State Failure and Fragility: Causes, Cases, Discussions

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DOI :10.26650/B/SSc21.2024.025.04   IUP :10.26650/B/SSc21.2024.025.04    Full Text (PDF)

Colonial Past Comes to the Hunt: Haiti, a Failed State?

Antonio Jesús Pınto Tortosa

In this chapter, my goal is to address Haiti’s postcolonial history and discuss its definition as a failed state from a historical and geopolitical scope. I start my analysis in the year when the country became independent from France in order to show how the negative image that the (white) West depicted of Haiti has dominated its political evolution ever since. The reason is fear of an example that no one wished to see imitated in other colonial possessions: the emancipation of African slaves. Hence, what started as an exercise of institutional propaganda to describe Haiti’s former slaves as savages has turned into a negative characterization of Haiti and its people. Popular opinion in the West regards the Haitians as lazy, corrupt, and incapable of helping themselves, always dependent on external material assistance that they cannot manage, either. The most evident consequence of such attitude is what they call “Haiti’s fatigue,” which can be summed up in one phrase: Haitians cannot be trusted. Adopting a critical perspective, in terms of postcolonial theory and global geopolitics, to carry out my analysis, I use primary historical sources, as well as governmental reports and scholarship on the topic. 


Keywords: Haiti, postcolonialism, slavery, negritude, state failure

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