Most countries fail to deliver on Haiti aid pledges

[Papa_Complex]

You left out Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier, the raping of the nations resources, and the Tonton Macoutes.

[pauldun170]

Troubled history: Haiti and US


By Vanessa Buschschluter
BBC News, Washington

When US President Barack Obama announced that one of the biggest relief efforts in US history would be heading for Haiti, he highlighted the close ties between the two nations.

"With just a few hundred miles of ocean between us and a long history that binds us together, Haitians are our neighbours in the Americas and here at home," he said.

Hundreds of thousands of Haitians have indeed become neighbours of Americans.

Some 420,000 live in the US legally, according to census figures. Estimates of the number of Haitians in the country illegally vary wildly, from some 30,000 to 125,000.

It is a sizeable diaspora which wants to see quick and decisive action from its adopted homeland.

Desperate to see aid getting through to friends and relatives, many expatriate Haitians have welcomed President Obama's decision to send up to 10,000 troops to help rescue efforts.

Historically though, US military deployments to Haiti have been controversial to say the least, and ties have often suffered.

Shared history

Both countries were born out of a struggle against European colonisers.

The US declared independence from Britain in 1776 - the first to do so in the Western Hemisphere - followed by Haiti, which broke away from France in 1804.


“ Haiti is a public nuisance at our door ”
Alvey A Adee, US Assistant Secretary of State 1886-1924
But there the similarities end. While the American War of Independence was driven by a white elite unwilling to - among other things - continue paying taxes to its colonial masters, the Haitian revolution was led by a freed slave, Toussaint Louverture.

The existence of a nation of freed slaves to the south became an inspiration for slaves in the US, and a thorn in the side of many Southerners who relied on slavery for their economy.

The animosity of some of the Southern states towards Haiti soured relations between the two nations for decades and played a big part in delaying its official recognition by the US until 1862, 58 years after its independence.

But Haiti's geographical proximity to the US and its strategic location in the Caribbean sparked the interest of American administrations.

Strategic interest

In the 19th Century, it was eyed as the location for a potential naval base.


US leaders also feared foreign occupation of the island at a time when European powers were trying to expand their sphere of influence.

In 1868, President Andrew Johnson suggested the annexation of the whole island of Hispaniola - present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic - to secure a US presence in the Caribbean.

His suggestion was not followed, but American warships were active in Haitian waters 17 times between 1862 - when the US finally recognised Haiti's independence - and 1915, when it occupied the country.

Assistant Secretary of State Alvey Adee summed up the US view of Haiti in 1888 when he called it "a public nuisance at our door".

Tumultuous history

In the following decades, Haiti would only become more of a headache to its big neighbour.

Between 1888 and 1915, no Haitian president completed his seven-year term.

Ten were killed or overthrown, including seven in the four years to the US invasion of 1915. Only one died of natural causes.

In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson took control of the Haitian National Bank by sending in marines, who removed $500,000 of its reserves "for safe-keeping" in New York.

The assassination of the Haitian president a year later finally prompted President Wilson to invade Haiti with the aim of protecting US assets and preventing the further strengthening of German influence in the region.

After failing to make the new Haitian legislature adopt a constitution which would allow foreign land ownership, the Wilson administration forced the legislature to dissolve in 1917. It would not meet again until 1929.

The US finally withdrew from Haiti in 1934 as part of President Franklin Roosevelt's "Good Neighbour Policy", which stressed co-operation and trade over military force to maintain stability in the Americas.

Duvalier era

Many Haitians fled to the US during the political repression under Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

At first, the US government welcomed the refugees, but as the numbers swelled and boatloads of Haitians arrived on the South Florida coast in the 1970s and 1980s, this attitude changed to a policy of intercepting boats at sea and returning those on board to Haiti.

After decades dominated by dictatorships and coups, democracy was restored in 1990 when Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected in a popular vote.

