Brendan Hoffman: Haiti Far From The Madding Crowd

This is the fifth and last post of photographer Brendan Hoffman’s series from Haiti, six months after the earthquake. Before returning to Washington, Brendan traveled with a family he had met in January in the aftermath of the quake to their hometown near Les Cayes in the mountains. Fortunately, the quake did not hit the region badly.

It was a much needed respite after the continuing chaos of Port-au-Prince. As Hoffman relates, “there’s no electricity, no running water. But they aren’t desperate. They’re growing fruit and corn.” He visited a cockfight, swam in the river and observed a family caring for a dying elder.

Unfortunately, rural sustainability in Haiti has been undermined for decades by the free trade economic policies of the United States. Cheap imported food replaced local produce, forcing many of Haiti’s farmers off of the hand and into the capital in a desperate search for scarce jobs — ultimately a decisive factor in the large number of quake casualties among the urban poor. BagNews explored these terrible ironies here last February.