The Mark 2010

Too often, Haiti is dismissed as a hopelessly poor nation with no future.

(Co-authored by Taylor Marie Young.)

It shadows Haiti like a swooping albatross, a qualifier that both explains and disregards the island nation and its people so concisely: the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere. If countries had subtitles, this would be Haiti’s.

After a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the nation two weeks ago, storytellers were reinvigorated with the passion to tell Haiti’s tale: one of not just a poor nation, but the poorest nation. With news of such gravity, journalists are compelled to establish some context before they focus the lens. The statement gets tacked on like a golden explanation that makes the puzzle pieces fit. It is presented as the point of departure for all things Haiti, and ends up being repeated so often that this one aspect of the country’s reality ends up overshadowing the bigger picture.

The mainstream news discourse on Haiti is a narrative, the creation of a tale that defines the small Caribbean nation. In just seven words, this narrative confines Haiti to an impoverished and miserable place. It creates a reality, a discursive literacy that exists between current and historical situations.

The news media espouses this view in the voice of the omniscient storyteller, the witness to Haiti’s unthinkable existence who, nonetheless, is not implicated in its misery. The National Post recently quoted historian Matthew Smith, a storyteller in the most literal sense, describing Haiti as “a country that is plagued by misfortune, it's a country that is dismally poor and corrupt and keeps itself in that retrograde state." He is but a witness. For Smith, it is Haiti that keeps Haiti in its trench.

The prevailing narrative suggests a moral superiority as well. This is no better demonstrated than by Pat Robertson’s explanation for the earthquake as a punishment handed down by God in retribution for Haiti’s past dealings with the devil.

The Haitian character is painted as fateful, cursed, and unlucky enough to pull the shortest straw yet again. Ultimately, it becomes self-fulfilling. In a New York Times op-ed, David Brooks suggests Haitians are suffering “from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences,” like a problem child that simply refuses to acknowledge the health benefits of vegetables. This kind of patronizing rhetoric motivates the troubled image even Haitians have of their nation. The mainstream discourse focuses on Haiti’s bad luck and implicit inadequacy, often ignoring the reasons why the odds are stacked against it.

And the odds have been stacked against Haiti for a long time. In many ways, Haitians are still paying for the slave revolt that made their country the first black republic over 200 years ago. The threat of other colonies following its lead compelled slave-dependent nations to make an example out of Haiti. Economic embargoes, reparations, and other punitive policies were imposed, starting it down the road towards its present state.

Calling Haiti the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere offers little context. These seven words are merely a euphemism for the ugliness of inequality and the complexity of a nation. They allow people to write Haiti off the page. The intricate, multi-layered story that is Haiti’s is neatly packaged and sent off for consumption.

The narrative, acting as an omniscient, prophetic moral compass, says in one phrase enough about this small country to satiate the audience. Poor, unlucky, corrupt Haiti. It is a sob story, one that disregards the triumphs of a nation with a rich history, a commendable reality – one that, when depicted completely, is robust with art, music, and literature that emulate the struggles and triumphs of a resilient people – and a future. It is enough to call it a future. Haiti has a future and this is the story that is going untold.