The ousting of President Aristide by a military regime in 1991 led to a new wave of Haitians headed for the US.

Military deployments

Faced with increasing chaos just south of its shores and an ever-growing stream of refugees arriving on - and often sinking off - Florida's shores, President Bill Clinton sent a US-led intervention force to Haiti in 1994.


A last-minute deal brokered by former President Jimmy Carter allowed the troops to go ashore unopposed by the Haitian military and police.

Constitutional government was restored and Mr Aristide returned to power.

US troops left after two years - too soon, some experts argue, to ensure the stability of Haiti's democratic institutions.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide stayed in power until 1996, and was re-elected in 2000.

While he enjoyed the support of the Clinton administration during his first term of office, allegations of corruption and links to the drugs trade during President Aristide's second term made for a rocky relationship with Washington.

After an uprising against President Aristide in 2004, US forces returned to Haiti, this time to airlift him out of the country.

Mr Aristide accused the US of forcing him out - an accusation the US rejected as "absurd".

With the crisis averted, US interest in Haiti lessened. A UN-led mission took over from US troops in June 2004 and continues to be present there.

'American leadership'

The election of President Obama and the nomination of Bill Clinton to the post of UN envoy to Haiti, combined with a period of relative political stability, led to a strengthening of US-Haitian ties.


Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who spent their honeymoon in Haiti, have long taken an interest in the country.

President Obama has enlisted their help, alongside that of former President George W Bush, to help drive fundraising for Haiti.

Speaking on Thursday, President Obama said that this was "one of those moments that calls out for American leadership".

This US intervention, he stressed, would be "for the sake of our common humanity".

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...as/8460185.stm

[Smittie61984]

Originally Posted by Papa_Complex

The Dominican Republic is more prosperous and uses different construction methods. Where Haiti has been virtually denuded of trees, the DR has forestry. For all intents and purposes there were no wooden buildings in Haiti; all concrete.

Cool deal. It just seemed odd that Haiti got so much help while I don't ever recall hearing the DR being mentioned once on the news cycles. It kind of reminded me of Katrina and you didn't hear much of anything about Mississippi or shitville despite they got hit pretty damn hard (if not harder) than Louisiana

But between reading the histories of Haiti and seeing that the Dominican Republic seems to have their shit together. It would seem logical to put the Dominican and Haiti together and let the Dominican run them and see how they work out.

[Homeslice]

Originally Posted by Smittie61984

But between reading the histories of Haiti and seeing that the Dominican Republic seems to have their shit together. It would seem logical to put the Dominican and Haiti together and let the Dominican run them and see how they work out.

The Dominicans are too busy running 900 lines and other misc. phone/web scams.

[EpyonXero]

Originally Posted by Mudpuppy

Haiti---a SHORT HISTORY................

In the 1700’s what is now Haiti was called the “Jewel of the Caribbean,” and supplied about 40% of the world’s sugar.

In 1791 the government of France passed legislation to phase out slavery in its Caribbean colonies and grant the former Negro slaves citizenship. Rather than becoming citizens, Haiti’s Negro population mass murdered all whites and Mulattoes who could not flee the Island in time. In 1804 only full blooded Negros remained and Haiti became the first Negro ruled nation. The Haitian revolution dominated America’s debate over slavery. While both the north and the south agreed that slavery should be ended, southerners and a large percentage of northerners universally opposed having a large population of freed slaves living in their midst.. The Haitian “Revolution” was fresh in every one’s mind.

I guess the slaves in Haiti should have waited patiently for the French to hand them freedom.

[Mudpuppy]

Originally Posted by EpyonXero

I guess the slaves in Haiti should have waited patiently for the French to hand them freedom.

I apologize that I posted something above your 4th grade reading comprehension level that required some thought to understand.

The real point here is you can't help those who can't help themselves. And Haiti has over and over again demonstrated they cannot help themselves.

[pauldun170]

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/DIASPORA/HAITI.HTM

The year is 1791. The United States is in its first years as the first republic in the western hemisphers. Europe is in disarray as the French Revolution burns across the face of France. The revolutionaries in France are getting ready to draft the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which will declare rights, liberty, and equality to the basis of all legitimate government and social systems. On the French island of Haiti, far from anybody's eyes, French planters, craftsmen, soldiers, and administrators are all closely watching the events unfold across the Atlantic. It's an uncertain time; the results of the revolution are up in the air and loyalties are deeply divided. While they watch the events in France, however, the planters are unaware that a revolution is brewing beneath their very feet. For the French plantations on Haiti offers some of the most cruel conditions that African-American slaves ever had to suffer. They differ from North American plantations in one key element: the coffee and sugar plantations require vast amounts of labor. As a result, the slave population outnumbers the French by terrifying amounts; the slaves, also, by their sheer numbers are allowed to retain much of their culture and to establish more or less independent social systems. But the French, even with the example of the American and French revolutions, are blissfully unaware of the fire they're sitting on.

On August 22, 1791, the Haitian war of independence began in flames under the leadership of a religious leader named Boukman; over one hundred thousand slaves rose up against the vastly outnumbered and infinitely hated French. Unlike the French Revolution and the American Revolution, the Haitian revolution was entirely driven by the passions of men and women who had been enslaved most if not all of their lives. They didn't simply desire liberty, they wanted vengeance. Over the next three weeks, the Haitian slaves burned every plantation throughout the fertile regions of Haiti and executed all Frenchmen they could find. The French fled to the seacoast towns and pleaded with France to help them out while the island burned.


Toussaint


The great hero of the Haitian Revolution and a man considered one of the great revolutionaries and generals in his own time throughout America and Europe, was François Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture. This man, whom all his European contemporaries compared to George Washington and later to Napolean Bonaparte, was not even part of the original revolution. When the war of independence broke out in August, Toussaint was fifty years old. Having spent his life in slavery, he was entering old age as a carriage driver. Like so many other slaves, though, the revolution fired his passion and he discovered within himself a greatness that fired the imagination of both his contemporaries and distant Europeans.

He didn't participate in the burning of the plantations or the executions of the slaveowners, but he rose to his own when he realized that the revolution could not hold unless the slaves became militarily and politically organized to resist outside pressures. His first move when he joined the revolution was to train a small military group. He then realized that the Haitian slaves, who now occupied the eastern 2/3 of Haiti (what is now the Dominican Republic), were caught between three contending European forces, all of whom wanted Haiti for themselves. The French, of course, wanted Haiti back. The Spanish and English saw the revolution as an opportunity for seizing Haiti for themselves. Toussaint's great genius was to achieve what he wanted for the slaves by playing each of these powers off of each other, for they all realized that the slaves were the key to gaining Haiti. In the end, Toussaint allied his forces with the French, and Haiti remained part of France under the consulship of Toussaint.

Toussaint by all accounts was a brilliant and charismatic statesman and leader. Although Haiti was nominally under the contol of France, in reality the Haitian Consul ran the island as a military dictator. Despite the fiery vengeance that animated the beginning of the revolution, Toussaint managed to maintain a certain level of racial harmony&emdash;in fact, he was as well-loved by the French on Haiti as he was by the freed slaves. His reign, however, came to an end with the rise of Napolean Bonaparte in France. Aside from the fact that Bonaparte did not like sharing power, he was also a deep-seated racist who was full of contempt for blacks. Napolean sent General Victor Leclerc with over twenty thousand soldiers to unseat Toussaint, who then waged guerilla warfare against the French. Eventually he made peace with the French and retired from public life in 1802 on his own plantation. In 1803, the French tricked him into a meeting where he was arrested and sent to France. He died in prison in April of 1803.


Dessalines


With the death of Toussaint, the revolution was carried on by Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Unlike Toussaint, he was angry over his treatment as a slave and was determined not to allow its return. The war fought between Leclerc and Dessalines was, on both sides, one of the most horrifying struggles in history. Both resorted to atrocities. Leclerc was desperate, for his men were dying of yellow fever and the guerilla attacks took a surprising toll. So he decided to simply execute blacks whenever and wherever he found them. The slaughter that he perpetrated on non-combatants would not really be equalled until World War II; Leclerc's successor, Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau, simply continued this policy. Dessalines responded that every atrocity committed by the French would be revisited on the French. Such was how the war was waged. As the fighting wore on, Dessalines ordered the summary execution of all Europeans that opposed the new revolutionary government. During this time, Napolean's government did little to help the harried French troops.

Finally, on November 28, 1803, Rochambeau surrendered and Dessalines declared Haiti to be a republic. He took the French three-colored flag and removed the white from the flag to produce the bi-colored flag of Haiti, the second republic of the Western hemisphere.

The response in North America was immediate. The Haitian Revolution suddenly changed the equation that had been operating in the North. Believing themselves to be kind and paternal and the slaves to be child-like and grateful, white slaveowners suddenly became aware of the tinderbox that they were sitting on. Although slaveowners would publicly declare that slaves were, in fact, happy being slaves, in reality they knew otherwise. All throughout the southern United States, white slaveowners began to build "slave shelters" to hide in should the slaves revolt. Many of them regularly occupied these shelters whenever they feared a slave revolt. Guns became bedside companions and fear became the rule of the day.

[pauldun170]

1806: US Places Embargo on Trade with Haiti
Edit event

Fearful that the Haitian revolution might inspire enslaved Africans in other parts of the world to rebel, US Congress bans trade with Haiti joining French and Spanish boycotts. The embargoes cripple Haiti’s economy, already weakened by 12 years of civil war. The embargo will be renewed in 1807 and 1809. [Dunkel, 1994] The embargo is accompanied by a threat of recolonization and re-enslavement if Haiti fails to compensate France for losses incurred when French plantation owners lost access to Haiti’s slave labor.

[pauldun170]

Causes

Between 1911 and 1915, a series of political assassinations and forced exiles saw the presidency of Haiti change six times.[1] Various revolutionary armies carried out this series of coups. Each was formed by cacos, or peasant brigands from the mountains of the north, along the porous Dominican border, who were enlisted by rival political factions under the promises of money, which would be paid after a successful revolution, and the opportunity to plunder.

The United States was particularly apprehensive about the role the small German community in Haiti, which numbered approximately 200 in 1910, played, wielding a disproportionately high amount of economic power.[2] German nationals controlled about 80 percent of the country's international commerce, owned and operated utilities in Cap Haitien and Port-au-Prince, the main wharf and a tramway in the capital, and owned a railroad serving the Plaine de Cul-du-Sac.[3]

The German community proved more willing to integrate into Haitian society than any other group of white foreigners, including the more numerous French. Some Germans married into the nation's most prominent mulatto families, thus bypassing the constitutional prohibition against foreign land-ownership. They also served as the principal financiers of the nation's innumerable revolutions, floating loans at high interest rates to competing political factions.[4]

In an effort to limit German influence, in 1910-11 the State Department backed a consortium of American investors, assembled by the National City Bank of New York, in acquiring control of the Banque National d'Haïti, the nation's only commercial bank and the government treasury.[5]

In February 1915, Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam established a dictatorship, but in July, facing a new revolt, he massacred 167 political prisoners, all of whom were from elite families. Sam was then lynched by a mob in Port-au-Prince.[6]

It is alleged that a popular uprising against Sam threatened American business interests in the country (such as HASCO). Because of these competing interests and the possibility of the cacos-supported anti-American Rosalvo Bobo emerging as the next President of Haiti, the American government decided to act quickly to preserve their economic dominance over Haiti.[7]

