All Eyes on Haiti

After the events that shook the Philippines on the later part of 2009, which left the rich and poor residents moist and the country in state of calamity, we set our eyes on the carribean and see the little country called Haiti. Another third world country in state of shock after the January 12 earthquake.

According to Wikipedia, Haiti means Land of HIgh Mountains, is a Carribean country and the only Francophone independent nation in the Americas. Aside from Canada, Haiti designate French as their official language. Also, Haiti is the first independent nation in Latin America, the first post-colonial independent black-led nation in the world and the only nation that gained independence succesfully becauseof the slave rebellion. Besides of being the poorest country in the Americas, it is also the least developed.

Why the world focused on Haiti after the devastating earthquake? If you watch any news programs from several news organizations in the world, especially in North America, most of them have this so called “Telethon for Haiti”. Everybody is trying to help the people of Haiti after most of them or millions of them were left homeless because of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake one of the deadliest in 200 years. Not only it collapses the country this disaster led them to economic wreckage. Their sign of hope, the presidential palace, was also severely damaged and rebuilding the country will be impossible without the help of foreign nations.

Why did I wrote something about Haiti? Not because it is the latest nation to be popularized by a disaster, not because it has the highest hits on search engines, but because Haiti, like the Philippines are trying to survive and move on after a calamity. These two nations also share similarities in history books.

I only got interested in Haiti after I learned about the earthquake. It was mentioned in the TV series “Heroes” and “The Big Bang Theory”, but I never bothered to read something about this country. I learned that most news organizations like CNN are having telethons to help the victims of the quake. I asked myself, “How come they didn’t have this programming when the Philippines was hit by a series of typhoons last year?”. At first I thought it is unfair, but I deliberately told myself to search for a better reason why Haiti is a nation we should be supporting in their dark times and that is the reason I researched about this country and learned that Haiti is indeed a country to be provided with great help. Everyday indeed is a learning experience.

The similarities of these two third world nations? Okay, I will only deal with one historical data. Corruption. President Ferdinand Marcos, his wife Imelda, and their cronies were accused of stealing money from the Filipinos between 1965 and 1986, so was Haiti’s President Baby Doc Duvalier, his wife Michelle, and three other people are believed to have taken $504 million from the Haitian public treasury between 1971 and 1986. Another similar events is that The Philippines was recently hit by a series of typhoon in the later part of 2009 while Haiti was struck by earthquake in the early part of 2010.

Haiti has nominal Gross Domestic Product of 7.018 billion USD in 2009 while the Philippines has 166.9 billion USD in 2008 making the Philippines the 47th largest in the world.