Post Earthquake Jacmel (Haiti) Report and EMMA

uprisings, crisis in world food prices, droughts, hurricanes, and now earthquakes. At present, a
common sight along Southeast roadsides are stacks of charcoal waiting to be picked up and
transported to the urban market and if the researcher voyages into the rural areas she or he cannot
help but note that resonating through the valleys and hillsides is the ubiquitous sound of machete
hacking against wood. xii
It warrants emphasizing that crises are not new to the Southeast. Since Haiti became a
recognized French colony in 1697; through the subsequent 100 years when it became the most
productive colony on the planet--annually producing greater monetary value in cash crops of
sugar, coffee, and indigo than Britain‘s 13 North American colonies with their respective
products; and up through the past 200 years of Haitian independence; the region has been
recurrently beset with crisis. Slavery itself was arguably one long crisis during which the slaves
were forced to carry the bulk of the colony‘s nutritional burden, not by work under the slave
regime, but during their little free time when they planted foodstuffs on ―subsistence‖ plots,
giving birth to the proto-peasant economy (complete with markets and use of currency). The 13
years of warfare that ended slavery was a conflagration during which more people died per
capita than during any war in human history and once again, was fought with the nutritional
supplement from the same garden and livestock strategies that prevail today. Beginning around
1820 independent Haiti found itself falling under its first trade embargo, consequence of an
agreement between England and France and the French demand for compensation for property
lost by virtue of the revolution, including the cost of slaves; and from 1843 until 1889 the
country, particularly the Southeast where reigned the piquet (rural military insurgents), was
rocked by no fewer than 18 uprisings and civil wars; for the entire 1890s and into the 1900s the
whole country was wracked with warfare; the US invaded in 1914 and another five years of
intensive guerrilla warfare ensued (Saint-Louis, 1988; Heinl and Heinl, 1979). In recent times
political crisis have intermittently cut off trade with the global economy forcing most Haitians to
depend on semi-subsistence production of the peasants and the internal marketing system. Cases
in point are the many uprisings between 1986 and 1990 and the 1991 coup when the country was
virtually shut down under martial law, Port-au-Prince completely blocked off for over a week
while the military gunned down some 3,000 impoverished slum dwellers, and then the economy
shuttered up for three full years under an international trade embargo maintained by US
warships; not to be left out was 2001-2004 aid embargo. Throughout all of this and until the
present, hurricanes periodically ravaged crops and induced widespread die-offs of livestock.
Since 1851, the Jacmel area has been hit with 18 hurricanes and 25 tropical storms--one severe
storm every 3.7 years-- most notably Hurricane Hazel in 1954, known locally as douz oktob (the
Twelfth of October) which devastated the entire country and is the one disaster comparable with
and perhaps even more severe in terms of economic impact than the recent earthquake
(Caribbean Hurricane Network 2010). xiii Droughts tend to be worse than hurricanes, often are
severe enough to get named, and earthquakes although not generally recalled as precipitating
economic crisis, have occasionally hit the region as well. xiv Throughout all of this what carried
the survivors was the same semi-subsistence strategies described earlier and the same internal
marketing system discussed below.
In summary, the people of the Southeast depend heavily on economic activities and
external sources of cash that have been severely curtailed by economic fallout from the recent
earthquake and, as or more severe, the regional drought. A certain percentage of families are
suffering acute nutritional stress (a good estimate is 5%), the most severe victims can be seen
with ribbons tied around their stomachs to suppress the hunger pains. But most people in the
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