This is the Justice, Not Charity! Haiti book diary. Allie123 and I are writing these book diaries because we became shocked by the truth of Haiti’s history and what really is needed to help the Haitians after the earthquake.
"It's as if Aristide was put in charge of a house that was falling apart and was expected to fix it. But then his enemies start setting fire to the back door, they send people with guns to attack the front door, and when these people finally manage to break in they said 'Look! He didn't wash the dishes in the sink! He never repaired the leak in the roof!' They made him spend all his time trying to put out the fire and to protect the door, and then once they got rid of him they said he was pushed out because he'd failed to repair the house." (Damming The Flood,
p 131.)
Chapters 2 and 3 are where we see Timothy Schwartz himself in the picture, first in a little seaside hamlet in Haiti, then in the nearest small town. Later in the book we learn a piece of background that is illuminating; some of his family heritage was unthinking racial prejudice. He had a Haitian friend in college, and one of his motives for going to Haiti was to work on the remaining mental constraints he felt from his background. He doesn't accomplish much in these first two chapters, but nevertheless some important groundwork is laid. He gets to know some people who continue to be important to him, he gets along badly at first, and pays some attention to understand why, and we learn that results matter to him. If something doesn't work, whether it is his initial approach to people, or the latrines in the hamlet, this attracts his attention and analysis.
Chapter Two: The Hamlet, Witch Doctors, and Sorcery
Schwartz came to the hamlet in 1995, working on his doctorate in cultural anthropology, with the intention of eventually working for CARE or some similar aid organization. In his words,
I thought that desire, that will to help, would give me a special status among the people living in the Hamlet, a status of respect and appreciation.
It didn't work that way. The children laughed at him and ridiculed him, the young men teased and goaded him. He hated the food, he was eaten alive by mosquitoes at night. He was considered an easy mark, and the stuff he gave away was eagerly accepted but never did much good. He wound up staying with Ram, a local bokor, since this kept the kids and teenage boys at a more tolerable distance, and the mosquitoes were less plentiful. Ram actually was the support of many of the poorer Hamlet people, since he maintained several households.
Schwartz's presence backfired for Ram, since the people he had been giving stuff to before were convinced that Ram stole him by magic. The hamlet folk stopped cooperating with Schwarz's research, and turned against Ram and his families. Schwarz sent aid to build a new house from Ram after he left, but could do nothing about the ostracism. When Ram died of AIDS, and his coffin was brought to his house, a number of people came and mocked instead of joining in the mourning.
The mosquitoes turned out to be the result of a failed aid project. The International Red Cross decided the hamlet needed latrines, instead of walking out into the brush to relieve themselves. They encouraged household heads to dig pits near their homes. Two or three feet down, they ran into fresh water. Rather than putting the water to good use, the Red Cross folks covered the pits with cement platforms with round toilet holes through the middle. Then they put up a sign about the new latrines, and left. The latrines became mosquito breeding ponds for several years, until the un-reinforced pits underneath finally caved in.
Chapter Three: The Village: Crime, Corruption, and Vigilantes
This village was the county seat for the same county, Jean Makout, where the hamlet by the sea was located. This was where the police, court, and government functions were located. Such as they were. Much of the chapter is taken up with three murder cases where the murderers were disposed of by vigilante action, since nobody trusted the police and the court to take proper care of the matter. Schwartz comments on the former system that used to be in place, and the inadequacy of the police and court system that replaced it. I'm going to do a couple of direct quotes, because his understanding and perception of what was going on locally contrasts with the higher-level view in "Damming the Flood".
Before that time [1994] it was a Chef Seksyon, a county sheriff, who meted out justice. The Chef was appointed from among the people who lived in the region. He knew the people and had deputies throughout the area and in the event of a crime, a land dispute, or some other type of conflict, would mediate or if necessary, make arrests.
So what had been put in place of the Chef Seksyon was a police force, small, some 2,500 to control 9 million people, composed of urban high school graduates who were concentrated in towns throughout the provinces and who did very, very little policing. They had few vehicles or motorcycles.... (elision mine) ...In general the people, especially people in the rural areas, saw them as outsiders who caused more problems than they solved and who were totally unreliable in the case of crime, indeed, inclined to save the criminal and persecute the victims.
Contrast this with a couple of quotes from "Damming the Flood", chapter 1, pages 17-18 in the edition I have.
In particular, this pro-army or anti-people position involved the preservation of the crucial repressive mechanism inherited from the US occupation of the country in 1915-34 and retained in all essentials by both Duvalier and Namphy: the power invested in Haiti's five hundred chefs de section.
After he was elected in 1990, nothing Aristide did was more subversive than his attempt to tackle this network of violent extortion and intimidation head on. In 1991, continues this same DOJ report,
"the Aristide government ordered the elimination of the section chief system, which was under military control, and its replacement by a rural police accountable to the Ministry of the Interior. Following the 1991 coup, this reform was quickly reversed"
-- only to be re-reversed when Aristide returned in late 1994.
It looks to me like what Schwartz was seeing was the same sort of nostalgia that some currently have for Baby Doc's rule, and the peace and quiet - of the grave. The rural police were ineffective, but Aristide's government was unable to fund them on the scale needed. At least I think this is what was going on.