Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Haïti déforestée, paysages remodelés by Alex Bellande and; Production of Disaster and Recovery in Post-earthquake Haiti: Disaster Industrial Complex by Loretta Pyles and Juliana Svistova and; There Is No More Haiti: Between Life and Death in Port-au-Prince by Greg Beckett and; Humanity’s Last Stand by Mark Schuller (review)

2023; Volume: 29; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/jhs.2023.a922867

2333-7311

Vincent Joos,

Caribbean and African Literature and Culture

Reviewed by: Haïti déforestée, paysages remodelés by Alex Bellande and; Production of Disaster and Recovery in Post-earthquake Haiti: Disaster Industrial Complex by Loretta Pyles and Juliana Svistova and; There Is No More Haiti: Between Life and Death in Port-au-Prince by Greg Beckett and; Humanity's Last Stand by Mark Schuller Vincent Joos Haïti déforestée, paysages remodelés. By Alex Bellande. Montreal: CIDIHCA, 2015. ISBN 978-2894543290. 386 pp. CA$40 paper. Production of Disaster and Recovery in Post-earthquake Haiti: Disaster Industrial Complex. By Loretta Pyles and Juliana Svistova. London: Routledge, 2018. ISBN 9780367820954. 188 pp. UK£36.99 hardcover. There Is No More Haiti: Between Life and Death in Port-au-Prince. By Greg Beckett. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019. ISBN 9780520378995. 312 pp. US$29.95 paper and ebook. Humanity's Last Stand. By Mark Schuller. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2021. ISBN 9781978820876. 272 pp. US$24.95 paperback, EPUB, PDF; US$65 hardcover. Knowledge, Solidarity, and Action: New Paradigms in Disaster Studies Writing in the summer of 2021, considering what many note as the rapid deterioration of the situation in Haiti is, to put it mildly, disheartening. The rapid succession of "natural" and unnatural crises that seem unrelated is difficult to understand and has revived the same old narratives of malediction in Western news outlets. Yet, as the journalist Frantz Duval states in an interview published in Courrier international on August 20, 2021, "No one in Haiti believes that the country is cursed."1 The image of a "tout-désastre" country hides the key mechanisms that engender these crises: the legacies of colonialism and imperialism; nefarious foreign interventions in the political, economic, and humanitarian fields; and the international support to business and political elites who peze souse (suck and squeeze) the Haitian population. As Duval aptly puts it, "We can explain it all without drawing on the notion of a curse." On July 7, 2021, a commando of mercenaries assassinated Haitian president Jovenel Moïse. On August 14, an earthquake ravaged the southern peninsula, killed more than 2,000 people, and left many towns and villages in rubble. Three days later, Hurricane Grace battered southern Haiti and hampered the already slow and difficult relief efforts. In the meantime, heavily armed gangs continued to terrorize entire neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince and forced people living in Martissant, a dense neighborhood, to leave their homes and seek refuge elsewhere. On the other side of [End Page 212] the island, the Dominican government was continuing to strip Haitian Dominicans of citizenship and to deport people of Haitian descent to Haiti. Haitian immigrants have not fared much better in the United States, Brazil, Mexico, and other recent immigration strongholds. All of this was happening during a global pandemic. Crises have been multiplying and compounding in the Americas, and especially in Haiti. An earthquake, a flood, an assassination, a wave of violence, a biological catastrophe, a racist and man-made immigration crisis. The four books reviewed in this essay shed light on the institutional, infrastructural, and narrative structures that make the compounding of disasters possible in Haiti and beyond. Taken together, these books mark a turn in disaster studies: they counter apocalyptic narratives, focus on grounded resistance networks and organizations, and show that change is not only necessary but also possible. Mark Schuller, in Humanity's Last Stand, takes a global view of disasters and offers paths to change by precisely describing indigenous nodes of resistance. Written with rage, sadness, hope, and pragmatism, Schuller's powerful book is much more than a key contribution to the field of anthropology; it is a call to action that transforms social science into a force for social and environmental justice. After examining Schuller's global view of disasters, this review focuses on three books squarely focused on Haiti. These books reinforce Schuller's points and open discussions on political changes in Haiti. There Is No More Haiti: Between Life and Death in Port-au-Prince, Greg Beckett's poignant ethnography of urban Haiti, focuses on the structural elements that enable the repetition of crises and...