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On Haiti's "Devil Pact"
by Regine O. Jackson
Managing representations of Haiti and Haitian people is always part of the response to crisis in Haiti. The enormity of the tragedy last week has meant even more vigilance. As many across the globe are scrambling to make sense of what happened and why, vivid depictions of “the poorest country in the Western hemisphere” and tall tales about the island nation’s “devil pact,” leave little room for the history of deliberate impoverishment and disempowerment of Haiti. Americans want to alleviate the suffering of millions of Haitian earthquake victims. The solution is not simple. But Americans who send soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan understand the complex world.
Then again, perhaps the solution in Haiti is simpler. We might actually owe the Haitian people a fairer deal than the one they have been getting. But most of us are as feeble in our knowledge of Haiti, or the nation’s long relationship to the United States, as Pat Robertson. It’s important that we know more, because American assistance will play an important role.
Most Haitians and friends of Haiti think that Americans ought to know that Haitians, like Henri Christophe, shed their blood in fighting the British to free white Americans from tyranny. 500 Haitian troops joined American colonists and French soldiers in the attempt to drive the British from Savannah. Haitians made up the largest military unit to fight in the 1779 siege.
As Americans, we ought to know that the Haitian military victory over the French, the Spanish, the British, and then the French under Napoleon, owed less to Vodou – a profound and civilizing West African heritage that still flourishes in the Haitian homelands of Benin, Togo, and Ghana – than it did to the remarkable military leader and diplomat Toussaint L’Ouverture. The embarrassed French abandoned their imperial pursuits in the western hemisphere and sold Thomas Jefferson the entire span of land surrounding the two thousand mile Mississippi River. The Louisiana Purchase doubled the nation's size, making it formidable enough to withstand almost any outside threat; it gave the country its heartland. The U.S. benefited the most from Haiti defeating the big European powers, and since the British suffered greater losses in Haiti than they did at Waterloo, it likely tempered their ambition during the War of 1812.
But the honorable history and rich culture of Haiti is not all we ought to know. For Americans, who understand the complex world, understand the importance of history lest it repeat itself. We ought to know that Haiti’s recent earthquake is indeed a concrete manifestation of the many metaphoric ‘earthquakes’ suffered for the past four centuries.
We could start with the brutal, superexploitation of natural resources under French colonialism; the decades of international ostracism after the Haitian revolution that left the new nation with no trading partners; crippling international debt – especially to the French who demanded 150 million francs as reparations for the “property” in human flesh they lost with the abolition of slavery – which ruined the Haitian economy for over a century and a half; or the American occupation of Haiti from 1915 – 1934 that enflamed divisions among Haitians and resulted in the murder of hundreds including the charismatic leader Charlemagne Péralte.
Such a long view of Haitian history may seem immaterial, but even within my lifetime American policy towards Haiti helps to explain why this disastrous earthquake is devastating Haiti. Americans ought to know that:
•American support of oppressive dictatorships in Haiti, especially the Duvalier regime (1957 – 1986), led to the mass exodus of Haitian professionals, including doctors and engineers, and the accumulation of additional international debt and political instability in the island nation.
•Neo-liberal policies (punitive international trade and financial arrangements, such as loan aid instead of grants, the substitution of American rice for locally grown Haitian rice) are directly responsible for the flood of rural migrants to cities like Port-au-Prince, the feminization of poverty, and the relative failure of American assembly manufacturing plants to alleviate poverty in Haiti.
•The CDC designation of Haiti as the source of the AIDS crisis destroyed the tourist industry in Haiti, which in the 1950s and 1960s was one of the strongest in the Caribbean. Images of Haiti based on uncritical folk models which are not carefully or critically examined further damage any possibility of rebuilding.
•The coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide from 1991 to 1994 frustrated efforts within Haiti to make sure the country could grow its own food, develop national industries and invest in rural areas and urban infrastructure (roads, bridges, buildings, a reliable power grid) and a clean water supply. As a condition of Aristide’s return, the country’s economy was geared toward paying off interest on Western debt and as a market for Western goods.
•The militarization of the UN's mandate in Haiti blocks proposals to invest some of the international community’s funds to reduce poverty or develop the agricultural sector, while the privatization of services with the proliferation of NGOs further weakened the Haitian state.
Americans ought to know that Haitians are simply asking for the support of a civilized world. Haiti needs our help to clear the rubble, to rebuild the roads, schools and hospitals – Haiti needs unconditional, humanitarian aid. But if this history teaches us anything, it is that cultural racism, which manifests in economic, social, political, and ideological damage to Haiti and exacerbates natural disasters, can also taint relief efforts. This is not an opportunity for the US to reshape Haiti for its own interests, but to finally let Haiti live.
