Hispaniola Has Many Fault Lines

There are after shock earthquakes hitting Haiti. There are people convinced that God through his outsourced servant is harassing and punishing the People of Haiti.

Pat Robertson, a man of the old south, with southern roots, and unspoken of black ancestors prefers the old Flip Wilson line "The Devil made me do it!" or we made a pact with the devil and we live by it two hundred years later.

It is strange to hear how you need the devil to throw off the white frog atheist of Napoleon Bonapart. You would think that you would have a backed up fill of God's grace to throw off that crazy dictator lunatic and Hitler's Idol.

But oh no, let's do it all half-assed and get a minor fallen angel on our team.

Another argument running think and deep through the fundamentalist blogosphere is that if the story about the pact with a devil in not true then why does Haiti have so much misery, poverty and earthquakes.

One scientific reason is that the center of the nation, the largest city Port au Prince sits right on a major fault line - EPGF fault line on map above. (click on map for better view)

The rest is exploitation by a handful of greedy "devil" capitalists. Ignorance is born by lack of education. Jesus said the poor and the ignorant will always be with us or something like that.

Jesus' statement is born of an obeservation of human nature in his primitive times. If he were here today he would marvel that his words reflecting the world of two thousand years ago have not improved into a poverty free, ignorant free world with ample resources and knowledge at our finger tips. If we cannot imagine or hope that we can overthrow the stone age that he lived in - then we as a human race and species are truly doomed.

There are several fault lines that run through the Island that Haiti and the Dominican Republic share.

The Dominican Republic has a link to the United States after we invaded it under LBJ to "git the commies". That's part of the link to some prosperity there. That and foreign investment and tourist dollars.

There have been many earthquakes in the Dominican Republic in the last century. There was a 7.0 earthquake in 1911. A 7.5 in 1918 and a 8.1 in 1946. There have been several 6.0 scale quakes in the decades up to the present.

The one in 1918 - 7.5 - took place on October 11, 1918 on the eve of Christopher Columbus Day, the founder of Hispaniola. So tramatic was that quake that when the population found itself digging out of it on Columbus Day - a Dominican Urban Legend was born about the use of the name Christopher which is considered an unlucky name there to this day with no one willing to name their child after the founder of the country after that quake of legend. Strange but true?

Is the devil real? Ignorance is in the eyes of the beholder. Right Pat?