with cholera is in stable condition in a hospital in eastern Dominican Republic, the Miami Herald reported.

Times staff writer Joe Mozingo recently reported on a woman who attempted to save her 2-year-old son from the disease. The mother, Rosemane Saintelone, was unsuccessful, and then was turned away from public transit trucks when drivers saw her carrying her child's corpse. Mozingo and staff photographer Rick Loomis observed dozens of bodies piling up in pits.

Haiti has a presidential election scheduled for Nov. 28, but the campaigns are being hampered by the cholera outbreak, deadly anti-U.N. riots, and continued recovery efforts after the devastating January earthquake.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: A cholera victim in Port-au-Prince. Credit: Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times

Dominican Republic closes border with Haiti over cholera scare; nearly 300 are dead

The Dominican Republic sealed its border with Haiti this week to ward off a cholera outbreak that is spreading inside the Carribean nation, which is still struggling to recover from January's devastating earthquake. The Dominican government closed the border to most Haitians and stepped up patrols along the 130-mile-long boundary after U.N. peacekeeping troops Monday fired tear gas to disperse a crowd of Haitians seeking to cross.

As of early Wednesday, nearly 300 Haitians have died in the cholera outrbreak, in what The Times reported as the worst cholera outbreak in Haiti in more than a century. The World Health Organization said the death rate was slowing, though the outbreak had not yet "peaked," meaning more deaths are likely. About 4,000 are reportedly sick.

The outbreak in St. Marc — which was not severely hit by the January quake — is blamed at least partly on contaminated water from the Artibonite River.

On Wednesday, the Dominican Republican reopened its border with Haiti under tight controls, reported Dominican Today. Health authorites ordered doctors to be on alert for patients with acute vomiting or diarrhea, symptoms related to the cholera infection.

— Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: A man who doctors say died of cholera is carried to a morgue in St. Marc, Haiti. Credit: Ramon Espinosa / Associated Press

'If I Was President': Wyclef Jean sets eyes on Haiti

Wyclef Jean, the New York-raised hip-hop star, has declared himself a candidate for the presidency of earthquake-torn Haiti, reports Joe Mozingo in the L.A. Times.

"My father always told me life without sacrifice is not worth living, so today I take on the greatest sacrifice that a man can take on in the 21st century," Jean said, announcing his candidacy Thursday. "I'm running for president for my country of Haiti."

The announcement has met cheers and skepticism among Haitians, with younger people expressing enthusiasm for the idea but members of the political and intellectual establishment doubting Jean's viability as a leader as Haiti struggles to emerge from the disaster of the Jan. 12 earthquake.

"Bon bagay," Saintil Wilson, 22, said from a seaside slum. "Good thing. We need somebody who is younger and stronger and has more power to run Haiti."

"First, he doesn't know how the state works," sociologist Laennec Hurbon told The Times. "He hasn't any knowledge of the political parties. This is not a good thing for democracy in Haiti."

A journalist and United Nations advisor notes in the story that Jean does not speak French and is not fluent in Creole, the primary languages used in Haiti's government. There are also unresolved questions about whether Jean even qualifies to run. He was born in Port-au-Prince but left when he was 9 and has not lived permanently in Haiti since.

Jean, 37, the son of a Nazarene preacher, is a former member of the influential hip-hop group the Fugees. In the days after the quake, Jean was in Port-au-Prince helping collect dead bodies. His Yele Haiti Foundation raised millions of dollars for Haiti's quake recovery but also faced criticism for its financial practices.

Only a day into his run, the entertainer is already facing resistance in the thorny world of Haitian politics. For starters, an electoral council must validate whether Jean meets the qualifications to be a candidate. If he is certified as a candidate, he'll be running against an uncle, Raymond Joseph, Haiti's ambassador to the United States. The party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whom Jean criticized in 2004, is planning on painting the new candidate as a puppet of U.S. interests, Mozingo reports.

In 2008, Jean released a song titled "If I Was President," in which he sings, "If I was president / I'd get elected on Friday / Assassinated on Saturday / Buried on Sunday / They go back to work on Monday." One video for the track uses U.S.-style electoral imagery, not Haitian. Watch it here.

The Fugees were a New Jersey hip-hop trio featuring Jean along with Pras and Lauryn Hill. The group rose to prominence in the 1990s with such politically charged hits as "Fu-Gee-La" and "Ready Or Not," but they later split up as the members embarked on solo careers.

Count one former bandmate as a Jean skeptic. The New York Daily News reports that Pras is not endorsing Jean's run and will support a rival candidate in elections in November.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Wyclef Jean greets supporters after filing candidacy papers in Port-au-Prince, Aug. 4, 2010. Credit: Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times

Homeless in Haiti, and losing hope

Misery is gripping the survivors of Haiti's catastrophic Jan. 12 earthquake, more than six months after the disaster and despite an international outpouring of humanitarian aid and goodwill. L.A. Times correspondent Ken Ellingwood was recently back in Haiti, where thousands sit in squalid temporary encampments waiting for relief, and new homes.

