The Courage to Change a Broken World, Part 2

Hispaniola, in a map from the Encyclopedia Britannica

I first recall Haiti with clarity following the 1991 coup d’etat against Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country’s first democratically elected president. I have vague, muddled prior recollections of Haiti in the news, particularly surrounding “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s expulsion; but I was too young to understand events in context. I was only eleven when Baby Doc fell, and remember wondering how bad somebody with such a cutesy-poo nickname could really be.

Finally old enough to understand the country’s historical context in 1991, I read Haitian history and culture avidly—to the extent I could. My local public library had exactly one book on Haiti, Wade Davis’ The Serpent and the Rainbow. (I’d watch Wes Craven’s feature film adaptation years later; the movie reduces Davis’ immersive anthropology to lurid exoticism.) I later discovered Paul Farmer when I started college. Sources were scarce.

With no scope to understand Haiti’s internal forces, I struggled to encompass much about Haiti. Despite being the Western Hemisphere’s second-oldest nation, it hadn’t enjoyed the United States’ economic prosperity or internal stability. Though the nation was functionally independent by 1804, it couldn’t organize a nationwide election until 1990. Both countries had fertile soil, luxurious coastlines, abundant natural resources, and robust populations. But only one got rich.

Wade Davis

Back then, I was more conservative, and believe me, I could’ve easily explained Haitian poverty dismissively. America’s founding (White) leaders were moneyed, aristocratic, and essentially bastions of old-world privilege. Haiti’s founders, former slaves all, were substantially illiterate and uniformly Black. Though it would’ve been impolitic to say so aloud in 1991, one underlying thread of American political discourse happily blamed the Caribbean Blacks for their own plight.

I couldn’t stomach such racism, then or now, despite Republican leanings. Accepting an entire nation’s inherent moral deficiency felt slovenly, until I’d exhausted other likely explanations. I quickly learned that French colonial masters made themselves obscenely wealthy through slave plantations and coerced labor. Revolutionary leaders chased France out in an overthrow that descended into a pogrom… and then, having no other model, cracked down on the citizenry.

America’s revolutionary leaders claimed to commence a new nation, a new democratic experiment, then simply repeated English social structure. Aristocracy, peonage, and slavery were the hallmarks of Early America, and in some places, still are. Haitians likewise repeated the colonial administration, because it’s what they knew. This meant bloody reprisals for minor acts of willfulness and independence: public maiming, a legacy of French slavery, is still a Haitian political tool.

This became an important seed in my political awakening. Poverty, I realized, appears causeless and simply natural, because the social forces which cause it are so baked into our environment that we can’t see them anymore. The bloody reprisals enacted by the Tonton Macoute or by Raoul Cédras’ army always first hit those Haitians who showed leadership, entrepreneurship, or self-reliance. Haiti’s ruling elite paid handsomely to keep the poor impoverished.

Dr. Paul Farmer

It took years before I applied this heuristic to American politics. Eventually I realized that some of America’s most lush, resource-rich states were the most economically impoverished, for exactly this reason. Chronically poor states, such as those in the Old Confederacy, have a long history of squandering their fertile lands, clear waters, and strong people, to keep ensure that Blacks, Native Americans, immigrants, and other “outsiders” don’t get any advantage.

We don’t call it that anymore, certainly, Since the middle 1960s, politicians can’t simply admit they’re engaged in Bull Connor-style naked racism designed to keep the designated underclass from rising. Yet that’s what happens with “law-n-order” crackdowns, or complaining about “handouts,” or making sure nobody receives a reward they didn’t “earn.” Entire American regions will squander abundant natural wealth to ensure the poor remain poor.

Read that way, Haiti’s struggles become instantly comprehensible. Sure, America had certain early advantages, particularly an existing moneyed class, and diplomatic recognition from the European powers, that Haiti lacked. (France didn’t recognize Haitian independence until 1826, the U.S. until 1861.) But both countries shared one important characteristic: the wealth of the nation wasn’t distributed equally, and autocrats paid heavily to ensure that inequality would survive.

The poorest citizens always paid the highest price, but their allies came a close second. Paul Farmer avoided political activities, simply providing peasants with medical care; yet treating the needy was so abhorrent that the Cédras junta expelled him for three years. The ruling elites would rather let their own citizens die than see them overcome their poverty. Viewed that way, I seriously doubt America has one penny over Haiti.