Haiti suffers the wrath of History, again

As will often be the case with this blog, I am going completely off topic and trying to justify the time and money invested in my Master’s degree in History (whoever knows me knows how much I like to plug this fact in as many conversations as I can). As with everyone else around me, every other word that comes out of my mouth these days start with an “H” and ends with “Aiti”. And today, I am making the statement that western imperialism and Haiti’s troubled history is largely to blame for the human tragedy that’s on everyone’s mind.

What happened on tuesday, january 12th 2010 at 4:53 pm is one of the greatest tragedies that has ever happened in my short lifetime. Speaking about the number of casualties alone, the people that were made homeless and the fact that all levels of tiny support that Haitians could have held on, whether religious, political or economic, have crumbled to the ground should be enough to make the above statements true. But what makes this particular tragedy greater than other hurricanes, earthquakes and armed conflicts is the fact that suffering comes to the Haitian people, again.

Saying that it was destiny or an act of God, and that nothing could have prevented what happened this week is FALSE. Yes, it is impossible to predict when and where an earthquake occurs early enough to evacuate a city of 3 million. But do you really believe that if a 7.0 earthquake occurred 25 kilometers west of LA, you would be seeing the same images? Do you think that half the city’s buildings would collapse, bringing death to all those that had been indoors at that exact moment? The answer is no.

What has killed so many Haitians is not the earthquake itself. It’s the fact that all of Port-au-Prince’s houses, cathedrals, hospitals and schools were built on such weak foundations because the country has been so poor for as long. And this poverty has been caused by decades of political instability (partly supported by the Unites States government) and over two centuries of undeclared economic sanctions by western powers that caused the country’s infrastructure to be so fragile and prone to crumble to the ground.  That’s right, I’m blaming western imperialism for this week’s tragedy.

Some would say that Haiti’s lack of valuable  natural ressources is the cause of its poverty. While this may be partly true, do you think that the Dominican Republic, which shares the same island as Haiti, has more natural resources, better climate or a more strategic geographical location? Of course not. Yet the GDP per capita of the Dominican Republic is 8,200$, while in Haiti that figure stand at a mere 1,300$. The difference is that Haiti has an often overlooked heroic history, for which it has suffered the consequences for over two centuries.

Haiti was officially colonized by the french in 1664, under the name Saint-Domingue. By the beginning of the 18th century, as Europe’s appetite for Sugar seemed never ending, the fertile lands of Saint-Domingue became the focal point of the french empire in the Americas. By 1780, Saint-Domingue produced 40% of the  sugar and 60% of the coffee consumed by Europeans. How could so much wealth come out of colony whose native Taino population had been extinct since the 17th century? It was of course not the french who would provide the hard labor necessary to harvest the sugar cane and mill it into the refined sugar that European aristocrats consumed with such passion. That labor was imported from Africa, as millions of unwilling African slaves were brought to the new world, away from their home and family, forced to labor all of their (often short) life in order to enrich their owners. It is estimated that close to 800,000 African slaves were brought to Saint-Domingue during the 18th century. The French appetite for gold blinded them, and the few thousands living on the island did not envision what would happen in the future.

Following the french revolution, the Haitian Revolution, led by the heroic figure of Toussaint-L’ouverture, is the only successful slave revolution in history. Its article on wikipedia describes it in a simplistic, yet effective way, and I invite everyone to read it. Having ousted the white rulers and abolished slavery, defeated Napoleon’s army (leading to the sale of Louisiana to the United States for 15 million dollars) Haiti was declared a free nation in 1804. This event, is one of the defining moments in the history of the Atlantic world. A great book by author Laurent Dubois, A colony of Citizens, defends the thesis that it is the Haitian Revolution which led to the abolition of slavery in France. Moreover, it is also a  little known fact that Hatian leader Alexandre Petion provided asylum, military and logistical support to Simon Bolivar before he liberated Venezuela, and eventually most of South America from Spanish rule.

What followed for Haiti though was two centuries of political and economic instability. For decades at a time, European powers refrained from trading with the runaway nation, making sure that it would not set an example for other slave colonies such as Cuba, Jamaica or Brazil (slavery was only abolished in Cuba and Brazil in the 1880s). Haiti was largely left out of the 19th century’s global economy because it was no longer part of the European imperialist system. And despite the US’s repeated political and military interventions in the 20th century to ensure stability in the country, nothing was done to help it develop, as the Americans never invested economic efforts like they did in pre-Castro Cuba or modern-day Puerto Rico.

Haiti’s history is fascinating and it has shaped the history of other carribean nations, the United States, Latin America, Europe  and the world. Yet for all the good that came out of the Haitian revolution, those that were made to suffer the most from it are Haitians themselves. And this week they have faced once more the consequences of decades of poverty, brought to the forefront by a massive earthquake. Haiti as a nation has been martyred to history, and has suffered its wrath once more, on january 12th, 2010 at 4:53pm.