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February 16, 2007
How Others See Us
“I don’t want to see poverty. I’m on vacation. I don’t want to think that these people don’t have enough to eat.” This is a quote from American tourist Helen Murphy of St. Paul (Minnesota, I assume), on vacation in Labadie, Haiti from a NYT article on page 4 of today’s paper titled “Beyond Mountains of Woe, a Haitian Paradise Beckons.” The article is about the pleasures of Labadie on Haiti’s north coast and how tourists who go there are sheltered and protected from the poverty and violence that is the daily life of most Haitians.
Having edited the just published Global Perspectives on the United States: A Nation by Nation Survey, I wonder if Helen Murphy or any of the other thousands of tourists who frolic at Labadie ever think about how their presence effects Haitians and their opinion of the U.S. She knows that Haitians are poor. And they are; Haiti is the poorest nation in the Americas and receives more economic assistance per capita than any other nation in the world. Haiti is also violent and political repression or revolt has long been its fate. Haitians wonder why we invaded Iraq to depose a dictator and encourage democracy while we have often stood by or even supported cruel Haitian dictators and have limited Haitian emigration to our land.
American use of Haiti as a resort while ignoring poverty and violence contributes to what many people around the world criticize most about the U.S. and Americans – our seemingly endless consumption of other places and their physical and human resources accompanied by a lack of concern about how our consumption effects those places and people.
Posted by David Levinson at February 16, 2007 4:42 PM