July 18, 1915: US Sends Troops to Haiti
Edit event

US President Woodrow Wilson sends US forces to Haiti in an attempt to prevent Germany or France from taking it over. Haiti controls the Windward Passage to the Panama Canal and is seen as strategically critical. The Haitian government is near insolvency at this time and is significantly in debt to foreign corporations. German companies control almost 80 percent of Haitian trade. US forces will occupy the country until 1934. [Rogozinski, 1992, pp. 238-239] A few weeks later, the US State Department installs Senator Philippe Sudre Dartiguenave as the head of state. “When the National Assembly met, the Marines stood in the aisles with their bayonets until the man selected by the American Minister was made President,” Smedley Butler, a Marine who will administer Haiti’s local police force, later writes.

[pauldun170]

Occupation of Haiti (1915-34)

Due to civil disturbances and lack of a stable friendly government, the United States occupied and ruled Haiti by means of a military government between 1915 and 1934. During the occupation, a number of infrastructure development projects were accomplished that made real material improvements to the country and the people. These included road and bridge building, disease control, establishment of schools, and the development of a communications infrastructure. The status of Port-au-Prince as the major city and trading center in today's Haiti is largely the result of the changes made during the occupation. However, despite the material improvements and good intentions of the U.S. military occupation forces, resentment of the foreign occupation led to protests and several notorious episodes in which scores of Haitian civilians were killed by the US Army and/or Marines. Among some of the population there is still resentment against the U.S. for the severity (and occasional brutality) of the former occupational forces. When the final U.S. service members left in 1934, a Haitian military elite was left in charge which reverted to the typical dictatorial style characterizing Haitian government since colonial times.

General Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, who had helped to bring Leconte to power, took the oath of office in March 1915. Like every other Haitian president of the period, he faced active rebellion to his rule. His leading opponent, Rosalvo Bobo, reputedly hostile toward the United States, represented to Washington a barrier to expanded commercial and strategic ties. A pretext for intervention came on July 27, 1915, when Guillaume Sam executed 167 political prisoners. Popular outrage provoked mob violence in the streets of Port-au-Prince. A throng of incensed citizens sought out Guillaume Sam at his sanctuary in the French embassy and literally tore him to pieces. The spectacle of an exultant rabble parading through the streets of the capital bearing the dismembered corpse of their former president shocked decision makers in the United States and spurred them to swift action. The first sailors and marines landed in Port-au-Prince on July 28. Within six weeks, representatives from the United States controlled Haitian customs houses and administrative institutions. For the next nineteen years, Haiti's powerful neighbor to the north guided and governed the country.

Representatives from the United States wielded veto power over all governmental decisions in Haiti, and Marine Corps commanders served as administrators in the provinces. Local institutions, however, continued to be run by Haitians, as was required under policies put in place during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. In line with these policies, Admiral William Caperton, the initial commander of United States forces, instructed Bobo to refrain from offering himself to the legislature as a presidential candidate. Philippe Sudre Dartiguenave, the mulatto president of the Senate, agreed to accept the presidency of Haiti after several other candidates had refused on principle.

With a figurehead installed in the National Palace and other institutions maintained in form if not in function, Caperton declared martial law, a condition that persisted until 1929. A treaty passed by the Haitian legislature in November 1915 granted further authority to the United States. The treaty allowed Washington to assume complete control of Haiti's finances, and it gave the United States sole authority over the appointment of advisers and receivers. The treaty also gave the United States responsibility for establishing and running public-health and public-works programs and for supervising routine governmental affairs. The treaty also established the Gendarmerie d'Haïti (Haitian Constabulary), a step later replicated in the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. The Gendarmerie was Haiti's first professional military force, and it was eventually to play an important political role in the country. In 1917 President Dartiguenave dissolved the legislature after its members refused to approve a constitution purportedly authored by United States assistant secretary of the navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. A referendum subsequently approved the new constitution (by a vote of 98,225 to 768), however, in 1918. Generally a liberal document, the constitution allowed foreigners to purchase land. Dessalines had forbidden land ownership by foreigners, and since 1804 most Haitians had viewed foreign ownership as anathema.

