The Wrong Half of the Island

Current news reports of the destruction and havoc in the area around Haiti’s capital city, Port-au-Price, will undoubtedly continue in great detail for some time, but it also helps to know about the source of the poverty and hopelessness that makes rebuilding extraordinarily difficult. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island – Hispaniola – but their economies bear little resemblance to each other.

Island history didn’t start out that way. There were five indigenous tribes when Columbus’ ships ranged into the region in 1492, but soon Spanish conquerors viciously wrested control of the island (the “gateway to the Caribbean”) from the locals, and mined gold from the hills, filling their galleons with New World riches. Local Native Americans who refused to work in the mines were pressed into an even more horrible form of slavery, and the diseases brought by the Spaniards decimated what was left of these indigenous tribes.

By the early 1500s, the Spaniards were importing large numbers of slaves from Africa to work the mines and till the fields on this island. Some of the surviving Indians intermarried with escaped African slaves, and strange new racial combinations blossomed. Children of white settlers and African slaves increased the racial mix. But the island certainly was born under a dark sky.

Most of us think of Hispaniola as a pirate haven; the western part of the island did in fact become home to a number of pirates, the majority in this area being ethnically French (think: Jean Lafitte). From the mid-1600s until well into the 1700s, this was truly pirate country, with most of the population disavowing any allegiance to Spain.

Needless to say, the Spaniards were none too happy with this division of loyalties, but in 1697, the French and the Spanish agreed (the Treaty of Ryswick) to split the island in half, a reality which continues culturally and linguistically to divide that island to the present day. The French succeeded to the western half, then known as Saint-Domingue which is present day Haiti, and the Spaniards accepted the eastern part, which is today the Dominican Republic (although the exact borders were set during the American occupation many years later).

In terms of both wealth and cruelty, western Hispaniola was in its golden era: “By about 1790, Saint-Domingue had… quickly became the richest French colony in the New World due to the immense profits from the sugar, coffee and indigo industries. This outcome was made possible by the labor and knowledge of thousands of enslaved Africans who brought to the island skills and technology for indigo production. The French-enacted Code Noir (Black Code), prepared by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and ratified by Louis XIV, established rigid rules on slave treatment and permissible freedom. Saint-Domingue has been described as one of the most brutally efficient slave colonies; one-third of newly imported Africans died within a few years.” Wikipedia.

Inspired by the French Revolution, the slaves began an open revolt against French rule in 1791. Weaving through a series of complex alliances – and the young United States played both sides of the street – made even more difficult by a war between England and France… Haiti settled into relative stability and autonomy until Napoleon Bonaparte decided to send 20,000 troops to retake the island. The war escalated from there. After years of brutal fighting and having lost 50,000 soldiers and 18 generals to war and the decimation of yellow fever, Napoleon let go of the island. The toll among the locals was even worse, an estimated 100,000 blacks and 24,000 (out of 40,000) of the white colonists perished. But Haiti achieved independence in 1804 and was the first country in the New World to abolish slavery.

The French efforts to retake control did not die with independence. “In July 1825, King Charles X of France sent a fleet of fourteen vessels and thousands of troops to reconquer the island. Under pressure, [the Haitian President] agreed to a treaty by which France formally recognized the independence of the nation in exchange for a payment of 150 million francs (the sum was reduced in 1838 to 90 million francs) – an indemnity for profits lost from the slave trade.” Wikipedia. The U.S. supported this killing financial burden imposed on this tiny island as a message to its own slaves against the thought of rebelling. Our hands were most dirty.

Foreign governments frequently sent troops supporting differing factions on the island; the local Haitian banks were often looted by these intruders who created reasons why they or their nationals were entitled to payments by the local government. Political instability was the rule – in its 200 year history, Haiti has experienced 32 coups, the most recent in 2004! By 1915, Haiti was occupied by the United States, which ruled this nation until 1934, an occupation that only served to sap the strength of a nation rapidly running out of resources that had been plundered over the centuries by the European powers. Wikipedia: “Scholars agree that Haiti was in much better shape after the occupation than before, but some accuse the US of establishing a ‘shaky’ foundation that left the country with a doomed financial structure. This was due to a 1922 $40 million loan owed to the US as well as the country's national treasury and to the Banque Nationale owned by a New York bank. The result was a financial system that siphoned the country's wealth to offshore creditors instead of reinvesting it in the country’s economy.”

From 1957 until 1986, Haiti was governed under the brutal and exploitative dictatorships of “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son, known as “Baby Doc.” Educated professionals fled the country; infrastructure was virtually completely neglected as Haiti was government primarily for the economic benefit of the Duvaliers. What little economic value that had remained in Haiti prior to 1957 was gone by the time the Duvalier regime ended. Baby Doc found exile in France as protests mounted. In 1987 a Constitution was instituted, but a bloody confrontation killed the first election. Suspicious of outsiders by this time, Haitian law forbade the ownership of land by foreigners, a practice that likewise discouraged much-needed foreign investment in this now profoundly impoverished nation.

The U.S. mounted a massive food aid program to Haiti in the 1980s, but the result was to make farming in Haiti uneconomic; local farmers gave up trying to complete with free food. Farms languished and were abandoned, eroded in the bad weather, and eventually, most of the farmland was no longer able to support agriculture (even before the big quake, Haiti imported 80% of its food). When the food aid from the United States began to ebb, Haitians were forced to buy food, increasing in cost as the Haitian consumers were losing buying power in the international market.

Forests were cut down for the wood, to make charcoal and build ramshackle slums in the hills above Port-au-Prince. Building codes are virtually non-existent, and because the western side of Hispaniola faces the area where hurricanes come from, Haiti’s side of the island has been virtually stripped by the rage of these storms, which have increased in intensity as global climate changes has impacted the region. An HIV epidemic added another inconceivable burden to this nation, now stripped of resources and what little dignity it had left.

The United States has had, at best, a mixed relationship with Haiti, most recently exercising its political influence in the 2004 coup. Haitians have always been suspicious that their political strings are in fact being pulled from Washington, D.C. In some significant part, we in the United States contributed to their state of extreme poverty – the worst in the Western Hemisphere – as you can see from our checkered involvement over time. As this struggling nation now faces the tremendous economic cost of this series of devastating earthquakes, America has a major moral reason why we really need to help these people restore vitality and a livelihood that has been dead for decades. The big quake was a horrible reminder of the scope and breadth of our obligation.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I thought you might want to know why things are so bad in Haiti.