Haiti's real deal with the devil

[tinrobot]

Pat Robertson thinks that Haiti is poverty stricken (and earthquake-stricken) because the country made a deal with Satan to help them overthrow the French.

Back in May, the Times Online provided some slightly better insight into Haiti's past. Beyond a vague assumption that Imperialism had probably screwed Haiti somehow, I didn't know much about the country's history. Reading this story has been nothing short of nauseating.

Summary: Haiti was forced to pay France for its freedom. When they couldn't afford the ransom, France (and other countries, including the United States) helpfully offered high-interest loans. By 1900, 80% of Haiti's annual budget went to paying off its "reparation" debt. They didn't make the last payment until 1947. Just 10 years later, dictator François Duvalier took over the country and promptly bankrupted it, taking out more high-interest loans to pay for his corrupt lifestyle. The Duvalier family, with the blind-eye financial assistance of Western countries, killed 10s of thousands of Haitians, until the Haitian people overthrew them in 1986. Today, Haiti is still paying off the debt of an oppressive dictator no one would help them get rid of for 30 years.

The rest of the world refuses to forgive this debt.

So, in a way, maybe Robertson is right. Haiti is caught in a deal with the devil, and the devil is us.

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/13/haitis-real-deal-wit.html

[Bucky]

1. Thomas Jefferson helped Napoleon break the Haitian uprising

His reward was a sweetheart deal on Louisiana--the middle third of a resource rich continent. Not a pretty chapter in our history. Thank goodness all our textbooks see fit to skip over that ugliness.

[Toots]

22. The slave rebellion was successful, it was not broken by USA aid.

The reason the USA got the Louisiana Purchase was because France was broke. They needed money in large part because of their heavy expenditures fighting the slave rebellion in Haiti as well as other places in Europe.

[Hippo_Tron]

29. I think the US hedged our bets and aided both sides in that conflict

[Oilwellian]

2. Interesting to see this thread dropping like a lead balloon

Another side to this story...part of the deal Haiti struck with France was a guaranteed European market for their banana industry. Clinton, then IMF VP Larry Summers, and free trade republicans used NAFTA to act on behalf of Chiquita Bananas and destroyed the banana industry throughout the Caribbean, including Haiti. Hundreds of indigenous farmers from these tiny islands committed suicide due to the devastation wrought from these new "free trade" policies.

These historical facts give new meaning to Limbaugh's comments about Haiti today.

[polly7]

7. Geeeeez. :(

[malaise]

17. 100% correct

Clinton screwed all the ACP states with our LOME agreement with Europe - and all for those criminals in Central and South America. The WTO was set up to facilitate transnational corporations and destroy agriculture and manufacturing in developing countries. In the end NAFTA fucked the planet.

[patrice]

26. Aww man!! goddammit!!!

Fuck this piece of shit we call a country, that's just too much.

Can't take too much more of this shit; I've about HAD it . . . .

:-((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( . . . ~

[alfredo]

3. Thanks. I need to bone up on Haitian history so when the racist on my

veterans list start bashing them I will have some ammo to fire back.

[Raster]

4. Kick for shame!

:kick:

[leftstreet]

5. K&R

[polly7]

6. Haiti was the first slave colony to free itself, and what did it get.

So sad. I don't know much about Haiti but that what was done to them by the coup is unforgiveable, Canada played its part as well. Here's an older article I'd remembered reading on the ousting of Aristide. http://www.counterpunch.org/engler03052004.html

[EFerrari]

8. In a nutshell, exactly.

K&R

[ConsAreLiars]

9. Thanks. The talking anuses on TV who specialize in celebrity gossip and script reading

will NEVER tell the truth about how power works its will and the consequences.

[Matariki]

10. excellent post. kick n/t

[dbt]

11. Back to the top, please.

"We have met the devil, and he is us."

[JohnyCanuck]

12. K&R

[smokey nj]

13. Thank you for this.

[dugaresa]

14. I think that Haiti was used as an example of how the colonial powers could screw a little country

if they dared kick out the colonials.

Then they got screwed by their own rulers.

[malaise]

15. Very Important thread

Rec

[redwitch]

16. Time to forgive Haiti's debt.

Beyond a vague assumption that Imperialism had probably screwed Haiti somehow...

Yeah, me too.
Thanks for posting this.

[annabanana]

18. If all our elementary school textbooks weren't vetted by RWers

in Texas, maybe American kids would LEARN some of this stuff!

[NNN0LHI]

20. That isn't just in Texas where the elementary school textbooks are vetted by RWers

I know mine were here in the Midwest.