***
Regine O. Jackson is Assistant Professor of American Studies Emory University
by Regine O. Jackson
Managing representations of Haiti and Haitian people is always part of the response to crisis in Haiti. The enormity of the tragedy last week has meant even more vigilance. As many across the globe are scrambling to make sense of what happened and why, vivid depictions of “the poorest country in the Western hemisphere” and tall tales about the island nation’s “devil pact,” leave little room for the history of deliberate impoverishment and disempowerment of Haiti. Americans want to alleviate the suffering of millions of Haitian earthquake victims. The solution is not simple. But Americans who send soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan understand the complex world.
Then again, perhaps the solution in Haiti is simpler. We might actually owe the Haitian people a fairer deal than the one they have been getting. But most of us are as feeble in our knowledge of Haiti, or the nation’s long relationship to the United States, as Pat Robertson. It’s important that we know more, because American assistance will play an important role.
Most Haitians and friends of Haiti think that Americans ought to know that Haitians, like Henri Christophe, shed their blood in fighting the British to free white Americans from tyranny. 500 Haitian troops joined American colonists and French soldiers in the attempt to drive the British from Savannah. Haitians made up the largest military unit to fight in the 1779 siege.
As Americans, we ought to know that the Haitian military victory over the French, the Spanish, the British, and then the French under Napoleon, owed less to Vodou – a profound and civilizing West African heritage that still flourishes in the Haitian homelands of Benin, Togo, and Ghana – than it did to the remarkable military leader and diplomat Toussaint L’Ouverture. The embarrassed French abandoned their imperial pursuits in the western hemisphere and sold Thomas Jefferson the entire span of land surrounding the two thousand mile Mississippi River. The Louisiana Purchase doubled the nation's size, making it formidable enough to withstand almost any outside threat; it gave the country its heartland. The U.S. benefited the most from Haiti defeating the big European powers, and since the British suffered greater losses in Haiti than they did at Waterloo, it likely tempered their ambition during the War of 1812.
But the honorable history and rich culture of Haiti is not all we ought to know. For Americans, who understand the complex world, understand the importance of history lest it repeat itself. We ought to know that Haiti’s recent earthquake is indeed a concrete manifestation of the many metaphoric ‘earthquakes’ suffered for the past four centuries.
We could start with the brutal, superexploitation of natural resources under French colonialism; the decades of international ostracism after the Haitian revolution that left the new nation with no trading partners; crippling international debt – especially to the French who demanded 150 million francs as reparations for the “property” in human flesh they lost with the abolition of slavery – which ruined the Haitian economy for over a century and a half; or the American occupation of Haiti from 1915 – 1934 that enflamed divisions among Haitians and resulted in the murder of hundreds including the charismatic leader Charlemagne Péralte.
Such a long view of Haitian history may seem immaterial, but even within my lifetime American policy towards Haiti helps to explain why this disastrous earthquake is devastating Haiti. Americans ought to know that:
•American support of oppressive dictatorships in Haiti, especially the Duvalier regime (1957 – 1986), led to the mass exodus of Haitian professionals, including doctors and engineers, and the accumulation of additional international debt and political instability in the island nation.
•Neo-liberal policies (punitive international trade and financial arrangements, such as loan aid instead of grants, the substitution of American rice for locally grown Haitian rice) are directly responsible for the flood of rural migrants to cities like Port-au-Prince, the feminization of poverty, and the relative failure of American assembly manufacturing plants to alleviate poverty in Haiti.
•The CDC designation of Haiti as the source of the AIDS crisis destroyed the tourist industry in Haiti, which in the 1950s and 1960s was one of the strongest in the Caribbean. Images of Haiti based on uncritical folk models which are not carefully or critically examined further damage any possibility of rebuilding.
•The coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide from 1991 to 1994 frustrated efforts within Haiti to make sure the country could grow its own food, develop national industries and invest in rural areas and urban infrastructure (roads, bridges, buildings, a reliable power grid) and a clean water supply. As a condition of Aristide’s return, the country’s economy was geared toward paying off interest on Western debt and as a market for Western goods.
•The militarization of the UN's mandate in Haiti blocks proposals to invest some of the international community’s funds to reduce poverty or develop the agricultural sector, while the privatization of services with the proliferation of NGOs further weakened the Haitian state.
Americans ought to know that Haitians are simply asking for the support of a civilized world. Haiti needs our help to clear the rubble, to rebuild the roads, schools and hospitals – Haiti needs unconditional, humanitarian aid. But if this history teaches us anything, it is that cultural racism, which manifests in economic, social, political, and ideological damage to Haiti and exacerbates natural disasters, can also taint relief efforts. This is not an opportunity for the US to reshape Haiti for its own interests, but to finally let Haiti live.
***
Regine O. Jackson is Assistant Professor of American Studies Emory University
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