thedrifter
01-01-06, 10:02 AM
HAITI
A LEGACY OF NEGLECT
BY LETTA TAYLER
STAFF CORRESPONDENT
January 1, 2006
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - When Haitian slaves ousted French colonists and created the world's first black-ruled republic two centuries ago, they begged the United States to help reconstruct their nation decimated by war.
Washington's response was to slap Haiti with a punishing trade embargo that lasted six decades.
"Confine the pest to the island," declared President Thomas Jefferson, who feared the revolution on his country's doorstep would inspire a similar slave revolt in the American South.
The embargo is hardly the only reason Haiti, once the wealthiest colony in the Caribbean, is now the poorest and one of the most troubled nations in the hemisphere. But many political experts believe U.S. policy was key among several outside forces that pushed this country on a downward spiral.
"There's a direct connection between Haiti's current problems and the way it was isolated by the rest of the world, particularly the United States," said Douglas Egerton, a history professor at LeMoyne College in upstate Syracuse.
Not only did the 1806 embargo "consciously kill the Haitian economy," Egerton said, it "put an anchor on the democratic ship" by creating such hardship that Haitians lost faith in their new republic.
How Haiti stands
Today, Haiti is a place so poor that its most desperate citizens eat pancakes made of boullion-flavored clay and one in 10 children works as a domestic in conditions that human rights groups liken to slavery. It is a land so lawless that two-thirds of its 45 leaders have been violently ousted.
Nearly half its 8 million people are illiterate, half its children are malnourished and 70 percent of its workers have no steady jobs.
Infrastructure is ravaged, the once lush land is barren of trees and the rate of HIV/AIDS is the highest outside Africa.
"I can't imagine Hell is much worse," said Rexipse Clairismé, a single mother who lives in a Port-au-Prince slum built atop acres of industrial and human waste.
Clairismé's shack in Cité L'Eternel, French for Eternal City, is perched just feet from a river-sized canal of sewage that courses through the slum. Huge pigs slosh through the sewage, snuffling it up. When it rains, the river overflows, disgorging its contents and its wrenching stench into Clairismé's home.
A string of despots has pillaged this country, taking the lead from its former occupiers. But there wasn't much to plunder.
By the time slaves routed the French colonists in 1804 - fending off the Spaniards and British in the process - the coffee and sugar plantations were razed, coffers were empty and professionals had fled. Left with the wreckage was a tiny group of black and mixed-race elites with no governing experience and a mass of illiterate former slaves.
Exacerbating the U.S. trade embargo, France forced Haiti to pay 90 million gold francs in reparations to slave and plantation owners, equal to $21 billion today. It took Haiti nearly a century to pay it off.
Passed by and isolated
The two transforming movements of the 18th century, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, passed Haiti by. The country was further isolated by its language, Haitian Creole, a patois partly based on Norman French that is unintelligible to most Francophones. Creole remains the sole language of 90 percent of Haitians today.
During the 1980s, the AIDS scare killed Haiti's fledgling tourism industry as the outside world accused this country of spreading the epidemic. But health experts say it was tourists, mostly from the United States, Canada and France, who brought AIDS here.
In benevolent moments over the past century, Washington has lavished this country with attention, building desperately needed schools, hospitals and roads. But Washington also has propped up dictators and sent in the Marines three times.
Two interventions involved ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former slum priest who has been ousted twice since becoming this country's first democratically elected leader in 1991. The controversial Aristide was reviled by the elite but worshiped by the poor.
Former President Bill Clinton sent in 20,000 Marines to return Aristide to power in 1994, three years after he was ousted in a coup.
But in the early 2000s, the United States led an international embargo of aid to Haiti as Aristide became mired in allegations of corruption. After Aristide fled in February 2004 aboard a U.S.-chartered jet as rebels marched to the capital of Port-au-Prince, he accused the United States of kidnapping him.
U.S. officials deny that allegation, saying they merely told Aristide that they couldn't guarantee his safety if he stayed. After Aristide boarded the jet, President George W. Bush sent in 3,000 Marines to keep order.
Following both interventions, the United States pulled out the troops and stopped the aid flow far too soon, critics say.
Torn down, not rebuilt
The Marines stayed 19 years after the United States invaded in 1915 to thwart possible German designs on the Panama Canal. But instead of nation building, the occupation became an exercise in subjugation, guerrilla warfare and racism.
After imposing martial law, the Marines created a Haitian gendarmerie that became a bulwark of later dictatorships, installed puppet leaders and dissolved the National Assembly so they could impose a new constitution allowing foreigners to buy Haitian property.
The all-white occupying force referred to Haitians as "nigs" and "coons" and used thousands of them as forced labor, sometimes roping them together so they couldn't flee. When a guerrilla resistance sprang up, U.S. troops executed rebels on the spot or threw them into a forced-labor camp where 5,500 inmates died in three years.
Despite that tortured history, many Haiti experts believe this country desperately needs outside help, particularly from the country that has played the greatest role here - the United States. "Expectations that Haiti will pull itself up by its bootstraps are unrealistic," said Jocelyn McCalla, executive director of the New York-based National Coalition for Haitian Rights. "Haiti has neither the will nor the straps."
