Market in Port au Prince, Haiti. Photo: Miguel Ángel (flickr)

I recently accepted an invitation to speak at a showing of the documentary “The Price of Sugar” sponsored by Portland State University. “The Price of Sugar,” which I had not seen before that event, is a powerful documentary depicting the plight of Haitians who toil on sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic.

According to the filmmakers, these workers cross the border from Haiti to labor in conditions that the film's central protagonist, Father Christopher Hartley, calls "quasi-slavery." They are housed in sugar company towns called bateyes. Stripped of identification papers, they cannot legally travel elsewhere in the country.

My role in the May 7 event involved offering my perspectives on the economic conditions in Haiti that drive Haitians to cross the border illegally and risk arrest and deportation. Since February 2006, I’ve had several opportunities to travel to Haiti to work on developing economic and educational projects in this poorest of counties in the Western Hemisphere.

Imagine my surprise the morning of the event to receive both an email and a fax at my office at Marylhurst University from the Washington, D.C. office of Patton Boggs, LLP informing me their law office represents the Vicini family, “who are involved in various business ventures in the Dominican Republic including sugar.”

According to the 29-page document, the Vicinis are the victims of misrepresentation by the makers of the documentary; the documentary contained no less than 53 errors, omissions, or fabrications that allegedly amount to defamation of the Vicini family and businesses; and a “cease and desist” motion had been filed in a United States District Court in Boston, Massachusetts. “What,” I thought, “kind of mess did I just step in?”

A careful reading of the legal document revealed that I wasn’t a target, but simply being informed that a legal effort has been underway to stop the distribution and showing of the video. Since I had no direct knowledge of the information contained in the video, nor was I in any way responsible for obtaining and showing the video, I chose to go ahead with my prepared remarks on general economic conditions in Haiti and show my own photos from recent trips to that country.

What’s important here, and both I and my hosts at the video screening were careful to point this out, is that anyone interested in learning more about the economic, political, and social conditions of people engaged in trade around the world are obligated to choose their information sources wisely and carefully.

Researchers seeking support for their own agendas and ideas can easily find sources that will support their position. We are human after all and we gravitate toward those bits of data that seem to resonate with our opinions. But careful researchers who desire to build a real knowledge of the world have a much tougher challenge. Researchers seeking an accurate picture of the conditions under which people labor around the world may find it harder to find unbiased, neutral, accurate data.

It is not my intent here to pass judgment on the veracity of the information contained in “The Price of Sugar” or to comment on the legal claims of anyone connected with the video. My intent is to caution viewers to be diligent in their pursuit of true knowledge by exercising a reasonable amount of skepticism and to engage in critical thinking any time they are learning something new.

U.N. and World Bank officials say "the perfect storm" of factors has led to skyrocketing food prices, leading to riots in places in Haiti.

Haitians took to the streets this week, with The Times Online reporting that protesters compared their hunger pangs to the burn of battery acid. U.N. Peacekeepers used rubber bullets in attempt to control the situation.

The riots in Haiti are not the first uprisings over food prices, which have risen 65 percent in the last six years. There have been riots in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique, and Senegal. A survey by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute says staple foods have risen by 80 percent since 2005. The price of rice is at its highest in the last 19 years and wheat is at a 28-year high.

“There is a risk that this unrest will spread in countries where 50 to 60 percent of income goes to food,” FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf told The Times Online. “This is due to higher demand from countries like India and China, where GDP grows at 8-10 percent and the increase in income is going to food.”

Community Health Workers in Haiti have had one of the most astounding responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in industrialized or developing countries worldwide. When the epidemic first came to Haiti’s shores, many world leaders thought the country was too poor and underdeveloped to make intervention worthwhile. In the decades since, they have been proven wrong. The World Security Institute writes that "Twenty-five years after the AIDS epidemic was given a name, it is a plague with tangled ties between the wealthiest and the poorest countries in the hemisphere. With HIV rates second only to those of sub-Saharan Africa, Caribbean islands that conjure visions of sun, sand, and tourism now highlight the interplay between poverty and the epidemic in this hemisphere."

This short film, In Focus - Haiti's Hope by the Pulitzer Center, showcases what health clinics in rural and urban Haiti are doing, in order to create a sustainable approach to treating disease – and help the Haitian people move out of the world’s most dire poverty level at the same time.