The occupation by the United States had several effects on Haiti. An early period of unrest culminated in a 1918 rebellion by up to 40,000 former cacos and other disgruntled people. The scale of the uprising overwhelmed the Gendarmerie, but marine reinforcements helped put down the revolt at the estimated cost of 2,000 Haitian lives. Major atrocity stories surfaced in 1920, setting off congressional inquiry. Thereafter, order prevailed to a degree that most Haitians had never witnessed.

Order was imposed largely by white foreigners with deep-seated racial prejudices and a disdain for the notion of self-determination by inhabitants of less-developed nations. These attitudes particularly dismayed the mulatto elite, who had heretofore believed in their innate superiority over the black masses. Many Americans voiced contempt for the native leadership and the populace as a whole. The Marines insisted on establishing the Jim Crow standards of the American South as soon as they settled in. American attitudes aggravated the racial polarization between mulattos and blacks. The whites from North America did not distinguish among Haitians, regardless of their skin tone, level of education, or sophistication. This intolerance caused indignation, resentment, and eventually a racial pride that was reflected in the work of a new generation of Haitian historians, ethnologists, writers, artists, and others, many of whom later became active in politics and government. Still, as Haitians united in their reaction to the racism of the occupying forces, the mulatto elite managed to dominate the country's bureaucracy and to strengthen its role in national affairs.

The occupation had several positive aspects. It greatly improved Haiti's infrastructure. Roads were improved and expanded. Almost all roads, however, led to Port-au-Prince, resulting in a gradual concentration of economic activity in the capital. Bridges went up throughout the country; a telephone system began to function; several towns gained access to clean water; and a construction boom (in some cases employing forced labor) helped restore wharves, lighthouses, schools, and hospitals. Public health improved, partially because of United States-directed campaigns against malaria and yaws (a crippling disease caused by a spirochete). Sound fiscal management kept Haiti current on its foreign-debt payments at a time when default among Latin American nations was common. By that time, United States banks were Haiti's main creditors, an important incentive for Haiti to make timely payments.

In 1922 Louis Borno replaced Dartiguenave, who was forced out of office for temporizing over the approval of a debtconsolidation loan. Borno ruled without the benefit of a legislature (dissolved in 1917 under Dartiguenave) until elections were again permitted in 1930. The legislature, after several ballots, elected mulatto Sténio Vincent to the presidency.

The occupation of Haiti continued after World War I, despite the embarrassment that it caused Woodrow Wilson at the Paris peace conference in 1919 and the scrutiny of a congressional inquiry in 1922. By 1930 President Herbert Hoover had become concerned about the effects of the occupation, particularly after a December 1929 incident in Les Cayes in which marines killed at least ten Haitian peasants during a march to protest local economic conditions. Hoover appointed two commissions to study the situation. A former governor general of the Philippines, W. Cameron Forbes, headed the more prominent of the two. The Forbes Commission praised the material improvements that the United States administration had wrought, but it criticized the exclusion of Haitians from positions of real authority in the government and the constabulary, which had come to be known as the Garde d'Haïti. In more general terms, the commission further asserted that "the social forces that created [instability] still remain--poverty, ignorance, and the lack of a tradition or desire for orderly free government."

The Hoover administration did not implement fully the recommendations of the Forbes Commission, but United States withdrawal was well under way by 1932, when Hoover lost the presidency to Roosevelt, the presumed author of the most recent Haitian constitution. On a visit to Cap Haïtien in July 1934, Roosevelt reaffirmed an August 1933 disengagement agreement. The last contingent of marines departed in mid-August, after a formal transfer of authority to the Garde. As in other countries occupied by the United States in the early twentieth century, the local military was often the only cohesive and effective institution left in the wake of withdrawal.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/haiti19.htm