: How Haiti became the Somalia of the Western Hemisphere
Jean Charles
How Haiti became the Somalia of the Western Hemisphere?
By
Jean H Charles
Somalia, the country in the horn of Africa, a nation of 17 million inhabitants was in the middle Ages a powerful region. It was a colony of Italy and later ruled by the British; in 1960 it became the republic of Somalia. Somalia is now the poster child of a failed state. All the economic and social indices are on the downward spiral. We find in Somalia as in Haiti, a fragmentation of the political class, a collapse of law and order, the terror of the militia and the gang groups terrorizing the population, disunity of the governing elite, and the passivity of the western powers and last not the least the weakness of the rural and marginalized population.
If Somalia is Islam, Haiti is Catholic we found the same traits, Haiti was the Dubai of the world in the 1700’s. Colonized by the French, it was dubbed the Pearl of the Antilles, providing more than 70% of the French budget with the sale of its sugar, coco and indigo. After its glorious independence from the French, Haiti encountered the legacy of the colonial rule, the natural disasters, the burden of the debt for independence, dictatorship, international interference that crippled its development.
I have witnessed in my own life the decline of Haiti. I was eleven years old when it started. The first decade of my existence coincided with Haiti golden age. During the governance of Dumarsais Estime and Paul E Magloire, (1946-1956) Haiti was the darling of the Caribbean. Its export of banana was in full swing. Celebrities considered Haiti, as their private backyard with their love for the food, the music and the Haitian culture.
Starting in 1956, with the governance of Francois Duvalier the reign of terror was instituted with at least one million Haitians leaving the country during the 30 years father and son ruled the island nation.
The transition to democracy was halted by the governance of the military that crushed the burgeoning mass enthusiasm for freedom in a massacre on Election Day in 1986. Since then, Haiti went into a downward spiral of violence, corruption leading to today gang control of almost all the apparatus of the governance. The last prime minister Ariel Henry was chased out of power by a coalition of gangs that refuse to let his plane land in Haiti after a trip aboard. He was so corrupt that he lost all his credibility with the western powers that balk him up.
Haiti a nation with a brand name and with a divine mission is now the laughing stock of the world, with Kenya arranging a military intervention to crush the rule of the gangs. The entire universe is crying for Haiti, including the Vatican that wishes the transitional government good luck.
Dissecting the Haitian malaise in its inception, one must put greed and jalousie as the major culprits of Haiti downfall. It was jalousie that ignite the fight between the precursors Toussaint Louverture against Andre Rigaud, and jalousie that cause the assassination of the liberator Jean Jacques Dessalines by Alexander Petion. It was jalousie that cause Alaexander Petion to deny to Henri Christophe the governance of the whole island. And it was greed that fuel the animosity of the mulatto and the sons and daughters of the generals for the mass of former slaves after the independence.
Haiti never became a nation. It was a liberated country from the yoke of the French but it did not take the steps to create the sentiment of appurtenance to forge the love of the citizens for their nation and the love of the nation for their citizens.
Furthermore saddened by the debt of independence, and the fear of the return of the French to re-impose slavery, Haiti did not invest in education and all the other institutions to implant a nation for its citizens. For two centuries, Haiti was isolated and grew wild and undeveloped. The last fifty years was lost by the ill regime of the dictators and the corrupt illiberal governments from Jean Bertrand Aristide who armed the youngsters our grown gang leaders today to Jovenel Moise passing through Rene Preval and Michel Martelly all adding their layers of improprieties to the nation.
Corruption and greed prevent the building of adequate infrastructure that reach the whole country from the rural area to the capital preventing as such the nomad phenomenon of the population. Without the education and the training of the majority of the youths a whole generation has become sure target and hotbed for the gangs.
Haiti needs new and caring leadership to develop a cadre of youths who are highly educated, resilient and creative to rebuild the country to its prominent status of pioneer nation that broke the yoke of slavery in the universe.
A reborn Haiti will fulfill its manifest destiny of emancipatory nation that will go to liberate failed countries like Somalia pregnant with problems of dissension, corruption and clannism.
Jean H Charles LLB, MSW, JD was a presidential candidate in the elections of 2016, he can be reached at jeanhc...@aol.com cell: 646-248-1171