Why Haiti is the way it is.

Haiti's condition as a nation started with French colonialism in the 18th century, during which the native populace was exterminated and replaced entirely by slaves. At the end of the 18th century, a 13 year long slave rebellion overthew the slave-masters, followed by the opportunistic armies of Spain and Britain who were looking to exploit Haiti during the rebellion, and finally Napoleon's own army. To this day, Haiti is still the only successul slave revolt in history.

Once the slaves of Haiti won their freedom through war and revolution, the U.S. and European powers still refused to recognize Haiti's independence as a nation, and made that known by imposing embargoes and blockades. The distaste for a liberated Haiti was likely rooted in the belief that supporting the newly freed country would send the wrong message to their own slaves: if you fight, you could be free. Those embargoes crippled Haiti's ability to bounce back from the devastation wrought by warring with 3 nations trying to maintain them as a slave-state. The French-led embargo continued until almost 1830, when it was dissolved only under the condition that Haiti reimburse France for the loss of their property: their slaves. The value was set at 150 million francs, close to the annual budget of France at the time. Due to this unjust debt being forced on Haiti, the country was plunged even further into poverty, so much so that 80% of Haiti's national budget went towards debt payments.

When the U.S. decided to flex its might in the western hemisphere, one of the ways they showed it was by sending in the Marines in 1915 to plunder and occupy Haiti. The Marines went straight to the Haiti national bank and took all their gold reserves, moving them to U.S. soil. After we stole their gold, we forced them to rewrite their constitution, allowing for the occupation, foreign ownership of Haitian land, and numerous other changes designed only to benefit us. The Haitians resisted this occupation through a series of revolts, each of which was crushed by the U.S. military by murdering revolt leaders, razing entire villages, and killing somewhere between 20-30,000 Haitians. Then, in the early 1930s, we abandoned our occupation of Haiti, leaving in power the brutal, U.S.-trained Haitian National Army to oppress and control the former slave populace.

In the late '50s Papa Doc Duvalier came to power through a fraudulent election and brought in his own army of thugs, the Tontons Macoutes. Duvalier's tyranny killed roughly 50,000 Haitians, and guess who supported his rule? That's right, the U.S. government. When Papa Doc Duvalier died, the U.S. stationed warships off the coast of Haiti as a display of force to insure a smooth transition of power to Papa Doc's son, Jean-Francois. Jean-Francois Duvalier was closely associated with and supported the U.S. "American Plan," which explicitly aimed to drive people into shantytowns and get them to work in assembly plants set up by the U.S.

Jean-Francois continued his reign until the mid 1980s when a series of uprisings forced the U.S. to extract him and give him sanctuary in France, so that we could keep control of the country through the U.S.-trained Haitian National Army and a series of military juntas. In 1991 a priest and member of the anti-Duvalier movement by the name of Jean Aristide was elected as president. This new president didn't make any noise about completely severing the power connections of the United States, but he made it known through fierce policy debate that he wasn't going to bend to the will of the U.S. government nor the local ruling class elite that supported U.S. policy. After less than a year in office, the CIA worked with the Haitian military to stage a coup and eliminate Aristide's support structure. This was done through repression by military soldiers and Duvalier's Macoutes. Thousands of Aristide's supporters were slaughtered, hundreds of thousands went into hiding and almost another hundred thousand fled the country.

All this intervention still didn't give the U.S. government what it wanted, so a few years later the U.S. returned Aristide to power, along with 20,000 U.S. troops to protect the paramilitary squads that had been put in place during Aristide's exile, and to train them again with even harsher techniques of oppression. The 20,000 U.S. troops stayed for a year, leaving only when Aristide agreed to the Governor's Island accords, which stated that he must stop resisting U.S. plans for Haiti. He stayed true to his agreement for the most part, but kept fighting for any concessions he could, which the U.S. grew tired of, and in 2004 another coup was organized by the CIA and the International Republican Institute--Aristide and his family were kidnapped and put on a plane for the Central African Republic. Within a few days U.S. soldiers once again patrolled the capital of Haiti and before long a new government was created, complete with new attacks on the people of Haiti, many of which were perpetrated by U.S. forces. A few short months after that the U.S. troops were replaced with U.N. soldiers, mainly Brazilians, who have been critized by human rights groups for summary executions. From 2004 until the recent earthquake, there has been no change in Haiti's structure of government or oppression of its people.