The Not-So “Invisible Hand:” America’s Role in Haiti’s Endemic Poverty Christina Amato
35 amato
As Otterbein’s “Common Book,” Mountains Beyond Mountains has inspired an animated dialogue on the conditions and quality of life in Haiti; Tracy Kidder illuminates the tiny island nation and its incredible poverty, suffering and domestic strife. While Kidder mentioned that actually seeing Haiti was like seeing “the end of the earth,” many who read the book keenly felt his vision simply through the experience of reading about Haiti (20). Images of treacherous mud-swelled roads, emaciated children dying of largely eradicated diseases, and decaying rubbish and trash heaps left their indelible imprints on readers, too. What is sprinkled less obtrusively through the book, though, are references to the accountability of Americans for the tragic state of suffering in Haiti. Kidder subtly recounts events like the construction of a dam, influenced by American agri-businesses, which wreaked so much misery and destruction among the families living in the villages of Haiti.1 He discusses the awkwardly hatched plan to substitute Iowa farm pigs for Creole pigs, an ill-fated venture devised by the American pork industry. There are multiple references to the intermittent Marine occupations of Haiti throughout their unstable history. These seem hardly damning in isolation, but the shadowy presence of America, both industrial and governmental, in Haiti inevitably leads to the question: how involved has the United States been in Haiti’s affairs? Why should Americans care? The answer is in the details, the historical facts, to be precise. Today, Haiti barely registers on the radar of the American national conscience except for the occasional news morsel showcasing “humanitarian” efforts to restore stability to a backward, uncivilized nation. The truth is that America’s history is very much intertwined with Haiti’s, with the United States playing a much more significant role in all of Haiti’s affairs than the sporadic news coverage might suggest. In fact, the United States, through aggressive business venturing and incessant government intrusion, stands to blame for a good deal of Haiti’s suffering. While the nature of American interest has evolved through our two-centuries old relationship with the first black republic, a freed slave republic no less, one truth always resonates: America remains firmly entrenched in Haiti’s sovereign affairs, shaping and impacting all sectors of Haitian life. To understand this complex, entangled history and how we, as Americans, must acknowledge and respond with this knowledge, we must first venture to Haiti’s nascent beginnings and subsequent decline.
aegis 2006
“We have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviledin short, from the perspective of those who suffer.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer
