What Killed the Haitians?

I recently came across an interesting position based in Boston with a group I'll call RH design group.
They were looking for "Design Fellows" with the possibility of travel to Africa and Haiti.

Apparently RH is kind of a NGO non-profit which does architecture and public health and design for some of the worst-hit areas of the world, focusing its attention on Haiti and Africa. The first line of their philosophy page states, and I quote:

In 2010, a single earthquake in Haiti killed over a quarter million people due to a combination of infrastructure failure and resulting outbreaks of disease.

While this is technically true, it carefully frames the area in which they have capacity or willingness to work.

What killed all those Haitians?

One could argue truthfully it was the individual's bodies that failed to keep them alive: that their human frame was not robust enough to survive being crushed by falling concrete floors and walls, or the massive loss of blood resulting from lacerations and crushed limbs, that the heat-removal and fire-retardant systems of the skin were overwhelmed in massive conflagrations, acute dehydration, and a host of infectious diseases. The death toll was a result of catastrophic biological failure: it's their fault they died because flesh is weak against steel and stone.

At a level higher, one can say it was not that people were too weak to survive, but that it was the concrete, fire, lack of water, and bacteria and viruses that killed them. Clearly, this is only slightly less absurd, but similarly accurate, to saying that the reason the Haitians died because they were mortal.

I am speaking here in what are absurd, brutally terms because this is literally how people die. Horrible injustice and horrible tragedy has fallen on Haiti, but no one points fingers at the falling concrete or the various bacteria and viruses.

Let us take a step up- why did the buildings fall apart? Why did people die of dehydration? What were the circumstances that hundreds of thousands of people were killed by diseases which are easily treatable and preventable?

This is the circuit in which RH design group operates- it was failures in architecture and infrastructure which caused the deaths of all those Haitians. The death toll was a result of catastrophic technical failure. On a certain level this makes sense for a design group to propose. If you ask a barber why a date didn't go well, and he's going to suggest you need a haircut. Most architecture firms as they are now can only provide architectural solutions. Improvements can only be made laterally- if the building collapsed, build another building, or better, build a stronger building.

This, for me, is where I get really tripped up. I'm a designer. I see my task as making things better, or to put a finer point on it, to make life better, for as many people as possible. But if I'm only designing architecture and infrastructure, I'm just designing survival gear- literally, making hard hats and steel-toed boots. Maybe that's really it. It's just incredibly frustrating to be stuck at level 5 spending a life of work to mitigate the simpler mistakes made at level 4.

Because to accuse failures in architecture and infrastructure of killing Haitians is about as worthless a statement as blaming the falling bricks themselves. Architecture and infrastructure are products of human endeavors. Let's keep climbing the ladder of things that killed all those Haitians:

Why did the buildings crumble? Lack of building codes or enforcement, poor quality building materials, poor (or none) structural design of the load-bearing system. Most of these buildings were put up by people who lived there, paid for themselves, and built by people typically just like them with little to no training in construction.

Why did the infrastructure fail? lack of robustness, lack of maintenance, it was obviously not built strongly enough or with enough redundancies, and probably of poor materials and design. One could argue that it was a lack of Haitians doing things they should have been doing which lead to so many of their tragic deaths.

Questions lead to more questions higher up the chain, and most of them have to do with money; money, because we live in a world where the groups in power have decided that money is the best way to decide things. The government claims to be too poor to fund the expansion, maintenance, and repair of infrastructure. Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. If Haiti was as rich as Chile, which suffered a worse earthquake with a miniscule fraction of the casualties and damage, or Japan, which is routinely pelted with far worse earthquakes with minor transportation delays, then do you think you would have seen the same body count?

Of course not. By that logic, then, you could reasonably say that the reason a quarter million Haitians died was because their country is so dirt poor they were continually living on the edge of catastrophe with absolutely no tolerance or ability to accommodate the slightest disaster. It was an economic failure which doomed those Haitians.

Saori had a friend in Tempe who drove this car which was a deathtrap. It was an ancient sedan which was so decrepit it didn't even have seats in the back. People sat on the floor on a piece of cardboard and slid around because there weren't any seat belts. Or airbags. Or anti-lock breaks. The ignition system was held together with tape and a cheap pen such that when the car turned too fast, the pen fell out and the car simply turned off. And it could only possible to make right handed turns. The slightest mishap would easily maim or kill everyone on board. He didn't drive it because he came from some culture which prized individuality, he drove it because he was poor. You could argue that he didn't need to drive it at all, and that he could have taken public transit, but if Haiti is this car, there is no public transit on the world stage to fall back on.

Why, then, is Haiti so poor? There's many answers to that question: corruption, structural disinvestment by the international community, high incidence of natural disasters (which takes us back down a step or two. The country next door is doing quite well by comparison.) I think it could possibly have something to do with the history of Haiti:

Haiti was a slave-owning colony of France, and then the slaves revolted and drove out the French. The French, in retaliation, convinced the rest of the world to not engage in trade with Haiti (which was only real potential source for generating wealth). Haiti, with its wealth of natural resources, began to starve cut off from the rest of the world, and finally agreed to Frances terms in return for the lift of the embargo: payments for the loss of life and property in the rebellion.

Haiti was subsequently forced to make annual payments, equaling about 40% of its annual GDP, to France, until the middle of the 1940's. IMF loans and Structural Adjustment Policies came with caveats and long strings attached. Remember the deathtrap Haiti's driving around? They've been told that they have to compete with Lincoln towncars, BMWs, and Aston Martins- the free market as a freeway. The IMF will buy Haiti some gas... and tell them to drive faster to try and catch up.

At the top of the ladder of inquiry, I am attempting to argue that what killed so many Haitians, and what continues to kill and stunt and deform around the world, is both the heritage and the perpetuation of global economic system of deliberate disenfranchisement, inhuman and unfair practices, and gross mismanagement at the world stage.