by Jim Harding
It's more than a month since the powerful earthquake left Haiti devastated. We've all seen images of bewildered people, barely recovering from a rash of hurricanes in 2008, clawing in the rubble of sub-standard houses looking for loved ones.
The cameras have now gone to the next "breaking news”, but hopefully we've seen too much to be able to forget Haiti. Anyway, images of desperate people scavenging in the stench of death don't tell us why this is happening. An aerial view explains much more, showing the island dissected by the impacts of centuries of colonization -- especially widespread deforestation from cash-cropping, which is primarily on the Haitian side.
HAITI'S HISTORICAL VULNERABILITY
The 7-Richter scale earthquake is why the cameras came, but the carnage and ongoing vulnerability are as much a human failure as a natural disaster. On the other side of the island, where the Dominican Republic formed in 1844 as a break-away state, things go on pretty much as usual. While we watched from afar, worrying whether grieving survivors will even have a tent to live in, the Dominican Republic made sure that none of its 600 hotels were used to house any of the million homeless, because this would threaten the lucrative tourist industry.
If we are going to turn the corner on creating sustainable societies we'll have to peel away centuries of layers that allowed this most recent Haitian disaster to take such a toll. They go way back. When Columbus sailed there the island was inhabited by the Taino people. How their lives were changed! In 1697, after a long period of brutal Spanish exploitation, the western part of the island of Saint Dominique was ceded to France. Over decades the French commercial empire stole one-half million Africans from their homeland, forcing them into slave work on lucrative sugar and coffee plantations on this colony. The slave traders stole Africans from a diversity of tribes so they couldn't communicate easily; the unique Creole language in Haiti may trace back to a tribe in what is now Senegal.
The French colony became the richest of all, but the slaves were kept impoverished. In 1791, after more than a century of this inhumanity, the slave population revolted; and by 1804 the revolt had created the first black state on the planet. Haiti was born. Haiti's independence from French colonialism followed after the US war of independence against British colonialism. The US and Haiti were the first two independent nations in the western hemisphere. How is it that one became the richest and the other the poorest in the hemisphere?
Rather than American solidarity for Haiti, the US imposed a trade embargo, and it was 60 years before it recognized Haiti's independence. In 1825 the French demanded compensation from Haiti for losses from the slave economy and Haiti's long-term indebtedness locked it into underdevelopment. In 1915 the US marines invaded Haiti to protect US economic interests that replaced those from France. In 1957, riding a wave of nationalist sentiment, the "Papa Doc" Duvalier took power and this brutal rule lasted until his son was overthrown in 1986. Populist priest-politician Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected in 1991 on a program of abolishing poverty and destitution, but in 1994 the US again occupied Haiti to protect American economic interests. Aristide was re-elected twice but was replaced, with Canadian support, by a military-backed president. In 2004, on Haiti's 200th anniversary, before his exile to South Africa, President Aristide called on France to pay restitution of several billions for the century-long pillage of the country. France never replied.
A HUGE DISSCONNECT
The devastation can't be grasped by the January 12th earthquake alone. The story-line of the western media, however, has been about creating security for aid workers, the threat of looting, the recovery of 150 people by 27 international rescue crews, and the widespread generosity of celebrity-starring benefits. Of course those watching the devastation from afar are moved to acts of compassion. But the millions of donors are not na've; they know that open-hearted generosity doesn't ensure resources get to people on the ground.
And much carnage resulted because Haiti, the poorest of the poor countries, doesn't have the infrastructure to launch an effective rescue mission. Even the UN, which suffered casualties, had to try to coordinate humanitarian aid with its headquarters collapsed. It apparently hasn't gone that well. While the US took over control of Port-au-Prince's airport and a massive US navy hospital docked offshore, people continued to die because there weren't trucks to move emergency and medical aid to outlying areas. The disconnect between the mammoth show of technology and the failure to meet simple human needs has been glaring.
To realize the scale of devastation, imagine half the population of Saskatchewan either dead (200,000) or injured (300,000). Three times our population, one-third of Haiti's, will require long-term assistance to survive. Within a week, without funerals, 75,000 bodies were buried in "body dumps", because there was nothing else to do. How many of these dead would be alive if Haiti had not been left to suffer its legacy of underdevelopment after centuries of colonialism? Or if it had not been forcibly stopped by outside economic interests from making the reforms required to lift its people out of such hardship? How many would be uninjured if the Haitian people had enough democratic influence to enforce standards of construction used elsewhere that would better endure the quake?
How many of the children who have had limbs amputated would still be running and playing if the medical services had gotten to them in time; before injuries turned into infections and then into untreatable gangrene? The media has focused a lot on the 50,000 children orphaned in the aftermath of the quake. There were already 380,000 orphans in Haiti before January 12th, many of them living in sub-standard buildings which did not withstand the shock.
Of course the needy must be helped regardless of this historical legacy. But will the aid go to Haiti in such a way that an infrastructure, economy and democracy is built that doesn't leave the majority of the population so powerless and vulnerable when the next natural disaster comes?
Originally published in RTown News, February 12, 2010