In today’s post, Cilas Kemedjio discusses Fatal Assistance, a documentary by Raoul Peck on the humanitarian relief operations after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti to alarm people who want to help Haiti after the recent earthquake to avoid the previous mistakes.
Here is the film with English subtitles: https://vimeo.com/239649104
Voilà la version Française avec sous titres: https://vimeo.com/244053586
By Cilas Kemedjio, CIHA Blog Co-Editor, Professor of French and Francophone Studies, University of Rochester
After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, an unprecedented humanitarian response would be mounted under the leadership of former United States President William J. Clinton. Members of the Board managing the distribution of resources were appointed by top donor countries. The Haitian government and civil society, who made up half of the Board, were effectively marginalized in the decision-making process. It is quite telling, for our understanding, of the ambivalence that may surround humanitarian interventions that Haitian Raoul Peck’s film about the relief operation is titled Fatal Assistance. After the natural disaster, the humanitarian operation that followed was another catastrophe. The forces of salvation, if we follow Peck’s interpretation, turned out to be just another calamity in the sad history of the Caribbean nation.
The controversial idea of a massive emergency relief operation destined to redeem lives after a devastating natural disaster turning into a “fatal assistance” recasts the semantic evolution of what humanitarianism is or ought to be in an entirely new light. Former Haitian President Préval acknowledges that the weakness of the Haitian State limits him to the expression of gratitude. He laments the imbalance of power in a meeting with Haitian populations, implicitly realizing that “humanitarian organizations are part of a broader set of globalizing forces that are involved in controlling and remaking the world” (Barnett/Weiss 42). He says:
I told Foreigners to stop. It’s better to give money so they can buy things. The markets are full of provisions. A bottle of water for example, put it on a plane and fly it to Haiti, it costs 50 times more than a bottle made here. The people producing water here are already struggling to sell their own. However, I wasn’t in a position to control them. They brought water and I thanked them. They brought drugs and I thanked them. They brought food and I thanked them. If I had a strong State, they wouldn’t have been able to do that. But this State is weak.
Préval’s Thanksgiving gesture codifies the deployment of power staged by the giver. At the risk of appearing ungrateful and injuring the pride of the giver, he must perform the role assigned to the subaltern. Préval wasn’t in a position to control them because they have worked since 1804, the year of Haitian independence, to ensure that the Haitian State remains weak (Kemedjio 2004, 2005). Préval’s reluctant gratitude constitutes an indictment of historical processes—heretofore forces of destruction—that have impoverished the Caribbean nation, making it vulnerable to humanitarian disasters that call for the intervention of forces of redemption. Haiti, thanks to this manufactured vulnerability, has been turned into a theater par excellence of humanitarian tourism. Préval’s confession of weakness enlists the audience—made up of Haitian victims of the earthquake—to witness how the humanitarian gift has been compromised. After the 2010 earthquake, Raoul Peck was given unprecedented access to all stakeholders of the Haitian humanitarian operations to document the relief operations and its impact on Haitians. After the most recent earthquake, Peck has made the film available for free, hoping that humanitarian agents will learn from the lessons of the 2010 debacle.