Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

Every­body singing "Haiti, I'm sor­ry." Miss Thing want to know, "What they sor­ry for? They didn't cause the earth­quake." I shame to say she don't know the his­to­ry, apart from the fact that Haiti kick out the French a cou­ple hun­dred years ago and catch­ing their skin ever since. She don't know the de­tails about Pa­pa Doc and Ba­by Doc, and what a mess Hait­ian pol­i­tics was just in my life­time alone. This coun­try that could have been the bright­est light for post-colo­nial so­ci­ety any­where in the world in­stead come like a joke: Haiti was the first coun­try in the West­ern Hemi­sphere to prove that black peo­ple couldn't build a coun­try on their own, just de­stroy one. Of course, to say that is to blind your­self to the fact that Haiti had plen­ty help in flush­ing it­self down the toi­let.

Huff­in­g­ton Post blog­ger Bill Quigley write on Thurs­day on huff­in­g­ton­post.com, "In the last decade alone, the US slashed hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance to Haiti, blocked in­ter­na­tion­al loans, forced the gov­ern­ment of Haiti to down­size, ru­ined tens of thou­sands of small farm­ers, and re­placed the gov­ern­ment with pri­vate non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions." That is on­ly part of the sto­ry. Quigley, a lawyer who is the le­gal di­rec­tor for the Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Rights in the US, ex­plain how his gov­ern­ment had a his­to­ry of ma­nip­u­lat­ing Haiti pol­i­tics. Is on­ly US-ap­proved lead­ers Haiti had, and aid mon­ey could on­ly go through NGOs, not the Hait­ian Gov­ern­ment, he say. "The fact is that many of Haiti's prob­lems to­day stem from the re­sponse of na­tions that saw its in­sur­rec­tion as a threat or a taunt," say an­oth­er writer in a sto­ry in Thurs­day Seat­tle Times.

Richard H Watts, a Caribbean stud­ies spe­cial­ist from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, write, "In 1825 the French en­gaged in a bit of gun­boat diplo­ma­cy and de­mand­ed that Haiti pay com­pen­sa­tion of some 150 mil­lion francs–a sum de­rived by fig­ur­ing the val­ue of the prop­er­ty, in the form of slaves and land, that French planters had lost–or face a to­tal eco­nom­ic block­ade. This amount was rough­ly equal to ten years' worth of to­tal rev­enue in Haiti. "By the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry, Haiti's pay­ments to France still con­sumed around 80 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get. One gen­er­a­tion of Haitians had bought its free­dom with its blood, and the gen­er­a­tions that fol­lowed had to pay cash." How you go run a coun­try with no mon­ey, when you so deep in debt your chil­dren chil­dren chil­dren go still be pay­ing it off? And that debt con­tin­ue up to to­day with loans from the IMF and World Bank.

An­oth­er Huff Post writer, po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Earl Ofari Hutchin­son, say, "Haiti is com­pelled to shell out near­ly US$1 mil­lion a week to pay off its debt to the World Bank and the IMF; debt in­curred by the Pa­pa and Ba­by Doc Du­va­lier regimes and their suc­ces­sor mil­i­tary gov­ern­ments in the ear­ly 1990s propped up by the US. Half of the loans were giv­en to the Du­va­liers and the oth­er dic­ta­tor­ships. They squan­dered the cash on pres­i­den­tial lux­u­ries with bare­ly a cent go­ing to de­vel­op­ment pro­grams for the poor." On a good day, Haiti had elec­tric­i­ty, wa­ter, hous­ing, med­ical and food short­ages, and bad roads. Now? Blood flow­ing like wa­ter. If al­lyuh feel the Box­ing Day tsuna­mi and Hur­ri­cane Ka­t­ri­na was pres­sure, you ent see noth­ing yet. All that food and wa­ter we send­ing to Port-au-Prince by the plane­load have nowhere to land, be­cause the air­port bare­ly func­tion­ing.

If they man­age to get the thing in, the roads gone through so they could hard­ly pass with it. The peo­ple who sur­vive go­ing to be in a mess, and the hos­pi­tal and all fall down. Even if the Gov­ern­ment was in good shape, even if the Na­tion­al Palace and par­lia­ment build­ing didn't col­lapse, they still wouldn't of be in any con­di­tion to man­age to col­lect and hand out the aid. But of course that don't mean we shouldn't send, and send un­til we can't send no more. T&T, for all the shame in we eye from the gun crime and cor­rup­tion, is a par­adise. When last we had a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter that kill over 500 peo­ple, like Haiti had when Hur­ri­cane Han­na hit in 2008? When last we chil­dren eat mud, like some chil­dren in Haiti does have to do? Count­ing we bless­ings is not enough; giv­ing to we broth­ers and sis­ters have to be high up on we agen­da or we can't call we­self hu­mans.

I would say some­thing about "Chris­t­ian char­i­ty," but I fraid for buss head. Pat Robert­son, that jac­ka--, make all Chris­tians look bad when he talk so much rub­bish on the TV about how Haiti make a deal with the dev­il and that is why it al­ways have so much suf­fer­ing there. I can't be­lieve that is true. For one, the dev­il like he peo­ple to be fat and hap­py, not scrunt­ing and hun­gry-look­ing. That is just good busi­ness sense. You want to ad­ver­tise so more peo­ple could flock to you. If Haiti did make a deal with the dev­il in truth, it would of throw off the French like a dirty Jock­ey shorts and nev­er look back. It might have the high­est rate of obe­si­ty in the world, have food like food go­ing out of style, have all the con­ve­niences and idle­ness you could want, with just as much spir­i­tu­al empti­ness. In fact, it might look a lot like Amer­i­ca... But that is an­oth­er sto­ry.

Earth­quake don't kill peo­ple. Falling build­ings and thing like that is what does kill you, not the earth­quake it­self. This dis­as­ter wouldn't of be so grim if Haiti had the in­fra­struc­ture to with­stand it. When Haiti get over this, the lat­est hur­dle in the way of de­vel­op­ment, all of we have to make sure in what­ev­er way we could that Haiti come out of the hole it in. Lob­by for in­ter­na­tion­al lend­ing agen­cies to for­give that debt. Lob­by for aid agen­cies to give sub­si­dies to Hait­ian agri­cul­ture and man­u­fac­tur­ing so the coun­try could get on its feet. Haiti have a long and proud her­itage. Let this be the last time she have to be on she knees.