The rhythm of old routines has begun to steady the pace of life in Jacmel: After being closed two months, the banks have reopened; Internet cafés lining the main Avenue Barranquilla have plugged in their computers again; most of the city’s roadways remain barricade-free at night now that people have ceased bedding down on blankets in the open streets.
On Sundays, hordes of people still head to church dressed in impeccable clothing. And many have resumed the tradition of heading eastward for the afternoon to relax on the sprawl of white-sand beaches. Downtown, packs of moto-taxis have reclaimed the streets from the hulking army bulldozers that clogged them after the earthquake; lineups at the two cellphone outlets no longer last all day, and the shopkeepers hawking cosmetics and clothing are again hanging provocative dresses outside, attempting to lure in customers.
Amid these signs of normality though, there remains a pervading sense of uncertainty, as if a giant question mark hangs in the air above Jacmel, its entire population wondering what, exactly, is supposed to happen next.
“Everybody is on pause right now to see what’s going to happen in the future,” Mayor Edwin (Edo) Zenny confessed in a recent interview.
Veterans of post-disaster reconstruction efforts say this ambiguity is textbook: As the frenzied emergency phase draws down and first responders pull out, there are always hiccups in the momentum before the engines driving medium-term stabilization efforts – projects that will create foundations for actual rebuilding – gear up.
The discomfort it’s causing in Jacmel, however, is compounded by the fact the city was well past its heyday – in need of far more than a rebuilding – long before the 35-second earthquake brought down half its buildings on Jan. 12 and left 8,000 families homeless.
The city’s glossy tourism leaflets don’t advertise the fact that routine gas shortages paralyze the city every couple of weeks; the local economy was barely limping along in the absence of private industry, which had been unresponsive to local officials’ attempts to draw foreign investment.
Although Jacmel has claim to being the first city in the Caribbean to have electricity in the 1920s, about eight hours of citywide blackouts hobble the overstretched system each day. The mostly privatized system of lower education has created rampant illiteracy, and health care at the hospital is an undisputed disaster.
“What we have here is a place where they have a license to kill people,” said Amil Roland Zenny, an outspoken cousin of the mayor, who chairs the city’s Chamber of Commerce. Pulling a $2,000 fist full of U.S. cash from a desk drawer, he explained that he keeps at least that much money on him at all times in case he needs to purchase an emergency flight out of the country for medical care.
“How many people can do that? Is that a life?” he exclaimed, pounding his fists. “We need to build up the institutions.”
Herein lies the rub.
The centralized government of Haiti, based in Port-au-Prince, has rendered municipalities in the outlying regions virtually powerless. The destruction of most government offices there has not lessened the capital city’s chokehold on resources in the country, the outlying regions of which hunger for decentralization.
“There is a city hall, but it doesn’t have a budget,” explained Gerald Mathurin, a former federal agriculture minister who leads a large Jacmel-based social movement called CROSE. “It’s a country controlled by Port-au-Prince: schools, university, commerce. Everything is in Port-au-Prince. The regions are kept weak,” he said, adding: “We have a real governance problem.”
Jacmel itself has no revenue-raising capabilities – any taxes collected are remitted directly to Port-au-Prince – and no real ability to independently engineer a rebuilding process. The city of about 40,000 people didn’t even have the capacity for garbage collection until recently, when the President gifted two white garbage trucks.
In fact, the current function of city hall, now run out of the town library, amounts to little more than ribbon-cutting at tent city inaugurations and data collection. The mayor’s staff spend their days compiling and then funnelling lists of ruined buildings, decimated businesses and population statistics to Port-au-Prince. They also send requests for funding support, but there is little they can do to influence approvals.
