To understand why Haiti was so extremely devastated by the 7.0 earthquake while Chile was actually less damaged though its quake was 500 times more powerful requires some knowledge of the history of the past 200 years.
Actually, let’s start in the 1490s when Columbus claimed for Spain an island 600 miles from Florida. The beautiful, fertile land was home to Arawaks, a quiet, contented tribe.
Fast forward a few centuries. Arawaks, who’d lasted, once enslaved, less than a decade, were replaced by continuous ranks of imported African slaves who also successively succumbed to the ignominious brutality of their keepers. Meantime, Spain gave France a third of the island, land so lush it grew more produce for Europe than all other colonies combined. Produce grown by slaves, of course. That gifted land is known as Haiti.
Trouble for colonizers began when Haitian slaves took them on in a dozen years of battle, defeating local armies, a Spanish invasion, and British and French expeditions of 60,000 each, proclaiming their independence in 1804. And the Haitians have been consistently punished for such audacity to this very day.
First, the United States, entrenched in its own slave system, refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of Haiti and placed an immediate international embargo on all trade with the fledgling country.
Second, under threat of renewed warfare, France demanded billions of dollars in reparation. Imagine former slaves being asked to compensate the French for their loss of slaves and homes! And the Haitian government did pay in full over the next 140 years.
Third, the U.S. invaded Haiti in 1914, occupied the land for nearly twenty years, treated residents as sub-humans, created an unnecessary Haitian army. At this time, 31-year-old Franklin Delano Roosevelt rewrote Haiti’s Constitution, reversing, among other protections, the policy prohibiting foreigners from owning land. Soon companies from abroad started building factories.
I remember watching years ago a film from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce touting Haiti as a most lucrative place to do business. Flourishing poinsettia plants and sandy beaches filled the screen with beauty while the commentator gushed over the abundance of willing workers and extremely low labor costs.
Because we’d rewritten the tax laws, manufacturers are not required to source any materials from the host country nor to pay any taxes to that country for their first nine years and then only a slowly rising rate.
Fourth, for nearly 30 years we supported an intensely brutal dictatorship. Dr. Jean Claude Duvalier, “Papa Doc,” formed his own private army, the Tonton Macoute. Drafted from the dregs of society, the Macoutes were given, instead of a salary, permission to extricate funds from the populace by any means they might devise.
We sent preposterous amounts of “Foreign Aid” to Haiti during the reign of Duvalier and the son he appointed to succeed him, “Baby Doc.” The populace did not get schools or health care or infrastructure. But it exploded the private wealth of Papa Doc and Baby Doc who took millions to France when he was deposed in 1986. So the people eked out a living as best they could, building shacks among the mud and sewage.
Meantime, more assembly factories hired more sweatshop labor. By the time I first went to Haiti in 1990, over 200 factories were in operation there, including one where Figgie International produced every baseball used in major league games in our country.
If you ever studied a baseball, you likely assumed it was machine-made. But each baseball is sown by hand. A woman gathers the stuffing materials and the precut leather strips (both from U.S. suppliers) and holds these together between her feet. Because stitching must be done with one continuous filament, she threads two needles and holding one in each hand, bends down to feed the filament through, then brings the needles the full length of her upward reach. One stitch completed. Bend, reach, bend, reach until half-way finished. Then the work continues from table height.
No breaks are allowed in the workday, and she’s working piecemeal under quota. If her quota isn’t fulfilled by quitting time, she won’t get paid a dime for the day’s work. On quota she gets about a dime for each ball – someday. There’s no regular payday. And to even get the job, she likely had to grant the foreman sexual favors.
Fifth, the U.S. constantly interferes with Haiti’s economics and politics. Case in point, I watched U.S.-subsidized rice delivered to a hidden dock to be sold below market value, thus sabotaging local agriculture. For years, Haitian haven’t been able to afford locally grown products. If they can afford anything. Many subsist on mudcakes. Picture grave unemployment and no governmental services, though all workers pay taxes.
Sixth, when Haiti held it’s first free and fair election in 1990, the U.S. was outraged that a populist candidate got 67% of the vote when we had invested millions in the campaign of another candidate. Significant members of our government tried to convince Jean Bertrand Aristide not to accept the Presidency. They failed and he was not allowed to succeed.
Though he accomplished much with few resources, including building many schools, a medical college, substantial housing for some of the poor, a first-time medical system, he also tried to raise the minimum wage from 38 cents to a dollar per day.
So we kidnapped Aristide in 2004, sent him into exile. The medical college immediately became a military base and the people suffered even more. Then came 4 hurricanes last year. And this year, the earthquake, for starts.
Thousands of Aristide supporters, clustered around the collapsed government center under tented bedsheets and rags, have received not one bottle of water, morsel of food, or drop of medication, though tons of relief supplies have been shipped to Haiti from around the world. These folks had, and retain, the audacity to hope.
