Several days after the earthquake in Haiti, our understanding of the losses are steadily mounting. Among the tens of thousands dead are the writer George Anglade, and Mamadou Bah, a member of the U.N. team who had been doing work to improve libraries in Haiti, and the city of Port-au-Prince has been irreparably transformed. The aftershocks of this event will certainly be multiple and ongoing.
For insightful updates on what is going on the ground in Haiti, I highly recommend the Twitter feed of Richard Morse from Haiti, which gives a sense of how people have been coping with the events.
Here, courtesy of Haitian historian Gusti Pourchet-Gaillard, are some photos of the earthquake hitting the downtown area of Port-au-Prince, the Champs de Mars, where the National Palace, Ministries, and many schools and cultural institutions are located. Other colleagues in Haiti share the horrifying news that the Ecole Normale Superieure, one of Haiti’s universities, collapsed with perhaps 1,000 students within it taking examinations.
I recommend this interview with Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat on Cnn.com, in which she recalls the way in which Haiti was born out of slave revolution. You can also see a remarkable interview of a now homeless President Preval, and images of the destroyed National Palace, at cnn.com.
It’s also worth being aware, though, of some of the very curious ways in which Haitian history is narrated, as this now famous clip of Pat Robertson speaking about the earthquake yesterday shows.
She also has published a good essay on responses to the earthquake among Vodou practitioners.
If you read interesting pieces about the events, or find photographs of videos you would like to share, you can do so in the comment section below this post.
Here is another article on Haiti from a rather different perspective
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/massive_earthquake_reveals_entire
The onion’s success is based upon its ability to exaggerate. Is it offensive? Generally. Yet, the writers often manage to strike a core of truth that is not always easy for us to embrace. This article is rather upsetting, yet does point to the shocking lack of awareness that so many Americans had when it came to Haiti.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/weekinreview/17bell.html?emc=eta1
An interesting and powerful depiction of life in Haiti through various literary forms. With the sudden concentration of interest on Haiti, it is important for everyone to also build a better comprehension of what life was like before the earthquake. Without a sense of this, it is much more difficult to understand how to help Haiti recover from this tragedy.
Go out to eat on Sunday or Monday to support Haiti relief efforts!
http://dineoutforhaititriangle.wordpress.com/
Unfortunately, this morning Haiti was hit by a pretty powerful aftershock, which brought down a lot of the previously damaged buildings:
http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/17728927
The population might not get to relax in the next couple of weeks either:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100120/ap_on_sc/us_haiti_earthquake_future
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/7020908/US-accused-of-occupying-Haiti-as-troops-flood-in.html.
As the title suggests, this article describes an interesting development in the US involvement in Haiti. It raises many questions about how other countries might view our helping Haiti and how the presence of our troops may be perceived in that country.
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2010/01/25/100125po_poem_cesaire
This particular translation is a bit bizarre, but I thought that the Césaire poem “Séisme” is eerily relevant to the disaster in Haiti. You can read the poem in the original or in a different translation in the collection we all bought for the class.
I saw Obama’s article in Newsweek today: http://www.newsweek.com/id/231131/output/print
I found his representation of the United States particularly interesting in light of our conversation on whether or not Haiti would be comfortable accepting aid from rich/powerful countries like the United States, given our imperialistic past.
Here’s an example: “But above all, we act for a very simple reason: in times of tragedy, the United States of America steps forward and helps. That is who we are. That is what we do. For decades, America’s leadership has been founded in part on the fact that we do not use our power to subjugate others, we use it to lift them up.”
Obama claims that our willingness to help the downtrodden is key to our national identity–and his article highlights this recent enthusiasm–from local volunteers to massive, organized, national assistance. While reading his uplifting statement of support, however, I couldn’t help wondering how would his words be interpreted in Haiti, given its past?
Ultimately, though, Haiti DOES need help from the UN and the US–hopefully this help will continue to be swift and enthusiastic!
http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2010/pr1006.htm
Today, the IMF announced that it is providing Haiti with $100 million of emergency funds. However, going along with MC Solaar’s lyrics, this funding is provided under the Extended Credit Facility that Haiti is already a part of. So Haiti’s debt is that much worse. But is there any other option? Is there really any other way for Haiti to get a substantial amount of money?
