Contribution short abstract:

This presentation depicts the Canal of Dignity as an 'affective infrastructure' and explores how the irrigation canal generated hope for a second Haitian revolution across different social groups, leading to the formation of the transnational KPK movement and a renegotiation of foreign politics.

Contribution long abstract:

In September 2023, tensions rose between the Dominican Republic and Haiti over the construction of an irrigation canal on the Río Masacre, their shared border river. Initiated by small-scale farmers in Haiti's Wanament region, the project was a grassroots response to severe drought and escalating food insecurity. Frustrated by decades of unmet government promises for irrigation infrastructure, these farmers took independent action to secure their livelihoods.

The Dominican government opposed the canal, citing violations of a binational treaty. Sanctions included border closures to stop food supplies, and residency permit denials and violent deportations for Haitian citizens living in the Dominican Republic.

In critique of the Dominican government's anti-Haitian politics the canal was named ‘The Canal of Dignity’ symbolizing the human dignity of the Haitian nation. The canal generated a collective political imaginary for a finally truly independent and self-determined Haiti. Supported by the Haitian diaspora the project quickly evolved into a transnational movement called "KPK – Kanal la Pap Kanpe" (The Canal Will Not Stop) and to the astonishment of the international onlookers was completed by June 2023.

In this presentation I draw on ethnographic data to present the Canal of Dignity as an ‘affective infrastructure’ around which people from diverse socio-economic backgrounds mobilized in the movement KPK for the collective idea of a second Haitian Revolution. In the absence of adequate national and international representation, through the construction of the canal, the Haitian civil society renegotiated 'foreign politics from below', asserting its sovereignty and right for self-determination.