Poverty-stricken country least able to sustain blow

ANALYSIS:Slavery, international extortion, embargoes and dictatorships have eroded Haiti's ability to deal with its awful death toll and destruction

IN THE 1960s, Haitian tourist officials revived a term that had been commonly used among French colonists centuries earlier to describe the lush Caribbean island where they had taken control. Saint-Domingue, as the French named the western part of Hispaniola island in the 17th century, was “the pearl of the Antilles”, a paradisiacal, forested landscape that would become the richest French colony in the New World thanks to its thriving coffee, sugar and indigo industries.

By the mid-20th century, there would already have been a darkly ironic quality to the idea of modern Haiti, ravaged and degraded by centuries of political and environmental calamity, seeking to attract outsiders by projecting itself as a Caribbean gem. With hindsight, we know that the long-suffering country had just then, in the 1960s, entered one of its darkest phases.

“For a country and a people who are no strangers to hardship and suffering, this tragedy seems especially cruel and incomprehensible,” President Barack Obama said at the White House on Wednesday, in the aftermath of the worst earthquake to hit the country in 200 years.

That familiarity with hardship and suffering has been a feature of the country’s history. Modern Haiti was founded 200 years ago after the first and only successful slave revolt in the Americas but, for much of that time, its people have found themselves at a precarious confluence of destructive forces – poverty, environmental degradation, violence, political instability and dictatorship – that have made it the poorest nation on the continent. So thorough has been its turmoil that Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, referred this week to the “Biblical” tragedies that continue to stalk its people.

The indigenous Taíno Indian population became virtually extinct under early Spanish colonial rulers, who imported African slaves to exploit the island for its minerals. In 1697, France and Spain divided the island between them, France taking the western third – what is now Haiti – and bringing hundreds of thousands more colonists from Europe.

When the Caribbean nation gained its independence in 1804, France – with the support of the United States, Britain and Spain – imposed an embargo and refused to lift it until Haiti paid an indemnity for lost property: in other words, for its slaves. Haiti agreed to pay the 90 million francs, but bitterness over the deal persists to this day. In 1994, then Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide called on France to pay reparations of $21 billion, the modern equivalent of the fee his country paid 200 years earlier. Foreign intervention did not end with the departure of the French, however: the United States occupied the island from 1915 to 1934.

In recent decades, Haiti has endured persistent political upheaval. It became notorious for the brutal dictatorships of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who seized power in 1957, and his son Jean-Claude, or “Baby Doc”, who was forced into exile in 1986.

Four years later, the populist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide was the landslide winner of a presidential election – Haiti’s first free and peaceful election – but hopes of democratic renewal were dashed when he was overthrown by the military within a year.

Although economic sanctions and US-led military intervention forced a return to constitutional government in 1994, Haiti’s fortunes were slow to pick up, with allegations of electoral irregularities, ongoing extra-judicial killings, torture and brutality.

Aristide returned to power in 1994 promising a new era for his country. Under his rule, and that of successor René Préval, with the help of the United Nations and aid organisations, there have been modest improvements in the lives of Haiti’s nine million people, though it remains one of the poorest countries in the world and the average income is less than $2 a day.

The UN peacekeeping force of 9,000, whose headquarters in the capital Port-au-Prince was destroyed in this week’s earthquake, has been in Haiti ever since Aristide was forced from power a second time, in 2004. His removal coincided with growing violence and increased insecurity.

As ever in Haiti, political instability has in recent years been just one of a number of forces that have made life dangerous and difficult. Deforestation, land erosion, water shortages, loss of biodiversity, urbanisation and demographic pressure have all increased people’s vulnerability.

Added to that mix has been the force and frequency of natural disasters. In May 2004, at least 2,600 people died when severe floods swamped villages in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, while just four months later, a further 3,000 lost their lives – mostly in the city of Gonaives – in floods caused by tropical storm Jeanne. Just over a year ago, in September 2008, four tropical storms and hurricanes battered the country, killing more than 800 people and leaving one million homeless or in need of help.

The social backdrop to each successive disaster has been stubbornly slow to change. The huge gap between rich and poor, bad public health (life expectancy is 60), corruption, violence and infrastructural collapse are all major problems, and those who can flee by emigrating to the US or other Caribbean nations do so in big numbers.

An earthquake as colossal as that which hit Haiti this week would have caused devastation anywhere in the world. But it could scarcely have struck a place more poorly equipped to deal with its long and terrible aftermath.

Ruadhán Mac Cormaic is Paris Correspondent