Tony Fras­er

It is nec­es­sary to tem­porar­i­ly break from the se­ries on par­ty pol­i­tics to share a per­spec­tive on Haiti that re­sponds to the ig­no­rance and frankly racist com­ments flow­ing since the earth­quake of last week. A par­tic­u­lar strain of the com­ments seeks to make Haiti and its peo­ple in­cur­ably back­ward, ge­net­i­cal­ly sub­hu­man and so pre­oc­cu­pied with evil and voodoo that even the God of the uni­verse has turned His back on the land and its peo­ple. Any at­tempt to un­der­stand and analyse the rea­sons for Haiti's back­ward­ness as a so­ci­ety and the hu­man con­di­tion of large num­bers of its peo­ple should start from the ap­pre­ci­a­tion that that coun­try has been a vic­tim of the worse forms of eco­nom­ic ex­ploita­tion, racist sub-hu­man degra­da­tion and im­pe­r­i­al im­po­si­tion known to man.

Haiti has been made to pay with the lives of mil­lions for the ef­fron­tery of Tou­s­saint L'Over­ture and his army to have beat­en and hu­mil­i­at­ed Napoleon's all-con­quer­ing French army, the British and the Span­ish, re­puls­ing them from San Domin­go and bring­ing to an end the most prof­itable and at the same time in­iq­ui­tous form of slav­ery imag­in­able. What Tou­s­saint was not good at, how­ev­er, was recog­nis­ing the kind of treach­ery which led to his mur­der at the hands of Napoleon (as sure as if the French em­per­or had in­sert­ed a blade in­to his chest). Be­cause of the loss of L'Over­ture's nat­ur­al and wise lead­er­ship, Haiti lurched through a suc­ces­sion of lead­ers and in­evitably split in­to its camps of mu­lat­tos, blacks and planters, the coun­try los­ing its fo­cus and its ca­pac­i­ty to co­here and move for­ward po­lit­i­cal­ly, eco­nom­i­cal­ly and so­cial­ly. But the "un­kind­est cut of all," to use James in an­oth­er con­text, was the Hait­ian Gov­ern­ment meet­ing the de­mand by the French Gov­ern­ment to pay 150 mil­lion francs in com­pen­sa­tion to the French farm­ers for loss of earn­ings and prop­er­ty be­cause of the suc­cess­ful end­ing of the slave sys­tem.

In the most ob­scene man­ner, what the or­di­nary labour­ing class­es amongst the Hait­ian peo­ple were re­quired to do was to com­pen­sate the planters and France as a coun­try for ex­ploit­ing and bru­tal­is­ing them for over 100 years (1665-1790). Lack­ing the lead­er­ship of a L'Over­ture, the mu­lat­to leader, Jean-Pierre Boy­er, was bul­lied in­to mak­ing the com­pen­sa­tion. He bor­rowed from a French bank, the coun­try just out of a rev­o­lu­tion, scat­tered and di­vid­ed and not hav­ing the ca­pac­i­ty to pay the de­mand. For near 100 years (1826-1922), Haiti had to meet debt pay­ments from the scarcest of re­sources. When the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary oc­cu­pa­tion be­gan (1915), 80 per cent of Cus­toms rev­enue was used to re­pay this in­iq­ui­tous debt. "The debt was a pri­ma­ry bar­ri­er to Haiti's de­vel­op­ment," states Mark Schuller (2006). "Dur­ing the for­ma­tive pe­ri­od in Haiti's his­to­ry, the state lacked the re­sources to de­vel­op the ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem, in­fra­struc­ture, agri­cul­tur­al tech­nol­o­gy, en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, or in­vest in health­care," states Schuller–the Ju­bilee USA Net­work.

