haiti's unrest

Haiti's having an election.

Aristide's been claiming that he was abducted by the U.S. Marines. I've no idea what to make of that. I wouldn't put it past Bush to tell the troops to go in and get Ti Tid out of Port-au-Prince whether he wants to go or not, but the truth is that Haiti has about zero value to us politically, tradewise or in any other category that really matters to our presidents, Democratic or Republican.

If Bush did order the Marines to remove him, it probably was for chiefly two reasons. One, he didn't want the situation to become all-out civil war with people being massacred in the streets. That sort of intervention would appeal to him on a humanitarian level, and politically, since he probably would (deservedly) get beaten up by the Democrats and media commentators for allowing the situation to reach that point when he could have prevented it. Two, it just doesn't pay to have a situation as messy as Haiti was about to become right on doorstep, geopolitically speaking.

But in the long haul, the Bush administration probably is about as committed to Haiti as other U.S. administrations have been since Haiti won its independence in 1804. Haiti has no oil, nor gold, nor other natural resources that should make it matter to us. Its economy is dreadful, which makes it a lousy prospect for trade, and it's not being ruled by a communist dictator, so we've never had any substantial political interest in the island or human rights abuses there. (Carter was the exception. He was appalled by Duvalier's record, and refused to support his corrupt government with aid money that would just be stolen.)

Haiti has been the bastard stepchild of American politics since the beginning. There was an entire regiment of volunteer Haitians who fought for American independence from Britan, and some of those volunteers went on to fight for their own independence from France. When they won in 1804, we decided it would be a bad idea to recognize Haiti as an independent state because we had slaves of our own, and didn't want to give them any ideas. It wasn't until 1865, after the Civil War and after the Emancipation Proclamation that we recognized Haiti as an independent republic, and even so, we've never really done much for the country.

After Aristide was ousted by the first coup, in 1991, the previous Bush administration slapped the coutnry with a trade embargo that made a difficult life positively hell for the common Haitian. (You think the lack of success with trade sanctions on Iraq is something new? Economic sanctions never dissuade dictators from being tinpot bullies, and they never empower the people to rise up against their better equipped and wealthier rulers.)

Unfortunately, we've never really committed as a nation to helping the Haitian people. Boat people from Cuba are granted asylum automatically. Boat people from Haiti don't even get a hearing; they're repatriated automatically. Great solution. Bush had the military doing this even in the days right before we removed Ti Tid. If that's his brand of compassionate conservatism, I'm glad to be a bleeding heart liberal.

What's going on right now in Haiti is part of the cyclical Haitian way of life. When people have had enough of one government, they overthrow it. When they've decided that someone is keeping them down, they rise up and dechouke that person, whether he was keeping them down or not. I've heard it described this way: In America, if you have something I want, I try to go out and get one of my own. If I'm a criminal, I just steal yours. In Haiti, the more common solution is to destroy yours so that you don't have one either. So they regularly destroy their own infrastructure to keep everyone else from getting ahead. Hotels, homes, bakeries, you name it.

Democracy can't really take root there because democracy assumes certain values, mores, and education that just aren't there yet. Illiteracy estimates range from 60 percent to 80 percent; the nation officially is 10 percent Protestant and 90 percent Catholic, but if you add on "and 100 percent voodoo" you start to get a better sense of the spiritual yoke they're under.

The gospel is what that nation needs, but -- like everywhere else, I suppose -- there's a warped view of what the church is about. If you want to get rich, the answer is to become a minister. In many ways, because of the way missions is done from the United States, the Haitian church has fallen into a real serious enslavement to Mammon. I've talked to pastors who see nothing wrong with leaving their wives and children and going to the United States to serve God here. (And get lots of money, naturally.)

I don't have much faith in the current situation. Guy Philippe is connected with FRAPH, a group well-known in Haiti for political executions. A paramilitary group, it includes many former military memebers and, not surprisingly, a lot of former Tonton Macoutes. (The Tonton Macoutes took their name from the Haitian bogeyman, and were Duvalier's brute squad.) Not surprisingly, after saying all they wanted was for Aristide to leave, the insurgents now are refusing to disarm. How much do you want to bet Philippe is going to be a bid for power, either directly or covertly, as the new government takes shape?

Yet things go on. After the tense days and weeks before Aristide was removed -- and after the looting, killings and riots after he was removed -- things pretty much went back to normal, from what I'm told by friends who are still there. When you live at the subsistence level, you can't afford to stay inside for days on end. People go out and do their business, stay in at night, and life proceeds as it did before.

If you want, pray for Steve and Ruth Hershey. They're friends of mine who are down there right now, still teaching at Cradle of Life Christian School. They live in school housing with their two children. There's also Laura Busshey, who I never worked with personally but knew through STEM Ministries. She was attacked in her home by looters the day Aristide left. (Ruth, painfully, was on the phone with her at the time.) I don't how badly she was hurt, just that she was attacked. I suspect she might have been raped, but really don't know.

I also have other friends who are back in the States at the moment, named Phil and Lonnie Murphy. Phil was Stateside anyway to attend a missions conference, and Lonnie and their son David were coming to Florida to visit his sister Michelle at college. Their missions board convinced them to stay. Knowing Phil, the board probably had to work hard to do that. He and Lonnie have stayed in Haiti through at least four coups and one U.S. invasion. Both their children were born there, and they themselves probably will be there for another five to 10 years, si Bondie vlé.

Phil and Lonnie run an orphanage in the mountains north of Port-au-Prince. They used to live in downtown Port, but moved the orphanage about eight years ago so they could expand it to the next phase. In addition to raising about 20 Haitian children and teaching them valuable skills like budgeting, the value of hard work, and so on, the Murphys also are engaged in community building. They've been teaching not just the kids but their neighbors some useful agricultural techniques, from simple stuff like composting to more advanced stuff like permaculture. Their goal is to get the orphange to the point that the grown-up kids can take over for them and eventually run the place on their own.

Phil and Lonnie are really neat people. I can honestly say they had a bigger impact on me in Haiti than anyone else. They're the only American missionaries I know who are invited to participate in the lives of their Haitian neighbors, such as baptisms, weddings and funerals. You know, if anyone wants to support them, I offer the Murphys my unqualified endorsement and would be happy to share their support information.