If the elite in Haiti own most ressources and let the population starve...?

Question

does the story end like that, or is there an alternative to make them contribute?

The elites in Haiti are rich as hell, go to the best schools in the world, basically live the Soap Opera life, while the rest of the population is eating mud. Some of them do contribute, but it is a small percentage.

So is it the end of the story? In other words, is it just life, and nothing can be done about it? Just wondering

The rest of the world don't eat mud

Answer 1

We must not simply associate and thereby confuse, the term Elite, simply with the attitude and behavior of certain individuals. What I wish to argue here is that the class of those whom we typically refer to as the elite of Haiti constitutes a structure of Haitian Society, and that it is the structure of the elite class in Haitian culture that matters much more than the actions of this or that member of the class.

Within Haitian society there is a significant group of people who do control a huge portion of the productive property of Haiti (land, factories, businesses, resources); and that control and their manner of managing those productive resources determine a great deal about daily
life in Haiti for everyone.

The elite have played this role for much longer than Haiti has existed, being a structure of society closely related to the slave owning planter class (French and free people of color in Saint Domingue) in colonial times.

After independence, this class, now exclusively a very limited circle of Haitians, continued and solidified the structure of the role of the elite class in Haitian society.

Inside that circle there have always been, even in colonial times, individual differences -- renegades who weren't happy or comfortable within that structure of society, or who simply weren't interested for various personal reasons and acted less within that power structure than others.

But the class as a whole has always existed, always dominated power in Haiti over all others, even the army and even in very strong competition with Haitian political rulers, including the most powerful dictators, Soulouque, and the Duvaliers.

The interests of that class, the lifestyles, the schools, the types of homes and structure of families, the penchant for the French language and French culture, the classes relationship to other Haitians not in that class -- including government employees, household employees, merchants, even the relationship with such others as teachers in schools or, especially in the 19th century, such people in professional positions as doctors and dentists and such, but not members of the elite.

The essential point I make is not to condemn anyone, but to argue that it is an identifiable class of people, with an identifiable life-form, and is also quite recognizable in Haitian society.

One knows the elite, even if identifying them one says of this or that person: “He's really a rebel in his family”, or “she's a decided disappointment to her parents”, or whatever else. Those less active at the heart of the structural role are still known (and know themselves) from within that structure.

Others may acquire some aspects of the elite life. In the Haiti of recent times, there are people from the middle class who have acquired more money, and fancier homes, and education for their children through the university and such. More often than not however, they have not often made that extremely difficult transition into the circle of the elite.

Money and holdings alone do not make that transition, and losing one's money and position, does not in any way automatically reduce someone out of the elite who has historic familial roots there.

There are other class groups in Haiti: the peasants, the urban poor, the civil servants, the members of the military, government officials, the professional class, the merchant class and so on.

Certainly here and there, members of one group or class overlap another (although virtually no peasants or urban poor are among the elite ever). But by and large each group knows itself as separate from one another and the normal everyday life in Haiti reflects this reality. We know who we are in any society, and we tend overwhelmingly to behave accordingly.

The elite of Haiti have always had enormous power in dictating the terms of everyday life in Haiti: how it will go; who will succeed and who will not; what will be done and tried; what not; who is put in, and who is taken out.

The other classes have phenomenally less power to make those changes and impacts on Haitian life.

In no way do I want to deny of denigrate the dramatic changes that have been creeping into Haitian life since the 1970’s as dreams of democracy have entered the lives of many ordinary people, especially those growing out of membership in community organizations of the Ti Legliz and Tet Ansanm groups of the mid 1980’s. A challenge has arisen to the absolute dominance of the role and power of the elite in Haitian society, and there is a great deal of turmoil connected with it.

Haiti might well be moving toward revolutionary changes away from rule by an aristocracy of the elite and toward greater participatory democracy, or even collapse, again, into brutal dictatorship. It's a critical and very uncertain time. Forces are aligned in odd ways. It is an unpredictable and quite dangerous and quite hopeful period. But the elite are still there; and in place, and functioning as a class.

Observers need to step back a bit from personalities, and limited functions and identifiers (money, a fancy house, ownership of some means of production, for example). One needs to view Haiti from some distance of history and the historical structures which have and continue to determine the nature of daily life in Haiti.

And if one does that; there they are: THE ELITE. A historical and historic class, a group, a way of life, a culture inside a culture, a fundamental structure of Haitian society.

Today it is very common to trash the elite, name call them as the morally repugnant elite, blame them for all Haiti's ills. I neither defend, nor blame the elite. I just argue they are a fundamental part of the structure of Haiti.

But they were not always utterly maligned. No lesser Haitian than the great leader and scholar-intellectual Jean Price-Mars, wrote a famous essay on the "vocation" of the elite. (He, himself was a member of the elite and he didn't kid himself that he was not.) This was during the U.S. Occupation (the one from 1915-34) and he argued that this class had an historic obligation to come to Haiti's rescue from this invasion, saving Haiti from the total cultural and governmental destruction at the hands of the U.S.

He chastised the elite, and urged them into a more positive role in their country's current woes. But, what is more important, I think, is that he knew and recognized that this group -- THE ELITE, not only existed, but was a clearly identifiable class with historic roots, and he even thought an historic mission.

The elite may well be in a different place in Haitian history now, perhaps on the very ropes of its existence, seemingly less dominant in the moral leadership of the country, but still a significant and dominant part of the structure of life in Haiti.

To pretend for a moment that the elite either don't exist, or that one escapes membership in the class by some trivial (or not so trivial) acts of defiance, or that one just makes some money and becomes elite – those are mistakes in understanding the history and nature of the elite

Answer 2

The gap between rich and poor in Haiti is extremely large, you are right. I don't know what can be done. When the rich are completely in charge then who's there to change things? Maybe over time as the poor get educated they will not accept things the way they are. But change is a slow process.

Answer 3

Why pick on Haiti? Does not the rest of the world do this also?

Answer 4

how did the elite in haiti get rich is the real question

Answer 5

unfortunately, that's the state of affairs in most nations on Earth.