Haiti is in the throws of a revolution. It is not the first, and it is not even the first time that Aristide has been thrown out. I don’t know very much about Haiti, and so read up some. Here is what I found out.
Haiti is a small island nation, taking up half of the island of Hispaniola. It has about 8 million people in about 37,500 square kilometers. It is a crowded splotch of a country. It is the second largest island in the region and is just windward of Cuba. The other two thirds of the island are taken up by the Dominican Republic, which has fewer people, and is much better off. It is currently home to a large number of Haitian refugees. Hispaniola is where Columbus landed in 1492, and where he founded the first colony in the new world in 1943. The Arawak group of indians which covered the entire region from Venezuela, all the way north to Florida, were the inhabitants of the island, in particular the Taino tribe. They were flourishing at the time, but by 1550 were completely exterminated by the Spanish. It took a little longer to wipe out the rest of the Arawaks, but they managed that as well. What this means for today is that they do not have the native/westerner tension that many latin american countries have. France made some settlements later, and in 1697 Spain ceded the western third of the island to France, which would later become Haiti.
By 1800 Hispaniola was the richest colony in the Americas, and the french revolution provided an opening for the British to seize the French part. This set the stage for the only successful slave revolt in modern times. The French revolution, much like the US revolution was run by property owners who didn’t like kings telling them what to do with their money. But, also like the US the french in Haiti made much of their money off of slaves, both from the trade and the actual labor. This meant that the slave owners tended to side with the revolution in France. The French monarchy then formed an alliance with the rebellious slaves against the bourgeoisie. Jean-Jacques Dessalines won his revolution and declared Haiti, the second freed colony in the new world (after the US) a kingdom in 1803. (Note: this victory over Rochambeau potentially stopped nepolean from taking over the New World Louisiana et. al. from the nascent US.) This set the stage for a very very long string of dictators, because as near as I can tell the difference between a dictator and a monarchy is the inheritance.
The US, France and the UK, all dependent on slave labor were terrified at the concept of a slave rebellion and economically isolated the new country. They were especially scared given that the africans were able to, in a short time and through brilliant strategy, defeat first Spain and England with the french, and then throw off the yolk of the French themselves. Given the large number of people living on the land, and the few landowners, and the lack of outside trade, the feudal system was natural, and for the freed slaves, certainly better than what they had before.
The continual struggle for power and poor economic conditions led to an ever decreasing standard of living in the country. It is now one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere. But that was not all of their woes. By 1900 large American sugar companies had started to move in and push the peasants off of the farms. (After paying the land owners a healthy sum of course.) This caused another rebellion which led to an invasion by the US marines and one of the darkest hours in US military history. The occupation lasted from 1915 to 1934 and basically involved a reintroduction of slave labor in Haiti to build the infrastructure to support the american businesses. The depths of the depravity can be seen in the person of Smedly Butler, a major at the time who wrote eloquently on the idiocy of foreign wars.
I don’t entirely agree that the US armed services has no business leaving the US soil, but I do feel that his comments have particular import in these times.
Skipping ahead a bit, in 1957 François Duvalier was elected president with the backing of the country. “Papa Doc” as he was known, eventually declared himself president for life and became a brutal dictator. Amoung his many negative attributes Duvalier was a nationalist and had no interest in other countries running his affairs. This led the CIA to attempt to assassinate him. Some pressure came on hom to ease up, but at the time they became anti-communists and after Kennedy was killed that was that. He set his son up to become president after his death in 1971. Baby Doc was nowhere near as much a nationalist as his father and let the US dictate a number of demands when he took power in the 70s. When continued mismanagement and an ever more oppressive and powerful military led to yet another rebellion in 1986, the US helped Baby Doc flee the country.
At this point there were two military forces, the Army, and the Ton Ton Macoutes. The Macoutes were formed by Papa Doc because he was (rightfully!) scared of attempts to overthrow him. The Macoutes were his personal guard and particularly brutal. The army allowed a period of chaos in which the Macoutes were destroyed by the people, and with the only counter to their power gone, took over. For the next few years, the military tended to side with the US while the remaining Macoutes were more nationalist (having been founded on that premise by Papa Doc). A few formented revolutions later by 1990 the US was able to compel the Haitian government to have elections. This was unheard of, and a group of peasants found a leader from the Catholic Church who was a populist nationalist, Aristide, who won the election by a landslide. Ah, well, a populist priest would never want to become a dictator right??! Find out next time, on, what happened to the dream? The next installment of what happens when something happens in a place in the world that Josh doesn’t know anything about.