Haitian Peace

Haiti is once again in the news, for an achingly familiar reason: political upheaval.  Several media have said the hefty hike in gas prices pushed a long-ignored, long-suffering people to express their discontentment the only way available to them. For others, it was a matter of score settling among very wealthy individuals, based on significant financial interests. Some more radical voices saw the “international hand" behind last week-end’s damaging, criminal acts.

I know not which group is right, but have noted a common reaction from almost every corner of the Protestant community, both Haitian and foreign: prayer for peace.

But Haiti should not continue what it has done for the last 30 years--and certainly not in peace.

First, if we believe every human being is made by God in His image, as we must, it is wrong to watch millions live in trash and darkness, in hunger and smelly water, while 1-2% of the population (national politicians, their ‘posse,’ and very wealthy business owners) live in opulence. Also, as a practical matter, that large underclass, who makes-up the country’s majority, will simply not tolerate it much longer in this time of WhatsApp and Facebook, where information is readily accessible.

Two clarifications. I do not mind the "gap” between the wealthy and the bottom 50%, or 70%, or however many. The Washington Post reported, in December 2016, that the wealthiest 1% Americans were richer than the bottom 90% combined. Yet few people expect poor New-Yorkers to burn down Manhattan. And fewer still would either “understand” or tolerate such action. Second, I do not object to people lawfully making obscene amounts of money in Haiti. The more, the marrier! 

No, my concern is not the gap nor the ceiling. It is, rather, the existence at the floor, or more accurately the sub-floor level.

I often think about a friend, a good friend, who lives in Port-au-Prince. A single mother of two, she works downtown. She rents a home with no wall, no gate, so she must often pay shadowy young men to “watch” her car overnight. 

Last Friday, the citywide rampage forced her to leave that car at work and walk more than four hours, uphill, to get home. When I saw her two days later, she was still limping, in pain.

Some years ago, she was in one of the city’s overly dense open-air markets, when an expensive car literally ran over her left foot. The driver did not stop. Folks helped her onto a bus, and she went home. She was out of work for days. No insurance plan, no Medicaid support. She was left to deal with all the ramifications alone.

Another time, she was the victim of an armed robbery  while walking with her boys. The criminal told her, very calmly, “Ma’am, I will kill you and your children.” She spent months trying to re-obtain her ID card, driver's license, etc. One note of gratitude: she had left her passport home that day. 

A few weeks later, her family was at a park. One of her boys ran to her and said, “Mom, I just saw the man who stole your pocketbook.” She was terrified. She went home quickly, sat her boys down, and explained to them that never, ever, were they to look at that man or identify him if they saw him again.

She is not unusually unlucky. After all, her boys go a Catholic school; she has a paying job; she has a car; she has even traveled to the United States: she is clearly not among the least of these. But her life is hard. Just really, really hard. 

Why can she not afford safe housing? Why did she have to walk four hours last Friday? Why did she not jot down the license place and report the hit-and-run to the police? Why did she feel obligated to forbid her boys from ever talking about the man who threatened them? 

The answer is the same each time: because of powerful people and of the public structures they created and maintain.

To assess Haiti's reality, even cursorily, here’s the basic, existential question that must be answered, thoughtfully, morally: does that woman have a right to wake up one morning and say, “hell, no”?

The related questions loom: what good would that do, or won’t that make it worse? Good questions, but first things first: does she have the right, nay the duty, to say, one glorious day, “Alright then, it’s show time.”