Haiti: after the earthquake

Paul Farmer's 2011 book entitled Haiti: after the earthquake has a chapter titled "A History of the Present [Socioeconomic] Illness."  Using a medical phrase, "acute-on-chronic," Farmer, a medical doctor with a doctorate in anthropology, sees the earthquake as an acute event made much worse by chronic politico-socio-economic conditions in Haiti.  So Farmer devotes a chapter to explaining why the chronic made the acute worse and made the recovery even more difficult.

Remember the old saying that the historical past haunts the sociological present?  Or as a young Haitian recently said, "We're still paying the price for defeating the architects of slavery," even though Haitians gained their freedom 200 years ago---in 1804.  This raises a fundamental question: are a people really free if they are denied economic justice.  Is freedom hollow if not accompanied by Jubilee justice?

Haiti, a country that has suffered from 500 years of ethnocentrism and oppression.  The ethnocentrism [supposed superiority of the white Spanish, French and Americans and the supposed inferiority of African slaves] of the Spanish, French and Americans legitimated the massive and horrific atrocities against past slaves and currently 'free' Haitians.

For approximately 200 years (1492-1697), the Spanish engaged in first Indian genocide and then African slavery.  For the next 100 years (1697-1804), the French engaged in brutal physical slavery to make Haiti into the Pearl of the Antilles---a highly productive colony that exported coffee, sugar and tropical fruits to Europe.  For the next 100+ years, from 1825 to around 1950, the French engaged in debt slavery, forcing Haiti to pay reparations to France.  During this same time period, the U.S. joined France in treating Haiti as a pariah nation.

From 1915 to 2016, the U.S. dominated and exploited Haiti joining forces with a small Haitian elite.  From 1915 to 1934, the U.S. marines controlled Haiti; they used forced labor to build roads.  From 1957-1986, the U.S. supported two Haitian dictators, Papa Doc and Baby Doc.  In many ways, the United States treat Haiti as a puppet state.

Back to the Haitian slave rebellion which gained political freedom for the slaves.  The first slave uprising started in 1791; the civil war devastated the country.  In 1801, France assembled a massive army to retake Haiti, France's prized colony.  Again, the Haitians defeated the French but at a terrific human and economic cost.  The country was devastated, much worse than the U.S. after its civil war.  The freed slaves, of course, had no experience or tradition of democracy, no educational system.  Into the vacuum stepped a few elite to gain control of the ports and what few exports there were.   These elite have controlled much of Haiti ever since, often in alliance with an American elite.

Now some quotations from Haiti: after the earthquake, chapter 4:

Farmer describes the chronic conditions this way: "shoddy housing, bare hillsides and overfished waters, scarce access to clean water and modern sanitation, an undesirable business environment, cash-strapped health and school systems, high structural unemployment, and frequent political upheaval."

Most outsiders, including most Americans, tend to avoid or minimize the 500 years of ethnocentrism and oppression and engage in "the old and pernicious tendency to blame solely the Haitians and their culture."  But "whether they can read or not, Haiti's people walk in history, and live in politics."  Moreau de St-Mery describes the horror of slavery this way:

"Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them is sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars?  Have they not forced them to eat shit?  And, after having flayed them with the lash, have they not cast them alive to be devoured by worms, or onto anthills, or lashed them to stakes in the swamp to be devoured by mosquitoes?  Have they not thrown them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup?"

Farmer continues:  "In 1801, Napoleon sent his brother-in-law, Captain-General Leclere, to retake the colony [Haiti]. Leclerc sailed at the head of one of the largest armadas ever to set forth for the New World. . . . [Haitian] "Dessalines and his irregulars routed the French by November of 1803."

"The end of slavery in Haiti caused ripples throughout the Americas, from Venezuela to the United States and back to Europe. . . . "  The French "orchestrated an economic and diplomatic embargo, the first of many against the troubled young nation."  The U.S. did not recognize Haiti until  1862.

"It can be reasonably said that no one helped the Haitians on the road to independence, and that many forces, the deliberate policies of their neighbors among them, stymied their growth as a nation.  . . .  Absurdly, the French demanded reparations, and not just for the losses of French plantations but for the losses of their slaves too.  Desperate for trading partners and international recognition, Haitian leaders agreed, in 1825, to pay France 150 million francs. .  .For more than a century, the Haitians paid the debt [debt slavery]."  Of course, justice demanded that reparations be paid to the slaves, but justice did not happen.

Farmer quotes Danner:

"This new nation, its fields burned, it plantation manors pillaged, its towns devastated by apocalyptic war, was crushed by these astronomical reparations, . . . that strangled its economy for more than a century.  It was in this dark aftermath of war, in the shadow of isolation and contempt, that Haiti's peculiar political system took shape, mirroring in distorted form, the slave society of colonial times."

Again the horrors of the historical past haunt the sociological present in Haiti.