This article critically examines the underlying political and structural conditions that lead to Haiti’s underdevelopment and the vulnerability of the country to natural disasters. Using the scholarship of Percy Hintzen and Michel-Rolph Trouillot, the article argues that disjunctures in the post-revolutionary governance of Haiti created conditions of precarity, vulnerability, and preempted possibilities for development. Those disjunctures were exacerbated under the Duvaliers and continue to be part of the fabric of Haiti. The explanation rests in the policies and practices of powerful domestic and foreign actors with vested interests in maintaining conditions of underdevelopment. This explains the failure of the county to effectively respond to extreme natural events such as earthquakes and hurricanes, thereby transforming them into pervasive natural disasters. The calamities that the world noticed on January 12, 2010 were simply an epiphenomenon of those deeply underlying conditions.

This paper argues, first, that despite the transnational impact of the Haitian Revolution, it remains mostly unknown in the Western hemisphere. This is primarily the result of an international racist project to repress the idea of Black Revolution and undermine Haiti’s progress. Second, I argue that, since the second half of the 19th century, intellectuals and social scientists have contributed to this racial project, and thus that scientific racism was born primarily as a response to the Haitian Revolution. The proliferation of racially oriented pseudosciences was part of significant efforts on the part of European and American intellectuals to undermine the notion of Black Revolution and Black power, and to demonstrate that Blacks were not capable of self-governance.

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