So, let’s see what entirely uninformed angle our theologically educated speaker can approach Haiti from… today it’s ‘cities’. Aren’t they populous, what with a lot of people living in them and whatnot. A lot of people also live in Port-au-Prince, recently razed to the ground by an earthquake. When it’s rebuilt though, let’s make sure we tell them how to do it. Because the problem with Haiti is that we haven’t been telling them what to do enough. Like who and who not to vote for.
I’ve said pretty much those very words before about Iran, and probably elsewhere too. That’s because both Iran and Haiti and many other countries have been subjected to the post-colonial economic oppression of the West, and the most recent disaster will no doubt provide opportunities for more of the the same.
So it’s interesting that Winkett suggests ‘we’ should use our superior expertise to “offer help to re-imagine for the long-term what a good city can be”. Here’s what Brian Concannon, the director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, has to say about the formation of Haitian cities under the tutelage of the West (the US government, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the UN etc.) :
Those people [city/slum-dwelling earthquake victims] got there because they or their parents were intentionally pushed out of the countryside by aid and trade policies specifically designed to create a large captive and therefore exploitable labour force in the cities; by definition they are people who would not be able to afford to build earthquake resistant houses.
It’s not like the West, wealthy as we are, shouldn’t help Haiti out of catastrophe and towards prosperity, it’s just that we should offer them help without attaching strings that pull apart the democratic process and tie them up in poverty so we can go to Walmart or Asda and fill shopping trolleys with dirt cheap t-shirts. We should offer them a chance to be ruled by the leaders they elect and allow them the freedom to build their country in their image, not Washington’s or London’s.
We should stop thinking we know best or even have the best intentions. Our nations contain plenty of poverty, misery and inequality masked by the glass and steel façades of our modern metropolises. Haiti needs agrarian reform in the countryside, not overcrowded cities filled with the ramshackle shacks sewing XXL seams pays for.