Haiti Alternative
A JOURNAL OF HAITIAN POLITICS
Welcome to Haiti Alternative 's homepage. This page offers everyone an opportunity to address critical isssues to Haitians. Its aim is to contribute to the monumental task of providing ideas to help with the develpment of Haiti.
The Question of National Identity in Haiti
The time has come for Haitians to take charge of their country to improve the situation in Haiti. As we know, the history of Haiti is proud and sad. The concept of national identity is absent from most Haitians. While most people put their country first, native Haitians have been active players in preventing Haiti from passing from an agricultural backward society to a modernized and industrialized country.
The National identity problem is related not only to culture but also to weak political institutions and lack of economic development. Political decentralization, current researh shows, can further the goals and aspirations of the Haitian people. Because political instability and economic poverty are the two main issues that have put Haiti in the spotlight in recent years, many would suggest that such goals as political stability and sustained economic growth should be the first two items in any reform package. To some extent, we agree, yet it is more practical to suggest that the goal of achieving a national identity should be given priority not because it can be achieved in a short period of time, but because a sense of national unity is a stimilus that can give Haitians a stronger motivation to successfully initiate political reforms that will contribute to greater political and economic development.
Haitians need to reassert and re-invent their national identity because Haiti cannot compete with other nations, nor can it integrate itself into the global economic without a patriotic sense among its people. A sense of national identity must be achieved first before a policy of decentralization, for example, can be successfully implemented.
It is time for Haitians to re-evaluate themselves, recognize the reality and undertand the way the surouunding world sees them. It is not a compliment when people refer to and describe Haiti as a "dysfunctional society," an "impoverished nation," or 'the poorest country in the Hemisphere". Haitinans need to come together to fight poverty. They need to unite themselves, trust one another to overcome the political chaos and economic stagnation and other obstacles that the country is facing. Haitians must reclaim the good name of Haiti, which will reassert itself as not just the proud world's first Black free nation but the generous neighbor that helped other countries such as the U.S., Venezuela, and Columbia, among others, fight unjust colonial policies.
Centralization of political power in Haiti was the work of Imperialist America. But as contends Professor Michel-Roth Trouillot, "The Haitian problem is not merely political. It is in the class structure of the country, in the military organization of a society at war with itself, in a fiscal system that discourages production and investment and finally, in socio-cultural elitism."
Trouillot is right, but there is hope. Haitians have a weapon, which is a latent shared of identity in being heirs to a legacy of revolution. The solution to the problem of centralization is at Haitians' fingertip. They need to reinvent and re-assert their national identity that would probably borrow from this shared event that carries considerable weight as even today.
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