Friday, January 22, 2010
Haitian tragedy horrifies New Yorkers
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The terrifying stories about the earthquake destruction and human tragedy in Haiti that have dominated the news since Tuesday January 12th open many questions, even for us New Yorkers, who feel secure behind the solid structure of our geological bastions. Can the same degree of destruction happen in San Francisco, which also sits on a geological fault line? And what about the likelihood of a tsunami, after all Port-au-Prince is only 600+ nautical miles from Miami? Why is US so slow in responding, with Haiti only two hours away by plane, is this another New Orleans, a FEMA/Homeland Security mix-up?
Should Haiti be still so disorganized, with the UN having a security force of 9,000 men and management teams in place for years? Port-au-Prince has two fire houses, scant sewage, and we see pictures of the country’s President Rene Preval wandering about at the airport in shirtsleeves, with no shelter for the night, as fearful of aftershocks as the man in the street; of a dump truck dropping loads of unidentified and unrecorded body parts and whole bodies in the landfill, by the thousands; of a hospital full of injured people left unattended overnight (except for the single-handed all-night nursing marathon by the CNN reporter/physician).
The history of events that led up to the present horrors in what prides itself of being the world's first republic in continued existence, since 1804, is not good. Once deemed the richest productive country in Western Hemisphere, with sugar, tobacco, coffee and indigo fortunes made by French colonists with slave labor, it has become the poorest, with 30% of GDP coming from US, Canadian and EU aid. Settled by Spanish arrivals soon after its 1492 discovery by Columbus, the native Tainos were soon annihilated and replaced by slaves from Africa. A French buccaneer settlement in Tortuga attracted French immigrants. The peace treaty of Ryswick in 1697, ending the Nine Years’ War, gave the western third of the island to France, more colonists came and prosperity thrived, until the French Revolution aroused the slaves under Toussaint L'Ouverture into revolting. They succeeded in 1804, beat back Napoleon and got rid of the colonialists (many escaped to New Orleans, increasing the city's French character), and the country led a somewhat democratic existence, interrupted by many dictatorships, until US occupied the country in 1915-34. Dr. Francois Duvalier (“Papa Doc”) was elected President in 1957, and upon his death in 1971 son Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") followed, until a revolution in 1986 sent him to a luxurious exile in France (the Duvaliers had looted some $500M from the treasury.) Under a new constitution, ex-priest Bertrand Aristide was elected President , but a military revolution followed in 1991, a surge of Haitian refugees stressed the US, and many were sent back. UN intervention returned Aristide in 1995-96, and he transferred power to his elected successor Rene Preval in1996, returning 2000-04, until another coup sent him to exile in South Africa. Preval returned to rule, with the help of 9,000 UN peacekeepers, mostly from Brazil.. Besides the political unrest (Tonton Macoutes, a criminal enforcers’ group, terrorized the governments), hurricane Georges in 1998 and tropical storm Jeanne in 2004 destroyed the country, with more storms in 2008. Despite the political climate and nature’s ravages, the population of Haiti has grown from three million in 1950 to almost ten million now, nearly half of it under age 20. Overpopulation has led to deforestation, with subsequent mud slides killing people. Inadequate agriculture brings on hunger, and mud pies have become part of diet in Port-au-Prince’s Cite de Soleil, where merchants bring truckloads of yellow clay soil from the mountains for sale to market women who mix it with salt and vegetable shortening, and bake dirt cookies on the hot roofs. Ugh!
The country cannot support its people load , at 900 persons per square mile, and millions of Haitian émigrés are dispersed throughout the world, with some 600,000 (officially, 230,000 legal permanent residents) in the US, alone . Under the current earthquake conditions, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has extended the stay for 100-200,000 illegal Haitians for 18 months.
If we do not see so many Haitians in NYC work force, it is because they are concentrated down south, with 275,000 in Florida alone. New York’ s visible immigrant worker component is Mexican, who constitute 27% of the 12.8 million legal permanent immigrant residents of the US, Haitians don’t even make it to the top tem immigrant supplying nations. They are, in order, Mexico, the Philippines, India, China, Dominican Republic, then Cuba, El Salvador, Canada, Vietnam, UK.
Haiti’s neighboring Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic, another source of immigrants, concentrated in NYC’s Upper West Side, also had intermittent native republics since early 1800s, interrupted with long occupation periods by Spain. That was until US Marines took over , 1916 to 1924, installing a constitutionally elected government and withdrawing. A brutal dictator, Leonidas Trujillo Molina, ruled 1930-1961, and US Marines and UN peacekeeping forces were needed to keep the country running after his assassination.
