Haiti After the Earthquake (63 page)

1
This, again, resonates with the lessons drawn by Halberstam. Of the U.S. general sent to Vietnam in 1962, Halberstam writes that, “Like almost all Americans who arrived in Vietnam, Harkins was ignorant of the past, and ignorant of the special kind of war he was fighting. To him, like so many Americans, the war had begun the moment he arrived; the past had never happened and need not be taken seriously.” Halberstam.
The Best and the Brightest,
p. 185.

2
Mark Danner. “To Heal Haiti Look to History, not Nature.”
New York Times
(January 21, 2010). Available:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/opinion/22danner.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
(accessed April 15, 2011).

3
See Thomas Madiou's monumental history of Haiti:
Histoire d'Haïti.
9 vols. (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Henri Deschamps, 1989). The U.S. occupation is chronicled in six volumes by Roger Gaillard in
La République Exterminatrice.
6 vols. (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Le Natal, 1984–1998).

4
See Noble David Cook,
Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 23, table 1.1.

5
Léon Dénius Pamphile.
Haitians and African-Americans: A Heritage of Tragedy and Hope
(Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2003), p. 2.

6
M.-L.-E. Moreau de Saint-Méry.
Description Topographique, Physique, Civile, Politique et Historique de la Partie Française de l'Isle Saint-Domingue (1797–1798)
. 3 vols. New ed., B. Maurel and E. Taillemite, eds. (Paris: Société de l'Histoire des Colonies Françaises and Librairie Larose).

7
Cited in Robert Heinl and Nancy Heinl.
Written in Blood
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1978), pp. 26–27.

8
Eric Williams.
From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean, 1492–1969
(London: Andre Deutsch), p. 246.

9
Cited in Claude Auguste and Marecel Auguste.
L'Expédition Leclerc 1801–1803
(Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Henri Deschamps), p. 236; Farmer.
The Uses of Haiti,
p. 70.

10
Quoted in Laurent Dubois.
Avengers of the New World
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 301.

11
For one of the best accounts of the abolition of the slave trade in England, see Adam Hochschild.
Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005).

12
After fifty years of searching for the eight-page document, the second independence declaration in history (after the U.S. Declaration in 1776) was found by Julia Gaffield, an American graduate student, in the British National Archives in Kew. For more information, see “Haiti's Declaration of Independence discovered at The National Archives,” April 1, 2010. Available:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/453.htm
(accessed April 15, 2011). Full text of the Declaration of Independence available here:
http://www.nathanielturner.com/haitiandeclarationofindependence1804.htm
(accessed April 15, 2011).

13
Cited in Hans Schmidt.
The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1971), p. 312.

14
Haun Saussy recently published a short piece revealing the Kingdom of France's logic behind indemnification. The order, issued by King Charles X on April 17, 1785, reads: “The present inhabitants of the French part of the island of Santo Domingo shall pay to the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations de France in five equal yearly installments, from year to year . . . the sum of 150,000,000 francs, intended to make whole those former colonists who require reimbursement. We concede, on these conditions, by the present Order, to the
inhabitants of the French part of Santo Domingo
the full and complete independence of their government” (italics added). In the eyes of Charles X, the Haitian Revolution hadn't happened; Haiti still belonged to France. See “That Is One Odious Debt,”
Printculture
(December 27, 2010). Available: http://printculture.com /item-2781.html(accessed April 15, 2011).

15
Danner. “To Heal Haiti Look to History, not Nature.”

16
I've written about this and earned some scorn from French officialdom for my troubles. See, for example, P. Farmer. “Douze Points en Faveur de la Restitution à Haïti de la Dette Française.”
L'Union
(November 11, 2003): 1, 3, 4. More recently, after the quake, more than ninety academics, journalists, and activists signed an open letter to President Sarkozy urging restitution of the French debt. See “M. Sarkozy, Rendez à Haïti Son Argent Extorqué.”
Libération.
August 16, 2010. Available:
http://www.liberation.fr/monde/0101652216-m-sarkozy-rendez-a-haiti-sonargent-extorque
(accessed April 15, 2011).

