Americans who know about Haiti mostly through media coverage of disasters have a warped view of our island neighbor. The earthquake on January 12, a natural disaster of historic proportions, follows tragically upon political violence, damaging hurricanes and an HIV crisis to brand Haiti in the public mind as dangerous and unstable. Pat Robertson has been rightly vilified for suggesting that Haiti is paying for its sins in hundreds of thousand of deaths, yet some perfectly reasonable people have watched this new, unprecedented level of suffering in Haiti and sighed the word “curse.” There is, however, much more to be said of Haiti and Haitians.
Even former President Bill Clinton, who has been charged by President Obama to spearhead earthquake relief fundraising (along with former President George W. Bush), reveals a skewed sense of Haiti’s history. In a column in TIME magazine published in the aftermath of the earthquake, Clinton writes, “Unfortunately, ever since the first slave revolt by Haitians in 1791, the country has been beset by abuses caused from within and without.” It is very peculiar indeed to say that Haiti has been abused “ever since the first slave revolt.” That slave revolt, which ultimately would liberate Haiti from the French, was of course a response to the preexisting abuses of the transatlantic slave trade and economy.
However, we agree with Clinton when he goes on to say of Haiti, “It has never been able to fulfill its potential as a nation.” Visitors to Haiti are perennially struck by the resourcefulness, energy, creativity and beauty of the people, very much including the island’s underclass – the victims of a rotating cast of callous rulers whose dirty dealings have played out against a exploitative foreign policies by its giant neighbor – the U.S. – that could be described as paranoid at best and homicidal at worst. Americans of conscience owe the people of Haiti our solidarity, not only because we are neighbors, but because our taxes have paid for military and political incursions into Haiti that seldom have been anything other than destructive to the average person in the street. These actions have been joined by U.S. immigration policies designed to keep Haitians in Haiti – or anywhere but here.
We should have learned in elementary school why Haiti should be held especially dear to us in St. Louis. The successful slave revolt (that Clinton wrongly says started the island’s chain of abuses) drove the French profiteers from Haiti and played a key role in the European colonial power’s decision to sell Louisiana – more than 800,000 square miles of this continent, including all or part of two future Canadian provinces, 14 American states and this river city – to the fledgling U.S. It is often suggested that we would speak French in St. Louis today were it not for the courage of Haiti’s slave revolutionaries. Katherine Dunham’s legendary mediations between Haiti and the U.S., from a home base of East St. Louis, further deepened our regional affiliation with this amazing place and its people. Haitian history is part of our history here in St. Louis. Conscience compels that we now become a part of our neighbor’s future by helping it rebound from this disaster and fulfill its great potential in any way we humanly can.