by Paul Farmer
42 See Farmer. The Uses of Haiti.
43 Although I’ve probably spilled too much ink about the Peligré Dam in AIDS and Accusation and elsewhere, it has appeared again in headlines: the Inter-American Development Bank is considering a $40 million rehabilitation program. The dam currently operates at half capacity because of residual silt buildup; this has contributed to the country’s 30 percent drop in electricity production in the past decade. The bank hopes to amend this shortage by getting the 54-megawatt dam back on its feet. See Jennifer Wells. “A Dam for the People, and a People Damned.” The Star (August 2010). Available: http://www.thestar.com/article/894096---peligre-dam-project-brought-floods-and-darkness (accessed April 15, 2011).
44 Stephen Smith and James F. Smith. “Rising to Meet an Infinite Need.” Boston Globe (January 24, 2010). Available: http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2010/01/24/boston_based_nonprofit_has_been_thrust_into_leadership_role_in_haiti/ (accessed April 15, 2011).
45 With the help of the logistics wizards in Boston, Thierry was able to escort his cousins to their new home, and he soon returned to Cange. He is still planning a career in surgery and hopes to begin his training, in Canada or the United States, by the summer of 2011.
46 To see and hear Shelove, see the wonderful short video, “Walking the Walk,” by Rebecca Rollins (translated by Caroline Hilaire). Available: http://vimeo.com (/13281822 accessed April 15, 2011).
47 The blind and otherwise handicapped had never fared much better. Graham Greene’s Haiti novel, The Comedians, evokes the terror of the Duvalier years but also the link between disability and poverty. When a well-meaning American man visits the post office, he is swarmed by beggars with severe disabilities: “Two onearmed men and three one-legged men hemmed him round. Two were trying to sell him dirty old envelopes containing out of date Haitian postage stamps: the others were more frankly begging. A man without legs at all had installed himself between his knees and removed his shoe-laces preparatory to cleaning his shoes. Others seeing a crowd collected were fighting to join in. A young fellow, with a hole where his nose should have been, lowered his head and tried to ram his way through towards the attraction. A man with no hands raised his pink polished stumps over the heads of the crowd to exhibit his infirmity to the foreigner. It was a typical scene in the Post Office” (New York: Penguin, 1965), p. 155.
48 Rollins. “Walking the Walk.”
49 David Brown. “Surgeon Seeks to Prevent ‘Unnecessary Amputations’ in Haiti’s Earthquake Zone.” Washington Post (January 21, 2010). Amputation has a fraught history during humanitarian aid efforts. The notorious international response to the amputated victims of Sierra Leone’s civil war, for example, triggered unintended, and perhaps perverse, consequences. Some have suggested that the surge of foreign money sent to Sierra Leone after photos of amputated children and women circulated in the western media only encouraged rebels to continue chopping off limbs as a political tactic. See, for example, Linda Polman. The Crisis Caravan: What’s Wrong with Humanitarian Aid? (New York: Macmillan Books, 2010), pp. 66–69.
50 For more on the graduation of the Global Health Delivery fellows, see “Global Health Delivery Fellows Honored for Accomplishments and Leadership.” Partners in Health Online (March 30, 2010). Available: http://www.pih.org/haiti/news-entry/global-health-delivery-fellows-honored-for-accompishments-and-leadersh/ (accessed April 15, 2011). One of the graduates had the following to say about the practice of social medicine in the rural reaches of his homeland: “My first day at Zanmi Lasante, I was greeted by Dr. Maxi and Dr. Léandre, and to be honest, I thought they were nuts. They spoke to me about everything except medicine—such as transport costs, income-generating activities, construction of houses, compensation for community health workers. In fact I stayed lost. I wasn’t even sure they were doctors. But I needed to learn, I needed time to live this reality . . . Later in my first year, I was annoyed, I did not think doctors should do home visits. I remember one of our faculty asked me to go find a TB patient, who had left without finishing his therapy . . . the attending insisted that any doctor taking care of a patient has a responsibility if the patient leaves the hospital. After returning to the hospital with the patient from the village of Kay Epin, I began to think differently about the doctor-patient relationship; about how my talking with and spending time with the patient changed his outcome. We decided to stay in a rural place, not to return to the city, or to do a residency—but to become “Dokte Mon”—a mountain doctor. You must understand, that we were among the best students in our classes in medical school, each of us was expected to do a residency. Generally, those who are called “mountain doctors” are surrounded by rumors of incompetence . . . but for us, choosing this path is our core engagement to join this determined team, Haitian and foreign, who in a noble mission, serve the Haitian poor. It is not easy to be devoted to this mission, there are sacrifices in these rural places, far from the lucrative and prestigious jobs in the capital that garner a private clinic or a car. But you all have accompanied us to a much greater goal, to see the medicine in a community way, medicine in service to all those who require it.”
