For the better part of two centuries, outsiders have been offering explanations that range from racist to learned-sounding - the supposed inferiority of blacks, the heritage of slavery, overpopulation - for why Haiti remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
Adam Hochschild
Whenever an earthquake or tsunami takes thousands of innocent lives, a shocked world talks of little else. I'll never forget the wrenching days I spent in Haiti last year for Save the Children just weeks after the earthquake.
Anne M. Mulcahy
Well, it wasn't a holiday, but I had expected to do some sightseeing when I went to Haiti to film a series called 'True Horror' for Discovery. Before I arrived, our film crew were kidnapped and held at knifepoint.
Anthony Head
Two hundred years ago, our precursors in Haiti struck a blow for freedom, which was heard around the world, and across centuries.
Baldwin Spencer
You know, I wish the world well. I want Iraq to have democracy and the Haitians to have democracy. I want the people of Afghanistan to thrive. Lord knows, we spend enough money there to help them. What about people at home? Isn't that our first responsibility?
Barbara Boxer
My first visit to Haiti was in May 1991, four months into the initial term of Haiti's first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. At the time, it seemed that Haiti was on the cusp of a new era.
Ben Fountain
I never have my CNN off, it's on the whole day. I don't want to be out of range of television. I'm constantly bombarded by information - Somalia one second, Haiti the next - I need that constant pounding. I couldn't write without television. I need to have the world in my room.
Bharati Mukherjee
The outpouring of support from millions of people in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti has been impressive.
Bill Gates
Haiti should remind us all that there is an immediate need to invest in and promote long-term development projects that are sustainable, scalable, and proven to work.
In Haiti, it - people seemed - in my experience in Haiti, people are so open to photographs and journalism. And there doesn't seem to be the same sort of restrictions or wariness about the press that you would experience in Washington, for instance, on many levels.
Carol Guzy
I've wept for Haiti a thousand times over the years since my first trip during the Duvalier reign.
I was lucky enough to grow up in a house where we listened to all kinds of music. We listened to Haitian, hip hop, soul, classical jazz, gospel and Cuban music, to name a few. When you have access to that as a child, it just opens up your world.
Cecile McLorin Salvant
My dad was born in Haiti, and my mom was born in Tunisia. She is the daughter of a white French woman and a black, half-Guadeloupian, half-American man. My mom traveled the world a lot. She went through Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. She just got to experience a lot of different cultures, and that came through my childhood.
Without question, conditions in the Haiti are worse since Aristide's removal, and continue to deteriorate.
Charles B. Rangel
The power of Haitian heritage and the strength of the Haitian people is tremendous. And Haiti holds a unique and rich role in the history of African Americans.
Cheryl Mills
I feel a special connection to Haiti and the Haitian people.
There are fewer people living in tents, more people with access to quality health care, more kids who are in school, and for the first time in a long, long time, Haiti is attracting private sector investments.
I had four combat tours, and I never saw death on a scale like I saw in Haiti. A quarter-million people lost their lives.
Chris Gibson
Even though Haitian women are considered the 'poto mitan' - the 'central pillars' of the family and their communities - they are often the most underserved members of already poor communities.
Christy Turlington
It turns out that cholera is new to Haiti. It was inadvertently introduced by a group of U.N. peacekeepers stationed in central Haiti who had come from South Asia where it is endemic.
A neoliberal disaster is one who generates a mass incarceration regime, who deregulates banks and markets, who promotes chaos of regime change in Libya, supports military coups in Honduras, undermines some of the magnificent efforts in Haiti of working people, and so forth.
And in rural communities we've worked alongside, Haitians are doing far more than merely recovering from the earthquake. Many are creating long-term sustainable change.
I never consider myself a minority. I see people who look like me in Barbados, in Trinidad, in Haiti, in London, and in Brooklyn. So I don't know what the heck anyone means when they call me a 'minority.' There's something about that word to me. It just minimalizes people.
It's funny... you can make fun of AIDS or Haiti, but if you make fun of some starlet in Hollywood's looks? That's like the one thing... the line you are not to cross.
What happened to Haiti is a threat that could happen anywhere in the Caribbean to these island nations, you know, because of global warming, because of climate change and all this.
You know, we do not want the militarization of Haiti. We do not see a Haitian as a protectorate where it relinquishes its own sovereignty.
But I think it's very key that there's a plan for Haiti. And we have to begin to - as progressives and people who are concerned about Haiti and have been concerned about Haiti, we have to begin to build some sort of consensus, a movement around the Haiti that the Haitians envision.
The art of coalition command - whether it is here in Afghanistan, whether it was in Iraq or in Bosnia or in Haiti - is to take the resources you are provided with, understand what the strengths and weaknesses are and to employ them to the best overall effect.
If I'm in the 'hood, I like Chef Creole's Haitian rice and stewed chicken.
I think Haiti is a place that suffers so much from neglect that people only want to hear about it when It's at its extreme. And that's what they end up knowing about it.
Napoleon had been fighting this army of slaves and free people in Haiti and it depleted his forces. And after the Revolution, when the French were driven out, they stopped and sold this big chunk of North America to the Americans for very little money.
To start with, for example this year, 2004, is the bicentennial of Haitian independence.
People think that there is a country there that these people are only around when they are on CNN. I don't think that's limited to Haiti.
In Haiti you had the Duvaliers for 29 years and they were very well supported by the United States.
And the fact that Haiti was occupied for 19 years by the United States, from 1915 to 1934.
Also, people are not often aware of the way the United States' policies influence what happens in places like Haiti or El Salvador or Nicaragua. Or in Columbia right now.
While Haiti has recently celebrated more than 200 years of independence from French colonial rule, the citizens of the island remain vulnerable to poverty, poor health, and political chaos.
We all would like to see a brighter future for Haiti, and I hope this conference will serve to explore many views. Respect for human rights, freedom, and the rule of law must be established in the poorest nation in our hemisphere.
The people in the United States are some of the most generous people in the world. We saw it in Haiti. We saw it with Katrina. When devastation strikes, American people want to step up.
Being from Miami, you're used to the fact that your home is a vacation spot. But that's what makes Miami one of the best places in the world. We're so rich in different cultures, being so close to Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, and then you've got people who travel from all over the world just to come visit.
It is not a question of whether I believe in voodoo. I am a scholar and, as such, I have studied the concept of voodoo. I have created the faculty of Afro-Haitian ethnology in our university where the concept of voodoo is taught. Voodoo is not superstition. It is a philosophy, a conception of God.
I know the Haitian people - because I am the Haitian people.
The people of Haiti have always called me Papa Doc. I was first their doctor. Now I am also their president for life.
I am the Haitian flag. He who is my enemy is the enemy of the fatherland.
The chief of the tribe is supposed to be the father of all people of the tribe. That is the Haitian way.
With no education, you have neocolonialism instead of colonialism, like you've got in Africa now and like you've got in Haiti. So what we're talking about is there has to be an educational program. That's very important.
Defenders of Wilson are correct to beg for context when considering his legacy. But it is they who ignore the context: the role Wilson played in using war, including Haiti's racist counterinsurgency, to nationalize white supremacy, militarism, and Christian evangelism.
Haiti and the Dominican Republic don't just share an island, Hispaniola, but a history, one that includes all the signal events that went into creating the modern world: Columbus, conquest, genocide, slavery, imperial war, revolution, and U.S. counterinsurgencies and military occupations.
There was a brief moment, after Haiti's 2010 earthquake, when even Bill Clinton recognized what had been done to Haiti in the name of 'free trade': the destruction of local markets and rice production.
Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere; some say the poorest in the world.
