13062: Simidor posts: The Haitian elite revisited

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: karioka9@cs.com

 There is a feeble-minded consensus emerging among Haitian list members
 that we shouldn't criticize the Haitian "elite" because there are good
 elite folks and bad elite folks just like in any other country, and just
 like there are good ordinary people and bad ordinary people everywhere.
 Besides, criticism is bad, it creates division, we should look at the
 positive, etc.   This is so much nonsense.

 The Haitian elite as a group is the most inhumane, wasteful and
 unproductive bunch of parasites you could wish on any country; it is the
 biggest obstacle to nation-building in Haiti.  It doesn't matter how
 nicely the elite behaves among themselves, or how well they treat their
 wives and children. The meanest slave trader, Nazi general or South
 African Boer could also be very pious, law-abiding, and very affable in
 their private lives.  Often, the worse mass murderers in history were
 also the finest officers and gentlemen of their times.

 There is a distinction within the Haitian elite between those who are
 blue-blooded (whose wealth and status go back several generations) and
 those who are nouveaux riches and interlopers.  And yet the only way the
 elite endures as a group (because they are so unproductive and wasteful)
 is by absorbing every emerging nouveau riche, whether it's a drug dealer,
 a mass murderer or an illiterate slob.  This marriage of convenience is a
 characteristic of the Haitian elite that reaches back in history; it is
 how the elite reproduces itself from one generation to the next.

 Hybrid in its composition, the elite shares nevertheless a common class
 outlook and ideology.  It is the class outlook and ideology of a
 SLAVE-OWNING ARISTOCRACY that the emerging black and mulatto elite
 inherited at independence, along with the plantations of the former
 French settlers.

 I will end here with a personal anecdote.  When I was growing up in what
 I can best describe as a vaguely middle class family, I used to feel
 shamed whenever I had to carry anything -- a bag, a loaf of bread.  What
 would people think?  That we did not have a maid or a garcon for this
 sort of thing?  Nowadays, I get around by foot or riding the tap-tap, and
 carry my own groceries.  The elite folks I encounter along the way look
 upon me with disdain (toiser) as if I was an insult to their way of life.
 The country is crumpling around them, but the Haitian elite remains
 unchanged.

Daniel Simidor