Helpless

Make a list of the most miserable places on earth and Haiti is bound to be somewhere near the top, close to Somalia or the Democratic Republic of Congo.

For over two centuries now, since a slave revolt produced one of the first independent states in the Americas, Haiti has been badly governed — if there was any government at all. For a week now, since that great earthquake struck this hapless island, any semblance of a government has completely dissipated.

The airport has been taken over by the US military, which quickly flew in troops and a naval force to save lives in the island. The capital city has been subdivided into quadrants by the international rescue and relief agencies to better manage the massive humanitarian effort.

Rescue workers and medical teams are being flown in from scores of countries across the globe. China was among the first to respond to the disaster, sending in a significant contingent initially to rescue their own peacekeeping personnel. The communication system and much of the infrastructure was taken down. Only the UN and the US could restore some semblance of leadership on the ground.

For many years now, a multinational UN peacekeeping force was necessary to maintain a tenuous peace in this island. The UN force includes a significant contingent from the Philippines. Although itself rattled by the quake, the peacekeeping force performed heroically despite the circumstances.

The top two UN officials in Haiti were among those killed by the quake. The peacekeeping forces took casualties as well. The main UN facility in Port-au-Prince was among the hundreds of buildings taken down by the killer quake.

Last year, 800 Haitians were killed by a severe hurricane that hit the island. Today, as rescue teams still work around the clock to clear the rubble, estimates of the casualty toll run well beyond 150,000. Some estimates put the casualty toll to a high of 500,000. That is, to emphasize its scale, set against a population of only about 9 million.

It is fashionable among retrograde people like evangelist Pat Robertson to declare Haiti a cursed nation. That is not only unsympathetic. It is also ignorant and racist.

To be sure, racism is a factor explaining Haiti’s miserable state.

Haiti is the only nation that won its independence on the basis of a slave revolt. That revolt happened in 1804, when the island was a French colonial holding. Napoleon sent in tens of thousands of its finest troops to crush the revolt. But the best imperial army of that time was defeated by badly armed slaves desperately fighting for freedom.

The French demanded remuneration for its defeat from the new nation founded by freed slaves. The other slaveholding countries of Europe basically looked at the new nation with deep suspicion. The US did not recognize Haiti for 58 years, finally relenting only in 1862 when the government of Abraham Lincoln declared the emancipation of slaves in the United States.

From 1804, Haiti was the only black nation in the western hemisphere. Today, it is the poorest country in the Americas. From its birth as an independent country, Haiti enjoyed little support and suffered the bigotry of its neighbors.

Largely isolated economically and inhabited by a farming population with few skills, Haiti has been a deeply troubled society for two centuries. The first peaceful transfer of power by means of democratic election happened only recently, installing the government that crumbled along with the buildings last week.

Once, in the early part of the 20th century, because of turmoil plaguing the island, the US sent in the Marines and occupied Haiti for two decades. For many years, in the latter half of the last century, Haiti was ruled by a tyranny. “Papa Doc” Duvalier and then his son, “Baby Doc” lived a life of great luxury and ran the country to the ground. The Duvalier dictatorship crushed every form of resistance to it with maximum cruelty.

Haiti has not recovered from that. Its institutions remain corrupted. The state remains weak. Armed militias continue to contest power — forcing the international community to send in peacekeeping forces.

Had Haiti managed to build a modern state, it might have been a safer society — and surely a more prosperous one. The state might have established safety standards that would have limited the scale of devastation we saw in the past week. A civic tradition might have developed so that people do not riot when food is scarce. A functioning national army and police might have ensured order, enabling the economy to actually function.

But since the modern state never really took root in Haiti, the population remained vulnerable and the country dirt poor. The best of Haitian society escaped the island as soon as they could to settle elsewhere. This is why there is a large Haitian-American population in Florida and New York.

Haiti has subsisted for decades dependent on money sent in by its migrants and on international aid. It has evolved a popular culture of dependence and an economy that creates no real wealth for the people trapped (largely by their own incompetence) in this severely underdeveloped country.

Haiti could not be called a “failed state” because it hardly had a state. It is a “failed society” because it never evolved the modern institutions that enable other societies to function. That has made it vulnerable in the first place and now, in the face of calamity, completely helpless.

The tragedy at Haiti provides us compelling lessons not only about how large the forces of nature are and how small our civilization really is. This tragedy instructs as well about the importance of building strong institutions that will enable the community to cope with adversity. Haiti is remarkable because it is a society whose few institutions are also very weak.