The Role Of Structural Violence In Haiti

Although not conventional violence, structural violence can be its driving force due to laws in place and the oppression it afflicts upon individuals. Structural violence is “systematic ways in which social structures harm or otherwise disadvantage individuals” and is often invisible1. On January 12, 2010 the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that demolished Haiti left thousands of people struggling to survive. Several monetary international responses were delayed due to the exaggerated corruption of the Haitian government. Because of current power structures, the suffering of the victims was unequal and would be a challenge to address. A structural violence perspective can help explain this unequal suffering among Haitians after the 2010 earthquake.
Soldiers were the only salaried men in Haiti, making them more appealing and possessing a greater ability to exert their agency. It was common for soldiers to watch and flirt with women walking to the market, and for women to entertain these gazes and comments, viewing them as an opportunity to overcome poverty. This is precisely what happened to Acéphie, ultimately leading to AIDS, and years later her death. This is a direct result of the power structures in place and selfish human agency. The structural violence in Haiti extended further to curbing one’s ability to express himself. This is seen in the story of Chouchou when he was subtly expressing his negative feelings toward the coup d’état and an out-of-uniform soldier had him kicked off the truck at the following checkpoint. This served as the beginning of his governmental torture2. In both of these cases, the structural violence directly led to physical violence and a prolonged death. Because these practices were societal norms before the earthquake, when the earthquake struck, the well-being of the impoverished was second to those of wealth and
By February, due to increased fuel shipments, the Port-au-Prince municipal water authority was producing nearly 50% more treated water per day than it had before the earthquake. The influx of free food kept prices lower than they would have been without it, there were widespread vaccination campaign against measles, tetanus, and diphtheria, and perhaps the greatest success was there were thousands of life saving surgeries, amputations, and other interventions3. These successes each helped to mitigate the inequality of suffering because water was more readily available, an accomplishment that certainly saved many lives. Lower food prices made food more affordable for the poor. Finally, the vaccination campaigns, surgeries, and amputations saved the lives of many poor and halted the growth of the gap between the number of wealthy and poor that perished. Another method that would have been helpful to neutralizing the tendency of humanitarian programs to worsen pre-existing inequalities is delivering aid to individual families that went to the countryside after Port-au-Prince crumbled (instead of squatter camps) because thousands flocked to Port-au-Prince when they heard aid was there. This method would have helped disperse the population to help prevent disease from spreading and camps from becoming permanent. In addition,