Angels and Demons

I will not likely be moving to Haiti any time soon. In addition to being unfashionably poor, the country lies upon the typical route for Atlantic hurricanes as they develop from the coast of Africa and move towards North America. Most hurricanes don’t decide whether to turn north and crash into Miami or stay the course and pummel Belize until they are in close proximity to Haiti, which means that Haiti gets hit by a lot of hurricanes. Hurricanes are not compatible with poverty and the poorly built structures usually blow away, wash away or simply disintegrate during storms such that the lower economic classes, which apparently comprise ninety-nine percent of Haiti’s population, are left with no roof and no return on their investment. In 2008 alone, hurricanes Fay, Gustav, Hannah and Ike all took a swipe at Haiti and over the years hurricanes Jeanne, Flora, Hazel, Gordon and Georges all ripped the country a new one. In addition to being in the wrong place, the people of Haiti have virtually deforested their homeland because they can’t afford oil or coal to heat and cook with, so there is nothing to stop the torrential rains from raging down the mountain sides and carrying the people and all their goats away.

However, as recent events have shown, there is an even greater persistent natural threat to the happiness of Haiti’s denizens. For those of you unfamiliar with Plate Tectonics, Wikipedia is a great source of education and you may want to check them out before reading further. Anyway, the island of Hispaniola (which includes the Dominican Republic and Haiti) and a number of other Caribbean islands sit upon the Caribbean Plate, which is sliding in an easterly direction. The Caribbean Plate is bordered on the north by the North American Plate and on the south by the South American Plate; both of these are sliding in a westerly direction. The North and South American plates grind against the Caribbean Plate and friction slows their movement and stores tremendous kinetic energy along the fault lines that divide them. Every so often the snag will release violently sending powerful shock waves through the region as the plates briefly lurch past each other. In other words, our planet is designed to periodically and unpredictably shake the shit out of Haiti and her neighbors. Combine this with poverty, poorly regulated construction and rural isolation and you often have unimaginably catastrophic results.

Haiti is principally populated by the descendants of African slaves brought to the island to labor on the sugar plantations. The previous inhabitants of the island of Hispaniola, the Arawak Indians, were a surly lot who were ultimately obliterated by smallpox and Catholicism. In the early 1500’s, the Spanish were the first to import unenthusiastic Africans to labor in the fields and dig for gold. In the 1600’s French pirates began to use the rugged western end of the island as a base of operations. Ultimately tobacco became more profitable than raping and pillaging and the pirate hideout evolved into a settlement which then began importing its own African slaves. Spain, which had nominal claim to the entire island, took a dim view of this usurpation of royal sovereignty and there was constant friction between the French and Spanish aims on the island. The Treaty of Ryswick, which ended the Nine-Years War, was signed in the Dutch Republic in September of 1697 and ceded the western third of the Island of Hispaniola to the French.

Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was originally named by the French, became a fabulously wealthy source of sugar, coffee and indigo and home to tens of thousands of French colonists and even more African slaves. The wealth of the colony was a result of its productivity and its productivity was the result of the ruthless efficiency with which it was run. Records indicate that one-third of all imported slaves would die within the firs t three years of their arrival, which probably reflects the view of the French colonists that African labor was an expendable, and easily replaceable, commodity. Not that the French were the only nation that lacked moral refinement, then or now, but a pretty crappy deal has generally characterized the whole Haitian experience from the get-go. When the French Revolution broke out, the revolutionary fever spread to Haiti, agitation for the universal rights of Man began and the slaves rose in rebellion. Efforts of the French revolutionary government to re-establish control were unsuccessful and the Jacobeans ultimately declared the abolition of slavery to attempt to pacify the colony. Napoleon was somewhat less accommodating and sent 20,000 soldiers to reassert French sovereignty, but most of them died from tropical diseases and Haiti formally declared its independence from France in 1801. In 1825, after over two decades of intermittent conflict and foreign intervention, Haiti’s independence was recognized.

It would be unfair to try and summarize the 185 years of history of Haiti’s existence as a sovereign nation in a few sentences, but the broad framework is persistent despotism, wholesale corruption, 32 violent coups (an average of one coup every 5.8 years), economic exploitation and routine foreign intervention. The United States, which has long had significance influence in Haitian affairs, occupied the country with military forces from 1915 to 1934. There is a large expatriate Haitian community in the U.S. and the United States is Haiti’s principle trading partner. The U.S. government also subsidizes the operations of the Haitian government to the tune of 100’s of millions of dollars each year, which is in addition to massive foreign aid from Canada, the European Union and other nations.

Why life in Haiti is, by our standards, so miserable is certainly the result of many things, including history, geography and the functioning of the world economy, and the Haitian people themselves cannot escape their share of the blame, but I doubt it has anything to do with voodoo and making a pact with the devil as the great 14th Century American statesman Pat Robertson has suggested. The idea that well-known Malthusians like Rush Limbaugh have once again trotted out that we should just let the Haitians die and thereby decrease the surplus population is also to my mind a little off base and smacks of tired old racism and imperialist self-justification. If we were truly a Christian nation we would not just text $10 to 90999, but we would open our hearts and our homes to our unfortunate brothers, which much to our credit many Americans have done. If we really took Christ’s teachings seriously, we would also quit believing that just because we are luckier than others that we are better than they are.

I am not aware of any polling data on the relative contentment of the Haitian people, and it is undoubtedly difficult to have any sense of security on two dollars a day while being beaten by unruly soldiers and lashed by tropical storm winds as the very ground beneath you bucks and heaves as if to toss you off, but, ironically, all reports are that the Haitians are generally friendly, optimistic and pleasantly disposed. When they extract a cousin who is barely clinging to life from the rubble after seven days, they thank God for the salvation instead of cursing Him for the other twenty relatives smashed flatter than the American GDP in the earthquake. Meanwhile, we here in the land of fabulous wealth and freedom hide in the basement in case someone who hates us tries to blow us up, and we lose countless nights of sleep worrying that our children will, for the first time in generations, have to make do with the same size television that we grew up with. Frankly, I don’t know who God has cursed more.