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Two years after a 7.0 earthquake rocked Haiti, the nation remains in a state of crisis. A cholera epidemic that began 10 months after the January 12th 2010 disaster has infected 520,000 people and left 7,000 dead. The World Health Organization told CNN this week that 200 new cholera cases are reported everyday. Meanwhile, the nearly 5 million cubic meters of rubble left from fallen buildings and structures remains in piles where new homes, hospitals, and schools are envisioned but never built. Bill Quigley, of the Center for Constitutional Rights visited the devastated nation recently and wrote, “Haiti looks like the earthquake happened two months ago, not two years.” Nearly $4 billion has been raised for the rebuilding of the tiny nation but Quigley found most of that went to the United States Government as reimbursements for military, food, and other aid. Though not much looks different on the ground, the past year has brought changes to the nation’s political and economic landscape. In March, former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned to Haiti after being exiled following a 2004 coup. He returned over the objections of Haiti’s political elite and the US government during a highly anticipated election season. In April Michel Martelly, a pop-star turned politician, declared himself President following a controversial election that excluded Aristide’s party, Fanmi Lavalas, and that many concluded was fraudulent. Since taking office Martelly has worked closely with the US to implement an economic agenda that the newspaper Haiti Liberte characterized as, “[b]etting on sweatshops.” Martelly declared Haiti “open for business” earlier this year, touting, along with the US government, a $257m industrial park in the northern region of the nation based on a so-called “public-private partnership.” The Caracol park will house factories owned by international companies, including South Korea’s largest clothing manufacturer that supplies US retailers like the GAP and Target. President Martelly is also set on building up the Haitian military, courting foreign nations to pitch in $95 million to support about 3,500 troops. Observing the move Amy Wilentz wrote late last year that, “[a]t best, Martelly’s priorities are confused. At worst, they are ominous.”

GUEST: Amy Wilentz is the author of The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier, Martyrs’ Crossing, and I Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen: Coming to California in the Age of Schwarzenegger. She is an award winning journalist and writer and her work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, Time magazine, and Mother Jones. She is a former Jerusalem correspondent for The New Yorker, and a contributing editor at The Nation magazine and at the Los Angeles Review of Books. She also teaches at UC Irvine.