The Long Road to Recovery

Haiti is forever changed. At least 150,000 people, equivalent to the population of Tallahassee, have died. At least 600,000, more than the population of Seattle, are without homes. Over 130,000, approximately the population of Syracuse, have left Port au Prince for the countryside. After a disaster of this magnitude, life does not go back to normal. Still, even in the face of great uncertainty, life goes on. Telecommunications are mostly up and running, some banks are opening, more gas stations are functional, markets and factories are re-openening. Neighborhood committees are meeting and people are attending church services. All agree it will take many years to rebuild. The question is how Haiti can recover and be built back better than it was before?

According to Mark Danner, “Haiti is everybody's cherished tragedy. Long before the great earthquake struck the country like a vengeful god, the outside world, and Americans especially, described, defined, marked Haiti most of all by its suffering. Epithets of misery clatter after its name like a ball and chain: Poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. For decades Haiti's formidable immiseration has made it among outsiders an object of fascination, wonder and awe. Sometimes the pity that is attached to the land - and we see this increasingly in the news coverage this past week - attains a tone almost sacred, as if Haiti has taken its place as a kind of sacrificial victim among nations…”

We have to change this narrative. Haitians are a proud, tough, and strong people with a long tradition of resistance against racism, exploitation, and oppression. Most know that Haiti was the only country in the world to lead a successful slave rebellion to win independence, becoming the first free black republic during a time when the great powers continued to build their economies on slavery. Haitians were forced to pay a steep human and financial cost for its audacity, still being paid by the descendents of idealists and revolutionaries.

This is the country that took in Simon Bolivar, after an attempted assassination in Jamaica. Haiti provided financial and military assistance to him, under the condition that he free enslaved peoples in Latin America. Haiti’s support was critical in enabling Bolivar to liberate Venezuela. Thousands of freed American blacks migrated to Haiti. Haitians themselves fought in the American Revolution. Haiti’s has long been isolated, but its history and fate are entertwined with the United States and the other countries of the Americas. For Haiti to have suffered so diminishes us as well. We feel it and know it should not be this way, we know things should

The Long Road to Recovery (1/25/2010) Haiti Innovation