Poverty In Haiti

How the "Bonbon Te" Illustrates What is Driving Thousands from the Caribbean

The “bonbon te” is one of the sadder emblems of conditions in Haiti. A single, simple signal of just exactly why thousands and thousands of Haitians are willing to leave a region widely regarded as paradise— the Caribbean— and travel the length and breadth of Mexico risking the truncheons of Mexican police and Military, as well as the potential predations of the Mexican Cartels.

After already facing that, worries about the U.S. Border Patrol and the Chihuahuan desert may seem like weak tea.

What is the bonbon te? Literally: Mud cookies. Or dirt biscuits. A staple of diets in Haiti for years— almost certainly for longer than 2007 and 2008 when articles first started appearing online.

Bonbon Te being prepared. Image Courtesy: “Feed My Starving Children”

Soil is combed and strained, removing rocks and solids, before salt, vegetable shortening and/or fat is added to the mix. The material is then baked, usually in the sun, and then later eaten. It is basically a way to fill the stomach and quiet hunger pangs. Despite attempts by some valiant editor on wikipedia to say something about calcium and mineral content in the cookies, one should be blunt when the occasion calls for it.

These mud cookies have almost zero nutritional value. And they almost certainly are going to be an acquired taste, if that’s even possible. If someone could afford enough sugar to make the dirt sweet, they’d be able to afford flour and eggs.

It should surprise no one that Haiti has one of the highest mortality rates in the Western Hemisphere with widespread respiratory issues and tuberculosis and diarrhea wreaking havoc among the population. Who cares about a little Covid-19 cough, when TB is making you hack your lungs out, and diarrhea and dysentery are doing their work at the other end?

In the course of preparing this piece and researching the background of the bonbon te, one comes across an article suggesting one might try a recipe for making their own batch of dirt cookies as a way of showing solidarity with the Haitian people. How about donating some money to one of the organizations trying to make conditions bearable instead? How on Earth is the act of eating a dirt cookie going to mean anything to anyone? It seems more a vulgar attempt at displaying virtue than any actually meaningful act.

The Encyclopedia Britannica points out unironically that agriculture is the main force in the Haitian economy. Haiti produces a mild arabica coffee that is their primary export. Critics say a lack of farming expertise over generations has resulted in massive soil erosion, and while 2/5ths of available lands in Haiti is being cultivated, only about 1/5th of it is even really all that suitable for growing crops.

Just across the way, next door on the same Island of Hispaniola, residents of the Dominican Republic live an almost luxurious existence by comparison. Few people are having to shovel dirt in their mouths just to stop their stomachs from turning themselves inside out with hunger.

The difference is reportedly visible in satellite imagery— a border line similar to that between North and South Korea, picked out in greener grass and healthier soils instead of electrical consumption as is the case with the two Koreas.

The Island of Hispaniola, Image Courtesy: Sciencephotolibrary @ www.sciencephoto.com

You can’t put all the blame on the Haitian farmer. Persistent drought compounds the issues raised by a lack of irrigation in the region, and many of the woes can also be laid at the feet of widespread government corruption, along with routine deforestation as people take whatever they can make a nickel from, making charcoal that they can sell for fuel in the city of Port-au-Prince.

Earlier this year, the Dominican Republic announced plans to build a border wall, separating the two nations. The Dominican President, a man named Luis Abinader, says the 236 mile wall or fence is needed to put the brakes on long-standing issues like illegal immigration, drug smuggling, and the movement of stolen vehicles back and forth between the two nations.

75 Years ago, Dominican soldiers massacred Haitians, going up to suspected Haitians and presenting them with a sprig of parsley, asking them to name the plant. In Spanish, it is called “perejil.” Those who speak Haitian Creole as a first language tend to have difficulty pronouncing it correctly. Failure to do so tended to mean their lives. This type of testing is referred to as a shibboleth— the use of a regional practice or cultural custom, to identify those who do not belong. It has its roots in the old testament, when the Hebrews would use the word for grain to identify the Ephraimites.

Historians estimate as many as 20-thousand Haitians were executed and dumped in the “Massacre River.” That river was named so after an earlier historical atrocity involving the French. The massacre is largely forgotten by the world at large today, but helps illuminate the historical state of relations between the two nations. To put it simply, activists say Dominican Border controls are already draconian and iron hard as applied to Haitians. Dominican hardliners say they’re simply trying to preserve what they have.

This brings us back to the U.S. Border Crisis, and what we keep saying at the Cavalry - Dispatch about how this matter isn’t really about Mexican illegal aliens coming from Mexico. It is perhaps difficult to actually articulate in a short and pithy sentence what it is, when there are so many moving parts. The Haitian dilemma is only one of them.

How in pluperfect hell is some rancher in Kinney County, or Val Verde County, or Uvalde County, or anywhere else around here supposed to handle this kind of dirt cookie eating misery that’s driving so many to try their luck with the U.S. Asylum process? Short of tooling up with guns and becoming twice as draconian as those Dominican soldiers from 75 years ago, they can’t. That’s why they’re supposed to be able to rely on the authority-by-proxy that we all grant the U.S. Government and its enforcement arms like the U.S. Border Patrol.

You can’t throw money at Haiti. The U.S. Government and the rest of the world has been doing precisely that for decades, and conditions there are worse than ever. It’s almost bad enough that one wonders if Haiti would not have been better off staying part of the French Colonial Empire, even with the existence of things like Massacre River.