By Karen Hunter

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.”

– Dom Helder Camara, Brazilian Archbishop

Out of the tragedy and devastation in the aftermath of the horrific earthquake that struck Haiti this week, there is opportunity. There is a chance to make things right.

Money and other forms of aid are pouring in. Nations and peoples, led by the U.S., are pledging their support.

Newsreel after newsreel shows a nation devastated long before this most recent tragedy—torn apart by war, disease, natural disaster, corruption, and neglect. There are some who will even say there must be a curse on this land and its people. Lost soul Pat Robertson suggested the Haitians made a deal with the devil over 200 years ago by rebelling against their former French slave masters.

But, symbolically at least, it’s no coincidence that one structure which survived the earthquake was the United States Embassy. It goes to show that with money and infrastructure and a solid foundation, you can survive just about anything.

As the media parades image after image and statistic after statistic on the crime rate in Haiti, the AIDS rate in Haiti, the poverty rate in Haiti, they must follow that with one question: Why?

Make no mistake that Haiti’s current overall condition is by design. And those responsible—and you can put the United States among the top of that list—now have an opportunity to make amends. It’s time.

It’s also time to set the historic record straight. This nation isn’t cursed and its people did not make a deal with the devil. Its sin? Audacity. It had the audacity to not only crave freedom during a time when the world’s economy depended on the slave culture, but it fought for and won its freedom in a slave revolt of historic proportions. Toussaint L’ouverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines took on Napoleon’s army and eventually claimed independence for Haiti in 1804.

How do you think the rest of the slave-holding world saw that insurrection? It had a tremendous impact not only on the sugar industry—of which Haiti (then known as Saint-Domingue) produced 40 percent—but the revolt threw the cotton prices in the United States into a state of tremendous volatility. It also spread fear throughout the New World, that other slaves might get an idea that freedom can be taken. The backlash for those enslaved was brutal.

But it was far worse for Haiti, which was not only shut out as a full trading partner with other nations despite a flourishing sugar industry, but also had to continue to fight to retain its freedom. In 1825, the King of France sent troops to re-conquer Haiti. An agreement was reached, under which Haiti agreed to pay France 150 million francs as an indemnity for profits lost from the slave trade.

Haiti ended up paying only 90 million francs, but what about the hundred-plus years France, Spain and the United States benefitted off the backs of that slave labor? Instead of paying an indemnity, Haiti should have been paid reparations.

The years that followed were filled with upheaval and unrest. Six leaders murdered in six years (a total of 32 coups in its 200-year history), a United States occupation (from 1915-1934), the emergence of dictator Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier, who came to power in a military coup and was backed by the U.S. and who ruled with a iron fist leaving his people hungry while his coffers filled. Duvalier’s only son, Jean Claude (Baby Doc), took over after his death and was proclaimed “president for life” at the age of 19. He continued in his father’s corrupt footsteps before being run off the island in a coup.

More corruption and chaos followed (even under the rule of a former priest) and more “help” and “intervention” by among many, the United States—which recommended that Haiti abandon agriculture and focus on factory jobs and become an export nation. That’s why there are no trees there and why Haiti can’t grow its own food, which puts them at the mercy of the world.

Add the natural disasters to the mix and you have total devastation. But again, out of the rubble—Opportunity.

If all of the money and aid that is currently being poured into Haiti is going to make any impact, we have to make sure that those whose hands the money is going through are clean. America has a president now who can make sure this happens. Barack Obama can and must hold Haiti’s leadership accountable.

And the earthquake’s survivors must remember who they are and from whence they came. They are descendants of a people who did something no other group of kidnapped Africans or Indians in the pre-twentieth-century New World were able to do. They are the descendants of some great men and women—resilient and fierce. They will survive this latest tragedy. Because they always survive.

Now it’s time to thrive.

Karen Hunter is a publisher, a best-selling author and a Distinguished Lecturer at Hunter College.