Who will lighten Haiti’s burden?

THE EDITOR, Madam:

I WRITE with reference to the article by Matthew J. Smith, titled ‘History a blurred lens in Haiti’, in The Sunday Gleaner of July 11. It’s hardly surprising that Haiti has found herself in the dire political, economic, and social disarray in which she is mired.

Basically, ever since Haiti became the world’s first black-led republic, and the first independent Caribbean state when it threw off French colonial control and slavery in the early 19th century, European powers, and North American ones, including the United States, have not forgiven Haiti for her audacity in wanting freedom.

Haiti’s independence came at a debilitating cost to her. She had to pay reparations to France from 1825 to 1947 amounting to about US$21 billion in today’s currency.

On top of all these punitive sanctions on Haiti, there have been invasions by foreign powers, the installation of despotic native regimes, such as the Duvaliers, and the rise of marauding gangs in the country.

All these events have been accompanied by lots of natural disasters, including hurricanes and the massive earthquake in 2010 which killed over 200,000 people, and caused extensive damage to its infrastructure and the economy.

So Haiti seems unable to distance itself from the notion of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being as portrayed in his 1984 novel. (Kundera is a Czech novelist). Lightness represents an easy life, but a shallow life.

But, instead, Haiti is laden with‘the unbearable heaviness of being’– life that is existentially demanding and unforgiving – their ‘real’ life.

Who, then, will make their burdens lighter?