51 J. Helprin. “Bill Clinton Chides Nations over Help to Haiti.” Associated Press (September 9, 2009). Available: http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2009/09/09/3243861-bill-clinton-chides-nations-over-help-for-haiti (accessed April 15, 2011).
52 “Haiti—No Leadership, No Elections.” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Report. 111th Congress, 2nd Session (June 10, 2010). Available: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html (accessed April 15, 2011).
53 Roberts. “Responding in a Crisis.”
54 A report by Merlin underscores this conclusion: “The overall emergency response could have benefited from wider participation in the effort to build capacity of the Ministry [of Health] and to support systems development and coordination, but most international agencies opted to focus on providing direct emergency care in the initial phase.” Roberts. “Responding in a Crisis,” p. 6.
Chapter 4
1 This, again, resonates with the lessons drawn by Halberstam. Of the U.S. general sent to Vietnam in 1962, Halberstam writes that, “Like almost all Americans who arrived in Vietnam, Harkins was ignorant of the past, and ignorant of the special kind of war he was fighting. To him, like so many Americans, the war had begun the moment he arrived; the past had never happened and need not be taken seriously.” Halberstam. The Best and the Brightest, p. 185.
2 Mark Danner. “To Heal Haiti Look to History, not Nature.” New York Times (January 21, 2010). Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/opinion/22danner.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all (accessed April 15, 2011).
3 See Thomas Madiou’s monumental history of Haiti: Histoire d’Haïti. 9 vols. (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Henri Deschamps, 1989). The U.S. occupation is chronicled in six volumes by Roger Gaillard in La République Exterminatrice. 6 vols. (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Le Natal, 1984–1998).
4 See Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 23, table 1.1.
5 Léon Dénius Pamphile. Haitians and African-Americans: A Heritage of Tragedy and Hope (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2003), p. 2.
6 M.-L.-E. Moreau de Saint-Méry. Description Topographique, Physique, Civile, Politique et Historique de la Partie Française de l’Isle Saint-Domingue (1797–1798). 3 vols. New ed., B. Maurel and E. Taillemite, eds. (Paris: Société de l’Histoire des Colonies Françaises and Librairie Larose).
7 Cited in Robert Heinl and Nancy Heinl. Written in Blood (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1978), pp. 26–27.
8 Eric Williams. From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean, 1492–1969 (London: Andre Deutsch), p. 246.
9 Cited in Claude Auguste and Marecel Auguste. L’Expédition Leclerc 1801–1803 (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Henri Deschamps), p. 236; Farmer. The Uses of Haiti, p. 70.
10 Quoted in Laurent Dubois. Avengers of the New World (Cam
bridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 301.
11 For one of the best accounts of the abolition of the slave trade in England, see Adam Hochschild. Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005).
12 After fifty years of searching for the eight-page document, the second independence declaration in history (after the U.S. Declaration in 1776) was found by Julia Gaffield, an American graduate student, in the British National Archives in Kew. For more information, see “Haiti’s Declaration of Independence discovered at The National Archives,” April 1, 2010. Available: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/453.htm (accessed April 15, 2011). Full text of the Declaration of Independence available here: http://www.nathanielturner.com/haitiandeclarationofindependence1804.htm (accessed April 15, 2011).
13 Cited in Hans Schmidt. The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1971), p. 312.
14 Haun Saussy recently published a short piece revealing the Kingdom of France’s logic behind indemnification. The order, issued by King Charles X on April 17, 1785, reads: “The present inhabitants of the French part of the island of Santo Domingo shall pay to the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations de France in five equal yearly installments, from year to year . . . the sum of 150,000,000 francs, intended to make whole those former colonists who require reimbursement. We concede, on these conditions, by the present Order, to the inhabitants of the French part of Santo Domingo the full and complete independence of their government” (italics added). In the eyes of Charles X, the Haitian Revolution hadn’t happened; Haiti still belonged to France. See “That Is One Odious Debt,” Printculture (December 27, 2010). Available: http://printculture.com /item-2781.html(accessed April 15, 2011).
