On Haiti

This won’t be an earthquake post, although I think you should donate to Doctors Without Borders, Yéle Haiti, or the World Food Programme (all secular charities).

Instead, this post is about Haiti and its relationship to the United States. A few items for your reading pleasure:

UPDATE 2: Naomi Klein says beware of Haiti being a target of disaster capitalism: Video | Blog post

UPDATE: Alternet.org published a piece today about Haiti’s history and ties to the United States. From Haiti’s Tragic History Is Entwined with the Story of America:

“By their long and bitter struggle for independence, St. Domingue’s blacks were instrumental in allowing the United States to more than double the size of its territory,” wrote Stanford University professor John Chester Miller in his book, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery.

From FiveThirtyEight.com: Haiti and United States Inextricably Linked:

Following colonial exploitation of the island for gold, sugar, tobacco and coffee production by successive waves of Europeans, Haiti became an independent nation following the Haitian Revolution in 1793. Throughout the following period, however, the business interests of the global and regional powers at the time, namely French, English, American and German merchants and commodity sellers, dominated the political and economic scene.

From New Statesman, the 2008 piece Democracy versus the people:

The goal of the US and its allies France and Canada was to impose on Haiti a “normal” democracy — a democracy which would not touch the economic power of the narrow elite; they were well aware that, if it is to function in this way, democracy has to cut its links with direct popular self-organisation.

Also see: Coup in Haiti, a 2004 piece in The Nation by Amy Wilentz and Aristide in Exile, a 2005 piece by Naomi Klein from the same magazine.

From a 2008 report by American Public Radio’s Marketplace:

Fourteen years ago, at the urging of the U.S. government and International Monetary Fund, Haiti slashed its tariffs and opened its market to imports. U.S.-subsidized rice poured into the Caribbean nation. Rice, once so prized it was only eaten on Sundays, suddenly became cheap enough that the average Haitian could eat it daily. Haiti became the third largest importer of U.S.-grown rice, and local production of rice and traditional food nosedived.

And from In Motion: the African American Migration Experience:

Haitians exerted a profound influence on Louisiana’s politics, people, religion, and culture. The colony’s officials, responding to anti-slavery plots and uprisings on the island, banned the entry of enslaved Saint Domingans in 1763. Their rebellious actions would continue to impact upon Louisiana’s slave trade and immigration policies throughout the age of the American and French revolutions.

There is a whole section detailing Haitian immigration to the United States and how the U.S. — new owners of the Louisiana territory, and a slave-holding society — responded to this growing population of free blacks, whites, and the few slaves who didn’t stick around to become free on Haitian soil. You can stll feel the Haitian hand print on New Orleans in its history, art, customs, and people such as the Haitian cab drivers I met on two separate trips. My thoughts are with them both, particularly since they both have close family that remained in Haiti.

To me, this complicated and conflicted history between the United States and Haiti means one thing: we have an ethical duty to fix that which we had a hand in breaking. I hope the Obama administration does just that.