The "independence" of Haiti

International aid always comes late and wrong to their recipients, other than what is lost along the way. I personally Bosnian camp Metkovic, January 93, with tons of food that never reached their destination. The chaos in Haiti, then, is the exception but the rule of good will overcome by the circumstances. With the aggravating further the chaos that there has been the norm before and after independence in 1804. Since its first leader, the former slave Jean Jacques Dessalines proclaimed himself emperor of the most miserable country in the world. In this first unfortunate blunder followed a string of fatalities until today. The current Haiti, now devastated by the earthquake, has not changed from that I met 40 years ago, during the dictatorship of Papa Doc Duvalier and his fearsome henchmen, the Tonton Macoutes, where the only respected institution was the ubiquitous voodoo. In a country of poverty and low capital-consuming elite refined products imported from Paris, there was a single infrastructure worth the name, like today. The only 200 km journey between the capital Port-de-Paix took me 17 hours in a rickety bus polychrome unveiled a rural landscape of scraping by under the trees.

The children and grandchildren of those wretched peasants have now died in the earthquake, but not with them and they have enjoyed genuine independence. So if the country were to be under the protection, not the United States, Belize and Barbados but would be a blessing in having their perennial curse of history.