[News] Haiti: Reparations and reconstruction

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Haiti: Reparations and reconstruction



Horace Campbell

2011-05-19, Issue <http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/530>530
<http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73445>http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73445

For two hundred years the peoples of Haiti have 
been struggling to reconstruct their society. 
Before the Haitian revolution of 1791-1804 could 
be consolidated, the French and other imperial 
powers worked to isolate the revolution for fear 
that the ideas of freedom would be contagious and 
spread. But they could not turn the tide of 
freedom. Failing to stem the idea that the 
African enslaved wanted freedom, the government 
and political leaders of France demanded 
reparations from Haiti, thus distorting the 
essence and meaning of reparative justice for 100 
years. Despite this, the fears of the imperial 
west that the Haitian Revolution would inspire 
other slaves in Latin America, the Caribbean and 
the United States came to fruition. Haiti played 
its role of supporting freedom and independence 
throughout the region. Simon Bolivar and other 
revolutionaries from Latin America flocked to 
seek assistance from Haiti. Every act of freedom 
by Haiti scared the imperial powers; these powers 
slowly consolidated the ideas of capitalist 
exploitation and white supremacy so that these 
racist ideologies of the 19th and 20th centuries 
began to take root in Europe and North America.

United States revolutionaries, such as Thomas 
Jefferson, who internalised chauvinistic ideas 
about European and male superiority opposed the 
reconstruction of Haiti and refused to recognise 
the independence of Haiti. It was only after the 
bloody US Civil War (1861-1865), when the 
enslaved in the United States won their freedom 
that the US government recognised Haiti. This 
diplomatic recognition was followed by the 
destruction of the capacity for the Haitians to 
reconstruct their society. Western bankers, 
financiers and merchants and Jim Crow architects 
worked with a small clique inside of Haiti to 
frustrate efforts for reconstruction. To 
guarantee that reconstruction did not take place 
the bankers, financiers and the militarists 
organised a military occupation of Haiti 
(1915-1934). This occupation by the US, supported 
by France and Canada, laid the foundations for 
brutal militarism to contain the spirit of the 
people of Haiti. In the book, ‘Haiti: The 
Breached Citadel’, author Patrick Bellgrade Smith 
brings to life the epic struggles of the Haitians 
to be independent and how the forms of peasant 
agriculture gave them social solidarity outside 
of the urban centres where the évolué aped France.

Genocide and genocidal violence from the 
government of the Dominican dictator, Rafael 
Trujillo, sent a message to Haitians that their 
lives were meaningless and that the place of 
Haitians in the Americas was to provide cheap 
labour for others. Yet, the Haitians struggled 
for dignity. It is the novelist Edwidge Danticat 
who has brought us this history in her book, ‘The 
Farming the Bones’, which is set in the Dominican Republic of the 1930s.

Militarism and genocidal violence was then 
reinforced by a crude form of chauvinism that 
manipulated the religious and spiritual values of 
the people. Francois ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier, who 
ruled Haiti from 1957 until his death in 1971, 
perfected a form of brutal repression with thugs 
and death squads called the Militia of National 
Security Advisers. This militia was renamed the 
Tonton Macoutes by the Haitian people after a 
mythical Haitian bogeyman who kidnapped children 
and ate them. Armed with machetes and guns, the 
Tonton Macoutes rained terror on the Haitian 
people. Francois Duvalier expired and the 
external forces propped up his son, Baby Doc, 
until the people revolted in 1986. From 
1915-1986, there was no possibility for 
reconstruction on Haiti, The people of Haiti 
revolted and brought a new movement to lay the basis for reconstruction.

The government of the United States organised not 
one, but two violent interventions to curtail 
possibilities of reconstruction by removing the 
first democratically elected president in Haiti, 
Bertrand Aristide. Aristide was placed at the 
front of a grassroots movement that gave itself 
the name ‘Fanmi Lavalas’. The Fanmi Lavalas 
movement was seeking to work through the 
inherited contradictions to lay a new foundation. 
This movement believed that the reconstruction of 
Haiti could only take place in the context of the 
reconstruction of the lives of the Haitian people 
based on the revolutionary history of Haiti. 
Together with other African descendants from 
across the world, the people of Haiti supported 
the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in 
September 2001, seeking to implant on the world a 
new spirit or reparations so that humanity could 
heal from the crimes against itself committed 
during the period of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and thereafter.

But this national and international effort was nipped in the bud.

