The Problem with Haiti's Eathquake
The recent, catastrophic earthquake in Haiti has drawn millions of dollars in aide and the world’s attention to Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. More than anything, the resultant surge of goodwill and relief efforts serve to highlight a very sad strain of subjective morality in our global society.
Haiti is half of the Caribbean island Hispaniola; it shares the territory with neighboring Dominican Republic, Hispaniola being where Columbus first made berth, and as such the veritable starting point for all of the New World’s racial, economic, cultural, and ethnic problems.
The Spaniards brought many slaves through Haiti; the indigenous peoples had offspring with the slaves and colonial powers, resulting in a Creole culture. The French eventually took the country, and lost it to slave rebellion. Through this rebellion, the first successful slave uprising in the modern world, Haiti became the Caribbean’s first independent Latin American country and the world’s first post-slavery, black-led nation.
The Haiti of the 20th and 21st centuries, however, is anything but a shining beacon of freedom and post-colonial potential. The majority of Haitians live on about $2 US per day. Illiteracy is at 50%. 80% of its population lives in poverty, and more than 80% of its college graduates emigrate. 40% of children are unvaccinated. Haiti now ranks 149th of 182 countries in the United Nations Human Development Index. According to the World Health Organization, nearly half the causes of deaths have been attributed to HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, meningitis and diarrheal diseases, including cholera and typhoid. Ninety percent of Haiti’s children suffer from waterborne diseases and intestinal parasites. The country sees 30,000 cases of malaria annually. A fair number of Haitians are so poor they actually eat dirt. I’m not making this up. They make cakes out of mud and leave them in the sun to cook/dry, and then eat them.
(A) Hispanola chillin next to Cuba (B) Haitian Slave Revolt (C) Dirt Cakes Drying in the sun (D) Pigs and people in a Haitian slum
Now, before the biting criticism and moral high horsing I’m about to go into (and yes I openly acknowledge it as such but sometimes its merited, being more Righteous Indignation than Look At Me I’m Better That You finger pointing), some acknowledging is order. From the US alone, Haiti has received 1.5 billion dollars in aide. A fair amount of that came during the Bush administration. So let’s acknowledge that the US in fact does some very admirable things in the world at large, and that even an administration as globally deplored as that of the second Bush lived up to some of America’s promise, to make the world a better place by using it superpower status and wealth to help those in suffering.
The criticism them must be leveled at the average people of the world, as it seems the governments (many other countries throw a good deal of aide Haiti’s way) have done their part, and done it admirably. But apparently it takes an earthquake, catastrophic destruction, and an estimated death toll of 200,000 (this being more deaths than US soldiers passed in Vietnam, as a result of a few minutes’ earth shaking) for the people of the world to care.
So far, $210 million US has been raised to help rebuild Haiti. Jay-Z and Bono (and no disrespect to Bono who, as a musician, has done more for the world’s needy than most statesmen in their careers) have recorded a benefit single (that, despite it’s best intentions, is pretty much an awful song) to help raise even more funds. But Haiti, being one of the world’s least developed nations, doesn’t really need rebuilding, because it was never quite built to begin with. What the earthquake has done is it has taken a catastrophic human toll and further destroyed the morale of an already crushed nation. A nation so poor people were actually, let’s reiterate, eating dirt. And overnight, thanks to destruction on a scale we couldn’t sit around and ignore it anymore, $210 million dollars shows up.
Much like Hurricane Katrina and the racial disparity of New Orleans, Haiti’s earthquake has exposed to us the diseased underbelly of the modern world. The natural disaster has drawn attention to the moral destruction that has be reaped on the world’s peoples at the hands of the promise of a comfortable life. It all comes down to math; six billion plus people, limited resources, wealthy nations: the haves necessitate the have-nots, just as love cannot exist without hate. Though it’s lamentable that it takes near quarter million deaths to get the world’s attention, it’s better late than never. Hopefully with this, we will learn our lesson for good, and begin to look to the world’s struggling nations, to help them on their difficult path to prosperity. A chain can only be as strong as its weakest link.
Here's a short documentary about the Disney factories in Haiti, from 1996:
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