Journalist Kim Ives on How Western Domination Has Undermined Haiti’s Ability to Recover from Natural Devastation
Shortly after Haiti was hit by a 6.1 aftershock earlier today, Amy Goodman and Kim Ives of Haiti Liberté report from the Port-au-Prince airport. Amy and Kim discuss how centuries of Western domination of Haiti has worsened the impact of the devastating earthquake, from the harsh reaction to Haiti’s independence as a republic of free slaves in 1804 to the US-backed overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Ives says, “This quake was precipitated by a political earthquake—with an epicenter in Washington, DC.” [includes rush transcript]
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/20/journalist_kim_ives_on_how_decades
After the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, a period in which the European practice of slavery went alongside the enlightenment, Voltaire wrote Poem on the Lisbon Disaster. The earthquake in Haiti on 12 January 2010 and the fatalist response by some contrasts with Voltaire’s reaction.
Nay, press not on my agitated heart
These iron and irrevocable laws,
This rigid chain of bodies, minds, and worlds.
Dreams of the bloodless thinker are such thoughts.
The quake makes me recall La Citadelle, the one and only old structure that would take us back to Voltaire’s time. Built as a fortress between 1808 and 1820, supposedly at the cost of 20,000 lives, it was to prevent the European powers returning to re-impose slavery. The slave revolt of 1804 long preceded the freedom granted slaves in other 'civilised' countries (UK,1833 and US,1865). Thomas Jefferson, U.S. president at the time of the liberation of Haiti, himself owned slaves. The instinct to build a defence against slavers was understandable if misplaced- interference came in new guises.
Haiti might be a very different place if the heroic leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture, a visionary with no regal ambitions, had not been dragged to the French Jura by Napoleon to die in prison of pneumonia in 1803. Local people say that L’Ouverture’s successor, Christophe, built La Citadelle with Haitian blood - and it may be true. The Citadelle was, indeed, an immense folly. Not least, it was built in the middle of the country, an irrelevance to any invasion. Christophe named himself King.
I presume that La Citadelle still stands, a constant reminder (all Haitians are descendents of slaves) of the terror provoked by the very idea of the return of the old European slave owners. It is also a poignant symbol of all that Haitians have been unable to defend against, including poverty and exploitation and this latest tragedy, upheld by the seemingly ‘irrevocable laws’ against which Voltaire railed. But these laws come not from heaven or voudou as many U.S. commentators are blithely stating.
Things started to go wrong soon after the French left. The U.S. withheld diplomatic recognition until 1862 (over the slavery issue) and the French demanded ‘compensation’ for the liberated slave plantations; “ce vre, ce vremen vre”, as the Haitians would say in Creole (a beautiful language created by a mix of largely French vocabulary and African grammar): “it’s true, truly true”. It is not far-fetched to say that Haiti never recovered from this foreign debt burden which took a century to pay off. It might also explain the paucity of public works in the 19th century.
The other notable building in Port-au-Prince, the cake-like Presidential palace, now collapsed, was built during the U.S. occupation of Haiti between 1915 and 1934. The Duvalier dictatorship left little architecture of note despite lasting nearly thirty years until ‘Baby Doc’ was chased out by another popular revolt in 1986.
But there was more to come. The profligate Duvaliers built up a huge debt and Haitians are still bitter that those debts were not cancelled. Manno Charlemagne, a great singer, later to become a rather inadequate mayor of Port-au-Prince, used to sing at the time of Aristide’s first election in 1990, “nou nan mise ak organizasyon mondyal yo”— ‘the world organisations have left us in misery” referring to both the dictators’ (Papa and Baby Doc) legacy of debt and savage structural adjustment which Haiti only just survived.
It is hard to remember when we watch the scenes of destruction that despite the crushing poverty, Haiti has a long and vibrant cultural history most notably in its sensual and afro-Caribbean music and painting. Part of that culture is Voudou, largely based on African traditions by the slaves. It is an official religion under the Haitian constitution and like other religions it contains some good and some bad things, but it is not the fantasy of 1950s Hollywood b-movies that have created the image of Haiti as a dark place of savagery and barbarism. Even the CNN and BBC journalists have been noting the warmth of the people to journalists they wish were bringing water not cameras.
