Don't Count Haiti Out

Haiti is a nation of resistance and resilience.  Were this not the case, it would not exist. Despite what Pat Robertson and other misguided religious zealots may so, the Haitian people did not deserve this.  They will pick up the pieces and begin the long, hard task of rebuilding.  As Amy Wilentz states in her op-ed piece to the LA Times below, it would be a mistake to count them out.  Haiti won't be the same, but it will recover.

By Amy Wilentz
January 15, 2010

Almost since its inception, outsiders have proclaimed Haiti doomed. In the wake of its 1791 slave rebellion, which led, in 1804, to independence from France and the establishment of the world's first black republic, observers were convinced the island nation would not survive. The sin of the triumphant Haitians was not only their blackness. Even worse, while many professed Christianity, the great majority followed traditional African practices, or voodoo.

More recently, doomsayers have focused on Haiti's corrupt leadership, on its environmental disasters and its failure to find a good fit with globalization. And yet, the country has limped on, defiantly resilient. With Tuesday's devastating earthquake, Haiti's inevitable demise is again being heralded, most egregiously by fundamentalist minister Pat Robertson, who declared the earthquake evidence that Haiti was under a curse because it had made "a deal with the devil" to get out from under French rule. Well, Robertson is an unvarnished speaker, let's put it that way. But he is not the only one who thinks like this.

As Paul Farmer, the doctor and international humanitarian, has written, even the media, which should know better, have helped "to perpetuate a series of peculiarly potent myths about Haiti and Haitians." Robertson, in other words, is saying out loud what many have been thinking, without knowing why. I have at least seven e-mails in my in-box from well-meaning friends using the word "cursed" in the subject line or text.

Not surprisingly, Haitians often feel this way too, and never more than right now. It's a kind of brainwashing: They've been hearing they are cursed for so long that they believe it. Also, it's hard to feel proud of your historical legacy when your family is buried under the rubble of a slum and your presidential palace, symbol of Haiti's patrimoine, looks more like a deflated pan of muffins than a shining beacon to the nation and to the oppressed everywhere.

One doesn't have to think back too far, though, to a time when things were better. It's no wonder Haitians often long for the days before globalization, when Haiti's farmers did not have to compete with cheaper produce from abroad, when the countryside was more or less self-sufficient, when people were not starving. I'm not saying Haiti was a tropical paradise, but when I started going there in 1986, at least there was a local economy of sorts, and poverty hadn't pushed peasants to cut down all their trees. There was dirt to farm and a vibrant culture. There was the coumbite, a get-together in which Haitians sang and helped each other till the earth, bring in the harvest, roof a house. You can still find this kind of life in some spots in Haiti.

In recent years, however, extreme poverty in the countryside has driven huge swaths of the population into Port-au-Prince, looking for a job, a way out, a boat to Florida or the Bahamas, anything. Haiti has traditionally been highly centralized -- it modeled itself on France, where there is the metropole (Paris) and les provinces (the rest of the country). In large measure, Port-au-Prince is Haiti, which is why the headlines refer to Haiti's devastation, though large parts of the country seem not to have been much affected by the quake.

Today, the capital is home to at least a sixth and probably more of the population. The city has spread out like an urban ectoplasm, over hillside and ravine, scattering concrete and asphalt wherever it expands. Country people who moved to town built slanting, uncontrolled favelas to accommodate the new arrivals, slums that now have crashed down to the bottom of the ravines.Haitians will have a lot to consider when they finally can gather themselves up from this awful catastrophe and think again about more abstract things than food, water, shelter and medicine.

When your country is a shambles, it concentrates the mind. When the symbols of state -- the National Palace, the justice ministry, the Parliament, the police headquarters -- have been reduced to a nonsense pile of broken construction materials, you have to re-imagine your national aspirations. (The United States did this to a degree after 9/11, and think what might have happened if those planes had hit the White House too.) The United States as well as Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Venezuela, Taiwan, France and others can provide construction and medical material, as well as expert advisors, for building a new Haiti.

We cannot know yet how many who would have participated in constructing that Haiti lie dead beneath what, only days ago, was Port-au-Prince. Every few hours I hear further dispiriting news about who has perished, about who is presumed dead. Friends who lived in apartments near the center of town have remained ominously silent.

There are tens of thousands of victims of this earthquake. Still, it bears remembering that there are also many survivors. Help will come and is already on the way. People are still being pulled alive from the rubble, and Haiti itself will also emerge. As a Haitian American friend said Wednesday on Twitter: "Don't get your hopes down."

The tragedy is tremendous and the threats to life ongoing in a situation in which the ground is still trembling and disease likely. But the capacity of this people for survival and, indeed, for greatness in the worst of conditions has been demonstrated for more than two centuries. These are the descendants of people who overthrew an indecent, inhuman, overpowering slave system. Many of those still alive grew up under a vicious dynasty and rose up to oust it.

It's entirely likely, therefore, that Haitians once again will put together a national coumbite. With a huge humanitarian effort from their friends, they will rebuild the country -- for the better. The will must be there for the world to come to Haiti's aid and work with the millions of surviving Haitians to rebuild this valuable country.

So many Haitians, including the president, have nowhere to sleep, but they will sleep and get up again tomorrow to face the troubles.

Amy Wilentz is the author of, among other books, "The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier."She teaches journalism at UC Irvine.