Haiti and Hate

US Marines during occupation of Haiti, 1915

Inspired in part by the success of the American Revolution, enslaved Haitians rose up against their French colonial oppressors in 1791.

And won.

Many Haitians had hoped and even expected that the new USA would recognise their independence – after all, many free Black Haitian “Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue” had fought alongside American militias against the British only a decade earlier…

Under the ever-classy Thomas Jefferson, the USA withheld recognition, choosing to isolate the new Caribbean nation, fearing that Haiti would become a beacon and example to enslaved peoples in the USA.

What’s more, the USA would enforce a trade embargo on the nascent Haitian state, an embargo which signalled the start of two full centuries of US colonialist interference, including the brutal occupation of Haiti by US Marines in 1915.

Way back in 1825, French gunboats had already returned to Haiti, demanding financial “compensation” for the loss of French slaveholders’ “property” during the recent revolution.

Failure to comply would have resulted in the French government refusing to recognise Haitian claims of independence, and almost certain renewed war.

With no help forthcoming, Haiti had no choice but to accept these terms.

Economically isolated and financially crippled, Haiti was forced to take out more and more additional loans to service this “independence debt”.

Shortly before WWI, the US “acquired” Haiti’s national treasury, and after WWI, Haiti’s remaining “debt” was moved onto the books of US investors such as the National City Bank of New York (later known as Citibank).

During the U.S. occupation of Haiti, more than seven percent of Haiti’s land was given or sold to U.S. companies.

Interest which had accrued on loans taken out by Haiti between 1825 and 1875 was not finally paid-off to US investors until 1947, shortly after the end of WWII…

From the establishment of the first European settlement of La Isabela by Christopher Columbus in 1493 – right up to the present day – Indigenous and African peoples on the island once called Quisqueya or Ayiti have been victims of slavery, colonialist exploitation, international capitalism, and the violent puppet regimes supported or enabled by outside interests.

And this is why 15,000 to 20,000 Haitians can end-up in a Rust Belt town in Ohio in 2024, willing to work LEGALLY in factories owned by shameless multi-national conglomerates like Dole, PLC., a company which cut its teeth by overthrowing Indigenous leaders and taking-over much of Hawaii in order to turn it into a vast pineapple plantation, manned by field workers from Japan, China, Korea, the Philippines and Portugal.

Pineapples are not native to Hawaii, by the way.  But then again, nor are American capitalists…

It’s all part of the game called “Global Capital”, and the winners under this system don’t give a solitary f**k what people at the bottom – Black, White, Haitian, or American – think about it.

Until they need a vote, that is.

Then the mess caused by greed and neoliberal economic theorists (like Ohio-born Arthur Laffer) can be blamed on cat-eating Haitian “unhumans” by racist, misogynistic dungsacks like J. D. Vance.