The Big Truck that Went By

When the news broke about the Haitian earthquake in January 2010, there were two things that struck me as odd. First was, if I'm not mistaken, the new technological phenomenon of being able to text the American Red Cross, etc. your $10 donation from your couch and that $10 would be added to your next phone bill. Suspicious, but I'll get to that later. Second was the media announcement that people should not be sending food, water, clothing, or other essential items (things that are essential for human survival), nor should they be trying to travel to Haiti to help. Also suspicious.

Jonathan Katz paints a vivid picture of what it was like to be working as an American journalist in Haiti during the catastrophe. His layout of Haiti's history represents its geographic and topographic location--it's tumultuous. It seems to have the unfortunate legacy of the constant threat of erasure--natural or otherwise. Western powers have forced themselves upon a struggling (to become an) autonomous country, by trying to bleed from it the wealth of resources and cheap human labor. Haiti has served more as a facilitator for Western societies (read: the United States) to grow and develop their wealth and prosperity, while getting nothing but violence and political/economic upheaval and sanctions in return.

I find great irony in the fact that former presidents that levied oppressive economic sanctions and military occupation were the same people who were seen on the ground, "helping" in Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake. However, in that moment, the United States was seen as the "good guy"--progressive and quick to come to the "aid" of its neighboring country. In the construction of this narrative, the Haitian voices, bodies and lives are erased or ignored. They become a "thing" to be fixed--again reinforcing the image of the white savior. However, just as we saw with the readings from last week, what are NGOs and volunteer organizations and nation-states really doing to help out these areas that are ravaged by political upheaval/violence? We, as Americans, think that because we don't hear about Haiti anymore that somehow Haitians' troubles are over. But, as Katz elucidates, we Americans have done more harm than good.

What we end up seeing is something more or less like a new age or new form of occupation, in which foreign diplomats, former presidents, and NGO workers occupied the disaster site, while living lavishly off of the donations from their home countries. It was disparaging to read about this. While I find it extremely problematic that we Americans figure that we can fix anything by throwing money at it, people were expecting that their funds would be going to help people. (This obviously doesn't absolve us Americans of the detached forms of charity that we conduct.) Reading about this made me recall a news clip after the Newtown, CT shootings that showed the outpouring of material donations that could fill a large classroom, floor to ceiling. The rhetoric that was spun was that it was almost a bad thing that people were sending so much stuff. This was the similar rhetoric that I referred to at the beginning of my post. "Don't send staple supplies and clothing--those things are of no use here."

What the US and friends' occupation after the earthquake amounted to was nothing more than another occupation. Rather than "fixing" the country and reorganizing the government institutions and economic structure (as the story goes), occupation leaves the country in deeper turmoil and reinforces structural violence. This recent occupation is casted as a relief and rebuilding effort, but as Katz shows, it ended up causing deeper problems for Haiti when they left.