On Jan. 13, the day after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, all I felt was relief to learn that my grandparents were alive.
Soon after, worry replaced relief. As a Haitian-American, I feared that people would donate to Haiti without taking the time to learn about Haiti’s less well-known designation as the first black republic in the world.
At a Feb. 3 campus teach-in I organized with students and faculty, the audience learned from a panel of experts that Haiti has experienced economic and political earthquakes throughout its history. Foreign powers — including the United States — brought about these unnatural disasters, forcing Haiti into perpetual poverty, including nearly $1 billion in external debt, and contributing to the current disaster’s death toll of nearly 300,000.
In 1804, Haitians expelled their French enslavers. France responded by forcing Haiti to pay 150 million francs in “reparations” for France’s lost wealth — namely, Haitian slave labor. Haiti borrowed money from French and U.S. banks until it paid off the debt in 1947. The current value of the money that France forced Haiti to pay for self-determination is $20 billion.
The U.S. military occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934.
During that time, the U.S. controlled customs in Haiti, collected taxes, rewrote the constitution and ran governmental institutions. The U.S. military killed thousands of Haitians to stifle revolts. Billions of dollars were diverted from Haiti.
From 1957 to 1986, Haitians suffered under U.S.-supported dictators François “Papa Doc” and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier. These regimes killed thousands and embezzled millions in public funds until a popular movement forced “Baby Doc” into exile. Four years later, the people voted in Jean-Bertrand Aristide as the country’s first democratically elected president. But two U.S.-backed coups forced Aristide into exile.
Rewind to the late 1970s. Haiti was self-sufficient in rice, its staple food. By the mid-1990s, the International Monetary Fund — a Western-led world banking institution — forced the country to cut tariffs through loan regulations, opening the door for the U.S. to unload its subsidized surplus of rice on Haiti.
Today, Haiti imports its rice, and thousands of rice farmers have been forced into Port-au-Prince slums where their labor is exploited in foreign-run factories. Many who made the move died in the earthquake.
Already, Western creditors are pushing for a fivefold increase in garment sector production, one of the country’s most exploited industries. New IMF loans require Haiti to raise electricity prices and freeze public sector pay. Meanwhile, Haitians have little say at international summits on their country’s reconstruction.
We need to confront the U.S.’s history of exploiting Haiti so that we no longer play a part in the impoverishment and disempowerment of Haitians.
Let’s push our government and the rest of the world to cancel Haiti’s unjust debt, then pay reparations for the damages we’ve done. Demand that we give grants to Haitians, not loans. Insist on a democratic reconstruction process led by Haitians.
To support Haiti, we must move from charity to solidarity.
Ellen Louis is a junior African-American studies major from South Orange, NJ. Contact her at elouis@email.unc.edu
