An informative article here.
The Spanish killed the indigenous population, the Arawaks, in 1492. Most of the current Haitians are descended from African slaves who were forced to work for the French.
From Christopher Columbus’s log about Arawaks he encountered: “They would make fine servants. .. With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
Eighteen months ago I read this story online and this scene has haunted me:
We drive into Port-au-Prince on the busy main road behind the little “tap-tap”, the brightly painted pick-up truck that serves as public transport. They all have religious exclamations painted on them; this one promises that Jesus is the saviour. A couple of youths are mucking around on the back step, and then they jump off to fight in the road; that rutting grappling that young men casually commit in streets everywhere. We stop, and as if by sleight of hand, now they are fighting over a pistol, holding it high in the air, grabbing each other’s wrists. They struggle for the gun, and then one boy seems just to lose interest; he lets go and turns to amble away. There is a pop, pop, pop; guns make such a tinny, silly little noise. The one lad who was firing wildly, I think he’s missed, but the other boy, now the victim, stumbles and turns with his hands out, in an imploring but unsurprised, almost bored gesture, and I can see the huge exit wound spreading over his yellow T-shirt. He slumps onto the verge, down on his back. The boy with the gun rifles his pockets. Another lad jogs up; together, with an aggressive, cocky, adrenal strut, they walk into the middle of the road and just stand there, holding their guns, staring into our car.Louis is shouting: “See, see, see what it’s like here! See, see, how we have to live!” He’s livid with fear. The shot boy raises his head from the gutter. His murderer notices the sign of life and trots back: pop pop, pop pop — point-blank, he fires into the yellow shirt. He skips back to his mate, and they amble down the centre of the road.
“For God’s sake, let’s go!” I shout from the footwell. But Louis is immobile, knuckles white on the wheel. “We must go,” he repeats, but doesn’t move. I shake his shoulder. The car stutters and almost stalls. Back in the hotel, clutching a beer bottle, he re-creates the scene, dancing back and forth down the bar, playing the roles. The guns grow: there are two, three, maybe four, more guns in belts, more shots, more boys, more blood, more murder.
That night, I can’t sleep. I’m childlike scared in the dark. The killing’s the secret I can’t talk about for fear of tears. It plays over and over in the corners of the room, flickering under the door. Why didn’t the dead boy fight harder for his life? How could it all be so banal and awkward, and clumsy? Who’d choose to die in a yellow nylon hockey shirt? Why do I feel this fragile? It was such an amateurly improvised drama. Such brutal bad luck?”
