Panel Discusses Haiti Crisis

“Apocalyptic”—that was the word used by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz to describe the massive earthquake that rocked Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Jan. 12.

At Friday’s interdisciplinary panel exploring the historical and political consequences of the disaster, Diaz described the Haitian earthquake as an apocalyptic event—not only in terms of its destructive force, but its stark exposure of the developing nation’s place in an international power dynamic.

“The system in which we live—which we can call capitalism—this is a system in which the Haitian catastrophe is not just normal but inevitable, that in fact a large part of the world is immiserated and stripped of resources to sustain certain lives of privilege,” said Diaz, a Dominican writer catapulted to fame by his novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.”

Sponsored by the Department of African American Studies, the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, and the Committee on African Studies, the panel assembled a variety of perspectives on the Haitian crisis from writers, including Haitian-born poet Patrick Sylvain, and doctors like Mary Louis Jean Baptiste, a Haitian-American mental health expert.

Estimates of the January earthquake’s death toll place the figure around 200,000, though the final number may be even higher. But Baptiste said Friday that the consequences of the earthquake reverberate beyond the bare statistics and the country’s borders.

In the aftermath of the earthquake, one of Baptiste’s Haitian-American patients has been unable to work, having fallen into depression as a result of the loss of her son in the devastation. Baptiste said the individual will now be unable to support her family in Haiti—a widespread phenomenon threatening the country’s economy, which is largely dependent on remittances from Haitians abroad.

But the panelists also took issue with the disaster’s media coverage, which they said has placed undue blame on Haitians for the magnitude of the tragedy.

Sylvain, who teaches Creole at Harvard, said a history of foreign intervention in Haiti and of pernicious economic policies has helped to undermine the Haitian economy, but he acknowledged that government corruption has also contributed to the nation’s impoverishment.

Calling Haiti “the founding nation of modernity that sought to create equality throughout the colonies,” Sylvain said that the media has long overlooked the rich history and culture of Haiti.

When Haiti becomes a byword for poverty, the country’s vibrant culture and history—encompassing rich literary and music traditions—become obscured in more negative coverage, according to David D. Hutchinson ’12, the president of the Harvard Haitian Alliance.

Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere and ranks towards the bottom of the United Nations’ human development indices.

Panelists, including Harvard Medical School epidemiologist P. Gregg Greenough, said that in the short-term, the international community needs to focus on humanitarian aid to feed and care for the Haitian people.

But in the long-term, the international community faces the challenge of changing what Diaz called “the narrative” concerning Haiti—a structural imbalance that has not only led to the neglect of a nation only a few hundred miles from Florida, but political indifference by the world’s powers until the earthquake struck the country.

—Staff writer Elias J. Groll can be reached at egroll@fas.harvard.edu.