Ellie
A LEGACY OF NEGLECT
BY LETTA TAYLER
STAFF CORRESPONDENT
January 1, 2006
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - When Haitian slaves ousted French colonists and created the world's first black-ruled republic two centuries ago, they begged the United States to help reconstruct their nation decimated by war.
Washington's response was to slap Haiti with a punishing trade embargo that lasted six decades.
"Confine the pest to the island," declared President Thomas Jefferson, who feared the revolution on his country's doorstep would inspire a similar slave revolt in the American South.
The embargo is hardly the only reason Haiti, once the wealthiest colony in the Caribbean, is now the poorest and one of the most troubled nations in the hemisphere. But many political experts believe U.S. policy was key among several outside forces that pushed this country on a downward spiral.
"There's a direct connection between Haiti's current problems and the way it was isolated by the rest of the world, particularly the United States," said Douglas Egerton, a history professor at LeMoyne College in upstate Syracuse.
Not only did the 1806 embargo "consciously kill the Haitian economy," Egerton said, it "put an anchor on the democratic ship" by creating such hardship that Haitians lost faith in their new republic.
How Haiti stands
Today, Haiti is a place so poor that its most desperate citizens eat pancakes made of boullion-flavored clay and one in 10 children works as a domestic in conditions that human rights groups liken to slavery. It is a land so lawless that two-thirds of its 45 leaders have been violently ousted.
Nearly half its 8 million people are illiterate, half its children are malnourished and 70 percent of its workers have no steady jobs.
Infrastructure is ravaged, the once lush land is barren of trees and the rate of HIV/AIDS is the highest outside Africa.
"I can't imagine Hell is much worse," said Rexipse Clairismé, a single mother who lives in a Port-au-Prince slum built atop acres of industrial and human waste.
Clairismé's shack in Cité L'Eternel, French for Eternal City, is perched just feet from a river-sized canal of sewage that courses through the slum. Huge pigs slosh through the sewage, snuffling it up. When it rains, the river overflows, disgorging its contents and its wrenching stench into Clairismé's home.
A string of despots has pillaged this country, taking the lead from its former occupiers. But there wasn't much to plunder.
By the time slaves routed the French colonists in 1804 - fending off the Spaniards and British in the process - the coffee and sugar plantations were razed, coffers were empty and professionals had fled. Left with the wreckage was a tiny group of black and mixed-race elites with no governing experience and a mass of illiterate former slaves.
Exacerbating the U.S. trade embargo, France forced Haiti to pay 90 million gold francs in reparations to slave and plantation owners, equal to $21 billion today. It took Haiti nearly a century to pay it off.
Passed by and isolated
The two transforming movements of the 18th century, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, passed Haiti by. The country was further isolated by its language, Haitian Creole, a patois partly based on Norman French that is unintelligible to most Francophones. Creole remains the sole language of 90 percent of Haitians today.
During the 1980s, the AIDS scare killed Haiti's fledgling tourism industry as the outside world accused this country of spreading the epidemic. But health experts say it was tourists, mostly from the United States, Canada and France, who brought AIDS here.
In benevolent moments over the past century, Washington has lavished this country with attention, building desperately needed schools, hospitals and roads. But Washington also has propped up dictators and sent in the Marines three times.
Two interventions involved ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former slum priest who has been ousted twice since becoming this country's first democratically elected leader in 1991. The controversial Aristide was reviled by the elite but worshiped by the poor.
Former President Bill Clinton sent in 20,000 Marines to return Aristide to power in 1994, three years after he was ousted in a coup.
But in the early 2000s, the United States led an international embargo of aid to Haiti as Aristide became mired in allegations of corruption. After Aristide fled in February 2004 aboard a U.S.-chartered jet as rebels marched to the capital of Port-au-Prince, he accused the United States of kidnapping him.
U.S. officials deny that allegation, saying they merely told Aristide that they couldn't guarantee his safety if he stayed. After Aristide boarded the jet, President George W. Bush sent in 3,000 Marines to keep order.
Following both interventions, the United States pulled out the troops and stopped the aid flow far too soon, critics say.
Torn down, not rebuilt
The Marines stayed 19 years after the United States invaded in 1915 to thwart possible German designs on the Panama Canal. But instead of nation building, the occupation became an exercise in subjugation, guerrilla warfare and racism.
After imposing martial law, the Marines created a Haitian gendarmerie that became a bulwark of later dictatorships, installed puppet leaders and dissolved the National Assembly so they could impose a new constitution allowing foreigners to buy Haitian property.
The all-white occupying force referred to Haitians as "nigs" and "coons" and used thousands of them as forced labor, sometimes roping them together so they couldn't flee. When a guerrilla resistance sprang up, U.S. troops executed rebels on the spot or threw them into a forced-labor camp where 5,500 inmates died in three years.
Despite that tortured history, many Haiti experts believe this country desperately needs outside help, particularly from the country that has played the greatest role here - the United States. "Expectations that Haiti will pull itself up by its bootstraps are unrealistic," said Jocelyn McCalla, executive director of the New York-based National Coalition for Haitian Rights. "Haiti has neither the will nor the straps."
Ellie