Poverty in Haiti is institutionalized

I watched the images coming out of Haiti after the quake. Like most everyone else, I was floored by the misery. I made my contribution and agonized over what else I could do — and that all seems appropriate.

But then I started to get angry. The news kept driving home how "Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere." As if that's just the way things are, no further explanation needed.

In the context of this modern world, with its dizzying array of miracle devices and its staggering productive capacity, why is Haiti the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere? Why is any country that poor?

Haiti (Ayiti) is a Taino word for "land of high mountains." Haiti's Taino natives, like Haiti's mahogany forests, have been in short supply since the time of Christopher Columbus. It is worth keeping Columbus in mind when the TV cameras zero in on crucifixes and religious piety. Columbus brought a lust for gold, a desire for slaves and European diseases that decimated its native population. When Columbus arrived, the native population was 7.9 million; by 1542, it was 200. There is, on Kiskeya — the island also known as Hispanola — a sordid history.

Why are so many houses made of concrete, so vulnerable during an earthquake, on an island known for its mahogany forests? If you swoop back a couple hundred years you start to learn why.

When Napoleon was forced out of Haiti in 1804 — after being defeated by an army of former slaves — he dragged the remainder of his disease-ridden troops home and demanded payment in exchange for formal independence. To pay this ransom, Haitians were forced to give up large amounts of mahogany. Forestry, especially using wood for fuel, is still part of Haiti's economy. And so continues the environmental devastation that has already gone too far.

Speaking of formal economy, there isn't much of one in Haiti. In the early '90s there were moves to exploit the cheap labor source, so textile and electronic assembly plants moved in. It doesn't amount to much; according to the CIA World Factbook, industry makes up 20 percent of the country's GDP. In large part, subsistence farming, service and the underground economy keep the country going. Meanwhile, thousands of Haitians are trucked into the sugar plantation towns of the Dominican Republic, and its more developed infrastructure, to harvest cane under slave-like conditions.

What you have in Haiti is the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith doing its worst. In Haiti the ability to extract surplus value (i.e. profit) by sending in capital is minimal. There's just not that much money to make in Haiti. So what you get is a situation where — as the Clash sang some years ago — "There ain't no need for you, there ain't no need ... go straight to hell boys, go straight to hell." That's how the world looks at Haiti.

Driving the lunatic ravings of the Haitian Consul in Brazil saying "anywhere you've got Africans the place is just fucked up," or Rush Limbaugh's rants that the U.S. has "already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax," is Haiti's political economy — or lack thereof.

It is worth keeping such things in mind as Haiti only begins to recover from devastation. It seems to me the real question we need to be churning over is not why Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, but what we need to do to get to a world where such conditions don't exist.