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'The Greatest Heist In History': How Haiti Was Forced To Pay Reparations For Freedom

(...) The Haiti that refugees are being sent back to is a nation in crisis. With its unlucky coordinates on the map and its poor infrastructure, Haiti has been devastated by multiple hurricanes and earthquakes in recent years, including a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in August. In July, Haiti's president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated by Colombian mercenaries, some of whom had received U.S. military training. A Florida-based security company reportedly connected whoever wanted Moïse killed with the mercenaries, but the details of why Moïse was killed and who directed the mercenaries are still murky.

What is clear, however, is that Moïse's assassination continues Haiti's centuries-long political instability. In 2015, the World Bank concluded that Haiti's biggest political problem is that "a social contract is missing between the state and its citizens." Ambassador Foote, in his resignation letter, blasted the United States and other nations for contributing to this problem for the umpteenth time by unabashedly backing Moïse's unelected replacement, Ariel Henry. Henry was appointed Prime Minister by Moïse in July, and took on the additional role of President after Moïse's assassination. Haiti's chief prosecutor said he found evidence linking Henry to the president's killing, and Henry promptly fired him. Some Haitian authorities have asked Henry to step down and pleaded with the international community to stop supporting him. "This cycle of international political interventions in Haiti has consistently produced catastrophic results," Foote wrote.

Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the world, and rich countries have their fingerprints all over the nation's stunted development. The United States worked to isolate a newly independent Haiti during the early 19th century and violently occupied the island nation for 19 years in the early 20th century. While the U.S. officially left Haiti in 1934, it continued to control Haiti's public finances until 1947, siphoning away around 40% of Haiti's national income to service debt repayments to the U.S. and France.

Much of this debt to France was the legacy of what the University of Virginia scholar Marlene Daut calls "the greatest heist in history": surrounded by French gunboats, a newly independent Haiti was forced to pay its slaveholders reparations. You read that correctly. It was the former slaves of Haiti, not the French slaveholders, who were forced to pay reparations. Haitians compensated their oppressors and their oppressors' descendants for the privilege of being free. It took Haiti more than a century to pay the reparation debts off. (...)

what if we skipped lunch one day and chipped in to help these peeps out?

Red Cross Responds to Earthquake in Haiti

little known fact

a huge part of the disaster in the bahamas was a haitian migrant shanty town

very poorly constructed

fire ripped through some of it a few years ago

it might be easier to just bring them to the us

a much better opportunity for them to flourish...

 miamizsun wrote: 
How moving! Thanks for sharing.

The Sunday Morning Show had a really interesting segment about Haiti this morning, an amazing story of how these people have unbelievably made lemonade out of lemons.

 hippiechick wrote: 
Yep, saw a harrowing report yesterday. Pretty much all of the money raised has still not got to them, over 1 million people living in tents, squalor basically. It's quite horrific

Thoughts and prayers for the people of Haiti. One year later, the poor people are still suffering.

 
So beautiful sharing!Thank you very much.
Best wishes!maternity wedding gown Your article is very good!
It is so nice.

 geordiezimmerman wrote: 
Probably still doing their Health & Safety assessments.

Why is nothing being done in Haiti? Over 1.3 million living in squalid tents, cholera spreading and only 2% of the rubble cleared. What is happening to all the money reaised by the so called 'safe agencies'. Red cross, Oxfam etc?

www.beattherain.org

Buy cool song, support Haiti relief.
 

 

 
More.
 

 rosedraws wrote: 

I think it would help the Haitians much more if she put some effort into speaking out here and donated the money her whole trip will cost to a solid relief agency.

 rosedraws wrote: 
1.  I don't know.

2.  agreed; I can't help but think they cause far more disruption than actual help.

3.  I have never thought so.

 oldslabsides wrote: 
1) Why, about 75% of the time, do I not get the voiceover with News Video??

2) Like these place need the stress of the dog and pony show for Jolie's cameras, not to mention feeding and caring for her entrourage (I assume that when these famous folk visit places like that, they're somewhat self-sufficient? but still, it's a whole lot of demanding westerners).

3) didn't she used to be the world's sexiest woman? 

Haitians can rest easy now - the world's scariest woman has arrived.

 dionysius wrote: 
Who only wants to do right by the people of Haiti?
Who's helping whom - what are you talking about?

To help finding the answer here are some

Haiti Numbers - 27 Days After the Quake

890 million. Amount of international debt that Haiti owes creditors. Finance ministers from developing countries announced they will forgive $290 million. Source: Wall Street Journal

644 million. Donations for Haiti to private organizations have exceeded $644 million. Over $200 million has gone to the Red Cross, which had 15 people working on health projects in Haiti before the earthquake. About $40 million has gone to Partners in Health, which had 5,000 people working on health in Haiti before the quake. Source: New York Times.

75. An hourly wage of 75 cents per hour is paid by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to people in Haiti who have been hired to help in the clean up. The UNDP is paying 30,000 people to help clean up Haiti, 180 Haitian gourdes ($4.47) for six hours of work. The program hopes to hire 100,000 people. Source: United Nations News Briefing.

1.25. The US is pledged to spend as much as $379 million in Haitian relief. This is about $1.25 for each person in the United States. Source: Canadian Press.

1. For every one dollar of US aid to Haiti, 42 cents is for disaster assistance, 33 cents is for the US military, 9 cents is for food, 9 cents is to transport the food, 5 cents to pay Haitians to help with recovery effort, 1 cent is for the Haitian government and one-half a cent is for the government of the Dominican Republic. Source: Associated Press.

Hope you get it now, but I won't wait for it.

 geordiezimmerman wrote: 
Not surprisingly, no one responded to your concern, it's too shameful and not really ridiculous.
But let me add this, however: the UK periodical New Statesman recently published an article written by John Pilger entitled
The kidnapping of Haiti, where Pilger reported:

When I was last in Haiti, I watched very young girls stooped in front of whirring, hissing binding machines at the Superior baseball plant in Port-au-Prince. Many had swollen eyes and lacerated arms. I produced a camera and was thrown out.

Haiti is where America makes the equipment for its hallowed national game, for next to nothing.
Haiti is where Walt Disney contractors make Mickey Mouse pyjamas, for next to nothing.
The US controls Haiti's sugar, bauxite and sisal.
Rice-growing was replaced by imported American rice, driving people into the town and jerry-built housing.
Year after year, Haiti was invaded by US marines, infamous for atrocities that have been their speciality from the Philippines to Afghanistan.
Bill Clinton is another comedian, having got himself appointed the UN's man in Haiti. Once fawned upon by the BBC as "Mr Nice Guy . . . bringing democracy back to a sad and troubled land", Clinton is Haiti's most notorious privateer, demanding deregulation that benefits the sweatshop barons. Lately, he has been promoting a $55m deal to turn the north of Haiti into an American-annexed "tourist playground".

Glorifying the US' exploitation of its Caribbean backyard is nothing else than prototyping the method of creating legends to define US history, and calling it beyond that something like 'help' for the Caribbean nations means ignoring the real history. Pilger has described this method of fabricating lies in order to turn the real world upside down with this kind of reflection in another article using a famous piece of George Orwell:

Welcome to Orwell’s world: 

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a superstate, Oceania, whose language of war inverted lies that "passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past'."