The un­der­de­vel­op­ment and back­ward­ness of the so­ci­ety have noth­ing to do with voodoo and a per­ceived in­her­ent in­fe­ri­or­i­ty of the Hait­ian mind and body, but rather to do with ex­ploita­tion and racism of the last 200 years. Dur­ing its hey­day as a sug­ar pro­duc­er, Haiti was the most pros­per­ous slave colony, ex­port­ing to France over 218 mil­lion tonnes of sug­ar, co­coa, cof­fee and in­di­go. The vast ma­jor­i­ty of these prod­ucts was re-ex­port­ed from France in its trade with the rest of the world. Haiti was the en­vy of the British, who at­tempt­ed to cap­ture it (1796), even while Lord Pitt and com­pa­ny were seek­ing to end the slave trade on hu­man­i­tar­i­an grounds.

Com­ing at the end of the un­con­scionable eco­nom­ic ex­ploita­tion by France, the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary oc­cu­pa­tion es­tab­lished and car­ried out the Munroe Doc­trine and the Roo­sevelt Corol­lary to se­cure the Amer­i­can back­yard and to make it known to the for­eign pow­ers they were not wel­comed.

All through the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry, the bru­tal­i­ty and sub­ju­ga­tion by Hait­ian lead­ers against their peo­ple pre­vailed. So too did the so­cial and eth­nic di­vi­sions frag­ment the coun­try. In the late 1950s, the Amer­i­cans first helped to in­stall and sub­se­quent­ly sus­tained the bru­tal and cor­rupt Fran­cois "Pa­pa Doc" Du­va­lier and sub­se­quent­ly his son, "Ba­by Doc." It was con­ve­nient for Wash­ing­ton to have such lead­ers in place, as­sured that they would do noth­ing to en­cour­age the pop­u­lar peo­ple's rev­o­lu­tion that was tak­ing place in Cu­ba to spread to Haiti. It is es­ti­mat­ed that a ma­jor por­tion of to­day's Hait­ian debt, US$900 mil­lion, was ac­cu­mu­lat­ed by the Du­va­liers from in­sti­tu­tions such as the World Bank and the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund. The mon­ey was cor­rupt­ly stolen by Pa­pa and Ba­by Doc and did not go to the de­vel­op­ment of the hu­man con­di­tion in Haiti. Not-with­stand­ing this fact, the Gov­ern­ment of Haiti has been ser- vic­ing this debt at ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$50 mil­lion a year; a sum far in ex­cess of that spent on ei­ther health, en­vi­ron­ment, ed­u­ca­tion and or trans­port.

Those are rea­sons for Haiti's back­ward­ness of to­day; not voodoo.

To con­tin­ue the pun­ish­ment in­flict­ed on Haiti for the rev­o­lu­tion, which brought an end to the pros­per­i­ty of the planters and the French econ­o­my, the coun­try was deemed in 2000 by the World Bank not to have qual­i­fied for the debt can­cel­la­tion award­ed to the "need­i­est coun­tries whose debt lev­els are un­sus­tain­able." This de­ci­sion was made notwith­stand­ing the fact that Haiti is the ac­knowl­edged "poor­est coun­try in the hemi­sphere." In­stead, Haiti was re­quired to meet a set of cri­te­ria (which could not have been re­al­is­ti­cal­ly met) by Sep­tem­ber 2009 to qual­i­fy for can­cel­la­tion of not all but a por­tion of its debt. When search­ing for rea­sons for Haiti's hu­man con­di­tion, the back­ward­ness of the so­ci­ety and its fail­ure to ad­vance from ini­ti­at­ing the great­est rev­o­lu­tion of or­di­nary peo­ple, we need to look at the rea­sons stat­ed above.

The re­al test of civilised so­ci­ety of the 21st cen­tu­ry mak­ing a change to the his­tor­i­cal pat­tern of treat­ment of Haiti can be judged when the im­me­di­ate hu­man­i­tar­i­an needs are met. Will there be a mean­ing­ful at­tempt to com­plete­ly re­con­struct the phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture? Will the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty ad­dress the need for hu­man de­vel­op­ment and to do so with­out at­tach­ing im­pos­si­ble con­di­tion­al­i­ties on the Hait­ian peo­ple?