Reflections on Haiti ("Divided Island") & "Haiti: A Side the Media Won't Show You"

Week of 3/31 - 4/6/24

Before reading the 2021 article 'The Greatest Heist in History': How Haiti Was Forced to Pay Reparations for Freedom by NPR I did some research on who the NPR news outlet is. I utilized the business insider Links to an external site and mediafactcheck.com to find out about the public radios credibility. I found that NPR was a nonprofit organization that produces and distributes news, talk, cultural programming, music, and entertainment programs, including the premier news magazines Morning Edition and All Things Considered across broadcast and digital platforms. The organization was also established after president Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. This made me comfortable to continue reading. 

In short, The NPR article taught me a lot about the political issues going on in Haiti, much of which were created by outside influences such as France and the United States. The ending offered an ideal scenario in which the rich countries would accept more Haitian refugees in exchange for not directly paying reparations to Haiti. However, this is unfortunately unlikely.

The remittances back home to Haiti in 2018, were almost 1/3rd of the island nations GDP (3 billion)! I can only imagine how much higher it's gone up since then.

I wasn't able to figure out how to do incognito mode and it said my schools email type wasn't registered for the free New York times articles, so I wasn't able to do that prereading. 

As I watched the How Haiti and the DR became two worlds video, I realized multiple examples of how what's being said and advertised to people isn't actually what happens.

For example, the border market that was supposed to be equal opportunity for both Dominican locals and the Haitians. It was not, the Haitian sellers were forced to wait multiple hours while the Dominican sellers had ample time to set up their shops. This occurred both at the southern and northern border. The video ended with a woman saying "We have no choice but to continue accepting mistreatment. We're shameless." The pain of the experiences spoke through her body despite the smile. It's a very sad situation.