Crying Uncle (Sujatha)

In the wake of the rather stymied attempts to get succour and aid to the millions affected in Haiti, we have the conservative columnists like David Brooks of the New York Times pontificating on the 'cultural' issues that underlie the extreme poverty and lack of infrastructure that plagued Haiti even well before the earthquake on Jan 12.

Brooks dismisses the years of horrendous history and Haiti's struggle for independence from the influence of the French and the U.S.:

Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth — with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other.

He blames Haiti's ills rather too simplistically on its culture and its affinity for Voodoo (oh, the horror of the undead zombies as portrayed so gruesomely in film and other media!):

As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book “The Central Liberal Truth,” Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.

We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.

Now, the Haitian Vodou religion is quite fascinating in its own right, informed by a syncretism of multiple African tribal practices and veneered over by Roman Catholicism to enable its practitioners to continue with their prayers even as they seemed to follow in large part the tenets of the Roman Catholic church. I suppose that Mr.Brooks has evidently fallen prey to the assumption that because of its portrayal in the popular media as dark witchdoctoring, it must necessarily mean that the 'poor backward country' couldn't progress despite the tonnes of aid that kept pouring into the country.

He forgets Uncle Sam's  propping up of the 'friendly neighborhood dictator' Papa Doc ( Francois Duvalier) and his equally infamous son and successor Baby Doc (Jean-Claude Duvalier).The reign of terror unleashed by Papa Doc and his minions popularly called the Tonton Macoute ('Uncle Gunnysack' for a bogeyman who grabbed kids who were out after dark and stowed them away forever in his sack).

And so in the aftermath of great tragedy, they are crying uncle, and the world, despite the reservations of those like Brooks, Limbaugh, Robertson et al, who think with their wallets, is responding to help them in this hour of their need.

Comments

[Ruchira]

Don't forget that very similar things, including the cult of voodoo, were brought up in the same quarters when Katrina hit New Orleans. Some people, in the eyes of a certain group of naysayers, are expected to always fail and suffer.

While religious superstitions can account for much societal backwardness, corruption of the ruling class is an even bigger cause. Haiti's stupendously corrupt leadership under the two brutal "Docs," Papa and Baby, was wholeheartedly supported by the US.

Anyway, the bellyaching by Robertson and Limbaugh and head shaking by Brooks notwithstanding, the world has responded to Haiti's misfortune in a swift and generous way. Let us now see if the wave of compassion and solidarity will translate into efficient and timely aid for the sick and the hungry.

[Sujatha]

I don't understand why some of the commentators wish to belittle every country and culture that doesn't conform to their world view. Do they really believe in their black-and-white worlds, incapable of seeing shades of grey? Or do they just choose not to, because seeing in shades of grey is too taxing on their brains, or not polarizing enough for them to push their agendas?

I've noticed even the TV media are pushing the meme of 'poor rioting hungry Haitians', repeatedly showing the same clippings of a few guys running with machetes in hand, or lugging cardboard boxes 'salvaged' from the rubble. Yes, people are hungry and desperate, but that doesn't mean that they are worthy of less help than 'meek bystanding sufferers'.
We have seen similar memes being pushed about the survivors of Hurricane Katrina: everything for a dramatic story, I guess.

[Lekhni]

He's right on one point, though - in saying macro aid doesn't work. Giving aid to the govt. doesn't help because it encourages politicians to enrich themselves. Micro aid has a better chance of working.

But what he misses is that loans always work better than aid. And in any case, money alone is never the issue, and finding out what the issues are (corruption, bureaucracy etc) helps. Preconceived prejudices do not :(

[Sujatha]

Lekhni:
Do loans always work better than aid? Even those can be sometimes constrained quite a bit. Admittedly, aid can be trammeled by so many conditions that it's like a country mortgaging its soul instead of just taking the money as a loan and using it as it deems fit. The problem is that even loans can be misused by unscrupulous governments.

[prasad]

I guess on such issues it matters to me not just what's said but who says it. An Indian who spent lots of time excoriating the British for Indian cultural and economic backwardness would quickly bore me. I'd rather have the Indian talk about caste and the status of women or make comparisons to South Korea. At the same time, I can't stand British Niall Ferguson types, who inspire in me the opposite reaction. Two questions worth pondering then:
- Is the US closer to being a third-party observer here, or is it France by another name for purposes of Haiti-analysis?
- Should one feel quite comfortable with treating argument X differently, even perhaps in opposite ways, depending just on who advances it?

[Lekhni]

I agree that loans to governments don't help much either. I'm more of an advocate of micro-financing.

Btw, here is another amusing "translation" of David Brooks' op-ed (via 3 quarksdaily).

[prasad]

On which last, I remember this story of Premchand I had to read in middle school, about a poor man who has a rapid and unexpected ascent up the social ladder. At the start of the story we find him in gloom, saying is duniya ko meri kya zaroorat? (What does the world need me for?) By the end, he happens upon a beggar and wonders instead is duniya ko inki kya zaroorat? (What does the world need such people for?)

I don't remember the story too well, but presumably this is intended as a story of moral corruption. I do remember insisting to the teacher nonetheless, more for the sake of being contrary than anything else, that the man displayed admirable intellectual consistency. Anyhoo.

[Sujatha]

Lekhni:
That was an amusing article indeed by Taibbi,(presumably he added the section about Brooks being Jewish as a sort of afterthought at the end, after having referred to him as Christian through the article- why not just reedit and note the correction, I wonder.) Here's another equally unflattering portrait of Brooks on Dickipedia:http://www.dickipedia.org/dick.php?title=David_Brooks. Maybe this was partly written by Taibbi too.

Prasad:
Maybe someone like Edwidge Danticat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwidge_Danticat) might be more acceptable when she presents the realities of Haiti after the horrors of the Duvalier years, as opposed to a commentator who spent 5 minutes with a Michael Jackson video and far too many Scooby Doo cartoons in judging an entire country. "They're poor because they deserve it, we're rich because we deserve it." seem to be the guiding principle in his assertions, quite reflective of the morphed mindset of the Premchand protagonist that you quote.

Meantime, Haiti, despite the devastation, has already lived up to one of its own proverbs: "Nou led, nou la" (We may be ugly, but we're alive.)

[narayan]

Sujatha - you're quite the dragon slayer : two of your Haiti related links have been yanked!

[Sujatha]

Let me try this again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwidge_Danticat
http://www.dickipedia.org/dick.php?title=David_Brooks

(the extra parentheses was definitely a killer, as well as the period)