A Passionate Portrait of Haiti
July 24, 2006, Reviewer: Adam Minson/Dan Erikson "Inter-American Dialogue" (Washington, DC).
Hyppolite Pierre has emerged as one of the most thoughtful and provocative young Haitian scholars in the United States who have been trying to advance to solutions to the plight of their home country. In his new book, Pierre investigates Haitian history to identify the origins of the country’s current political situation. Not surprisingly, he argues that Haiti’s development has been crippled by the embrace of predatory political traditions, and he offers fresh historical examples that Haitian leaders might follow.
Pierre’s diagnosis of Haiti’s political ailments is dead-on. This battered country has suffered from the repeated triumph of opportunism over pragmatism, resulting social and political mistrust, the reliance on violence as the ultimate problem-solver, and the centralization of power. But is Haiti really that unique? While Pierre’s coverage of the political history is exhaustive and well-analyzed, his insistence on Haiti’s historical uniqueness fails to explain why many now-successful post-colonial republics were also born in violent revolution and struggled through years of brutish, mistrustful, and corrupt politics.
Why does Haiti’s history hang so heavily around its neck? What truly sets Haiti apart from much of the developing world isn’t its frequent political upheaval, but rather its harrowing economic backslide and economic degradation over the last 200 years â€" exacerbated by the episodic intervention of the great powers in the affairs of this small state created by freed slaves. Throughout its history, the notion of Haitian sovereignty has been a notably flexible concept both within and outside Haiti. Pierre makes this link between the political and economic roots of violence when he writes that “the obsession with political power resulting from the weaknesses in the economy has always been so intense that vital questions are rarely explored.â€
Pierre’s book was published just a few months before Rene Preval was inaugurated for a second time as Haiti’s president, thus earning a second chance to become the most democratic and perhaps the most pragmatic head of state in modern Haiti. But in the absence of a new social contract or a viable political compromise, populist appeals will continue to resonate with the millions of Haitians who live on less then $2 a day, yet Haiti desperately needs a political pragmatist who can make peace with the country’s fractious elites and win the confidence of the international community to maintain the flow of foreign aid. The electoral victory of René Preval may offer the chance for greater democratic stability, but it remains to be seen whether the U.S. and the international community can break the cycle of intervention and neglect and work effectively with the new Haitian leadership.
Pierre concludes his book by writing that “Haiti is like a Phoenix buried under her own ashes, barely visible and looking vile. But under these ashes hides a dim but brash, unyielding and consuming fire.†Pierre means the metaphor as a symbol of hope, but it can be easily be seen as one of despair. Are the Haitian people doomed to choose between ashes and fire? The author closes the book by invoking the words of former Haitian leader Alexandre Pétion that “freedom means freedom.†But Pétion’s political career began with the assassination of Haiti’s first leader, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, in 1806. As Pierre passionately argues in his new work, although more than two hundred years have passed since gaining independence, most Haitians can barely perceive their freedom in the midst of the lawlessness and deprivation that threatens to keep both democracy and development at bay.
