According to a Global Sisters Report, more than half of its citizens live either on or below the poverty line , contributing to a dearth of resources like food.
Severe hunger is one of the biggest consequences of Haitian poverty, which has gotten worse in recent times. One of the biggest causes of poverty in Haiti is government instability. Throughout the past 30 years, Haiti has had 18 different leaders, with 18 different governments. Due to this upheaval, several officials and businesses have taken advantage of the situation for their own power and wealth, to the detriment of the rest of the Haitian people. Another consequence of this instability is the lack of government funds due to a lack of paid taxes.
There are, plainly, more propitious places for a country and its capital city to find themselves than straddling the major fault line between the North American and Caribbean tectonic plates. Wretched, also, to have fallen victim to calamitous flooding in , twice , and In Haiti, the last five centuries have combined to produce a people so poor, an infrastructure so nonexistent and a state so hopelessly ineffectual that whatever natural disaster chooses to strike next, its impact on the population will be magnified many, many times over.
Every single factor that international experts look for when trying to measure a nation's vulnerability to natural disasters is, in Haiti, at the very top of the scale.
Countries, when it comes to dealing with disaster, do not get worse. And that was before the earthquake. It sounds a terrible cliche, but it really is a perfect storm. This is a catastrophe beyond our worst imagination. It needn't, though, have been like this. In the 18th century, under French rule, Haiti — then called Saint-Domingue — was the Pearl of the Antilles, one of the richest islands in France's empire though ,odd African slaves who produced that wealth saw precious little of it.
It subsequently became the first independent nation in Latin America, and remains the world's oldest black republic and the second-oldest republic in the western hemisphere after the United States. So what went wrong? Haiti, or rather the large island in the western Atlantic of which the present-day Republic of Haiti occupies the western part, was discovered by Christopher Columbus in December As Spanish interest in the island faltered with the discovery of gold and silver elsewhere in Latin America, the early occupiers moved east, leaving the western part of Hispaniola free for English, Dutch and particularly French buccaneers.
A treaty with Spain 30 years later saw Madrid cede the western third of the island to Paris. Economically, French occupation was a runaway success. But Haiti's riches could only be exploited by importing up to 40, slaves a year.
For nearly a decade in the late 18th century, Haiti accounted for more than one-third of the entire Atlantic slave trade. Conditions for these men and women were atrocious; the average life expectancy for a slave on Haiti was 21 years. Abuse was dreadful, and routine: "Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars?
But, a pattern arose because the only model they knew for successful agriculture was slave labor. It was impossible to return the masses to slavery, but Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the first president, tried to enforce a system of labor on the peasants which resembled medieval serfdom. This system failed miserably and created a labor system which has been instrumental in the developing misery of Haiti. The former slaves ran away from the lowlands, the plantations, away from the cruel rulers who would have effectively enslaved them again.
They ran to the mountains where they would be safe from the soldiers and police of the realm. And here they remain. This pattern of relocation has defined several aspects of Haitian life which undermine the development of a healthy economy.
The price the Haitian masses have paid for their freedom has been to live at or below subsistence, remaining in tiny huts and non-fertile mountain regions in order to have peace and freedom from oppression. For nearly two centuries they have sub-divided their small plots among generations of descendants until the plots of land are tiny and unproductive.
A widespread attitude has developed holding that no government could ever be good. Folk wisdom demands that one retreat ever further from government and eke out an existence outside the mainstream of society.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines was assassinated for that policy. Instead, revolutionary war generals confiscated plantations, living in feudal luxury off the labor of freed slaves. There is an elite which is mainly black and an elite which is mainly mulatto. These two groups have their own fights and battles, but has rallied together using its wealth and power to crush the masses.
The elite have used their positions since to gather wealth and power. Foreign governments and humanitarian and religious organizations have attempted to aid the suffering people of Haiti. Time and again, over and over in the years of so-called freedom, the Haitian elite and government officials have sidetracked much of this wealth for their own purpose.
Haiti faces the difficult task of dealing with corruption that is so established, so all-persuasive as to be an accepted social practice. Continued violence and technical delays prompted repeated postponements, but Haiti finally inaugurated a democratically elected president and parliament in May of Many thought Haiti was positioned for major changes for the first time in history; January 12, changed that. Indeed, the people did not sit willingly by.
