Foreign Policy magazine has a timeline of the modern-day disasters that set the stage for the current humanitarian disaster.
The Unluckiest Country
The second-oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere has been wracked by coups, dictators, and foreign interventions throughout nearly its entire history. But you don't have to agree with Pat Robertson to agree that even by Haitian standards, the last few decades have been particularly tragic.
BY JOSHUA KEATING | JANUARY 14, 2010
The FP chronology describes: the Duvalier dictatorship, which was backed by the USA because of Duvalier's staunch anti-communist stance; the Aristide fiasco, also orchestrated by the USA; the 2004 floods, which the USA had no role in causing; the food riots of 2008, which arguably were partly due to USA policies; and the 2008 hurricanes.
What they do not mention, however, is the deeper background. How did Haiti get to be so poor, so lacking in wealth and resilience?
Anthropology Works gives an introduction:
Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispaniola. Following the island's discovery by Columbus in 1492, Spanish colonialists exterminated the island's indigenous Arawak Indians. In 1697, the French took control of what is now Haiti and instituted an exceptionally cruel system of African plantation slavery. In the late 1700s, the half million slaves revolted. In what is the only successful slave revolution in history, they ousted the French and established the first Black republic in the Western Hemisphere.
This would seem to be promising. The throw off the oppressors and take control of the wealth for themselves. The problem was, most of them were illiterate. This is ironic. When France was a Roman colony, so to speak, the commoners were prohibited from learning Latin. This effectively kept them from having any chance of engaging in business, and limited their educational opportunities. When St. Domingue was a French colony, the slaves were kept illiterate, which had the same effect as what the French commoners had experienced.
James Williams, writing in Discovery News, elaborates on this, drawing form the work of Dr. Bryan Page, Professor of Anthropology at U Miami:
Why Is Haiti So Poor?
By James Williams
Wed Jan 13, 2010 08:08 PM
...After they became independent, they ended up in a situation where - number one - they were considered a threat by the entire rest of the region because the rest of the region, especially the United States, owned slaves. A slave rebellion is not a good thing to have so close to a nation that owned several million slaves of their own...Page says that post-1804, Haitians were discriminated against by not only the United States, but all the European powers...That discrimination meant no availability of resources to educate the Haitian population, no significant trade with any polity outside of Haiti. Also, the break up of the plantations into individual land parcels meant there's no longer a coherent cash crop activity going on within Haiti...
He goes on to describe the occupation of Haiti by the USA in 1915, followed by the abrupt withdrawal of US forces in 1935. Howard Zinn provides some background to the interest the USA had in Haiti. The US Navy was interested in establishing a base in Haiti. Also, the National City Bank of New York (precursor to Citibank) wanted to take control of the Haitian banking system. In 1914, the USA tried to persuade Haiti to turn over control of their customs houses, which were the Haitian government's only source of revenue. They refused; the US invasion followed. US Marines took a half-million dollars from Haiti, and gave it to the National City Bank of New York for safekeeping.
It is difficult to build a country when people do things like that.
Meterological and geological phenomena seem to have conspired against Haiti. But geopolical concerns (i.e. greed) have played a role, too.
Politics
Comments
Thanks for this. There's no such thing as a purely natural disaster. I think most Americans are pretty unaware of Haiti's complicated and fascinating history, or the long-term history of US involvement there. I'd really recommend Mary Renda's book Taking Haiti for anyone interested in a cultural history of the 1915-1935 occupation.
Posted by: mr | January 15, 2010 11:21 AM
The entire eleventh chapter of the book COLLAPSE, by Jared Diamond, is dedicated to the history of Haiti and Dominican Republic.
Posted by: janus | January 18, 2010 9:31 AM