Over the past few weeks, every news outlet in the country has been covering the devastation wrought by the recent earthquake in Haiti, and without fail, every piece of coverage I've seen has referred to the events as tragic. I'm not so sure about those semantics. The earthquake was many things: terrible, unfortunate, and disturbingly located in a nation seemingly made for heartbreak. But tragic? I tend to think of tragedy as a distinctly human creation, one equal parts hubris, pain, and irony. Shakespearean tragedy, the gold standard by which all tragic elements in the western mind are measured, is centered around the choices made by mankind and the folly of an imperfect race. An earthquake is a cataclysmic event, surely, but it's also a natural act. As much as that jackass Pat Robertson might like to believe the earthquake was brought about as a result of human wickedness, it reality it was the inexorable grinding of an indifferent earth that caused the havoc. It was awful, yes, but unlike true tragedy, it was also somewhat inevitable. The Haitian earthquake was horrific, but it was not tragic.
But what is going to happen to the county will be tragic.
Im talking about the months and years to come, and what I see happening to the people of Haiti. At the moment, aid workers and supplies are flooding into the small island nation, and, despite massive upheavals, some relief is being distributed. But the real question is for how long this foreign aid will go on? Consider the state of the Haitian situation, even before the quake.
The country was gripped by poverty, wracked by political corruption, and subject, for almost it's entire existence, to the whims of foreign powers. Colonialism is a subject in and of itself, but to shorten the tale, Haiti, in the days leading up to the quake, was in a poor and ultimately doomed position. The country lacked infrastructure, both economically and agriculturally, and already relied heavily on foreign largess. As well as having under-supported agricultural institutions (thanks to subsidies, US farmers could undersell local Haitian producers of basic staples), Haiti also bore the scars of a ravaged ecology. Look at the following photo:
To the right are the still partially forested hills of the Dominican Republic, and to the left are the barren slopes of what once was Haitian forest. Years of unregulated cutting for firewood and charcoal have left the countryside a desolate mess in many if not most places. Add on top of this a people largely illiterate, uneducated, and striated by deep and purposely maintained class divides, and all the spirit and determination in the world can do little in the face of disaster.
The true misfortune of the quake was that it's epicenter fell almost on top of the major metropolitan center of Port-au-Prince. In the wake of the earthquake, refugees have been streaming out of the city, returning to already overburdened country towns. As odd as it may seem, cities are actually the most efficient form of human dwelling, under ideal circumstances; resources are both more readily distributed and more effectively dispersed. Yet now, not only are masses of people fleeing the ruins of the city, but those who stay are not able to get access to locally produced supplies at reasonable prices.
Haiti was a powderkeg, and though it was touched off by a natural event, it was made by man, both the colonial powers that pulled the nation's strings and by the Haitian citizens themselves. And now, the fate of Haiti rests almost entirely on the shoulders of the world's industrialized nations. For the moment, people have rallied to the cause, and millions are being spent to get basic food and water to Haiti. But the cynical realist in me wonders how long this can go on.
No nation has any real vested interest in Haiti, save perhaps a sense of guilt, compassion, or a fear of a destabilized western hemisphere nation. None of these reasons can or will hold up in the long term. Haiti has nothing to offer the outside world, save maybe mangos, and the sad truth is, the UN, the US, and the powers of the world will slowly begin to grow weary of constant aid, and turn away. No one would like to admit it, but it will happen. Because Haiti can't be rebuilt; it would need to be built anew, almost entirely from the ground up. Right now, there are governments that seem committed to the effort, but what about in a year, or two, or ten?
Even in the best of circumstances, Haiti would face a difficult path towards any sort of recovery. But when are circumstances ever the best? In reality, Haiti will continue to be subjected to the cruel vagaries of nature. The first serious rainstorm will find hundreds of thousands of people homeless, without even basic protection from the elements. And the next hurricane will bring chaos on a whole new level. Deforestation caused by the Haitians coupled with climactic disturbances caused by global warming, itself a result of the human industry of the global powers, will lead to hurricanes of unprecedented destructive potential in the coming years, as mudslides and sea swells combine to torment an already tormented people.
Haiti is a recipe for what much of the world may someday look like if we continue on our current route. A lack of potable water, few and overburdened agricultural resources, human augmented natural disasters, civil unrest that may lead to civil war or political dissolution...it would all be just so much dystopian fantasy if it weren't happening right now, just a scant hundred miles south of American waters. These are the things of which tragedies are made, these flaws of human nature and choice, and such a tragedy is being writ large on a scale that even Shakespeare's mind would boggle at.
And, I fear, the curtain is only now rising on the first act...
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