In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

132 nine Haiti: Life beyond Survival Juan Gabriel Valdés The catastrophic earthquake of January 12, 2010, has had a devastating impact on all aspects of Haitian society: social, economic, political, and cultural . No aspect of Haitian life was unaffected. The quake will long remain a horrific calamity in the collective memory of Haitians, clearly marked by a “before” and an “after.” Most painful has been the loss of life, estimated to be between 230,000 and 300,000. Very few Haitian families have escaped tragedy, and those hardest hit—in the capital, Port-au-Prince, or in Léogâne and Petit Goâve—are convinced that since its very foundation Haiti has been en route to a deadly and inexorable fate. At the same time, it is in the extraordinary nature of Haitians not to be bowed by disaster. They have been neither defeated nor crushed by the quake; if anything, they have developed an aura of tragic greatness and profound dignity. The quake also brought tragedy to the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) with the deaths of more than 100 staff members, including the mission chief and representative of the secretary general, Hedi Anabi, and his entire managing team, known for their integrity and dedication to the Haitian cause.1 This loss clearly made the work of the mission very difficult in the immediate aftermath of the quake, a situation that only began to change after the arrival of the new UN representative, Edmond Mulet. But the initial absence of MINUSTAH military forces on the ground served to highlight the dignified behavior of the Haitian people, who did not engage 09-0562-8 ch9.indd 132 11/2/10 11:12 AM Haiti 133 in looting and other excesses but instead bravely tried to save people and retrieve the dead from the ruins. Months after the earthquake, the physical destruction of the capital remains evident everywhere and seems almost insuperable. It is traumatic to live in a city in which 105,000 homes were almost completely destroyed and 200,000 seriously damaged; in which 1,300 schools and 50 hospitals collapsed; where the Presidential Palace, the glory of Port-au-Prince, was irreparably damaged and destroyed, and the great majority of Haiti’s ministries and its parliament building were demolished. The devastation is akin to that following a great war, except in Haiti’s case, the frontal attack was perpetrated by nature. More than 600,000 of the capital’s 3 million residents who chose to abandon the city are finding only the most fragile of havens in the rural areas, once the original home for many of them. These territories have been devastated by erosion, and their meager agricultural returns, hard fought for, offer little guarantee of subsistence. Migration to other towns is equally uncertain and difficult, but also impossible without urgent state assistance to the already poverty-stricken settlements that would receive the new inhabitants. Moreover, this is not something that can be achieved in the short run. After retrieving and burying the dead, survivors found refuge in large tented camps or in simple plastic-covered structures in the most accessible locations: the public squares of Pétionville, the gardens of the prime minister ’s mansion, the Champs de Mars, in front of the ruins of the Presidential Palace, on the vast tracts of empty lands bordering the road to ToussaintL ’Ouverture airport, and elsewhere. All this temporary resettling has been peaceful. The fears voiced by some media outlets that bandits might pillage the city, as they had done before and during the first period of the MINUSTAH mission in 2004 and 2005, or that social unrest might break out during food distribution or with the relocation of survivors, have turned out to be unfounded. As noted in a report recently presented to the UN Security Council by Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, “The Haitian people have reacted to the disaster with admirable dignity and resilience.”2 But the possibility of discontent is beginning to emerge, particularly with the onset of the rainy season, which is often accompanied by hurricanes and floods. It is clearly urgent to transfer refugees to safer places, but this will not be easy without an accelerated home construction program. To complicate matters, some refugees living in tents in the city center or on higher ground may resist giving up these shelters because they have never had the police 09-0562-8 ch9.indd 133 11/2/10 11...

Share