15 Danner. “To Heal Haiti Look to History, not Nature.”
16 I’ve written about this and earned some scorn from French officialdom for my troubles. See, for example, P. Farmer. “Douze Points en Faveur de la Restitution à Haïti de la Dette Française.” L’Union (November 11, 2003): 1, 3, 4. More recently, after the quake, more than ninety academics, journalists, and activists signed an open letter to President Sarkozy urging restitution of the French debt. See “M. Sarkozy, Rendez à Haïti Son Argent Extorqué.” Libération. August 16, 2010. Available: http://www.liberation.fr/monde/0101652216-m-sarkozy-rendez-a-haiti-sonargent-extorque (accessed April 15, 2011).
17 Jean Price-Mars. La République d’Haïti et la République Dominicaine: Les Aspects Divers d’un Problème d’Histoire, de Géographie et d’Ethnologie (Lausanne: Imprimerie Held, 1953), pp. 169–170.
18 Quoted in Rayford Logan. Haiti and the Dominican Republic (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 119.
19 Roger Gaillard. Le Guerilla de Batraville (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Le Natal, 1983), pp. 261–262. The authoritative North American version of the history finds 3,250 peasant deaths in the twenty months of active resistance. See Hans Schmidt. The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934 (New Brunwick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1971), p. 103.
20 Balch won the prize in 1946 for her efforts to promote peace between the World Wars. (John Mott also won the Peace Prize in 1946.) While serving on the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s committee investigating the occupation of Haiti, Balch wrote “Occupied Haiti,” a report calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. marines from Haiti. For more on Balch, see Kristen Gwinn’s biography, Emily Greene Balch: The Long Road to Internationalism (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2011).
21 Military historians Heinl and Heinl estimated that 2250 had been killed from 1915 to 1920 during the Cacos uprisings. See Heinl and Heinl. Written in Blood, p. 441, n. 24., pp. 463, 470.
22 Cited in Rod Prince. Haiti: Family Business (London: Latin American Bureau, 1985), p. 21.
23 See e.g. Heinl and Heinl. Written in Blood, p. 441, n. 24.
24 In one scene, the narrator watches a photograph of Papa Doc Duvalier—required by law to be posted in every building—burn in the fire of a Voodoo ceremony: “The flames lit the photograph nailed on the pillar, the heavy spectacles, the eyes staring at the ground as though at a body ready for dissection. Once he had been a country doctor struggling successfully against typhoid; he had been a founder of the Ethnological Society . . . Corruptio optimi.” Greene. The Comedians, p. 180.
25 For more on this violent interregnum, see Erica James’ book Democratic Insecurities: Violence, Trauma, and Intervention in Haiti (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), which examines the terror apparatus of the Duvalier dictatorships. Violation of sex, gender, and kinship norms through rape, torture, and shame was a strategy of state and, indeed, a locus of Duvalierist power. James analyzes the practice of documenting trauma narratives as a means of marshalling resources in the subsequent aid economy, and the varied implications of this practice for both the donors and recipients of aid dollars. She describes the “bureaucraft” culture that arose in Haiti amidst failures of aid transparency: a public trade in accusations about hidden or occult activity amongst government and nongovernment organizations that have led to violence and civil unrest.
26 Amy Wilentz. The Rainy Season: Haiti After Duvalier (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), p. 335. Leslie Francois Saint Roc Manigat, born August 16, 1930 in Port-au-Prince, was elected president of Haiti in an election tightly controlled by the military in January 1988.
27 Aristide wrote about the massacre: “Everyone was running, trying to find a place to hide. One man was shot in the outside courtyard, with his Bible in his hand. Bullets were zinging left and right. I saw a pregnant woman screaming for help in the pews, and holding onto her stomach. A man had just speared her there, and she was bathed in red blood . . . this was a prophetic, historic resistance that we will never forget.” Jean Bertrand Aristide. In the Parish of the Poor: Writings from Haiti (MaryKnoll, New York: Orbis, 1990), p. 55.
