Removing the spell from Haiti
By Ben Fountain |
January 20, 2013, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
WHAT if conventional wisdom has it exactly wrong? What if Haiti, instead of being mired in retrograde customs and superstitions the developed world cast off centuries ago, is in fact ahead of the curve? What if, as Amy Wilentz posits in her excellent "Farewell, Fred Voodoo," Haiti has always been the most modern of nations, at the forefront of every major historical trend since Columbus dropped anchor off the Hispaniolan coast?
Wilentz, the author of "The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier," makes a good case with her catalog of Haitian "firsts." The first genocide of indigenous people (the Arawaks); the first truly globalized economy (ships from Europe, slaves from Africa, and products - chiefly sugar - from Haiti back to Europe); the earliest Third World liberation movement, resulting in the first (and so far only) successful slave revolution, and the world's first black republic; the prototype for American invasion and "nation building," with the attendant insurgency and guerrilla warfare (1915-34); and now, in our own time, a window into what may well be the future for all of us, a "postapocalyptic dystopia" of environmental desolation, government dysfunction, broken cities, dwindling resources and raging epidemics.
Wilentz is good at these twists that turn received ideas inside out. Her relationship with Haiti dates to 1986 and the fall of the Duvalier regime, days she spent traversing Port-au-Prince and interviewing, by her own account, "anyone who had anything to say: ... this priest and that general, ... this guy I met in the street, and a market lady, and some man who said he was a tailor." In other words, she was interviewing "Fred Voodoo," the politically incorrect label by which an older generation of journalists referred to the Haitian man on the street.
Fred Voodoo is, of course, a stereotype, the generic Haitian "other" into which outsiders conveniently pour their agendas, misconceptions and prejudices by way of explaining a place that seems so maddeningly inexplicable. Watching the earthquake coverage from her home in Los Angeles, Wilentz saw all of the old Fred Voodoo tropes being breathlessly recycled by khaki-clad reporters standing atop the rubble.
Within two weeks of the quake, Wilentz was back in Haiti, trying, as she says, "to put Haiti back together again for myself, ... to stack the pieces flung apart by the earthquake back up into some semblance of the real country." This book is Wilentz's attempt to be done with Fred Voodoo - to see Haitians and Haiti for who and what they are.
Not just Haitians. "I had added white men to my list of things to think about in Haiti. I was continuing my study of us: What did we think we were doing here?" These outsiders - blans in Haitian Creole - are variously described by Wilentz as the crisis caravan, the innocent army, mobile sovereigns, disaster junkies, aid groupies or simply "stupid white people." Thanks to her long experience with Haiti, Wilentz describes herself as only "fairly stupid," and at all times she's very much part of the narrative, her own confusions, feelings and memories restlessly informing the larger story.
"There's always hope, whatever that means," Wilentz sarcastically comments as she deconstructs a coffee-table book of earthquake photos. Hope's not a given, not in a place as hard as Haiti. Hope is a grind. Hope is a work in progress. For hope to be real it has to be earned. That is just one of many valuable lessons in this intimate, honest, bracingly unsentimental book.
Wilentz, the author of "The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier," makes a good case with her catalog of Haitian "firsts." The first genocide of indigenous people (the Arawaks); the first truly globalized economy (ships from Europe, slaves from Africa, and products - chiefly sugar - from Haiti back to Europe); the earliest Third World liberation movement, resulting in the first (and so far only) successful slave revolution, and the world's first black republic; the prototype for American invasion and "nation building," with the attendant insurgency and guerrilla warfare (1915-34); and now, in our own time, a window into what may well be the future for all of us, a "postapocalyptic dystopia" of environmental desolation, government dysfunction, broken cities, dwindling resources and raging epidemics.
Wilentz is good at these twists that turn received ideas inside out. Her relationship with Haiti dates to 1986 and the fall of the Duvalier regime, days she spent traversing Port-au-Prince and interviewing, by her own account, "anyone who had anything to say: ... this priest and that general, ... this guy I met in the street, and a market lady, and some man who said he was a tailor." In other words, she was interviewing "Fred Voodoo," the politically incorrect label by which an older generation of journalists referred to the Haitian man on the street.
Fred Voodoo is, of course, a stereotype, the generic Haitian "other" into which outsiders conveniently pour their agendas, misconceptions and prejudices by way of explaining a place that seems so maddeningly inexplicable. Watching the earthquake coverage from her home in Los Angeles, Wilentz saw all of the old Fred Voodoo tropes being breathlessly recycled by khaki-clad reporters standing atop the rubble.
Within two weeks of the quake, Wilentz was back in Haiti, trying, as she says, "to put Haiti back together again for myself, ... to stack the pieces flung apart by the earthquake back up into some semblance of the real country." This book is Wilentz's attempt to be done with Fred Voodoo - to see Haitians and Haiti for who and what they are.
Not just Haitians. "I had added white men to my list of things to think about in Haiti. I was continuing my study of us: What did we think we were doing here?" These outsiders - blans in Haitian Creole - are variously described by Wilentz as the crisis caravan, the innocent army, mobile sovereigns, disaster junkies, aid groupies or simply "stupid white people." Thanks to her long experience with Haiti, Wilentz describes herself as only "fairly stupid," and at all times she's very much part of the narrative, her own confusions, feelings and memories restlessly informing the larger story.
"There's always hope, whatever that means," Wilentz sarcastically comments as she deconstructs a coffee-table book of earthquake photos. Hope's not a given, not in a place as hard as Haiti. Hope is a grind. Hope is a work in progress. For hope to be real it has to be earned. That is just one of many valuable lessons in this intimate, honest, bracingly unsentimental book.
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