The last few days the media has been reporting on riots in Port au Prince, capital of the island Republic of Haiti, first Republic in the world founded and administered by its black native population in January 1804. The slogan of the French Revolutionary government, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity was extended to the former slave colony. In passing, we should give credit to France for recognizing what today is called “a young democracy,” since before the Revolution, it had been a bigger source of income for its French owners than all thirteen North American colonies had been for Britain.
There had been some initial resistance at losing so much income and property, and the French had joined with the British and Spanish to put down the slave rebellion. However, in 1791, Toussaint Louverture, its political leader and military general, defeated these three imperial armies, causing over 50,000 casualties. The British left the island, the Spanish moved to the other half, Santo Domingo, and the French revolutionary government sent two representatives to welcome Toussaint, together with the people of Haiti, as free and equal brothers.
So why is everyone starving today? Why is the President holed up in his palace while his hungry people are trying to storm it––just like the French people stormed Versailles in 1789. Why are UN troops firing “rubber bullets” and tear gas bombs at the crowd? Why is the crowd throwing stones at the UN tanks?
One reason is that the price of a small bag of rice is now over 7 U.S. dollars, more than the average Haitian wage earner makes in a week, that is, if any Haitian is a wage earner these days, and the UN peacekeeping soldier makes from fifty to sixty dollars a day.
This information is known, and the UN soldiers are the only ones the Haitians can even get within spitting distance of. But in a broader sense, on an island as rich in natural resources as Haiti, what happened to the small farms and the pigs and chickens and rice that should have prevented stark hunger? We might even think that a rich agricultural country, independent for the last 200 years, might by now be rich, but if not rich, not starving. The first reason for this poverty is based on the usual equation that poverty=no money.
To remain solvent, independent Haiti needed to retain its economic trade with Europe, specifically with France, which had been its only outlet as a colony. But France soon retreated from its democratic embrace of all mankind, and even before Napoleon had taken over, was having second thoughts about Toussaint Louverture’s Haiti.
Like Iraq today, Haiti was wrestling with civil war, and in the long run, re-establishing a slave economy there would have been convenient. However––and this has been an immovable foundation stone of Haiti since it won its war against the combined European powers––NEVER AGAIN SLAVERY! So slavery was not an option.
Ten years after Waterloo, a re-established French monarchy agreed to start up trade and diplomatic relations with Haiti, but Haiti had to agree to pay France compensation. After all, slaves had been property, worth good money, and their loss must be reimbursed, plus France must be given a substantial discount on all commercial transactions. 150 million francs was considered fair. A nice amount even today, but in 1825 it was colossal. Where was a country ravaged by war and governed by people who had never been paid a cent prior to 1804, to get 150 million francs––except from the French banks?
The Haitians began by borrowing 24 million from private French banks, plus appropriate interest, and right away 80% of Haiti’s budget went to pay it off every year. Even France realized it would never get the whole 150, so cut the debt down to 90 million, and therefore Haiti was able to pay off this debt––after over 100 years: 1825 to 1947!
To quote one historian: “Haitians have thus had to pay their original oppressors three times over––through the slaves’ initial labor, through compensation for the French loss of this labor, and then in interest on the payment of the compensation.” Repeat: Haiti remained a poor country. Toussaint Louverture, who had led the Haitians to victory, was kidnapped by the French when he agreed to meet the French commander on his flagship, The Hero.
Legend has it that while negotiations were taking place in the cabin, the ship weighed anchor and sailed with Toussaint back to France, where he was imprisoned in the Fort de Joux, in the mountains near the Swiss border. He died there of pneumonia on April 7, 1803.
I visited the Fort de Joux in April when it was cold enough; I can imagine it was chosen deliberately to do away with a man used to a Caribbean climate. Since I am writing for readers used to the concept of occupation, I will summarize with a partial list of the occupying forces that have invaded Haiti in the last century. The U.S. marines invaded during the term of the Democratic U.S. president, Woodrow Wilson and stayed for almost 20 years (hello Iraq!): 1916-1924.
Another interesting parallel is that, at that time, the American military instituted what is today called a “structural adjustment.” One clause allowed foreigners to own property, on which they immediately built plantations and shipped the produce home. The United States took over the National Bank. For space reasons, I’ll skip over Papa Doc and son, a dynasty in power from 1957-86, backed by the U.S. and remembered for his “Voodoo politics” and his private army of Tonton Macoutes, sinister thugs with sunglasses.
Fast forward to 2000 when courtesy of structural adjustment and the International Monetary Fund was turned loose on Haiti: the watchwords became privatization and cash crops to stock the supermarkets of North America. IMF cut the tariff on rice from 50% to 3%, to create a market for American “subsidized” grain and rice.
By 2002, Haiti was importing 220,000 tons of rice a year, where it used to be self-sufficient. In 2008 (repeat), rice is 7 dollars a bag (small). The same fate struck the chickens and the pigs! The Haitian pigs were executed “en masse” in 1982 because the Americans were afraid they all had swine fever, and American pigs from Iowa were sent to Haiti to replace them.
The U.S. pigs “required living conditions,” writes Peter Hallward, Haiti analyst, “rather better than those enjoyed by most of the island’s human population.” To conclude: the Clinton administration, in the final months of its mandate in 2000, put an embargo on all foreign aid to Haiti because it disagreed with the election of Jean Bertrand Aristide as president (hello Hamas!). It also blocked an agreed-on loan of 145 million dollars .
The Bush government sent over a thousand Haitian and Haitian-American convicts from U.S. prisons back to the island, to help out the U.S.-trained paramilitary forces. Aristide cooked his own goose with France, so to speak, by asking for repayment of the 90 million francs plus 5 percent interest extorted from Haiti on its independence in 1804 (see above). Today’s equivalent is about 21 billion dollars (since this money was paid to France in hard cash, it is fully documented by French banks).
Aristide and his Lavalas Party government went on to accumulate such unpopular positions with the international community that eventually the UN Security council sent in one of its Multinational Interim Forces in 2004 to invade Haiti, and three months later a Stabilization Force. Then its henchmen kidnapped Aristide and sent him off to a foreign country (like Toussaint Louverture 200 years earlier). The Stabilization Force, 8300 men strong, was under the leadership of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s Brazilian “left wing” government (hello Napoleon!) bolstered by men from Nepal, Angola, Benin and Pakistan.
“We will stay until democracy is restored,” said the UN Chilean ambassador when Chile joined the initial invasion along with the U.S., France, and Canada.
So, is today’s outbreak of the Haitian people a sign of restored democracy? And if so, when are they going to restore the Haitian rice paddies, and the chickens, and the pigs?