Experiments in true democracy. We have seen very recent attempts at power grabs in young democracies in that region which over the past half century or so have been prone to military coups and tribal conflicts escalating into chaos and total mayhem averted through dipplomatic means which have resulted in power sharing arrangements, redrawing national borders and turning political disourse over to properly elected representatives of those countries' populations. I credit South Africa with the most humane and reasonable transfer of power I'll ever see in my lifetime by searching past centuries of hatred and suffering to find commonality and shared purpose.
If Boers and Zulus could find a path to peaceful coexistence then the Hutus and Tutsis, Luo and Kikuyu, Hausa and Fulani and Yoruba and Igbo....
See where I'm going with this? It's not perfect, but it's a start. Haiti is a most homogeneous society (not unlike Egypt) and the Haitian people should be able to absorb the recent lessons in democratic behavior quite well. As soon as the rest of the World stops trying to "fix" them.
Very interesting take.
I think there is a de facto "tribal" or "ethnic" division in Haiti as real as some of the divisions we've seen in former eastern bloc or in post colonial Africans countries.
Namely the masses of Black Haitians and the minority of Mulatto(with German, Lebanese,Syrian emigres) Haitians.
With the minority owning most of the wealth and the tools of capitalism, it defies human nature that they would work against their own interests.
There is blood lost, and historic tension between the 2 groups (which has been exploited expertly by politicians, most recently Aristide).
THERE is NO WAY that it compares to apartheid or the history of neo slavery in South Africa, I agree.
What happened in South African ultimately proved to be the "right" thing to do for the country, but was very hard to watch(just as a human being, never mind as a Black person)--the reconciliation "hearing"
In terms of absorbing the lessons of other places.....and I'm being real here...Haiti is, has been, and in the near future will be VERY isolated. No public schools, majority of the population speaks as a first language a tongue that isn't any of the top 5 languages spoken on this hemisphere, and a low overall literacy rate. Not exactly the conditions that makes us open to absorb information, education, world events, or lessons from other places.
