The Great Tragedy That Is Haiti

The Great Tragedy That Is Haiti
By Michael Reisig
16 January 2010

No one who has watched television this week could help but be touched to the core by the individual and collective tragedy that has taken place in Haiti. The portraits of desperation make us reflexively hold our loved ones closer and silently thank God for the blessings we have and share, without thought, every day.

It is the responsibility of nations across the planet to offer what they can to help see Haiti through this initial reorganization, and it’s my hope that they will follow through, but the dilemma that is Haiti is much broader in its width and depth than most people understand, and the consequence that this disaster manifests is much more complex and far reaching than most of us realize.

Having spent time in Haiti I have some understanding of the challenges that lie ahead for that nation, and for America. Much of what is taking place now is analogous to a funeral – when great tragedy strikes a family, like a death, we have a tendency to eulogize with effusive kindness towards the departed. The sadness and the shock in Haiti is overwhelming – we don’t want to hear what the departed was really like, we just want to help the family. And for now, that’s good. But there is a truth, perhaps several truths, just around the corner, that we are all going to have to face, and those truths will come to affect not just Haiti, but America.

Put simply, brutally, Haiti was a train wreck long before the earthquake. It has a 200-year history of violence, brutality, corruption, poverty, bad leadership, and bad decisions. It has had a succession of mad, violent, narcissistic leaders who were either killed in coups or slipped away in the night with the national treasury safely shipped to some European or African country. It is the Rwanda of the Caribbean, and America has spent billions of dollars over the last few decades trying to keep it afloat.

To provide some insight to Haiti one has to understand its history. African slaves on French plantations led the only successful slave revolt in the Caribbean in the late 1700s-early 1800s, and all European influence on the island was expelled or killed. In the rest of the Caribbean – the Bahamas, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Barbados, Saint Kitts, etc., European or Spanish influence dominated, and in the process, a stable infrastructure with a sound economy and government was designed, which enabled the nation to survive and thrive. Eventually, in these islands, the indigenous black/slave population gained freedom/independence and integrated into the mainstream, by and large gaining control over their new homeland by persistence, and attrition in numbers of the original dominating cultures.

Haiti, with its constant political and cultural unrest, was never able to maintain one single government long enough to allow the nation to progress. The greatest example of this lies in the fact that Haiti comprises the western half of the island of Hispaniola. On the Eastern half (divided by nothing more than an invisible border across the mountains) lies the Dominican Republic – occupied by the Spanish, who had originally established settlements in Hispaniola in the 1500s and declared independence from Haiti in 1844. The Dominican Republic is a thriving nation with a strong agriculture, a well-organized infrastructure, and a highly successful tourist trade. Haiti is not even listed as a point of destination in travel magazines any more. There are no cruise ship stops in Haiti. It has the largest poverty rate and the highest rates of homicides, HIV, and tuberculosis in the Caribbean Basin. And these two nations are attached by a single border, on the same island…

None of this lessens Haiti’s needs at this moment, nor does it lessen our responsibility to help the island nation, but this does set forth an understanding of the challenges ahead. Moreover the tragedy that is Haiti has far reaching political and cultural implications for America.

At present, with the world’s help, we are simply trying to save lives and supply food and water in Haiti, and we will be weeks, probably months, at that. At that point we come to some big questions: Haiti had a crumbling infrastructure before this calamity – it has none now. Do we rebuild Haiti? And to what extent? There are nine million people in the country – what happens to those people? The truth is, the rest of the world will tire of this disaster in a few months, and the responsibility will fall to the closest, most benevolent neighbor – America. Haiti could easily become our perpetual welfare charge, our Caribbean New Orleans. Another ugly truth is the Haitian people have never been a very stable commodity. In the months to come, without serious intervention, we are most likely looking at total anarchy, rule by the machete. How do we deal with this, now that we have such kind and gentle inclinations?

Our present administration is forced into a quandary here. Illegal immigration could easily run wild now. Without a doubt, the Dominican Republic will be inundated by refugees. This may collapse its economy as well. We could virtually see a Haitian exodus (possibly government sponsored) to America -- an exodus that would change the dynamics of how our government deals with immigration and have a profound effect on the economies of states like Florida and New York.

At a time when we have spent ourselves into a state of fiscal poverty, and over half of our nation is on some form of welfare, we are faced with another calamity of epic proportions. How do we deal with the human time bomb that is Haiti?

For now, we do what Americans do best -- share, help, supply hope and sustenance, and provide faith in God. But the truth is, the tragedy that is Haiti, and its consequences, have just begun.