Hispaniola is an island in the Caribbean about the size of the province of New Brunswick in Canada, or Maine and South Carolina in the U.S. It’s shared by two nations. On the eastern half is the Dominican Republic. The World Tourism Association says, the DR as it’s known to most people, was the “Caribbean’s Number One Destination in 2006.”
Haitians Are Desperately Poor
On the western half of Hispaniola is Haiti; a country almost no tourists visit. Those who do arrive by cruise ship at Labadee, a resort that is fenced off from the surrounding area. The vacationers are isolated from the real Haiti, a very troubled country that the United Nations ranks 148th out of 179 states in its desirability as a place to live.
The Fund for Peace places Haiti 11th on its list of failed states. It slumped to this undesirable position for a combination of reasons but mostly because of a series of criminal governments.
Appalling Legacy of Duvalier Family
From 1957 onwards, the Duvalier family had a strangle-hold on Haiti. Francois Duvalier and then his son Jean-Claude misgoverned without opposition for three decades. Their depredations of the country were well documented in a Time Magazine article on June 24, 2001 entitled “Haiti End of the Duvalier Era.”
Anybody who raised objections to the family’s rule was killed by the Duvaliers’ several-thousand-strong force of thugs called the Tonton Macoutes. The family and its friends stole just about everything of value from the country. In 2004, the anti-corruption group Transparency International gave Jean-Claude Duvalier position number six on its list of the world’s most corrupt political leaders of the previous two decades.
Eventually, the brutality of the Tonton Macoutes got too much for even the long-suffering people of Haiti. Social unrest reached such a point that Jean-Claude left the country in 1986; he was pushed out by Haiti’s military and pulled out with U.S. help.
Duvalier Left a Country in Ruins
International assistance hasn’t improved the situation in Haiti a whole lot. The Council on Hemispheric Affairs said in a May 7, 2009 report that despite the fact that “the international community is providing $3 billion worth of support for projects in the country, its living standards remain fraught with subhuman conditions.
Here’s the catalogue of misery that is Haiti today:
- Life expectancy is 51 years;
- 80% of the population lives below the poverty line;
- Most of the country’s educated and professional class fled the country in the 1990s in search of opportunities abroad and never returned;
- There is a huge gap between the privileged French-speaking mulatto (mixed-race) minority, and the Creole-speaking Black majority; one percent of the population owns an estimated 50 percent of the country’s wealth;
- Only 30 percent of the population has access to sanitation and 54 percent has access to clean water;
- The average Haitian’s annual salary is $240 – about 66 cents per day;
- Half the population can neither read nor write; and,
- 70 percent of the people are unemployed.
Since 2004, a United Nations Stabilization Mission of 9,000 troops has been in the country. But, the UN recently described the human rights situation in the country as “catastrophic.” The BBC reports in its country profile (April 29, 2009) that “Haiti is still plagued by violent confrontations between rival gangs and political groups.”
Cite Soleil Slum Very Dangerous
While Haiti is an insecure country to visit, there is a place within Haiti that wise people would never go. Cite Soleil is a slum in the capital, Port-au-Prince. The United Nations called it “the most dangerous place on Earth,” with the only authority within it being the 30 or so heavily armed gangs.
Between 200,000 and 300,000 people live here. The International Red Cross says they are “deprived of basic services, which the authorities have never really been able to deliver...No police, no or little electricity, no sewers, no shops, rudimentary health-care, and education facilities - the inhabitants are living in a parallel world, cut off from the rest of the country.”
On April 14, 2009 delegates from 28 countries gathered in Washington under the auspices of The Council on Hemispheric Affairs. This donors’ conference raised pledges for an additional $324 million in aid to Haiti over the next two years.
Given recent experience only the very optimistic believe this will make a dramatic difference to the lives of the country’s massive numbers of poor people.
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