The Haitian Situation, Part 2
Luke 4:1-13 and Deuteronomy 26:1-11
February 21, 2010
Often we think about history in a very limited sense; we only venture so far back, perhaps a mere few decades, in seeking the root causes of current situations. But there are circumstances when a much broader history is needed; the present day condition of Haiti is just such a case.
Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic the island known as Hispaniola which was first sighted by Western European eyes in 1492, when Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It was here that the famous Spaniard first misconceived that a western path to India had been found.
A mere 50 years after this Spanish “discovery” of Hispaniola, a Catholic priest by the name of Bartolome de las Casas published a shocking document assessing the situation in Hispaniola after the Spaniards arrived. Its shortened title is A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Here are a few, difficult to bear excerpts:
“On the Island Hispaniola was where the Spaniards first landed… Here those Christians perpetrated their first ravages and oppressions against the native peoples...And the Christians attacked them with buffets and beatings…And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them…They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house…They took infants from their mothers' breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, "Boil there, you offspring of the devil!"…After the wars and the killings had ended, when usually there survived only some boys, some women, and children, these survivors were distributed among the Christians to be slaves…And the men died in the mines and the women died on the ranches from the same causes, exhaustion and hunger. And thus was depopulated that island [of Hispaniola] which had been densely populated.”
As Bartolome de las Casas eventually describes in his work, the depopulation of Hispaniola meant that the Spanish were not able to make a profit from the island because the labor had been killed or died of diseases. Eventually the Spanish moved on to colonize Central and South America, leaving the western third of Hispaniola free for France’s taking.
French pirates and buccaneers and a corporation known as the French West India Company then took control of what is now Haiti, calling it Saint-Domingue. Planters moved in and began planting crops that were hard on the land, such as cotton, tobacco and eventually sugarcane. But because the vast majority of native peoples had been destroyed by Spanish weapons and diseases, there was no one to labor in the fields. Thus the French companies and planters began importing slaves from Africa.
The “free labor” of slaves produced harvests so large that present day Haiti became known as the “Pearl of the Antilles.” But this was a pearl was bathed in blood. The enslaved peoples were violently unhappy, rising up in repeated revolts which were put down with astounding violence. Nevertheless, slavery continued and in 1789, just two years after the drafting of the United States Constitution, estimates suggest that were over 500,000 slaves in what is now Haiti, held captive by a mere 32,000 European settlers.
Unhappy with their enslavement, the revolts of slaves increased; and the French responded with tortures devilishly horrific—burning enslaved people alive, hanging and drowning them, burying them in pits filled with insects, even boiling them alive in cauldrons of bubbling molasses.
Despite these horrors the revolution would not be silenced, and in 1804 a Haitian slave uprising defeated the armies of Napoleon Bonaparte and the independent nation of Haiti was first realized.
Yet even independence had its price for the Haitian people. Despite the fact that they defeated the French in battle, their island was miniscule on the world stage. The United States, France and Britain quickly installed an embargo on Haiti that only ended when Haiti consented to pay over 90 million francs to France. For reference, this was more than the 78 million franc price the U.S. paid for the entire Louisiana Purchase. The 90 million franc reparations debt shackled Haiti with repayments until 1947, over 120 years.
Haiti is the only modern country where ex-slaves themselves were forced to pay reparations to very country that once enslaved them. And they surely received no help after their liberation from their neighbor the United States. The U.S., if we remember, still practiced chattel slavery and consequently did not want the Haitian desire for freedom to spread to its shores. So our country both economically and politically ostracized Haiti. Haiti was not even recognized as a country by the U.S. until 1862.
But by that time the debts of Haiti due to international isolation and the massively unjust reparations it was still paying its former colonizer, France, had crippled this once promising country. In the world economy often times the debt of poor nations seems only to multiply as countries like Haiti are forced to take out loans to pay already existing debts. By 1900 Haiti was paying 80% of its national budget to alleviating foreign debt.
Furthermore, much of the repayment to the French was not in the form of hard currency, but in tradable goods such as lumber. The forests were cut down, a process which never stopped and now less than 4% of Haiti’s original forests remain. Without trees, soil erodes. Without soil, plants don’t grow. Without plants, Haiti can’t feed itself.
Haiti has lived through periods of stable governments, with workable constitutions, democratic elections and peaceful successions of power. The problem has been that the cards have always been stacked against the country. Whenever a new government rose to power it faced the same difficulties previous ones had—little access to resources for change and massive debt repayments. These hardships faced by the governments of Haiti led to them not being able to provide for its people, which in turn, led to frustration and anger from the citizens which then turned into repeated revolts.
When the United States finally did come around to recognizing its southern neighbor, self-interest often was the dominant force. The United States, in fact, invaded and occupied Haiti from 1915 until 1934.
While U.S. control of Haiti did bring some positive changes such as a better infrastructure of roads, schools and health care, even the U.S. Department of State website today acknowledges that this was only because of U.S. interests in Haiti, not because it particularly wanted to aid its Caribbean neighbor. There was a powerful German population in Haiti at the time that the United States was afraid was influencing the Haitian government.
The brashness of U.S. involvement in Haiti during this time is shown clearly in the Department of State’s website which says, “Following the successful manipulation of the 1915 elections, the [Woodrow] Wilson Administration attempted to strong-arm the Haitian legislature into adopting a new constitution in 1917.”