"At first we thought that the way the international community was coming together that in six months we'd be off the street. But we're still here," Stella Nicholas told Ellingwood from a shelter near downtown Port-au-Prince. "Our government is incapable of getting us out of this situation. I hope the international community can keep our hope alive, because it's fading."

Read the entire story here.

The Times also checks back in with quake survivor Sounlove Zamor, above, a 19-year-old amputee who has been waiting for several months for a trip to an Israeli hospital to be fitted with prosthetic limbs. Communication and passport issues have kept Zamor waiting and waiting. As a commenter on the story notes, Zamor is but one of many amputees hoping for prosthetic surgery.

An L.A. Times editorial recently called for the United States government to expedite visas for thousands of Haitians with sponsors in the U.S. Meanwhile, hip-hop entertainer Wyclef Jean is reportedly considering a run for Haiti's presidency in elections later this year. The deadline to declare a candidacy is Aug. 7.

So what's taking so long to get improvements to the people of Haiti?

Authorities in charge of the relief effort say that progress is actually impressive, given the scale of the disaster. Major outbreaks of illness or violence have so far been averted, although rape is increasingly a threat in some camps. The quake exacerbated existing problems in Haiti, such as deficiencies in infrastructure and the ambivalent nature of land rights in the country. Reaching recovery goals will take more time, officials say.

At a conference in New York in March, the international community pledged $9 billion in aid for reconstruction efforts in Haiti. To learn more about those efforts, visit the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission and the United Nations' Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, headed by former President Clinton.

Yet as reports frequently point out, skepticism remains high among ordinary Haitians who are still struggling to survive since the disaster struck. Richard Morse, a Twitter user in Haiti who rose to prominence in the days after the quake, recently tweeted: "First 2 questions to ask Haiti's Presidential Candidates 1) Are you planning any audits? 2) Are you planning any arrests?"

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Sounlove Zamor, 19, right, with her sister Baranatha, 20, at the general hospital in Gonaives, Haiti. Credit: Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times

The perils of displacement in Haiti

Nearly four months after the Haiti earthquake, the situation appears uniformly bleak for hundreds of thousands of people living in temporary encampments in and around Port-au-Prince, Ken Ellingwood reports in The Times. Some segments of the society want things to return to normal -- but how can normality be achieved with more than a million left homeless after the quake? Where will they go?

The Haitian soccer federation wanted to get a season underway, for example, which meant removing 3,000 who were living on the field of the Port-au-Prince soccer stadium. More than 1,300 families are still living under tarps in the stadium parking lot, preventing fans from showing up. In Croix-des-Bouquets, the private school Lycee Jean Jacques wants to resume classes, but that would mean removing about 10,000 people crowded into tents on its campus.

"We are hungry," says a message painted on a wall at the school. "Give us food."

Haiti's government plans to build massive provisional housing sites for homeless earthquake survivors on the outskirts of the city, but hasn't found enough land to put them on. The aid agency Oxfam is urging Haiti to first establish the housing camps before allowing the homeless to move from other encampments. As The Times previously reported, people are already moving to Corail Cesselesse, the first of the new provisional housing sites.

"I don't like it," one woman arriving at the camp said. "It's like a wasteland."

For "stories from Haiti, told by Haitians," check out the films by students from the Cine Institute, as seen on CBC.com. They are raw, moving films, told directly by the people who are living the story. This short film, "The Silent March," documents a mournful Carnival observance in the southern city of Jacmel, where the Cine Institute is located.

You can learn more about the film school here.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Residents arrive at the new Corail Cesselesse housing site outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on April 10. Credit: Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times

Haitians reunite with families in Mexico

A group of 250 men, women and children arrived on Mexican shores over the weekend from earthquake-torn Haiti, bringing to 324 the total of Haitian citizens who have relocated to Mexico since the Jan. 12 disaster. Sunday's arrivals from Port-au-Prince traveled to the port of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico after five days at sea aboard the Mexican naval ship "Usumacinta."

Mexican immigration authorities said the new arrivals are relatives of Haitians already living in Mexico and came as part of a family reunification program. The National Migration Institute (INM) said each would be granted a "humanitarian visa," allowing them to work and study in Mexico, use public services, and travel to and from the country. Previously, two smaller groups of migrants from Haiti arrived in Mexico in the days following the earthquake.

The INM reported that the Haitians sang "Merci, merci, Mexique" (French for "Thank you, thank you, Mexico") as they boarded buses and private vehicles and headed to reunions with family members. The new arrivals are expected to settle primarily in Mexico City, Mexico State, the city of Pachuca, and in Monterrey, said an official at the Haitian embassy in Mexico City.

La Jornada reported that health authorities administered the A/H1N1 flu vaccine to the arriving migrants.