Long before the military took over again in 1991, Haiti was desperately poor. Every time it rains, the streets of the capital are covered in pebbles and mud, an indication of the devastation caused by deforestation. The poor in Haiti, some 90% of the population, cook with charcoal. There are so few trees in the first black republic that peasants now make charcoal out of dead roots torn from the earth. The dry cleaners in Petionville are powered by charcoal. True. At least they were until last Tuesday.
Each rain shower is a reminder of the cost of defeating Napoleon – they subsequently missed out on the administration and accountancy systems that Europe found so handy. But more seriously, the act of slave liberation still means that Haiti inspires urges of revenge. U.S. right-wing religious leader, TV star Pat Robertson blamed Haiti’s suffering on a pact Haitians made with the devil to free themselves from the French. Nothing to do with debt and other forms of political castigation, then.
In 2004, after the removal of Aristide - whatever the merits of the case, this was regime change from outside - 5,000 people died in the months of May to September as the result of two heavy rain showers-- not hurricanes or tropical storms-- showers. People are so poor that they build their shacks in places the no-one owns- mainly dry river valleys, with guaranteed regular flash floods. But if that is the only land you can access....
Probably we never will never know how many people died in the Haiti quake- there are not even the resources to count the dead, let alone give them a decent burial. But my guess is that the earthquake, however strong, will have been responsible for a minority of the deaths. The rest died because they were poor, dirt poor, so vulnerable to the slightest whim of nature.
We can only defend ourselves from the forces of nature if we have some financial resources. Dumping of farm surpluses from developed countries and the dogmatic insistence by those same countries in the 1980s that Haiti abolish its import tariffs (‘true, truly true’) destroyed Haiti's rural economy and left it with almost no agriculture and drove many people to the already bloated and overstretched capital of Port-au-Prince. Current President Preval, himself an agronomist, has been pleading for international support for peasant farmers for at least a decade to my knowledge.
Thirty years ago Haiti was self-sufficient in its popular staple, rice. Now probably the biggest inflow of finance in Haiti is associated with the trans-shipment of cocaine from Colombia which is estimated to be over 10% of all the U.S. imports of the drug. So now the country produces dust in the dry season, mud in the wet (oh, and assembles t-shirts for export) - and then there is the cocaine money. The maths is not difficult and the corrupting effect on police, customs officers and the judiciary is devastating.
Read more: http://www.poder360.com/article_detail.php?id_article=3458&pag=1#ixzz0dNeACca5
Of the 5,000 who drowned or were buried in mudslides in 2004 (I remember it well as I was responsible for the UN’s humanitarian aid at the time, hummm), with the exception of the Argentinian peacekeepers who were caught in a landslide, nearly all of the victims were poor, or, rather, penniless.
It’s hard not to see these deaths as calculated sacrifices to an imposed and brutal economic model. In an illustration for Voltaire’s Candide in 1787 (by Jean-Michel Moreau le Jeune), a slave explains to puzzled European onlookers that the price of their enjoyment of sugar from the colonies included the amputation of his hands and legs due to a combination of accidents in the sugar mill and his desperate attempt to escape (this illustration was removed in later editions of this monument to Enlightenment thinking after the successful slave revolt in Haiti).
So there we are. As the Haitians like to say, ‘behind every mountain there is another one’, to sum up the never-ending harshness of life as they eke out their survival.. As the dust settles on the dead and dying in Port-au-Prince, let’s give a thought to the next batch of paupers who will be killed not by nature, which makes no class distinction, but by their poverty which leaves them vulnerabxle to even the most predictable downpour.
“Nay, press not on my agitated heart, these iron and irrevocable laws” that do little justice for the dead UN colleagues and all of the tens of thousands killed by poverty. Those who survived this tragedy will take a long time to put their lives back together again.
Comeback Toussaint Louverture, come back to us now.
If that is not possible, full support must be rallied behind President Preval. He and the Haitian people must decide what the reconstructed Haiti should look like, not those who pay for it. We owe them that.
**John Bevan has served in Haiti five times between 1993 and 2006 for United Nations missions on humanitarian affairs, political affairs and human rights.