The United States eventually gained complete control of Haiti’s finances and in the process overturned a central tenet of the original Haitian constitution in 1804; foreigners were now allowed to own land in Haiti, which had always been prevented as a way of maintaining Haitian sovereignty. In a sense this would be like a foreign government overtaking the United States and throwing out our Bill of Rights.
With foreign ownership of Haitian soil now allowed, the way was paved for even less control of the Haitian government by Haitian people themselves, more and more foreign influence soon prevailed.
After the U.S. gave control of the country back to Haitians themselves, a series of dictators soon gained power. “Papa Doc” Duvalier was the first and he was followed by his son known as “Baby Doc” Duvalier. While the world community recognized the terrors these two men inflicted upon their nation—torturing citizens, embezzling aid money, expelling free speech, harsh treatment of political dissidents—the international community allowed them to stay in power and even sent massive amounts of aid money to Haiti as a way to prevent the influence of communist countries like Russia and Cuba.
In the past few decades Haiti has had a handful of elections, but political insecurity, along with economic and food insecurity, still rule the nation. Progress has been made especially in the elimination of Haiti’s debt by many first world countries. Just this past week the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, acknowledged the “wounds of colonization” and said that it would cancel the remaining 56 million Euro debt that Haiti still owes France. This is certainly a step in the right direction for the common people of Haiti.
Often times when we consider the plight of the desperately poor countries of the world, the easiest solution is to blame their condition simply on corruption. Bad people are in power and they treat people poorly. Hopefully from our very brief history of Haiti this morning we can begin a journey of understanding that will lead us to see that history is far more complex. The trouble of Haiti is not simply corruption, but abuses of people and power that go back centuries, and in many cases happened in a way in which the Haitian people themselves in no way could have controlled or contained. Poor people are often trampled upon, and poor countries are no different.
It is impossible not to see parallels between our biblical texts today and the history of Haiti as a nation. In Luke, Jesus suffers through a 40 day wilderness experience, facing temptations from the devil of fortune, power and fame.
In the book of Deuteronomy, we hear a synopsis of the story of Moses who led his people out of slavery only to wander for forty years in the desert enduring the hardships of an unsettled life before eventually reaching their land of promise.
It seems as if Haiti, like Jesus or the ancient Israelites, is on its own wilderness sojourn. Having escaped the horrors of slavery, it is still wandering the deserts of Sinai looking for its place of comfort and satisfaction.
The good news for Haiti is that it is not journeying through the desert alone. Indeed, you as members of the Presbyterian Church have been accompanying them on their journey to their promised land, whether you know it or not.
I must say that I have been mightily encouraged this week by your responses to last week’s sermon; but not because I received pats on the backs and encouraging nods of approval. Rather, it was just the opposite. Many people seemed to be frustrated that I didn’t relate how much work has been done to alleviate the situation in Haiti; and how true this is!
For decades people in this very Presbytery and throughout the PC(USA) have been giving up time and resources to help resurrect our fallen neighbor. The Presbyterian Church partners with organizations in Haiti that help “with agricultural and husbandry development, women's groups, youth groups, literacy, organizational training for associations, farmers' associations, cooperatives, and micro-enterprise[s],” all of which seek to build sustainable development in Haiti that attacks the root causes of their poverty.
The common maxim “give a person a fish and they will eat for a day, teach a person to fish and they will eat for a lifetime” is playing out in grand reality as this very Presbytery sent around $20,000 just last year from our 5 cents a meal program to an organization in Haiti that builds and runs fish farms to provide jobs and feed the population.
Finally, for years the Presbyterian Church (USA) has been following the Lord’s Prayer creed of “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” by promoting the cancellation of Haiti’s foreign debts, so that it can begin to find its way out of the wilderness.
The glory of this moment in the life of Haiti, in the aftermath of the earthquake, is that after centuries of neglect and ill-treatment by its larger brother nations, the eyes of the world are now focused on Haiti not with manipulation in mind, but with compassion, justice and understanding. Now is the time that true rebuilding can take place. Now is the time that to begin anew. Now is the time to walk hand-in-hand with our neighbor, out of the desert and into the glories of Haiti’s Promised Land. The road will be long and the journey will be hard. But it is a path we must travel for the message of Jesus is clear: bring good news to the poor, release to the captives and let the oppressed go free. Amen.
Robert Debs Heinl and Nancy Gordon Heinl, Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People, 1492-1995, University Press of America: Lanham, MD, 1996, 108-123.
Alex von Tunzelmann, “Haiti: The land where children eat mud,” The Times of London, May 17, 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6281614.ece, accessed February 18, 2010.
Joel K. Bourne, Jr.,“Dirt Poor: Haiti has lost its soil and the means to feed itself,” National Geographic, September 2008, http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/soil/bourne-text.html, accessed February 18, 2010.
“U.S. Invasion and Occupation of Haiti, 1915-34,” United States Department of State, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwi/88275.htm, accessed on February 20, 2010.
Associated Press, “Haiti promised €230m as Nicolas Sarkozy visits former colony,” The Gaurdian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/17/sarkozy-haiti-visit, accessed on February 20, 2010.
“Haiti Partner Churches and Organizations,” http://www.pcusa.org/worldwide/haiti/international.htm, accessed on February 20, 2010.
Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, “Support Debt Cancellation in Haiti,” http://presbyterian.typepad.com/peacemaking/2010/02/support-debt-cancellation-for-haiti.html, referenced on February 20, 2010.