Don

[annabanana]

21. All US elementary school textbooks seem to come through Texas.

It is yet another national disgrace, courtesy of the BFEE.

[Hippo_Tron]

30. Textbooks are literally vetted by Texas RWers, though

The reason is that Texas is such a big state that textbook publishers won't publish anything that won't be approved for Texas. California has leverage in the other direction but they are flat broke right now and won't be buying a whole lot of new textbooks anytime soon.

[a la izquierda]

19. The Haitian ambassador eloquently noted...

that if not for the Haitian Revolution, the Louisiana Purchase might not have happened so easily and Latin Americans would not have had a pretext for their own Independence movements.
I am talking about this very thing, and will bring up Pat Robertson, that good buddy of murdering psycho Efrain Rios Montt, on Wednesday when my class starts up. My students, many of whom are evangelicals, will hear in no uncertain terms what I think about such abominable speech.

[bullwinkle428]

23. Bastards like Limbaugh are terrified that their minions might hear

the truth behind the history of Haiti...that explains why he was spewing the shit he did yesterday.

[smokey nj]

24. Kick

[sofa king]

25. It was the deforestation that kept them in the hole.

Their debt treadmill prompted Haiti to grant logging concessions to international companies in 1954, who sold the wood back to the Hatians as charcoal. Today, only 2% of Haiti is forested, and almost the entire population still relies upon wood and charcoal for their cooking.

Once they had no forests, soil erosion crapped out highland grazing and croplands, siltified the hydroelectric dams, and so on. Until someone figures out how to grow the forests back, Haiti is doomed to be overpopulated and unsustainable.

[flamingdem]

27. K + R

[Solly Mack]

28. k/r

[winyanstaz]

31. K & R

[Tanelorn]

32. Thanks Pat Robinson

for forcing us to go back to the history books and reread this
very sad chapter. Now open up our wallets and give till it
hurts because it won't be as much pain as our Haitian brothers
and sisters are feeling right now.

[jwirr]

33. Which nations in have been forgiven their debts so far? It is obvious

that debt forgiveness is needed.

[Grinchie]

34. I visited Haiti in 1969.

I was very young, and I still have extremely vivid memories of the utter poverty that the people lived with at the time. I recall hundreds of acres of tidal areas, completely littered with trash, with people wading in the mud along with the discarded tin, rubbish and industrial waste, looking for something to salvage. Later on, we passed a loading dock that had 2 bathtubs up on the platform. The building was gone, and it was just a platform. There was line of about 200 people, half of them naked, waited to take a bath in one of the two bathtubs on the platform.

I had never seen anything like it, and to this day, I still can't believe that their could be such poverty, but I know that it does exist, and will continue to exist.

We then passed the Presidential Palace and everything was immaculate. Two tanks guarded the entrance, and there were soldiers bearing automatic weapons stationed every 50 feet around the perimeter. Our hotel was within 3 blocks of the Palace, and it was definately the upscale district, complete with pool that would make Hawaii look downscale.

The next day, My father, who was fearless by the way, took us to the local market to view the "locals". It was pretty terrifying for a preteen kid, and that's all I want to say about that. I recall a trip into the interior by rental car, and we drove all the way to the border of the Dominican Republic. The Haitian side was all scrub and chaparel, totally deforested, while the Dominican Republic side was rich tropical forest, it was pretty astounding, even to me as a little kid. I recall seeing mostly women, hauling ridiculous loads of sticks, crops and water down the mountainous dirt roads. The volume of the load defied physics, but there they were, hauling a huge load on two feet. I always marvel how they actually loaded themselves up that way.

The end of the road trip was the ruins of some french fort at the top of a hill. It consisted of a deep cistern on top of a hill, and a flat area that was once the interior. All the walls were gone, carted away by the locals to build their own walls.

Ever since that trip, whenever I would see the obliviousness of American's, expecially when they had never travelled out of their own state, I would call them out and tell them about the real world. I lost a lot of so called friends that refused to believe that America would allow a situation like this to exist in the Americas. In fact, a lot of Americans are totally unaware of the rest of the world and their living conditions, and that is America's weakness.

I have actually tackled the problem of living like some of these poor people, and have been amazed how liberating it can be to live ones life taking care of the basic necessities, which is a full time job I might add. I am much stronger for attempting it, but I was able to do it by choice and with foreknowledge, and not forced into it by Social structure which is what the Haitians face, along with countless other societies based on debt.

Americans will be shocked when this reality comes home to roost, and other knowledgeable bloggers here have already pointed that fact out already.