28 I wrote an account of the elections for a Jesuit magazine shortly after Aristide’s inauguration. I cribbed the title from the liberation theologian, Gustavo Guttiérrez. See Paul Farmer. “The Power of the Poor in Haiti.” America 164, 9 (1992): 260–267.
29 Bob Shacochis. The Immaculate Invasion (New York: Penguin, 1999).
30 Oscar Arias. “Only the marching band.” The Washington Post (March 12, 2004).
31 Some of the most thorough accounts of the period include: Randal Robinson. An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2007); Peter Hallward. Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment (London: Verso, 2008); and Isabel Macdonald. “‘Parachute Journalism’ in Haiti: Media Sourcing in the 2003–2004 Political Crisis.” Canadian Journal of Communication 33: 213–232. Also be sure to see Jeb Sprague’s forthcoming book Haiti and the Roots of Paramilitarism (New York: Monthy Review Press, 2012).
32 Madison Smartt Bell. “Mine of Stones: With and Without the Spirits Along the Cordon de l’Ouest.” Harper’s (January 2004), p. 65.
33 Peter Hallward’s book, Damming the Flood, is a grueling and instructive exploration of this slow-motion coup.
34 See Paul Farmer. “Who Removed Aristide?” London Review of Books 26, 8 (2004): 28–31. See also Randall Robinson’s book, An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President (New York: Perseus Books, 2007).
35 Amy Wilentz. “Coup in Haiti.” Nation (March 22, 2004). Available: http://amywilentz.com /blog/coup-in-haiti/ (accessed April 15, 2011). Wilentz continues: “One thing about coups: They don’t just happen. In a country like Haiti, where the military has been disbanded for nearly a decade, soldiers don’t simply emerge from the underbrush; they have to be reorganized, retrained and resupplied . . . In the current coup, there are several players. There is the disgruntled former Haitian army (an institution with a violent and unpalatable recent history), which has been wielded many times in the service of coups d’état, often subsidized by its master
s, the elite of Haiti. The elite, too, had their hand in this coup–it’s hard to believe in this day and age, but they must be called the entrenched class enemies of the Haitian people. There is ‘a growing enthusiasm among businessmen to use the rebels as a security force,’ said a news report from the Los Angeles Times after the remnants of the Haitian army that helped engineer the coup descended on the capital. ‘[The businessmen] welcomed the rebels.’”
36 Peter Heinlein. “UN Peacekeeping Chief: Haiti Worse than Darfur.” Voice of America (June 28, 2005). Available: http://www.voanews.com. /english/2005-06-28-voa63 cfm (accessed April 15, 2011).
Chapter 5
1 For more on internally displaced persons in Africa and around the world see Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, “Internal Displacement: Global Overview of Trends and Developments in 2010,” March 2011 Report. Available: http://www.internal-displacement.org/publications/global-overview-2010.pdf (accessed April 14, 2011).
2 The memo was leaked to Turtle Bay on February 17, 2010. Available: http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/17/top_un_aid_official_critiques_haiti_aid_efforts_in_confidential_email (accessed April 15, 2011).
3 Kimberly A. Cullen and Louise C. Ivers. “Human Rights Assessment in Parc Jean-Marie Vincent, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.” Health and Human Rights in Practice 12, no. 2: 1–12.
4 See Didi Bertrand Farmer. “Bearing Witness: Girls and Women in Haiti’s Camps.” World Pulse (November 4, 2010). Available: http://www.worldpulse.com/node/30500/ (accessed April 15, 2011); see also her essay in this book, “Mothers and Daughters of Haïti,” where this topic is explored at greater length.
Chapter 6
1 A recording of the hearing is available here: http://foreign.senate.gov /hearings/hearing/?id=3f546a93-d363-da0b-b25f-f1c5d096ddb1 (accessed April 15, 2011). For more on food assistance in Haiti, see the recent report by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and the Global Justice Clinic at New York University’s School of Law, Partners In Health, Zanmi Lasante, and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. Sak Vid Pa Kanpe: The Impact of U.S. Food Aid on Human Rights in Haiti (2010). Available: http://parthealth.3cdn.netf /3f82f61a3316d7f1a0_pvm6b80f3.pd.