Documenting hurt: UN, epistemic injustice, and the political ecology of the 2010 cholera epidemic in Haiti

ABSTRACT

In a reiteration of a long history of pathologization of Haiti and Haitians, the cholera epidemic was framed as endemic, an inevitable outcome of the 2010 earthquake, and a quasi-confirmation of Haiti’s premodern, exceptional predicament. Baseball in the Time of Cholera and Haiti in a Time of Cholera, widely viewed but not extensively analysed documentaries, challenge this linking of disaster and disease. They reveal forms of epistemic injustice and counter the politics behind such misappropriations of cause and effect in the UN-introduced cholera outbreak. Centring on the notion of hurt, this essay explores the ways in which the two films give value to personal testimony, stories of individual life and loss, offer a relational take on life with cholera, and, in so doing, contribute to the ‘narrative defeat’ of the UN (Payton 2017). In effect, the two films, as the article argues, formulate a political ecology of the epidemic: they compel a rethinking of the relationship between forms of experiential knowledge, such as personal testimony, and forms of slow violence that occur when an environment is rendered dangerous, or when an introduced disease becomes an endemic threat.

RÉSUMÉ

Encore un exemple de la pathologisation d’Haïti et des Haïtiens, l’épidémie de choléra de 2010 a été représentée comme endémique, inévitable après le tremblement de terre 2010, tout en étant une confirmation du malheur exceptionnel de ce pays «prémoderne ». Baseball in the Time of Cholera et Haiti in a Time of Cholera, deux films largement circulés mais pas considérés d’une façon analytique, remettent en cause le lien entre désastre et épidémie. Ils montrent des formes d’injustice épistémique et opposent les motifs politiqués derrière cette attribution erronée des causes et des effets de cette épidémie introduite par l’ONU. Cet article, centré sur la notion de douleur, explore comment ces deux films donnent valeur aux témoignages personnels, les témoignages de la vie et de la perte, donnent une perspective relationnelle sur la vie avec le choléra tout en contribuant à ‘la défaite narrative’ de l’ONU (Payton 2017). En effet, les deux œuvres cinématographiques, comme l’article le suggère, offrent une écologie politique du choléra: ils nous font repenser le rapport entre connaissances expérientielles, comme le témoignage, et la ‘slow violence’ qui devient visible quand un environnement est rendu dangereux ou quand une maladie importée devient endémique.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This field has drawn primarily on methods found in human geography and anthropology (Jackson and Neely 2015; Singer 2016).

2. Researchers in disaster studies have long argued against the ‘naturalness’ of ‘natural’ disasters (Carr 1932; Ball 1975; Glantz 1977; Schuller and Morales 2012; Kelman, Mercer, and Gaillard 2017). In a postcolonial context, see Carrigan (2015). Mika provides an introduction to work on ‘non-natural disasters’ in disaster studies (2019, 1–52).

3. As Jonathan Katz makes clear, negative images of Haiti had an adverse impact on the way in which post-disaster relief and the recovery effort were directed: ‘having sought above all to prevent riots, ensure stability, and prevent disease, the responders helped spark the first, undermine the second, and by all evidence caused the third’ (2013, 278).

4. ‘Once cholera entered Haiti’s waterways, it spread like wildfire, aggravated by poor access to healthcare, treated water and sanitation. Within the first thirty days, 2000 people had died. By July of 2011 cholera was infecting one person every minute. At least 9,600 Haitians have died and 800,000 have fallen sick. Some studies estimate the true death toll could be 3 to 4 times higher. It is the worst cholera epidemic of modern times’ (www.time2deliver.org/background.html).

5. IJDH’s report ‘Cholera 9 Years on: A “New Approach’’? The ongoing violation of victims’ rights in the UN’s response to cholera in Haiti’ (June 2020) provides a comprehensive outline of the decade-long efforts to hold the UN’s accountable. After denying (for six years) any responsibility for the outbreak, in the face of overwhelming evidence and advocacy efforts, the UN apologized to the Haitian people in 2016, and launched ‘a US$400 million plan (the ‘New Approach to Cholera in Haiti’) to address what it termed its ‘moral responsibility’ to the people of Haiti’ (IJDH (Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti) 2020, 5). Regardless of this apology and the ‘moral responsibility’ it claims, the UN’s ‘response to cholera in Haiti remains deeply inadequate and continues to violate the rights of victims (IJDH (Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti) 2020, 5).’

