the rix mix

With all the unfolding horror & tragedy of Haiti, I had a peculiar reaction to images of the national palace, parliament, cathedral, old bank buildings, & reports of a nonfunctioning government & the disappearance of the national police. I thought, At least they're done with all that, if they want to be done with it. Haiti is the most desperately poor of western hemisphere nations. Haiti is not cursed from a deal with the devil. Nor is it cursed by geography, despite being on a fault line in hurricane alley. It has been cursed by a common belief - a superstition - that nothing could really change, which became a self-fullfilling prophecy after the fall of the Duvalier clan. Haiti was trapped in its own history, its own view of itself.

Historically, there's nothing quite like an earthquake's capacity to force change. Wrecked cities rise again, their identities & cultures renewed, or they disappear. The Great Lisbon earthquake of 1755, in a roundabout way, helped create The United States of America, it had such a profound influence on European philosophy.

Haiti has been a sinkhole of world aid. After years of a United Nations peacekeeping presence, the basic mission was still to prevent Haiti from falling into political chaos. Every major relief organization was already on the ground in Haiti, & all their prior efforts had hardly made a dent in Haiti's poverty & economic backwardness.

Perhaps it will eventually be good thing for the old symbols to fall, since the Haitians themselves would not tear them down. Port-au-Prince must be bulldozed just to gather, count, & bury the dead. Many of them died because the government was too weak & too corrupt to require basic construction codes; because the intractable slums sat by side-by-side with the mansions of the exploiters & oppressors, & when the quake came, the villas & mansions fell on the tin shanties, but all, rich & poor, died together. Should it disturb us if the poor of Haiti come to take some satisfaction in this equality of destruction? They had suffered for so long seen yet unseen, in the indifferent shadow of arrogant wealth. This is a great & terrible passage for them. It is not our duty to lead Haiti into the future, but to alleviate their suffering now, then clear the way & make it possible for them to choose to build something better on the ruins of their great city.

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