"Society ended up in cannibalism, the government was overthrown and people began pulling down each other's statues, so that is pretty serious. In another example, Pitcairn and Henderson island in the south-east Pacific, everybody ended up dead. Another example was Mayan civilisation in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico and Guatemala. Again, people survived but about 90% of the population was lost," he said.
The horrific impact of deforestation on the Haitian condition is a modern and pressing concern but some might say that Haiti was cursed from the beginning and for that we have to look at other aspects of the Haitian landscape.
Slavery
Slavery throughout the Caribbean was awful but nowhere worse than in Haiti where colonists gave vent to the full flowering of racism and raw brutality, plumbing the depths of institutional degradation and humiliation. The legendary violence in Port-Au-Price and its environs still reverberates. If issues of race and its legacy still consume the US, imagine what it must be like where slavery received its highest formulations.
L'esclave vieil homme et le molosse by Patrick Chamoiseau
Patrick Chamoiseau hails from, and writes about, Martinique but this little fable about the old slave who decides to flee the cruel master and the huge mastiff that pursues him applies equally well to Haiti. This story is akin to Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea, written as a universal tale, in the exuberant voice of creole. Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories is written in a similar tone although this time targeted at younger audiences.
Chamoiseau normally writes about life in the slum (see Texaco, and about oral history, language and modern-day griots (see Solibo Magnificent in a stylized language that is neither french nor creole but it's own invention. This short book is a departure for him and allows him to focus on the essence of the caribbean experience of slavery. His Creole Folktales are more explicitly idealized.
Here both the language and the story is simple, drawn with broad strokes and the effect is dreamy with sometimes astonishing details catching your attention. The master's huge dog that had demoralized all other fugitives into submission. The old slave that no one ever thought would flee, has spent his life caring for the family and the plantation. The master's rigid discipline over his domain, a firm and sometimes cruel hand - but only when necessary. The chase drawing these three characters further and further into the the forest. It is a journey of 150 pages that leaves you wanting to discover all you can about this living history that is slavery in the Caribbean.
Voodoo
Voodoo too looms large in the popular imagination of Haiti. In music, we can look in recent years to D'Angelo's Voodoo album and it's photos of bare-chested dancers in circles and chicken feathers floating in the air presumably about to be sacrificed. The music too is slow and mysterious, tilted towards New Orleans and Haitian Vodun with occasional shrieks and sound effects providing ambiance. My favourite album of the past decade.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Damn, Koranteng, there's a lot going on here - the writing is excellent and the information fascinating. The realtionship between environmental degradation and political decline/collapse makes an awful lot of sense.
I also agree that our media tends toward solipsism, though not more than most and certainly less than some.
I fear "we" (the West) sees parts of the world as beyond hope, as sinkholes beyond redemption - it is perhaps related to a "help those who can help themselves" mentality.
Thanks!
2 - Mac Diva
There are two solutions to Haiti's debacle. The first is immigration. That is what really frightens Americans, Koranteng. Though the country has absorbed millions of immigrants from Europe, an increasing number of Americans want to end immigration now that the color of most immigrants skin is darker than olive. The second solution is, of course, for France to pay Haitians the millions in reparations it owes them. That is what really frightens the French. I wish I could say I believe either solution will occur in my life time, but I don't.