In the weeks after the Port-au-Prince quake, which left as many as 250,000 dead, Mexico saw an outpouring of donations and government aid for survivors on the island, reflecting a deep affinity that developed within Mexican society for the Haitian victims. To get a sense of how deeply that affinity runs, consider this: a newspaper in Tijuana on Tuesday devoted an entire article to merely report that no Haitian among the recent arrivals is expected to move to the border city. (Interestingly, El Sol de Tijuana also noted that 27 Haitians have resided in Tijuana for "several years.")

In late January, after Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard suggested that the capital would be "ready" to welcome Haitian orphans as "future sons and the daughters" of the city, thousands contacted officials at the Haitian Embassy to request adopting a child -- although no such program existed.

The newest threat for Haiti, still actively recovering from the January quake, is rainy season. More from The Times here.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Haitians arriving in Veracruz on Sunday. Credit: La Jornada

Chile earthquake a test for aid agencies

Disaster relief officials Saturday were faced with a daunting mission, trying to arrange assistance to victims of Chile's massive earthquake while maintaining full-throttle operations in Haiti.

That should not be a problem for large organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, which have the resources to send emergency responders and humanitarian aid to a number of hot spots. But the same may not be true for smaller groups whose focus is on long-term rebuilding efforts.

"Organizations like ours are able to coordinate on multiple disasters," said Red Cross spokesman Eric Porterfield, citing as an example the cyclone in Myanmar and the earthquake in China's Sichuan province in May 2008.

In the month and a half since a magnitude 7 quake devastated Haiti, he said, the Red Cross has raised $322 million for its efforts there. A separate emergency fund could be directed for Chile, Porterfield said.

Chile's earthquake 500 times more powerful than Haiti's

The magnitude 8.8 earthquake that jolted Chile early Saturday packed roughly 500 times the wallop of the seismic disaster that struck Haiti on Jan. 12. But the damage and deaths in Chile, still being tallied, will probably be much less devastating.

The Haitian quake was shallow and centered just miles from a densely populated urban hub: Port-au-Prince, the capital. The Chilean quake was much deeper and centered offshore, and Chile's Pacific coast near the epicenter is sparsely populated in comparison.

Chile is relatively well prepared for earthquakes. An area of intense seismic activity, the mountainous South American country has experienced numerous deadly jolts, including a 9.5 quake in 1960, the biggest ever recorded. Children grow up doing earthquake drills in school. Laws require construction that can withstand temblors, and an immediate-response network of rescuers and emergency personnel was able to quickly spring into action.

Continue reading Chile's quake 500 times more powerful than Haiti's by Tracy Wilkinson.

Photo: Cyclers pass by the San Francisco church in Curico, south of Santiago. The church was destroyed in this morning's magnitude 8.8 earthquake. Credit: Martin Bernetti /AFP/Getty Images.

Latin America, Caribbean: Creating a bloc minus the U.S.

Representatives of 32 countries, including about two dozen presidents and prime ministers, are meeting in Cancun, Mexico, for a two-day summit. The goal: creation of a regional organization that excludes the United States and Canada.

"It is time for Latin Americans and Caribbeans to unite," Mexican President Felipe Calderon, the summit host, said Monday at the event.

The new bloc, he said, would promote better integration and shared economic development among the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, and give the region a stronger voice in international settings. It would serve as a counterbalance to the Organization of American States, which some Latin leaders, like leftist President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, say is dominated by the U.S. and Washington's agenda.

Calderon urged the leaders to put aside the political differences that cleave the region, where the left has made substantial inroads after a Cold War era of military governments and a U.S.-backed right.

"The challenge that faces our region is not a matter of left or right, it is not a question of ideologies or doctrines," Calderon said. "Rather, it is the alternative between the past and the future, a future where the values we believe in -- democracy, justice and freedom -- can flourish."

Among those in attendance were Cuban President Raul Castro and Haiti's Rene Preval, who used the summit to thank the world for helping his country after the Jan. 12 earthquake and to plea for continued assistance. Among those not invited was Honduran President Porfirio Lobo, whose government is still not recognized by some countries because of last year's coup.

--Tracy Wilkinson in Mexico City

Photo: Venezuela's Hugo Chavez greets his Mexican counterpart, Felipe Calderon. Credit: Associated Press

HAITI: Chat recap with reporter Joe Mozingo

Joe Mozingo covered the earthquake in Haiti for The Times, and yesterday he took the time to have an online chat with readers about his experiences on the ground in the aftermath of the quake.  See what he had to say (and what readers wanted to know) in the live chat at the L.A. Times Reader's Representative Journal blog.

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Haiti quake relief: How to help

Multimedia coverage: The earthquake in Haiti

Photo: Joe Mozingo is shown in Haiti with fellow Los Angeles Times reporters Tracy Wilkinson, center, and Tina Susman. Credit: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times.