The terrifying stories about the earthquake destruction and human tragedy in Haiti that have dominated the news since Tuesday January 12th open many questions, even for us New Yorkers, who feel secure behind the solid structure of our geological bastions. Can the same degree of destruction happen in San Francisco, which also sits on a geological fault line? And what about the likelihood of a tsunami, after all Port-au-Prince is only 600+ nautical miles from Miami? Why is US so slow in responding, with Haiti only two hours away by plane, is this another New Orleans, a FEMA/Homeland Security mix-up?
Should Haiti be still so disorganized, with the UN having a security force of 9,000 men and management teams in place for years? Port-au-Prince has two fire houses, scant sewage, and we see pictures of the country’s President Rene Preval wandering about at the airport in shirtsleeves, with no shelter for the night, as fearful of aftershocks as the man in the street; of a dump truck dropping loads of unidentified and unrecorded body parts and whole bodies in the landfill, by the thousands; of a hospital full of injured people left unattended overnight (except for the single-handed all-night nursing marathon by the CNN reporter/physician).
The history of events that led up to the present horrors in what prides itself of being the world's first republic in continued existence, since 1804, is not good. Once deemed the richest productive country in Western Hemisphere, with sugar, tobacco, coffee and indigo fortunes made by French colonists with slave labor, it has become the poorest, with 30% of GDP coming from US, Canadian and EU aid. Settled by Spanish arrivals soon after its 1492 discovery by Columbus, the native Tainos were soon annihilated and replaced by slaves from Africa. A French buccaneer settlement in Tortuga attracted French immigrants. The peace treaty of Ryswick in 1697, ending the Nine Years’ War, gave the western third of the island to France, more colonists came and prosperity thrived, until the French Revolution aroused the slaves under Toussaint L'Ouverture into revolting. They succeeded in 1804, beat back Napoleon and got rid of the colonialists (many escaped to New Orleans, increasing the city's French character), and the country led a somewhat democratic existence, interrupted by many dictatorships, until US occupied the country in 1915-34. Dr. Francois Duvalier (“Papa Doc”) was elected President in 1957, and upon his death in 1971 son Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") followed, until a revolution in 1986 sent him to a luxurious exile in France (the Duvaliers had looted some $500M from the treasury.) Under a new constitution, ex-priest Bertrand Aristide was elected President , but a military revolution followed in 1991, a surge of Haitian refugees stressed the US, and many were sent back. UN intervention returned Aristide in 1995-96, and he transferred power to his elected successor Rene Preval in1996, returning 2000-04, until another coup sent him to exile in South Africa. Preval returned to rule, with the help of 9,000 UN peacekeepers, mostly from Brazil.. Besides the political unrest (Tonton Macoutes, a criminal enforcers’ group, terrorized the governments), hurricane Georges in 1998 and tropical storm Jeanne in 2004 destroyed the country, with more storms in 2008. Despite the political climate and nature’s ravages, the population of Haiti has grown from three million in 1950 to almost ten million now, nearly half of it under age 20. Overpopulation has led to deforestation, with subsequent mud slides killing people. Inadequate agriculture brings on hunger, and mud pies have become part of diet in Port-au-Prince’s Cite de Soleil, where merchants bring truckloads of yellow clay soil from the mountains for sale to market women who mix it with salt and vegetable shortening, and bake dirt cookies on the hot roofs. Ugh!
The country cannot support its people load , at 900 persons per square mile, and millions of Haitian émigrés are dispersed throughout the world, with some 600,000 (officially, 230,000 legal permanent residents) in the US, alone . Under the current earthquake conditions, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has extended the stay for 100-200,000 illegal Haitians for 18 months.
If we do not see so many Haitians in NYC work force, it is because they are concentrated down south, with 275,000 in Florida alone. New York’ s visible immigrant worker component is Mexican, who constitute 27% of the 12.8 million legal permanent immigrant residents of the US, Haitians don’t even make it to the top tem immigrant supplying nations. They are, in order, Mexico, the Philippines, India, China, Dominican Republic, then Cuba, El Salvador, Canada, Vietnam, UK.
Haiti’s neighboring Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic, another source of immigrants, concentrated in NYC’s Upper West Side, also had intermittent native republics since early 1800s, interrupted with long occupation periods by Spain. That was until US Marines took over , 1916 to 1924, installing a constitutionally elected government and withdrawing. A brutal dictator, Leonidas Trujillo Molina, ruled 1930-1961, and US Marines and UN peacekeeping forces were needed to keep the country running after his assassination.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 2:58 AM 
