Poverty

Haiti has been punished for its founding sin over the centuries. But it’s not the earthquake or any other natural disaster that’s the punishment, nor is what ever diseased idea of devil worship this old asshole has dreamt up that’s the sin. The real sin for which Haiti has been punished ever since it was founded, was the simple fact that it was the Black slaves who won their independence for themselves, forming an intolerable beacon of freedom and independence:

By late 1803, to the universal astonishment of contemporary observers, the armies led by Toussaint L’Ouverture and Dessalines had broken the chain of colonial slavery at ‘what had been, in 1789, its strongest link’. [7] Renamed Haiti, the new country celebrated its independence in January 1804. I have argued elsewhere that there have been few other events in modern history whose implications were more threatening to the dominant order: the mere existence of an independent Haiti was a reproach to the slave-trading nations of Europe, a dangerous example to the slave-owning us, and an inspiration for successive African and Latin American liberation movements. [8] Much of Haiti’s subsequent history has been shaped by efforts, both internal and external, to stifle the consequences of this event and to preserve the essential legacy of slavery and colonialism—that spectacularly unjust distribution of labour, wealth and power which has characterized the whole of the island’s post-Columbian history.

Since its independence Haiti has been kept poor through domestic repression supported by foreign interference, which started with having had to pay France restitutionj (!) for the loss of its slave colony, through US supported dictatorship after dictatorship up until the present day, with the UN “peace force” stationed in Haiti since 2004 after the wrong man had been president for too long:

The real goals of the occupation that began on 29 February 2004 are perfectly apparent: to silence or obliterate all that remains of this support. During the first week of their deployment, the Franco-American invasion force operated almost exclusively in pro-Aristide neighbourhoods and killed only fl supporters. Their new puppet Prime Minister Gérard Latortue (a 69-year-old ex-un factotum and Miami talk-show host) publicly embraced the convicted mass-murderer Tatoune and his ex-army rebels in Gonaïves as ‘freedom fighters’—a move interpreted by the New York Times as ‘sending a clear message of stability’. [54] Latortue’s ‘national unity government’ is composed exclusively of members of the traditional elite. On March 14, the Haitian police began arresting Lavalas militants on suspicion of unidentified crimes, but decided not to pursue the rebel death squad leaders, even those already convicted of atrocities. The new National Police chief, Léon Charles, explained that while ‘there’s a lot of Aristide supporters’ to be arrested, the government ‘still has to make a decision about the rebels—that’s over my head’. [55] On March 22 Latortue’s new Interior Minister, the ex-General Hérard Abraham, announced plans to integrate the paramilitaries into the police force and confirmed his intention to re-establish the army which Aristide abolished in 1995. [56] In late March, anti-Aristide death squads continued to control the country’s second largest city, Cap Haïtien, where ‘dozens of bullet-riddled bodies have been brought to the morgue over the last month’. [57] While scores of other Aristide supporters were being killed up and down the country, the us Coast Guard applied Bush’s order, in keeping with usual us practice (but in flagrant violation of international law), to refuse all Haitian applications for asylum in advance.

The Security Council resolution that mandated the invading Franco-American troops as a un Multinational Interim Force on 29 February 2004 called for a follow-up un Stabilization Force to take over three months later. In March, Kofi Annan duly sent his Special Advisor, John Reginald Dumas, and Hocine Medili, to assess the situation on the ground. The ‘Report of the Secretary-General on Haiti’, published in April, took the obfuscatory euphemism of un discourse to new levels. ‘It is unfortunate that, in its bicentennial year, Haiti had to call again on the international community to help it overcome a serious political and security situation’, wrote Annan. The circumstances of the elected President’s overthrow were decorously skirted, the Secretary-General merely noting that: ‘Early on February 29, Mr Aristide left the country’. The toppling of the constitutional government was deemed to offer Haitians the opportunity of ‘a peaceful, democratic and locally-owned future’. [58]

It’s this history of domestic and foreign exploitation and repression that has not only kept Haiti poor, but has so ill prepared it for this earthquake. It costs money to make a city earthquake proof and that money had been stolen from the Haitians years ago. The tens of thousands or more of deaths are the result. But at least both the presidential palace and the UN mission were hit as well.

UPDATE: and of course the earthquake is just another opportunity to exploit the country…