6. In contrast to other countries in the Caribbean that were also occupied by the US (e.g. Dominican Republic) or continue to be under US influence (e.g. Puerto Rico), Haiti has resisted the introduction of baseball as a game with recent attempts to introduce the game into the mainstream seen, by some, as a treason of the historical opposition to US hegemony. Writing in 2018, Isabelle Papillon makes such direct and impassioned comparison between baseball and the 1915–1935 Occupation: ‘Our ancestors fought the first U.S. occupation of Haiti and resisted the introduction of baseball. Now people who don’t defend Haiti’s values, but instead want to make money, have decided to implant baseball on the ground still soaked with the blood of Charlemagne Péralte, the martyred leader of Haitian resistance to that U.S. occupation’ (Papillon 2018). For an overview, of how the US uses baseball to maintain its influence and dominance, see: Kelly (2006). However, for many years, Haiti has been the ‘world’s largest producer of baseballs’ (Farmer 1988, 95) along with other products (e.g. stuffed toys) assembled offshore.

7. ‘David Darg has spent five years as director of international disaster relief for Operation Blessing International. He has worked in 30 different countries and is currently based in Haiti. Bryan Mooser is the Country Director for Artists for Peace and Justice and lives and works in Haiti’ (www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/archive/512cf32e1c7d76e0460018bc-baseball-in-the-time-of-c).

8. The documentary, which won an Emmy Award and a Peabody Award in 2014, entailed a team going from Haiti to UN Headquarters in New York to ask who should be held accountable for the cholera epidemic.

9. The concept has been theorized under different terms by Black feminist scholars (McKinnon 2016), and taken up in discussions of healthcare, illness narratives, and literature.

10. The presence of Protestant missions in Haiti goes back to the 1970s (Mika 2019, 150). For Frederick Conway, ‘missionary Protestantism in Haiti gives rise less to a ‘Protestant ethic’ of self-help than to the idea that the way to worldly success is identified with a direct dependence on the foreign [i.e. North American] missionary’ (1978, 193). These new congregations have often provided ‘career’ and self-advancement opportunities in areas where unemployment is high and local prospects for formal work can be highly limited. In the context of Haiti and the ever-increasing number of NGOs working there, it is impossible to dismiss these ‘added values’ that accompany Gospel preaching, and shape religious affiliation among local populations, especially in times of crisis. Karen Richman’s analysis of ‘strategic positioning’ discusses how such interlocking dynamics of conversion, religion, and power manifested in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake wherein one’s denominational affiliation was often determined by the strategic resources that a given congregation offered (2012, 152–53).

11. In Haitian Kreyòl, lòt bò dlo evokes not only the geographical displacement of Nadine’s family from the precarious location to ‘the longed-for destination of promise and refuge, but also, more perilously, death’ (Braziel 2010, 67). Moreover, the phrase alludes to generations of Haitians reduced to the news tag of ‘boat people’ when escaping political persecution, violence and economic marginalisation.

12. A second meaning of ‘crossing the waters’ refers to sinking beneath the water at the end of life—‘anba dlo, that one is now fallen into a watery grave where ancestral spirits earlier went to rest during the Middle Passage’ (Braziel 2010, 67).

13. The Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti, created in 2004 after the ousting of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, held a mandate for 13 years to facilitate peaceful political process and the rule of law. However, what followed for MINUSTAH was decades of controversial involvement as a de facto military and police force, as well as scandals that included the cholera epidemic in 2010, and transactional sex between UN peacekeepers and the population.

14. One such example includes Nigel Fisher’s (then the acting UN Humanitarian Coordinator and deputy head of the UN mission in Haiti) assertion that ‘no link had been found between the camp and the outbreak [… and that] the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) had analysed the strain of cholera but had been unable to place a definite source on the outbreak’ (UN News 2010). The CDC’s own information webpage on the epidemic (last reviewed: 7 November 2014) implies, erroneously, that there were earlier cases of cholera in Haiti, linking the 2010 outbreak to a presumed historical presence of cholera in Haiti and the January earthquake as the main causes of the epidemic. The page states: ‘On 20 October 2010, an outbreak of cholera was confirmed in Haiti for the first time in more than a century, ten months after the catastrophic earthquake that killed over 200,000 people and displaced over 1 million’ (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2014). Such claims, captured in the UN’s and the CDC’s communication, exemplify the hegemonic interpretative frames of many of the media’s and the scientific community’s response to the epidemic. Such evasions and misappropriations are in direct contrast to the clear calls of the Haitian community, from the onset of the epidemic, to investigate the link between the UN’s peacekeeping base and the disease. See (Herz 2010; Katz 2010).

15. IJDH is a partnership of Haitian and US human rights advocates, was founded following the 2004 coup d’état in Haiti, and is based in Boston, Massachusetts. In affiliation with Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, IJDH represents victims of the 2010 Cholera Epidemic.

16. Referred to as Mario in the text, in order to avoid confusion.