“The National Penitentiary held 4,000 prisoners. We know that 60 to 80 percent of them are not convicted of anything. They’re in prolonged pretrial detention. The average pretrial detention is a year. So, between time of arrest and accusation to the time you see a judge, the average is a year. Sometimes that’s out to two, and sometimes that’s out to three. It’s a fairly common practice in Haiti. If someone who’s accused can’t be found, a family member will be picked up. So the lies that criminals have been released into the street is a lie. Sixty to 80 percent of these people are not convicted of anything.”

wait, so when anderson cooper implied that the correct thing for those people to do when the prison was destroyed in the earthquake was to sit tight and wait for the justice system to literally rebuild around them until such time they could be reimprisoned, that wasn’t accurate and overlooked key facts about the country while imposing a western view of right and wrong? NO WAY.

[...] Haiti is routinely described as the "poorest country in the western hemisphere". This poverty is the direct legacy of perhaps the most brutal system of colonial exploitation in world history, compounded by decades of systematic postcolonial oppression.

The noble "international community" which is currently scrambling to send its "humanitarian aid" to Haiti is largely responsible for the extent of the suffering it now aims to reduce. Ever since the US invaded and occupied the country in 1915, every serious political attempt to allow Haiti's people to move (in former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's phrase) "from absolute misery to a dignified poverty" has been violently and deliberately blocked by the US government and some of its allies.

So Haiti was isolated: no diplomatic recognition, official embargoes on trade. “You don’t really exist,” said the French. And the Americans. And the British. And the Spanish. The economy foundered. Then the Bourbons started making noises about re-conquering the island. Finally, in 1825, the Haitians signed a deal with France: recognize us diplomatically, call off the gunboats, and in return we will reimburse you for the loss of us as your slaves. The price? One hundred and fifty million francs.

Haiti spent the next 122 years paying off that indemnity. The final installment was in 1947. Nineteen forty-fucking-seven. The entire history of modern Haiti is about paying off that goddamn debt. They borrowed money from European and American bankers to make the installments, took out more loans to pay the interest, and the whole thing turned into a century-long bankrupting of the country. Imagine a giant straw jammed into the Haitian economy, with white bankers sucking hard on the other end for a hundred-plus years, and that’s the story of Haiti. The U.S. even occupied the country for awhile to make sure the goddamn money kept coming. Gotta make those debt payments. By the time Papa Doc Duvalier came to power in 1957, Haiti was a hollowed-out mess.

“Here is the difference Heather: if there were a comparable natural disaster on the Upper West Side people would be doing exactly the same thing but the press would be calling it “The Triumph Of The American Will to Survive.” The reporting on Haiti that focuses on the looting does so to make a point about the character of the Haitian people, not the desperation of their circumstances. And essays like yours try to have it both ways, display pity for the Haitian people, which proves you are a *good* person, while maintaining a tastefully curled lip at their behavior. It reads to me like you are struggling between pity and disgust so you are trying to use one feeling to justify the other. I think perhaps you know this, which is why you deleted it in the first place. Do I think the looting in Haiti should be reported on? Of course, it is part of this tragedy. But when (not if, When) emphasis on the (Ha!) “dark side of the story” (thanks for the unintentionally revealing phrase sagemerlin) is employed—as it was in Katrina—to dehumanize the victims of this disaster I am going to say so. The demand to control the narrative of other people is the very definition of white/western privilege.”

As the unprecedented humanitarian relief effort in Haiti struggles through logistical chaos, triaging shipments of food, medicine, and personnel, making sure help is distributed efficiently, one entity seems to consistently dominate the hierarchy of needs: the military. [...] At a press conference on Monday, [top military commander Ken Keen] admitted that there was no massive threat of violence. In fact, military officers’ fears may have been informed by alarming press accounts—demonstrating the media’s influence on not only public perceptions but policy calculations as well.