Read more: http://www.poder360.com/article_detail.php?id_article=3458&pag=2#ixzz0dNdG8h1x
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/20/journalist_kim_ives_on_how_decades
Poverty Kills People, Not Nature
Haiti might be a very different place if the heroic leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture, a visionary with no regal ambitions, had not been dragged to the French Jura by Napoleon to die in prison of pneumonia in 1803.
By John Bevan
 Michael Appleton | The New York Times A coffin was carried through the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Monday, six days after the quake, on Monday, Jan. 18, 2010. Thousands of Haitians crammed onto rickety school buses and the backs of trucks to flee the ravaged capital on Monday in an uncertain quest for shelter, fresh water and stability in the countryside. |
After the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, a period in which the European practice of slavery went alongside the enlightenment, Voltaire wrote Poem on the Lisbon Disaster. The earthquake in Haiti on 12 January 2010 and the fatalist response by some contrasts with Voltaire’s reaction.
Nay, press not on my agitated heart
These iron and irrevocable laws,
This rigid chain of bodies, minds, and worlds.
Dreams of the bloodless thinker are such thoughts.
The quake makes me recall La Citadelle, the one and only old structure that would take us back to Voltaire’s time. Built as a fortress between 1808 and 1820, supposedly at the cost of 20,000 lives, it was to prevent the European powers returning to re-impose slavery. The slave revolt of 1804 long preceded the freedom granted slaves in other 'civilised' countries (UK,1833 and US,1865). Thomas Jefferson, U.S. president at the time of the liberation of Haiti, himself owned slaves. The instinct to build a defence against slavers was understandable if misplaced- interference came in new guises.
Haiti might be a very different place if the heroic leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture, a visionary with no regal ambitions, had not been dragged to the French Jura by Napoleon to die in prison of pneumonia in 1803. Local people say that L’Ouverture’s successor, Christophe, built La Citadelle with Haitian blood - and it may be true. The Citadelle was, indeed, an immense folly. Not least, it was built in the middle of the country, an irrelevance to any invasion. Christophe named himself King.
I presume that La Citadelle still stands, a constant reminder (all Haitians are descendents of slaves) of the terror provoked by the very idea of the return of the old European slave owners. It is also a poignant symbol of all that Haitians have been unable to defend against, including poverty and exploitation and this latest tragedy, upheld by the seemingly ‘irrevocable laws’ against which Voltaire railed. But these laws come not from heaven or voudou as many U.S. commentators are blithely stating.
Things started to go wrong soon after the French left. The U.S. withheld diplomatic recognition until 1862 (over the slavery issue) and the French demanded ‘compensation’ for the liberated slave plantations; “ce vre, ce vremen vre”, as the Haitians would say in Creole (a beautiful language created by a mix of largely French vocabulary and African grammar): “it’s true, truly true”. It is not far-fetched to say that Haiti never recovered from this foreign debt burden which took a century to pay off. It might also explain the paucity of public works in the 19th century.
The other notable building in Port-au-Prince, the cake-like Presidential palace, now collapsed, was built during the U.S. occupation of Haiti between 1915 and 1934. The Duvalier dictatorship left little architecture of note despite lasting nearly thirty years until ‘Baby Doc’ was chased out by another popular revolt in 1986.
But there was more to come. The profligate Duvaliers built up a huge debt and Haitians are still bitter that those debts were not cancelled. Manno Charlemagne, a great singer, later to become a rather inadequate mayor of Port-au-Prince, used to sing at the time of Aristide’s first election in 1990, “nou nan mise ak organizasyon mondyal yo”— ‘the world organisations have left us in misery” referring to both the dictators’ (Papa and Baby Doc) legacy of debt and savage structural adjustment which Haiti only just survived.
It is hard to remember when we watch the scenes of destruction that despite the crushing poverty, Haiti has a long and vibrant cultural history most notably in its sensual and afro-Caribbean music and painting. Part of that culture is Voudou, largely based on African traditions by the slaves. It is an official religion under the Haitian constitution and like other religions it contains some good and some bad things, but it is not the fantasy of 1950s Hollywood b-movies that have created the image of Haiti as a dark place of savagery and barbarism. Even the CNN and BBC journalists have been noting the warmth of the people to journalists they wish were bringing water not cameras.
