OPINION: Haiti’s True Story Deflates Myth of America as Savior

The Pencil Warrior
By Dave Wheelock

For surviving victims of the great Haitian earthquake of 2010, the struggle continues for the most basic elements of a dignified existence, beginning with water, shelter, food, and living conditions that will support a healthful existence. From around the world, aid continues to pour in from governments and millions of good people who are moved to assist those less fortunate than themselves. But the best gift we could give the people of Haiti is to finally face up to the awful history of the place, including what our own country has perpetrated on behalf of American business interests. Only then will Haiti at long last have a hope of healing herself, and on her own terms.
Not that the United States has been the only agent of misery in Haiti. Fortune seekers acting with the blessings of the governments of Spain, England, and France had plenty to do with the extermination and replacement of the original inhabitants of the once-bountiful island with hundreds of thousands of African innocents kidnapped into slavery. From the landing of Columbus in 1492 until the Haitians’ violent self-liberation at the dawn of the 19th Century; through the endless legacy of debt first placed upon the economy by France and perpetrated by interventionist U.S. policies cloaked in the Monroe Doctrine and the Washington Consensus, Haiti has seen her lands despoiled and her people impoverished. Yet justice could emerge at last if the light of attention brought about by this tragedy brings the American people to reject the imperial tendencies their government has so vigorously denied for over one hundred years, not only in Haiti but throughout Latin America.
The pronouncement of Haiti’s independence in 1804 elicited a response from the United States Senate eerily prophetic of more modern times, when that august body declared Haiti “the greatest threat to U.S. interests at home and abroad.” In 1806 the U.S. even joined a French and Spanish embargo on trade with Haiti in sympathy with French demands for massive compensation from the new republic for the loss of her slave-powered plantations. Terrified by the prospect of American slaves also rising to throw off their bonds, Uncle Sam refused to recognize Haiti’s existence as an independent nation until after the southern states had seceded over fifty years later.
Meanwhile, business interests of the U.S. and other European nations had moved into Haiti and the rest of Latin America, establishing fruit, sugar, and coffee plantations and generally trampling the nation’s sovereign rights, to the point of periodically raiding the national treasury. U.S. gunboats became a fixture in Haitian waters, ready at a moment’s notice to protect U.S. business interests from European rivals or any ideas the locals might get about asserting their own rights. In 1910, the U.S. State Department supported a takeover of Haiti’s national treasury by the National City Bank of New York, known today as Citibank.
And so it’s gone. In 1915 the U.S. Marines invaded Haiti and occupied the country until 1934. Through popular revolts, military coups, and constant pillaging, Haiti has never been far from the thoughts of Washington, whether for the purposes of arming right wing dictators against perceived communist plots or “stabilizing” the population. In the process a tiny, fabulously wealthy ruling elite evolved as Washington’s clients, who delivered – and continue to deliver - what remained of Haiti’s wealth in return for superpower validation. The commonly accepted portrayal in the U.S. of the Haitian people as incapable of self rule adds outrageous insult to injury.
The crowning glory came in 1996, when Haiti was pressured by the International Monetary Fund into implementing a broad program of neoliberal reforms in order to receive economic aid. Under the rubric of “structural adjustment” wages were reduced, import tariffs protecting domestic businesses slashed, and state-owned enterprises sold off to foreign bidders. American crops including rice, subsidized by the U.S. government, were dumped on this new market at the price of the destruction of Haitian farmers, who migrated in droves into substandard (read "earthquake vulnerable") housing in Port-au-Prince. Notably, the Emergency Economic Recovery Plan contained virtually no benefits for the chronically poor of Haiti.
The full scale of offenses against Haiti boggles the mind, yet her uncensored story is required reading for anyone professing to care about her fate. To throw crumbs in charity while ignoring the root causes of poverty is to collaborate in its permanence.
What has happened in Haiti is not a unique phenomenon but a reality that is allowed to flourish wherever myth goes unquestioned. May we all learn to be skeptical of narratives that sound too good to be true. A good place to start is with the United States as noble savior of the world.

Dave Wheelock, a member of the Oneida Nation, is a collegiate sports administrator and coach. His history degree is from the University of New Mexico. Reach him at davewheelock@yahoo.com. Mr. Wheelock's views do not necessarily represent those of the Mountain Mail.

OPINION: Haiti’s True Story Deflates Myth of America as Savior