Building a Sustainable Future on the Grounds of a Rediscovered Identity

Abstract

For several weeks in January 2010, the world witnessed one of the most extraordinary demonstrations of courage, dignity, and unity by a people ranked as the poorest and most politically unstable in the Western Hemisphere. The Haitian people showed the world how far it could go in its determination to survive against all odds—a resilience that seems embedded in the Haitian culture and way of thinking. So why hasn’t that resilience, that common front the Haitian people present in the face of adversity, played its part in helping Haiti grow as a nation? How could a people who, in the midst of disaster, changed the world’s perception of its own humanity, apparently be unable to take charge of its own destiny, to build on its accomplishments, and secure its collective well-being? Having learned to manage unlikely alliances in order to secure their own collective freedom, how could Haitians be so devoid of a national conscience, the very motor of nation-building? The answer to this riddle seems to lie in Haiti’s past, and in the way the selective acceptance or rejection of its history has, over the years, shaped the mentality of its people.