Invade Haiti, Wall Street Urged.The U.S. Obliged.

[Judi Lynn]

Lire en français



By Selam Gebrekidan, Matt Apuzzo, Catherine Porter and Constant Méheut
May 20, 2022, 4:22 p.m. ET

In the drowsy hours of a December afternoon, eight American Marines strolled into the headquarters of Haiti’s national bank and walked out with $500,000 in gold, packed in wooden boxes.

They drove the loot by wagon to the shore, past American soldiers in civilian clothes who kept watch along the route. Once at the water, they loaded the boxes and sped to an awaiting gunboat. The gold was in the vault of a Wall Street bank within days.

The operation took place in 1914 — a precursor to the full-scale invasion of Haiti. American forces took over the country the following summer and ruled it with brute force for 19 years, one of the longest military occupations in American history. Even after the soldiers left in 1934, Haiti remained under the control of American financial officers who pulled the country’s purse strings for another 13 years.

Invading Haiti was necessary, the United States said. The country was so poor and unstable, the explanation went, that if the United States didn’t take over, some other power would — in America’s backyard, no less. Secretary of State Robert Lansing also portrayed the occupation as a civilizing mission to end the “anarchy, savagery and oppression” in Haiti, convinced that, as he once wrote, “the African race are devoid of any capacity for political organization.”



The American military in Haiti in 1915.Credit...Getty Images

More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/haiti-wall-street-us-banks.html

(This is a long feature article.)

[brush]

1. Just total racism. No wonder Haiti is in such bad shape.

And the US occupation and subsequent financial control was on top of Haiti being required by the international community to pay France back millions for having the temerity to overthrow their imperial rule in 1791. The "debt" wasn't paid off until 1947. Think of all the good that money could've done generations of poor Haitians

Such hypocrisy. Imagine if the international community had required the US to pay the UK back for overthrowing the rule of King George and Great Britain, and enforced it with the threat of military power.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Excellent point. It has always seemed that the only righteous revolution happened here.

It was only a few years ago I read accounts the Haitian mothers, the poor ones, of course, almost everyone, were using actual dirt from the ground, mixing it with sugar, and some binding, like oil or grease, cooking them and giving them to their desperately hungry children to at least fill their little stomachs, to temporarily fight the overwhelming emptiness.

A segment from the article which drove me around the bend when I saw it:

The Americans explained the invasion by saying Haiti was bound to fall to the Europeans, particularly Germany.
“If the United States had not assumed the responsibility, some other power would,” Secretary of State Lansing, who had replaced Bryan a month before the occupation, later said.

Lansing was also blinkered by racial prejudice. He once wrote that Black people were “ungovernable” and had “an inherent tendency to revert to savagery and to cast aside the shackles of civilization which are irksome to their physical nature.”

Racism shaped many aspects of the occupation. Many administrators appointed by the United States came from Southern states and made no bones about the worldview they brought with them.

John A. McIlhenny, an heir to Louisiana’s Tabasco sauce fortune who had fought in Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders cavalry during the Spanish-American War, was appointed American financial adviser in 1919, with broad authority over Haiti’s budget.

More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/haiti-wall-street-us-banks.html

Really glad to see your comment. It advances perspective, for sure!

[Judi Lynn]

3. Hundreds of years after Haiti paid to be free from slavery the costs are still being felt

May 21, 2022 Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere, yet the reasons for that are often overlooked. The New York Times recently conducted an unprecedented investigation into those root causes, which includes revelations about Haiti’s former colonizer: France. The Times' Catherine Porter, who led the team that uncovered the story, joins Ali Rogin to discuss.

[Judi Lynn]

4. More on the occupation of Haiti by the U.S. which I never knew, from the article:

Soon after the occupation, the American overseers started building roads to connect Haiti’s mountainous interior to its coast. To do so, they resurrected corvée, a 19th-century Haitian law for indentured labor. The law required citizens to work on public works projects near their homes for a few days a year in lieu of paying taxes. But the American military, along with a constabulary it trained and oversaw, seized men and forced them to work far from home for no pay. Rich Haitians paid their way out of indentured labor, but the law entrapped the poor.

Haitians saw this as a return of slavery and revolted. Armed men, called cacos, fled to the mountains and began an insurgency against American forces. Laborers forced into corvée fled their captors and joined the fight. One leader of the cacos, Charlemagne Péralte, invoked Haiti’s revolution against France to call on his countrymen to “throw the invaders into the ocean.”

. . .

The United States responded forcefully. Soldiers bound workers in rope to keep them from fleeing. Anyone who attempted to escape corvée labor was treated like a deserter, and many were shot. As a warning, the Americans killed Péralte and distributed an image of his corpse tied to a door, evoking a crucifixion.

Leaked military documents from the time showed that the “indiscriminate killing of natives has gone on for some time,” with 3,250 Haitians killed. When Congress began investigating in 1921, the American military lowered the number, saying that 2,250 Haitians had been killed in the occupation, a figure Haitian officials denounced as an undercount. As many as 16 American soldiers died, as well.