Long before the military took over again in 1991, Haiti was desperately poor. Every time it rains, the streets of the capital are covered in pebbles and mud, an indication of the devastation caused by deforestation. The poor in Haiti, some 90% of the population, cook with charcoal. There are so few trees in the first black republic that peasants now make charcoal out of dead roots torn from the earth. The dry cleaners in Petionville are powered by charcoal. True. At least they were until last Tuesday.
Each rain shower is a reminder of the cost of defeating Napoleon – they subsequently missed out on the administration and accountancy systems that Europe found so handy. But more seriously, the act of slave liberation still means that Haiti inspires urges of revenge. U.S. right-wing religious leader, TV star Pat Robertson blamed Haiti’s suffering on a pact Haitians made with the devil to free themselves from the French. Nothing to do with debt and other forms of political castigation, then.
In 2004, after the removal of Aristide - whatever the merits of the case, this was regime change from outside - 5,000 people died in the months of May to September as the result of two heavy rain showers-- not hurricanes or tropical storms-- showers. People are so poor that they build their shacks in places the no-one owns- mainly dry river valleys, with guaranteed regular flash floods. But if that is the only land you can access....
Probably we never will never know how many people died in the Haiti quake- there are not even the resources to count the dead, let alone give them a decent burial. But my guess is that the earthquake, however strong, will have been responsible for a minority of the deaths. The rest died because they were poor, dirt poor, so vulnerable to the slightest whim of nature.
We can only defend ourselves from the forces of nature if we have some financial resources. Dumping of farm surpluses from developed countries and the dogmatic insistence by those same countries in the 1980s that Haiti abolish its import tariffs (‘true, truly true’) destroyed Haiti's rural economy and left it with almost no agriculture and drove many people to the already bloated and overstretched capital of Port-au-Prince. Current President Preval, himself an agronomist, has been pleading for international support for peasant farmers for at least a decade to my knowledge.
Thirty years ago Haiti was self-sufficient in its popular staple, rice. Now probably the biggest inflow of finance in Haiti is associated with the trans-shipment of cocaine from Colombia which is estimated to be over 10% of all the U.S. imports of the drug. So now the country produces dust in the dry season, mud in the wet (oh, and assembles t-shirts for export) - and then there is the cocaine money. The maths is not difficult and the corrupting effect on police, customs officers and the judiciary is devastating.
Read more: http://www.poder360.com/article_detail.php?id_article=3458&pag=1#ixzz0dNeACca5
Of the 5,000 who drowned or were buried in mudslides in 2004 (I remember it well as I was responsible for the UN’s humanitarian aid at the time, hummm), with the exception of the Argentinian peacekeepers who were caught in a landslide, nearly all of the victims were poor, or, rather, penniless.
It’s hard not to see these deaths as calculated sacrifices to an imposed and brutal economic model. In an illustration for Voltaire’s Candide in 1787 (by Jean-Michel Moreau le Jeune), a slave explains to puzzled European onlookers that the price of their enjoyment of sugar from the colonies included the amputation of his hands and legs due to a combination of accidents in the sugar mill and his desperate attempt to escape (this illustration was removed in later editions of this monument to Enlightenment thinking after the successful slave revolt in Haiti).
So there we are. As the Haitians like to say, ‘behind every mountain there is another one’, to sum up the never-ending harshness of life as they eke out their survival.. As the dust settles on the dead and dying in Port-au-Prince, let’s give a thought to the next batch of paupers who will be killed not by nature, which makes no class distinction, but by their poverty which leaves them vulnerabxle to even the most predictable downpour.
“Nay, press not on my agitated heart, these iron and irrevocable laws” that do little justice for the dead UN colleagues and all of the tens of thousands killed by poverty. Those who survived this tragedy will take a long time to put their lives back together again.
Comeback Toussaint Louverture, come back to us now.
If that is not possible, full support must be rallied behind President Preval. He and the Haitian people must decide what the reconstructed Haiti should look like, not those who pay for it. We owe them that.
**John Bevan has served in Haiti five times between 1993 and 2006 for United Nations missions on humanitarian affairs, political affairs and human rights.
Read more: http://www.poder360.com/article_detail.php?id_article=3458&pag=2#ixzz0dNdG8h1x
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