While the world revels in a plethora of technological marvels and is potentially at the dawn of another paradigm shift with social media and touch screen technologies, Some Haitians still believe cholera epidemics has a direct relationship with the malfeasance of voodoo priests. Scores of medical personnel, scholars and researchers working in Haiti were caught off-guard by the lynching episode that choked the country near the end of 2010. As reported in the media, 45 people needlessly lost their lives to lynching, as if 2010’s death grip around the country’s neck did not accumulate enough deaths. Their alleged crime was spreading cholera through voodoo ritual; the rope decided the fate of many voodoo priests and their families throughout the country before government officials released statements rejecting the vile practice.
Many people have attributed this barbaric behavior to cognitive dissonance or psychological reactance; 2010 was indeed a chronically traumatic year for Haitians. Others however, aired on the side of logic: ignorance and fear would be the culprits. Still, many think tanks have cautioned; the problem could be more complex and would require more careful analysis. One emerging theory stipulated the latest lynching episode would stem from the first successful slave rebellion in the World. Contemporaries of Haiti’s Founding Fathers, they reasoned, tended to approach any political conflict with the traditional mantra “Koupe Tet, Boule Kay,” (beheadings and property incineration in Creole translation), that inspired rebellious slaves before the last great battle for Haiti’s independence.
Admittedly, several factors could have contributed to the lethal phenomenon. For instance, it could be a vehement rejection to failures of leadership and political saturation. As many theorists have argued, “abuse of power is a true essence of moral evil.” Furthermore, violence might result from the power of inspiring or vitriolic rhetoric of revered idealists with strong anti-governmental sentiments or worse; it could simply be a matter of ignorance and misinformation. Nevertheless, Haiti’s troubling history of violent eruptions might suggest some people would be caught in a state of stagnancy paralyzed by the unprecedented success of their forbearers’ liberation model against Napoleon’s great army in 1804.
Alas, 206 years have passed since founding ancestors Dessalines, Toussaint, Boukman, Capois and their numerous faithful minions planned the first successful slave rebellion worldwide giving birth to the first colored independent nation known to man. However, their contemporaries might still carry their revolutionary banner “koupe Tet, boule Kay,” their weapon of choice to any unbearable political climate. Recent lynching campaigns and post-elections chaos were only the latest in a lengthy cyclical series and often-fatal history of violence. How then would officials move a people from that primitive, regressive school of thought to a more evolved construct where people would adopt human rights and science as guiding principles?
Borrowing a page from history, we have learned from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his Gandhian philosophy that passive resistance was a more effective mean of persuasion as it pertained to government oppression. As many 19th century colonialists feared, Haiti’s success deterred their expansionist ideals and inspired abolitionist movements across the globe, including Dr. King’s heroics. Surely, if poorly equipped, poorly trained slaves could drive the French army out of Haiti to become independent, African-Americans too, could be free; however, Dr. King took the movement one step further by omitting the element of violence. As gratifying as violent uprising seemed at the time, a violent discourse would only incite more violence at the expense of the country and its oppressed minority. A contemporary of Mahatma Gandhi, he knew with a degree of certainty the model was powerful and efficient as it forced the British out of India in 1947. Therefore, inspired by the brave Negroes from the Caribbean and the Gandhian probability factor, Dr. King embarked on the road to freedom and martyrdom. His persistence on the passive rebellion model, even under the iron fists of vitriol and often-violent police brutality, was the determining factor compelling his oppressors to abandon their arbitrary discourse.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, chronic poverty has not been the gravest abysmal failure of Haitian governance deterring the country from a prosperous future. A government has failed its people when, even with the prevalence of cutting edge 21st century technologies, superstitions would persist as the available science; when more than 45 percent of a population could not even write its name on a piece of paper. Leadership has failed on all cylinders when fundamental hygiene and basic necessities could be considered a luxury and cholera, reported to be such an easily treatable disease, could claim 50 lives a day and still would not peaked three months since its first outbreak. When adopting young children, the future leaders of the country, by loads would be a more viable option than building infrastructure to secure a future for them in their own country, government has been dysfunctional and virtually nonexistent.
The most disastrous effect of oppression is not the abuse of power in itself, but the prevalence of ignorance inhibiting its victims and the blatant chilling effect imposed on knowledge. Change, as history taught us, is not an action, rather the evolutionary progression of conflicting ideas leading to particular actions. It is the bridge connecting ideology to pragmatism.
As new beginnings loom on Haiti’s horizon, a new generation of Toussaint, Dessalines, Petion, Capois and Christophe will inevitably rise from the debris. Similar to Dr. King, these future Haitian heroes should embrace the passive resistance construct, change the hard-line, destructive rhetoric and should teach their Brethren new methods of advocacy while replacing traditional, archaic ways of doing business. Armed with their patriotic imperative, these evolved nationalists could help Haiti divorce its perilous legacy and urge its citizenry to transition into a new era of prosperity, respect and innovations rooted into democratic principles. Matches, machetes, Guns, and human sacrifice would have no place in the free-flowing marketplace of ideas; Instead, tolerance, equitable justice, government accountability and the rule of law would dictate the national agenda.
