Chris Leslie: Haiti and the Deal with the Devil

ISSUE 38 WINTER 2010/2011

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FOUNDATION F O U N D AT I O N ISSUE 38 WINTER 2010/2011

Cooking up Peter Watkins Haiti Founders Foundational Democracy Burns’s Bawdy Guest Editor Alan E. Williams Cover Artist Chris Leslie

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HAITI AND THE ‘DEAL WITH THE DEVIL’ Chris Leslie

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‘Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, uh you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the Devil. They said we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French. True Story.’

Pat Robertson Televangelist and former Republican candidate for president

One year on from the earthquake that killed 260,000, injured 300,000, made 1,000,000 people homeless and it seems that Pat Robertson may be right. There seems no other way to describe the level of suffering Haiti has endured. In the past year Haiti suffered further from a cholera outbreak and a flawed presidential election, only the third democratic election in Haitian history, where even rap singers from the US had a go at standing for President.

I have travelled all across the poorest countries of Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, but the level and scale of poverty I witnessed in Haiti in July this year was on another level. 6 months on from the earthquake and there was still no major reconstruction taking place, the capital Port Au Prince looked like it had been hit by the earthquake yesterday. Destruction was widespread, cars and people weaved around piles of rubble trying to go about their daily lives with some sense of normality. Undiscovered bodies were still to be claimed, marked by spray paint on the side of buildings. Families lived in corrugated iron huts amongst sewage shared by pigs and disease, and these were the lucky ones whose ‘homes’ survived the earthquake.

Despite an outpouring of international aid since Jan 12 2010, an estimated 1.3 million people – 15% of the population - remain homeless in tent cities. So what happened to all that money that was raised. Of the $6 billion pledged for 2010 and 2011 at the U.N donors conference in March, $2 billion has been committed, but only $732 million has been disbursed.

But the problem with Haiti is perhaps where do you actually start? How do you and why would you repair a country back to its former status before the earthquake? Haiti was and still is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and much of its cities and towns are slums, unfit for animal habitation never mind human. Its not about rebuilding in Haiti, it has to be about building. One year on Haitians are frustrated and rightfully furious as only a fraction of that recovery money has been into projects that they can actually see.

When the cholera outbreak hit Haiti in the autumn of 2010, its 1.3 million tent cities residents were trapped in just the perfect conditions to allow the epidemic to spread.

Once again claims about a deal with the devil seemed apt to describe Haiti’s suffering.

But it’s well documented that Haiti was actually forced to pay France heavily for its freedom and had to borrow high interest loans from France, the US and other countries to repay this debt, which crippled the country for decades and effectively made it one of the poorest countries in the world. Only now has this debt been written off by the International Community as a result of the media attention that the earthquake generated.

So perhaps Pat Robertson is right. Haiti had done a deal with the devil and that devil was the Western Countries who bled the country dry for decades. Its a very sad state of affairs when it takes an earthquake to write off a crippling debt, but maybe this deal with the devil just got a little bit easier for Haiti. www.chrisleslie.com

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