Blazingcatfur

The country’s history is bookended by superstition and sealed at both ends in violence.

When in 2018 Donald Trump allegedly referred to Haiti as one of the world’s “shithole countries” from which immigration is per se undesirable, the deranged slogan “Haiti Is Great Already” promptly went viral on social media, turning up with clockwork predictability on T-shirts worn by various contrarian celebrity goons. While it might be conceded from the outset that “shithole” is not and should not be encompassed within the vocabulary of international diplomacy — Metternich, for example, is not known to have used the term — we would at the same time be loath to concede that the general sentiment properly expressed, that Haiti is the most failed of all failed states, is entirely without merit. It is, in fact, possible to assert an axiom in global affairs: No good news comes out of Haiti. To contemplate even in outline the history of this unhappiest of lands is to feel the dead weight of 20 decades of catastrophe, as if the god of mischief had chosen Haiti as a 28,000-square-kilometer proving ground for a grotesque experiment in just how much suffering one country can endure in the space of 200 years. In the aboriginal Taíno language, Haiti’s name means “land of high mountains.” But Haitians call their country by another name, “Ayiti-Cheri,” or “Haiti, my darling,” intoned more in pity than in pride, the way one might console a luckless friend, a feverish child, a grieving beloved.

Haiti, my darling. There is no word for your sorrows.