The history of Haiti from early colonial days to present is one of constant resistance, constant rebellion. But the elite have been equal to the challenge.
For years, Haitian rulers have used terror, killings, beatings, illegal arrests and detentions, and forced exile to keep masses in line. French is the official language of the country. All state business is carried on in French, the schools educate mainly in French. Social prestige is related to the ability to speak French. Creole is the language of the masses. The road to social, economic and intellectual development is reserved French speakers. Creole is not a patois or dialect of French.
It is a recognized language in its own right, with its own syntax which is significantly different from French. The Creole grammar is rooted in Central African languages, though most of its vocabulary is influenced by French.
It is hard to calculate the suffering tied to illiteracy and the ignorance of alternatives which comes with illiteracy and lack of education. When a whole people cannot read, they are cut off from advances in knowledge. Thus they are condemned to repeat the forms of life they have developed whether or not those practices have negative aspects. Haitian life has many disastrous practices and these account for much of her misery. These will be detailed below. The point here is to note that the immediate cause of many negative practices is rooted in ignorance of the alternatives.
It is ignorance that allows traditional practices in agriculture or education, health care or house-hold hygiene. Some of these practices are killing Haitians unnecessarily and destroying the agricultural base of this land. This harmful ignorance is the direct result of the illiteracy which defines the nation. Actually, state-sponsored education is limited and most secondary or university education goes to the children of the elite. There are many factors which contribute to the lack of education: Education is mainly in French, a foreign tongue to the masses.
Creole has begun to creep into schools as part of a reform movement. However, books are still primarily in French, and after the 5th year in school, even classroom instruction reverts to French. More importantly is the indoctrination that only French is the language of intelligent and well-educated people.
Thus peasants, who speak only Creole, despise their own language and demand that their children be educated in French, thereby assuring that their children will not succeed in school.
This examination is in French. Few children of the peasant masses pass this examination. Teachers are poorly prepared. Materials are inadequate. In rural schools, it is common that only teachers have books. Rote learning is the common, even in schools in the capital. Students are taught to parrot teachers. They learn little beyond the immediate textbook. Schools are overcrowded, and discipline is a problem. Of course, the fact that class centers around a language children do not know hinders learning.
The response to serious discipline problems is harsh punishment which relies on beating and serious physical assaults on misbehaving children. Initially, forests were pillaged for their beautiful mahogany wood — to pay off a foreign ransom — mostly to France. Since then, the forests have been a source of fuel and jobs. For the past years, people have been cutting trees on mountains without replanting. There are four primary reasons for the soil erosion: The need for fuel. Haiti has no fuel except wood.
People cook with charcoal. This requires massive amounts of wood to provide fuel for 6 million people. Thus the demand on wood as a crop is the immediate cause of the denuding of the mountains of Haiti. The need to earn a living. Peasants are hungry. They have little available work. But wood is in constant demand as charcoal or to sell to others to make charcoal. Peasant wood-cutters who do understand the soil erosion problem will argue that they have no alternative.
Because of illiteracy and lack of education, Haitian wood cutters do not fully understand the implications of their cutting. Uneducated peasants have little sense of history. In their generation, Haiti has always looked denuded. When faced with hunger, the argument makes no sense. Lack of motivation to reform. There is little motivation for wood cutters to replant trees.
Mainly they do not own the land. They cut here or there as sharecroppers or renters, then move on to other lands. The land owners are often city people or more wealthy village folks, and they do not keep a close watch on their lands. Sugar cane is the dominant crop, but tropical fruit and other crops are grown as well. With most of the very best land out of production for local food crops beans, rice and corn , the masses do not have access to land to grow food for eating or selling on local markets.
Ironically, Haiti, a primarily agricultural land, is a net importer of food. Because land is controlled by the elite of Haiti, cash goes to these owner who spend their money in the United States and Europe.
Not even a trickle down effect is felt from this flow of cash. Further, farm wages are among the lowest in Haiti. There are inadequate roads in the rural areas. Thus shipping goods to the market in Port-au-Prince is expensive and risky.
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