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How Political Correctness Could Sink Haiti's Future

by Alejandro Bermudez 

I saw him at the entrance of the Santo Domingo zoo almost ten years ago. A Haitian beggar was sitting at the curb side, barely whispering for money. A Dominican man came and told him in a commandeering voice, “Move away from here!” and the Haitian, sheepishly, moved ten feet away.

Less than five minutes later, another Dominican passerby stopped at the Haitian beggar and chewed him out again. The beggar, silently, moved back to his previous position.

Years later I would learn that the useless abuse of the Haitian beggar at the door of the Dominican Republic’s zoo was a metaphor of Haiti: a desperately poor country with literally nowhere to go in space or time.

The earthquake that shocked Haiti on January 13, destroying most of Port-Au-Prince, has attracted attention to a country that has been in a slow motion earthquake almost since its inception as a nation. Let’s take a look at some historical facts.

Sharing the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, Haiti occupies one third of the Caribbean island that Christopher Columbus discovered on December 5, 1492.

After Spain sent soldiers, missionaries and settlers, the native population, the Taíno, suffered under hard labor and infectious European diseases. By 1520, most of the Taíno population had disappeared, leaving European immigrants and African slaves.

Spain would soon lose control of the western part of the island to French buccaneers.

By the end of the 18th century, the French side of Hispaniola had not only overshadowed its eastern neighbor but was the richest French colony in the New World. There was, nevertheless, a dirty little secret to such success: it was the enactment of the Code Noir (Black Code), which established the most brutal, inhuman treatment of slaves ever seen in the western hemisphere. The price of success was paid with the lives of black slaves at a rate of one out of every three slaves arriving from Africa.

Slavery was nominally abolished in 1795, but this was hardly enacted, leading to years of upheaval that brought the local economy to a state of almost total disarray.

In late 1803, native leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines led a revolt of slaves that defeated the remnant of French troops. On January 1, 1804, the victorious slave revolutionaries found themselves in full control of the region. They then declared independence, christening the new nation Haïti, the Taíno name for the island.

The rebellion not only resulted in the death of 100,000 blacks and more than 60% of the approximately 40,000 white colonists, but it also unleashed a massive exodus of French Créole – those of mixed race or free people of color. Some 10,000 of them settled in New Orleans.

Dessalines, proclaimed “emperor for life,” exiled or killed the remaining whites until he was killed in 1806.

In 1821, President Jean Pierre Boyer invaded the Dominican Republic, establishing a 20-year-long Haitian occupation (1822–42) which Dominicans have never forgotten, much less forgiven. 

After Boyer was ousted in 1843, the story of coups, dictatorships and political killings has stained Haiti's history: a record of 32 coups – only matched in the hemisphere by Bolivia – has hampered Haiti’s progress, without ever affecting the minuscule, outrageously wealthy minority which  lives in the bunker-like gated communities in the Petionville neighborhood in Port-Au-Prince.

The U.S. occupied the island from 1915 to 1934, and although it is certainly not the proudest chapter of history for the U.S., Uncle Sam left the island in the best shape it has ever been: 1,100 miles of roads, 189 bridges, hundreds of irrigation canals, hospitals and public buildings, and the availability of drinking water in the main cities. The departure of the last U.S. troops in 1937 marked a steep, irreversible decline in Haiti’s infrastructure.

Brutal dictators and rulers such as François Duvalier, known as “Papa Doc,” his son and successor Jean-Claude Duvalier (“Baby Doc”), and the former Salesian priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide – who encouraged his supporters to burn  his critics alive – have marked Haiti’s  late 20th and earliest  21st century.

The current, mostly irrelevant president of Haiti, Rene Preval – who was nowhere to be found following the earthquake – previously served as Aristide’s prime minister.

Over the past decade, the United Nations and several countries, including the U.S., have poured some $7 billion dollars into the beleaguered nation. But the money is nowhere to be seen, except for the growing number of military and government officials moving into Petionville or Miami. And in 1994, the Clinton administration sponsored “Operation Uphold Democracy,” paving the way for the restoration of the brutal and corrupt Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president.

Today, many local Catholic leaders, upon the sight of an almost completely destroyed Port-Au-Prince, are venturing to say that maybe Haiti's right to “self-determination” should be open to discussion.

Such leaders are not calling for another U.S. invasion. They are just asking the world, now so willing to help, to consider that self-determination is a myth when the only “leadership” of the country is an ultra-wealthy minority that has remained comfortably in their bunkers in the aftermath of the earthquake because they can afford  to smuggle truckloads of food, water and luxurious supplies in from the Dominican Republic. Meanwhile the vast majority of Haitians fights for survival in the lower part of town, which is completely destroyed.

There are several, mainly U.S.-based charities who have been working for years to bring relief and development to Haiti. But as one Church leader told a Catholic News Agency reporter: “Aspirins do not suffice to heal our cancer.”

He not only means local corruption. The international community will also be complicit in Haiti’s continued demise if, out of political correctness, it treats Haiti as a viable nation, instead of helping it become one.

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)