AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame

Emerging from doctoral fieldwork in a Central Plateau village during the mid-1980s, this book argues that Haiti was not the origin of the AIDS epidemic but among its earliest and most catastrophically blamed victims, and that the mechanisms of blame — from village sorcery accusations to the CDC's racialized designation of Haitians as a risk group — follow structured patterns rooted in racist representation and economic exploitation. Farmer introduces the 'geography of blame' and lays the groundwork for his structural violence framework: HIV spread along paths carved by plantation slavery, US occupation, Duvalier-era offshore assembly, and tourism, not by cultural pathology or vodou practice.