In terms of addressing their need quickly, the IMF is trying to rally international organizations to actually use the emergency funds. It seems that it is now a question of how organized these international aid organizations are and whether this tragic situation is at the top of their priority list – I really hope it is. As said during class discussion, they really are building up Haiti from scratch. Pact with the devil or not, these people are in desperate need of compassion and aid.
These are the twitters I mentioned in class.
http://twitter.com/MOLLYMSHEPHARD
http://twitter.com/Mariasoliz
The following Google map helped me to understand exactly where the earthquake struck as well as the locations of the surrounding islands we were discussing in class today. The “Geo Eye” supplements the map nicely as well.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=http://mw1.google.com/mw-earth-vectordb/haiti/Haiti-Earthquake-nl.kml&sll=40.111689,-95.712891&sspn=41.414553,93.076172&ie=UTF8&z=11
It’s hard sometimes living in the US to remember just how much suffering actually takes place elsewhere, but when I watched this video last night on TF1 it all came rushing back. The death toll is extremely high (one out of seven, if I remember correctly); however, without foreign aid those numbers will keep rising. I think that it’s important for us to spread the news about this tragic event so that our small contributions to the relief effort will add up to saving many lives.
I found some photos from NYTimes.
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/behind-28/
The last picture of a young girl crying hit me more than any of the photos of collapsed buildings could. While collapsed buildings and dead bodies are difficult to believe, it is only after seeing this girl that one realizes the implication of the disaster. Her reaction to the disaster captured the degree of impact the disaster has on Haiti and its people right now.
I thought the Pat Robertson piece (which I sincerely hope…rather pray…that a majority of Americans do not take to be their primary news source) was fascinating. I think it captured, especially in the last part of his statement, the paradox of foreign assistance or aid and its connection to imperialism. In this case, it would be much more of a coercive resource/power imbalance that lends itself to evangelistic potential.
With this devastating earthquake, crippling and wiping out crucial infrastructure that is necessary for long-term economic prosperity — education, healthcare (inundated by the wounded), the anticipated food shortages with transportion and delivery blockages–the set back is enormous and is sure to receive a lot of foreign intervention. For an nation where “L’union fait la force” –it will be interesting to follow on international dialogue surrounding conditions for aid and how it impacts Haitian state sovereignty — enacting the modern era of imperialism. In intervening, how can we be mindful of how powerful donor nations (political to religious as we saw in Pat Robertson’s outrageous claim) use their assistance to promote their own agendas? How can we shape our policies stemming from community-needs assessment without generating complete dependence?
I’m particularly fascinated by what role (and the ethics behind) religious based organizations–many of which fill an important void of funding and many are well intentioned without explicit religious imposition will take in this conversation? Or is Pat Robertson fundraising 1 million for “those ignorant, heathen Haitians” still worth it?
I found that the content wise, the New York Times covered many of the same facts as provided in the CNN link that professor Dubois gave us but I found some of the pictures in the following links particularly gripping. I found that these images added an important visual component to my understanding of the gravity of the situation. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/world/americas/14haiti.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/01/13/world/20100113-haiti-close-ups.html. I look forward to meeting you guys in class tomorrow.
Woops, here is the link: http://http://www.redcross.org/portal/site/en/menuitem.94aae335470e233f6cf911df43181aa0/?vgnextoid=15c0c5a210826210VgnVCM10000089f0870aRCRD
I just came across this link and thought I would share! An easy way to support relief efforts (a text message will donate $10), given that the American Red Cross is one of the main aid groups working in Haiti right now.
Here is another interesting article from BBC that echos this sentiment of perpetual struggle in Haiti: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8456728.stm
This summer, I traveled to South Africa, and although the two countries are certainly very different, there are some striking similarities. Both have a history of violent and repressive colonization, and today these nations struggle with sickening levels of poverty. While Haiti continues to battle natural disasters, South Africa faces deep economic turmoil after the near-collapse of the American financial system. I am struck by the profound impact of these events on impoverished, marginalized populations living in squalor. Ultimately, it is no coincidence that the people most profoundly impacted by these crises are the ones that were so purposefully exploited under colonial rule.