White Devils?
(movie poster for The Devils [source])
Haiti's earthquake, declared Pat Robertson, was a result of its people's pact with the Devil, back when Boukman Dutty at Bois Caiman, a Voudun priest or Houngan, led a slave rebellion in 1791 that grew into the successful 1804 revolution against the French slave-owners! What he was really denouncing was Voudun, what we call Voodoo.
Pat Robertson has come out with insane declamations before--like 9-11 caused by the prevalence of the "homosexual lifestyle." He thinks he's an Old Testament prophet, so, he should inveigh against all manner of "wickedness," including, apparently, rebellion against slavery! Slavery worse than our South. How racist! And he's still popular among right-wing "Christians."
His citation of the devil recalls the thinking prevalent in the early 5th century, when the Roman Church marshaled finger bones, clavicles, whatever, of supposed martyrs, in order to defend the Empire against barbarian hordes.
The Church didn't stop the barbarians: far from it. Later on, it supported the Franks, barbarians who had converted to Catholicism. The finger bones hadn't worked.
The fifth century was the beginning of the Dark Ages. It was the beginning of the dominance of the Medieval, magical thinking Pat Robertson exemplifies and others mimic. It has been marshaled in the religious right wing's fight against same-sex marriage. Its latest triumph was in New Jersey, using similar tactics to the earlier defeat in New York: money to spread fear and misinformation about the "gay lifestyle."
I hope it's not the wave of the future.
Actually, if there was a devil's curse on Haiti, it was imperialism, white devils. The French didn't take the loss of their most profitable colony lying down. Not only did Napoleon send unsuccessful expeditions to re-take it, but King Charles X, in 1825 mounted a large naval armada to re-conquer Haiti. President Boyer had to buy him off with reparations (for the profits from slavery the French had lost); the total was 150 million francs, a huge sum in those days.
Expeditions by British, Germans, French and Americans, and even occupations (the US from 1915-1934) also stole wealth from the Haitian part of the island, often directly from the government's vaults.
The poverty that resulted built the shoddy buildings that fell about people's ears in the earthquake. It has been building ever since the French were forced to leave their most prosperous colony in the 1790's. The poverty isn't because of a black devil's curse, or the fecklessness of the hard-working population; it's because imperialists saw Haiti as an easy prey. American corporations still do.
Think of Haiti as the victim of imperialism. Like many other places on earth, it will be a lot better off when all the empires fall.
