Haiti, the Disaster

At around 5 pm on January 13th, a massive earthquake measuring 7.0 on Richter scale hit Port au Prince, the capital city of Haiti. Within 3 days more than 60,000 people were reported dead with over one third of the population of Haiti rendered homeless. The city looks like an ancient ruin with the infrastructure of the city and the surrounding areas was completely razed to ground. The essential public services, hospitals, communication, transportation, water, electricity, sewage and other basic amenities totally collapsed. It was reported that there was no means to get the aid from the airport to people. The people languished on the streets and died not only due to the occurrence of natural calamity but also due to lack of most basic human necessities like food, drinking water, hygiene and basic shelter. The catastrophe in human terms is massive and its repercussions incalculable. The Presidential palace collapsed and the President of Haiti went missing for about 3 days, leaving the country rudderless amidst utter chaos and tragedy. It is a rare sight to see the head of a state who usually commands supreme privileges in his country languish on streets. It shows that the disaster caused due to the earthquake have much deeper and profound causes. The scale of devastation and loss of lives is far greater than if an earthquake of a similar intensity had hit an advanced western country. Haiti is repeatedly dubbed as the poorest country in the western hemisphere; but instead of feeling a benign pity for such a country let us pause for a moment and think why it remained so poor in this so called ‘fast-developing’ world? And what consequences a country faces being impoverished and extremely poor like Haiti. Humans till date have no control over natural disasters like an earthquake, but they have certainly mastered and developed technologies to minimize destruction under such calamitous situations. The disaster in Haiti again opens the question of rich and poor, exploiter and exploited and the way the history has shaped the world making some parts of the world extremely poor and some parts extremely rich. An earthquake of similar intensity in the western advanced world would not kill nearly as many people or destroy the place as it did in Haiti.

Haiti is part of the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean where Christopher Columbus started his first massacre and exploitation of native Indians. With flourishing slave trade and massacre of native population, Haiti soon became dominantly populated with black slaves; but was also the first country to witness a successful slave rebellion against the French colony. The story goes back to 1804 when enslaved Africans expelled their French masters and declared the first black independent republic. The US or any other white country refused to recognize the new republic, until Lincoln finally granted recognition in 1862. When French were forced to leave Haiti, they put a military blockade around Haiti demanding reparations for loss of profits, resources and cheap black labor. Haiti has thus been the victim of colonial exploitation since centuries but its back was broken by the financial doom it suffered when the US invaded and conquered it in 1915 to keep tabs on its ‘investment’ (Citibank took over Haiti’s debts by buying its central bank) and ruled it as its own country till 1934. During this period the US diverted nearly 40% of Haiti’s resources to the US, bringing profits to its banks and financial institutions. The control of Haiti’s finances was maintained until 1947 completely crippling the country. To get a perspective, imagine living on 40% less salary than you currently get. Haiti, being already poor struggled to survive. Since 1957 the US propped and supported corrupt dictators, supplying them with firepower to subdue the common mass while the US corporations had a free run in exploiting and ruining country’s resources. It was only in 1986 that Haiti became free of its corrupt and brutal dictators due to massive popular uprising against it. Still covert operations against Haiti remained in place. As recently as 2004 under President Bush, the popular President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti (for the second time) was ousted from Haiti.

The poverty of Haiti and the disaster it faced needs to be looked in this perspective. Haiti has survived under such brutal excesses of the ‘advanced nations’ who are now scrambling together to get some token humanitarian help. It is ironic and insulting then to the people of Haiti when President Obama announced President Bush and President Clinton to head Haiti’s relief program. President Clinton pushed for the neo-liberal policies in Haiti which contributed to further impoverishing of Haiti. The neo-liberal policies in Haiti resulted in complete destruction of the agrarian and self-sustaining society. A vast majority of people live on less than $2 a day whereas a tiny, extremely wealthy capitalist class enjoys and controls most of the resources. The country has no public service, equipment, machinery or manpower to pull out its people buried under the rubble. A vast number of deaths occurred not due to tectonic movements but due to the lack of most basic infrastructure of relief and help in the country. The death toll continued to rise even a couple of days after the tectonic shocks hit Haiti. Unlike wealthy countries, good seismic building codes were never enforced in Haiti for strong and durable buildings with which the scale of disaster would have been far less.

The systemic destruction of Haiti’s economy leading to a vast population extremely poor has attracted numerous non-governmental agencies in the country. Haiti is now ridden with non-governmental and UN agencies which perform some basic public services in some parts of the country. The administrative infrastructure is virtually absent; it could never develop under the corrupt regimes and self-serving dictators. However, in the wake of this disaster, the agencies were busy securing the safety of their own personnel and did not get into action till very late. The food, medicines and other humanitarian aid remained at Port-au Prince’s airport with no means to transport it to the suffering people. It is only after a few days that the US choppers started dropping relief material in the affected areas. However, this cannot be taken without skepticism. A very critical danger pointed out by Naomi Klein (author of ‘Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism’) is that the US might take it as an opportunity to make ways for its corporations for rebuilding Haiti securing contracts worth billions of dollars. So any relief offered by the US has a potential danger of being seen as an investment by its government and corporations, thereby again bleeding Haiti for recovering the investments and reaping profits out of this tremendous human catastrophe.

As we join hands in aiding Haiti and helping the country stand on its own feet again, we should also try to prevent the ‘disaster capitalism’ from taking its roots in Haiti which would be a more subtle force but can bring destruction far greater than any natural calamity.