a1622: Charles Arthur: Haiti: A Guide to the People, Politcs and Culture -- comments by Bob Corbett

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

These comments may also be found at:

http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/bookreviews/arthur-haiti.htm

HAITI: A GUIDE TO THE PEOPLE, POLITICS AND CULTURE
By Charles Arthur
Brooklyn, NY: Interlink Books, 2002.
99 Pages
ISBN: 1-56656-359-3.

Comments by Bob Corbett
April 2002


Charles Arthur has provided a wonderful brief guide for the person not
familiar with Haiti. This is not a travel guide in the normal sense. There
is no information about hotel prices or restaurants and the like. Rather
this would be more for the very serious tourist who wants to know where he
or she is going, or more likely for the missionary, relief worker or
business person who is going to be in Haiti a while and wanted to be more
than a complete outsider.

The work is presented in a clear fashion, well-written and informative.
Arthur divides the book into six sections:

Land and People
History
Society
The Economy
Politics
Culture

Such a book has no choice but to simply things greatly and thus those who
already know Haiti will often be caught up short wanting to say, Well,
yes, but you see.. and then would come a much longer dissertation, most of
which Arthur would accept without question. But he has the task of giving
someone the overview of the six gigantic topics in 99 pages!!

What I find a delight to do in reading such a book is to see exactly where
I would do it differently IF I WERE LIMITED TO THE SAME NUMBER OF PAGES.
Thats the rub. Most of us who know Haiti, even if we arent scholars, could
pick up themes which Arthur treats and add intelligently to them, giving a
much less simply perspective. Obviously so could Charles Arthur. But,
whether we could do this in the exact same number of pages or words: Ah,
theres the fun question.

So I read the book with that in mind and must say, in Charles Arthurs 99
pages his Haiti gets very high marks for me. My few minimal complaints
would include the following:


History

A real challenge is to tell the history of Hispaniola/Haiti from
pre-Columbian period through 2001 in 13 pages with half dozen photos
thrown in. I simply love it. It would make a fantastic party game. Set the
stop watch: 5 minutes max. At the end the group votes on the best history
given and argues why.

If this game were played Charles Arthur would be a creditable contender.
One little tidbit sort of dates me in a way. He went through the Duvaliers
and on to Aristide and has some small section headings and I came to The
Coup. I was caught up short. The Coup? But he just finished the section on
the Duvaliers? I realized if were using the definite article the, I still
think of Feb. 7, 1986 as the coup in my Haiti experience. Perhaps because
I was in Haiti just a few days before and saw it building, perhaps because
THAT coup seem to be the necessary condition for all that has followed. Im
not sure. Its an utterly trivial point and tells us more about Bob Corbett
and Charles Arthur than about Haiti. But the experience in reading amused
me though neither of those two coups amused me!

In the Intervention section of the history, the last 1  pages of his
mini-jaunt into the subject, Arthur takes a rather clear and defended
political stance for Aristide, Lavalas and against neo-liberalism. He
makes no bones about his politics, presenting this section more as a
factual report that a controversial political analysis.

Society

This is a broad section which runs the gamut from education and
healthcare, to such other huge topics as the churches, ngos, the Diaspora,
human rights, deportations, drug transshipments and all. A dizzying array
for 11 pages with photos. I liked it all and would think Id not do as well
in my imaginary party game competition. I would have found a way, however,
to add more forcefully to his grave skepticism about education for the
masses, that the schools are not simply bad, but probably so bad that
their actual non-existence would be better than their current existence in
the form they take. But what would I cut out to squeeze such talk in?
Perhaps a bit less lashing out at foreign aid.

The Economy

I liked this section a great deal and would want to say most of what he
said. Id have reorganized the order of my presentation of the same
material somewhat to lay emphasis on one item. Arthur correctly cites the
huge unemployment figures, and rightly stresses that this is very
misleading since the informal economy exists and everyone is in some sense
working all the time, thus, effectively, NO unemployed. Arthur makes a
clear and accurate distinction between employment meaning something like
the 9-5 job with guaranteed pay. Yet, Id place that distinction about the
informal economy and the technical way in which employed is used so that
it was right at the point of the mention of unemployment figures in the
70% arena. It can be very misleading to neophytes to the Third World in
general or Haiti in particular to see this official looking hard number
and only later on come to the details of the nature of the informal
economy.

I know in my very early and nave days in Haiti back in the beginning of
the 1980s I had read those unemployment figures and was so puzzled when I
arrived in Haiti and everyone I saw, from small children to old folks who
should have been sitting in a rocker with their feet up, were working like
crazy from sun up to sun down. Only later did I learn this fine
distinction and come to know that most of that work didnt count as real
employment.

Politics

Once again Arthur jumps into the thick of the political situation and
describes the politics of Haiti with a significant degree of involvement
on his part. I would have used my time in a much more neutral manner, but
that may well be a weakness not a strength. I think it reflects more a
lack of conviction on my part about what to think about contemporary
Haitian politics than it is that Arthur and I see a different reality.

I was rather taken by the fact that the section of The Future is exactly 6
lines long. Mine would be about the same, but wed say different things.
Here he is noticeably restrained, just making a fairly obvious prediction
that it is likely to be volatile. I would get into big trouble. My six
lines would defend a political view of virtual hopelessness for Haiti, a
theme that would win me few votes in my party game situation! Every time
Ive defend this view on my e-mail list Ive gotten blasted from all sides.
Ive never revised the view, but have expressed it less often in the past
few years.!

Culture

Arthurs cultural section is one I greatly admire. He gives an admirable,
fair and accurate picture of Haitis dominant religion, Voodoo and then
adds material on the major arts, music, literature and the plastic arts.
In such a short section with only 11 pages to tackle those four topics and
soccer to boot, I wouldnt do much different, just a single word. My Voodoo
as opposed to his Vodou.

He says: The real battle for spiritual allegiance in Haiti has been, and
continues to be, waged by Christians against the practice of serving the
spirits, a religion better known as Vodou.

I would serious challenge that. Better know by whom? The mass of English
speakers, and especially the primary audience of this book will most
likely be seeing the spelling Vodou for the first time in their lives. If
they know of the religion at all they will know of it as Voodoo the
spelling of the religion of Haiti in all but specialist literature.

But, thats a point of great debate, of course. Nonetheless I think the
normal reader of this book will simply be confused by the spelling, or
think perhaps it is the French or Creole spelling rather than the English
one.

[Fascinating little point. While I was proof reading these comments and
ran a spell check on it, my Microsoft Word program singled out Vodou and
recommended that I meant to write Voodoo!!]

No matter with these tiny little quarrels along the way, and the very
minor reorderings, Charles Arthur has done an admirable job of presenting
Haiti to the unknowing foreigner in a very readable and good looking
photo-accompanied 99 pages.

I would recommend it for any groups who are bringing new folks to Haiti,
and for those of us who have friends who know of our love of and
fascination with Haiti, be we citizens of this land or foreigners involved
with Haiti, this book would be a nice starting point for giving these
folks something to read to help them understand what Haiti is to begin
with from which we could try to expand and enrich those starting points.
Of course the best way to do that is bring them to Haiti and show them
around. In either case Arthurs book is a very useful starting point.