17
Jean Price-Mars.
La République d'Haïti et la République Dominicaine: Les Aspects Divers d'un Problème d'Histoire, de Géographie et d'Ethnologie
(Lausanne: Imprimerie Held, 1953), pp. 169–170.

18
Quoted in Rayford Logan.
Haiti and the Dominican Republic
(London: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 119.

19
Roger Gaillard.
Le Guerilla de Batraville
(Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Le Natal, 1983), pp. 261–262. The authoritative North American version of the history finds 3,250 peasant deaths in the twenty months of active resistance. See Hans Schmidt.
The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934
(New Brunwick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1971), p. 103.

20
Balch won the prize in 1946 for her efforts to promote peace between the World Wars. (John Mott also won the Peace Prize in 1946.) While serving on the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom's committee investigating the occupation of Haiti, Balch wrote “Occupied Haiti,” a report calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. marines from Haiti. For more on Balch, see Kristen Gwinn's biography,
Emily Greene Balch: The Long Road to Internationalism
(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2011).

21
Military historians Heinl and Heinl estimated that 2250 had been killed from 1915 to 1920 during the Cacos uprisings. See Heinl and Heinl.
Written in Blood,
p. 441, n. 24., pp. 463, 470.

22
Cited in Rod Prince.
Haiti: Family Business
(London: Latin American Bureau, 1985), p. 21.

23
See e.g. Heinl and Heinl.
Written in Blood,
p. 441, n. 24.

24
In one scene, the narrator watches a photograph of Papa Doc Duvalier—required by law to be posted in every building—burn in the fire of a Voodoo ceremony: “The flames lit the photograph nailed on the pillar, the heavy spectacles, the eyes staring at the ground as though at a body ready for dissection. Once he had been a country doctor struggling successfully against typhoid; he had been a founder of the Ethnological Society . . .
Corruptio optimi.”
Greene.
The Comedians,
p. 180.

25
For more on this violent interregnum, see Erica James' book
Democratic Insecurities: Violence, Trauma, and Intervention in Haiti
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), which examines the terror apparatus of the Duvalier dictatorships. Violation of sex, gender, and kinship norms through rape, torture, and shame was a strategy of state and, indeed, a locus of Duvalierist power. James analyzes the practice of documenting trauma narratives as a means of marshalling resources in the subsequent aid economy, and the varied implications of this practice for both the donors and recipients of aid dollars. She describes the “bureaucraft” culture that arose in Haiti amidst failures of aid transparency: a public trade in accusations about hidden or occult activity amongst government and nongovernment organizations that have led to violence and civil unrest.

26
Amy Wilentz.
The Rainy Season: Haiti After Duvalier
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), p. 335. Leslie Francois Saint Roc Manigat, born August 16, 1930 in Port-au-Prince, was elected president of Haiti in an election tightly controlled by the military in January 1988.

27
Aristide wrote about the massacre: “Everyone was running, trying to find a place to hide. One man was shot in the outside courtyard, with his Bible in his hand. Bullets were zinging left and right. I saw a pregnant woman screaming for help in the pews, and holding onto her stomach. A man had just speared her there, and she was bathed in red blood . . . this was a prophetic, historic resistance that we will never forget.” Jean Bertrand Aristide.
In the Parish of the Poor: Writings from Haiti
(MaryKnoll, New York: Orbis, 1990), p. 55.

28
I wrote an account of the elections for a Jesuit magazine shortly after Aristide's inauguration. I cribbed the title from the liberation theologian, Gustavo Guttiérrez.
See Paul Farmer. “The Power of the Poor in Haiti.”
America
164, 9 (1992): 260–267.

