Istwa Nou

Two centuries after independence the Heinls describe a Haiti split along a line drawn in the colony. Ninety percent of the population is black. Ten percent is mulatre or jaune. Haitian writers of the period called the split a virus in the republic, and it produced two worlds that touch every day and never merge. Language holds the line in place. Eighty-five percent of the country speaks only Kreyol, a working fusion of African and European speech, while the state conducts its affairs in French. That arrangement shuts most Haitians out of their own ministries, their own courts and their own official record. It also works as a shield. A language outsiders cannot follow keeps foreign ears at the edge of the conversation, which is one reason the society has been so hard for visitors to read. Race, literacy and money track each other closely enough that any one of the three predicts the other two. Most of the political crises on this timeline run along that seam.