Haiti's Poor: Dying For the Devil's Protection

Haiti's sad history speaks to the power of guilty projections and fear-based perceptions. That country's unexpected birth as a Free Black republic at a time when most Africans in the Americas were captive slaves is its only curse, but a curse which haunts to this day.

The reason men like Thomas Jefferson rejected manumission despite their denouncement of slavery was palpable fear. Fear that the slaves who had endured such cruel oppression would seek restitution in blood. The Haitian revolution made real those haunting fears, terrors which lurk in the American psyche, just as every peasant revolt in Europe conjured the horrors of the bloody French jacqueries five centuries after 1358.

It was fear of Haiti's poor that led its light-skinned rich to trade their country's future for French protection, a deal that would prove a true Faustian bargain. Now that fear of delayed black vengeance is once again causing needless suffering and heartbreaking death.



So why, after all this time, have the needed supplies not arrived? Again, that insidious fear of the poor and exploited black: "Violence in Haiti as residents fight to survive", says Johannesburg World News; "Violence in Haiti Hindering Aid Effort" trumpets the Associated Press; "Violence grows in Desperate Haiti" cries Sphere News. But how justified is the fear and our collective inaction. (Putting aside just how foraging for food comes to be criminal looting.)

Here's what those actually on the ground are reporting:
From the Guardian: The myth of Haiti's lawless streets. "To withhold aid because of the 'security situation' is a miserable excuse for agencies' failure to deliver desperately needed help."

Army Lt. Gen. Ken Keen of the U.S. Southern Command: "I must say, all the places U.S. forces have gone thus far have been very calm. [ ] Post-earthquake security problems are not impeding the U.S. military's humanitarian efforts." Apparently Lt. Generals do not tremble at the thought of facing dark-skinned jacqueries! That does not mean his mission is wholly benevolent.

"So send in the marines, okay?"
The Washington Post: "Haiti's elite spared from much of the devastation." "Through decades of coups, hurricanes, embargoes and economic collapse, members of the wily and powerful business elite of Haiti have learned the art of survival in one of the most chaotic countries on Earth -- and they might come out on top again."

From the WSW: "US military operations block relief efforts in Haiti"
"The US troop build-up is proceeding, citing as justification fears of possible “looting” by Haitians desperate for food and water—with the New York Times writing that “the threat of mass looting seems to increase by the day.” However, there have been no reports of violence against aid personnel.

Doctors Without Borders issued a statement yesterday protesting the US military’s continuing refusal to allow its planes to land at the Port-au-Prince airport. It quoted Loris De Filippi, the coordinator at Choscal hospital in the Cité Soleil neighborhood of Port-au-Prince: “they are begging us there in front of the hospital. It’s a very unacceptable situation. What we are trying to do is to expand our capacity to answer these calls. But we need supplies to get to the airport—and we don’t know why the planes are being redirected.”

So on top of being slandered by our Limbaughs and Robertsons Haiti's poor must perish so the rich can feel safe and secure. It's enough to turn the stomach to remember it was the same landed brown elite who first strained to join the Great Egalitarian Revolution.