29
Bob Shacochis.
The Immaculate Invasion
(New York: Penguin, 1999).

30
Oscar Arias. “Only the marching band.”
The Washington Post
(March 12, 2004).

31
Some of the most thorough accounts of the period include: Randal Robinson.
An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President
(New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2007); Peter Hallward.
Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment
(London: Verso, 2008); and Isabel Macdonald. “‘Parachute Journalism' in Haiti: Media Sourcing in the 2003–2004 Political Crisis.”
Canadian Journal of Communication
33: 213–232. Also be sure to see Jeb Sprague's forthcoming book
Haiti and the Roots of Paramilitarism
(New York: Monthy Review Press, 2012).

32
Madison Smartt Bell. “Mine of Stones: With and Without the Spirits Along the Cordon de l'Ouest.”
Harper's
(January 2004), p. 65.

33
Peter Hallward's book,
Damming the Flood,
is a grueling and instructive exploration of this slow-motion coup.

34
See Paul Farmer. “Who Removed Aristide?”
London Review of Books
26, 8 (2004): 28–31. See also Randall Robinson's book,
An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President
(New York: Perseus Books, 2007).

35
Amy Wilentz. “Coup in Haiti.”
Nation
(March 22, 2004). Available: http://amywilentz.com /blog/coup-in-haiti/ (accessed April 15, 2011). Wilentz continues: “One thing about coups: They don't just happen. In a country like Haiti, where the military has been disbanded for nearly a decade, soldiers don't simply emerge from the underbrush; they have to be reorganized, retrained and resupplied . . . In the current coup, there are several players. There is the disgruntled former Haitian army (an institution with a violent and unpalatable recent history), which has been wielded many times in the service of coups d'état, often subsidized by its masters, the elite of Haiti. The elite, too, had their hand in this coup–it's hard to believe in this day and age, but they must be called the entrenched class enemies of the Haitian people. There is ‘a growing enthusiasm among businessmen to use the rebels as a security force,' said a news report from the Los Angeles
Times
after the remnants of the Haitian army that helped engineer the coup descended on the capital. ‘[The businessmen] welcomed the rebels.'”

36
Peter Heinlein. “UN Peacekeeping Chief: Haiti Worse than Darfur.”
Voice of America
(June 28, 2005). Available:
http://www.voanews.com
. /english/2005-06-28-voa63 cfm (accessed April 15, 2011).

1
For more on internally displaced persons in Africa and around the world see Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, “Internal Displacement: Global Overview of Trends and Developments in 2010,” March 2011 Report. Available:
http://www.internal-displacement.org/publications/global-overview-2010.pdf
(accessed April 14, 2011).

2
The memo was leaked to Turtle Bay on February 17, 2010. Available:
http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/17/top_un_aid_official_critiques_haiti_aid_efforts_in_confidential_email
(accessed April 15, 2011).

3
Kimberly A. Cullen and Louise C. Ivers. “Human Rights Assessment in Parc Jean-Marie Vincent, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.”
Health and Human Rights in Practice
12, no. 2: 1–12.

4
See Didi Bertrand Farmer. “Bearing Witness: Girls and Women in Haiti's Camps.”
World Pulse
(November 4, 2010). Available:
http://www.worldpulse.com/node/30500/
(accessed April 15, 2011); see also her essay in this book, “Mothers and Daughters of Haïti,” where this topic is explored at greater length.

1
A recording of the hearing is available here: http://foreign.senate.gov /hearings/hearing/?id=3f546a93-d363-da0b-b25f-f1c5d096ddb1 (accessed April 15, 2011). For more on food assistance in Haiti, see the recent report by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and the Global Justice Clinic at New York University's School of Law, Partners In Health, Zanmi Lasante, and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.
Sak Vid Pa Kanpe: The Impact of U.S. Food Aid on Human Rights in Haiti
(2010). Available: http://parthealth.3cdn.netf /3f82f61a3316d7f1a0_pvm6b80f3.pd.

2
Anna Zingg et al. “Haiti-Hurricane Season 2008.” International Committee of the Red Cross Report (September 23, 2008).