A global ‘war on terror’ imposed a different 
agenda on the world while real terrorism against 
the peoples of Haiti was supported by the west. 
Thugs, death squads, drug runners and anti-social 
elements permeating Haiti were supported by 
France and the United States. Bertrand Aristide 
was removed in 2004 just at the moment when the 
world was being reminded of the 200th anniversary 
of the Haitian Revolution. The United Nations was 
brought in to give legitimacy to the erosion of 
the popular sovereignty of Haiti in the form of 
an allegedly peacekeeping force called, the 
United Nations Stabilization in Haiti (MINUSTAH). 
Money launderers, Drug runners and gangsters 
flourished in this scheme of recolonisation. In 
this moment of external domination, the imperial 
forces had suborned the Organization of American 
States to support imperial occupation of Haiti. 
What was baffling was how governments in Brazil 
and Venezuela that presented themselves as 
progressives could be part of the OAS front for 
oppressing the Haitian peoples. Indeed 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/21/haiti-wikileaks>the 
Wikileaks cables reveal the desire of the United 
States to keep Aristide out of Haiti and 
suppressing the Haitian people by pressuring 
Brazil, which led the MINUSTAH at the time. In 
2005, Brazil led MINUSTAH in a deadly assault to 
suppress the coup and occupation of Cite Soleil, 
one of Haiti’s poorest communities.

On 12 January 2010 there was a massive earthquake 
in Haiti. Millions of people were displaced in 
the capital Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas 
killing hundreds of thousands. Billions of 
dollars were pledged for reconstruction. For a 
brief moment, the popular and democratic forces 
in Haiti looked to the progressive world to 
intervene solidly so that all of the 
international attention on Haiti after the 
earthquake would support the democratic forces inside Haiti.

Again, reconstruction was opposed by the imperial 
forces in France and the United States. 
Cynically, the military and humanitarian 
occupation of MINUSTAH, by appointing former 
President William Jefferson Clinton as UN Special 
Envoy to Haiti to utilise Clinton’s networks that 
had been in support of the anti-social forces of 
the nineties. To add to the ruble and distress in 
the society, an outbreak of cholera served to 
intensify the pressures on the people of Haiti to 
keep them down. Progressive Haitians now looked 
to the Caribbean, Latin America and the new 
rising forces to become an antidote to humanitarian imperialism.

To block the energetic measures of the people of 
Haiti, the imperial forces of the US imposed a 
new president who was clearly enamored by the 
militarist traditions of the Duvalierists. The 
inauguration of Michel ‘Sweet Micky’ Martelly as 
President of Haiti on 14 May 2011, was an affront 
to the peoples of Haiti and the world. The sham 
elections of 28 November 2010 that excluded the 
largest party in Haiti, Fanmi Lavalas, dictated 
that the people of Haiti would have to find new 
ways to organise for reconstruction. This 
reconstruction in Haiti will demand political 
changes in all parts of the Americas. The 
struggles for reparative justice is transnational 
and the lessons of imperial destruction in Haiti 
dictate that the progressive forces in all parts 
of the Americas will have to see how the 
struggles for peace, democracy and reparations 
are inseparable from the struggles in other parts of the Americas,

THE EARTHQUAKE OF JANUARY 12, 2010

When the massive earthquake struck Haiti on 
January 12, 2010, it was estimated that over the 
estimated 222,000 Haitians perished. Close to two 
million persons were displaced. Hundreds of 
thousands were homeless. In the midst of the 
rubble, the United States sent troops, ostensibly 
to prevent looting. Such was the mindset of 
international capitalists that in a moment when 
quarter of a million persons lost their lives, 
protection of property and material goods came 
before the lives of the peoples of Haiti.

International non-governmental organisations of 
all stripes descended on Haiti. Many of these 
international NGO’s demanded military protection 
from the people whom they were in Haiti to 
purportedly serve. Haiti presented a textbook 
case of disaster capitalism. Together with the 
United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, 
these NGOs created a new layer of oppressive 
governance to isolate the democratic aspirations 
of the people. International goodwill for the 
people of Haiti brought promises of support of 
all forms from all over the world. Bill Clinton 
and the neoliberal faction of US capitalism 
established themselves at the head of this wave 
of popular support for reconstruction. Where 
clear planning was needed, these forces continued 
to push the failed reform plans of the 
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to 
create a layer of servile imperial allies inside 
Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the 
diaspora rallied to form international teams to rebuild the country.

Instead of international brigades going into 
Haiti to assist the rebuilding and working with 
the people, Bill Clinton was named Special Envoy 
to Haiti. Later, Paul Farmer, the renowned 
physician and anthropologist and founder of 
Partners in Health, was named Deputy Special 
Envoy. This ruse was to exploit the good image of 
Partners in Health, which provided medical 
services to the poor, in the service of imperial machinations.

Reconstruction after the earthquake required 
honest government, a solid partnership with those 
who wanted to see homes, schools, hospitals, 
public facilities, roads and other infrastructure 
rebuilt for the people. These were not 
forthcoming. In the absence of clear support for 
reconstruction in spite of billions of dollars 
pledged, there were some section of the people of 
Haiti and their allies who began to believe that 
the earthquake was not a natural disaster. Web 
surfers began to read blogs claiming that a 
‘tectonic weapon’ had been unleashed to induce 
the catastrophic earthquake that hit the country. 
The US military Project called HAARP was named as 
the tectonic weapon. HAARP, the High Frequency 
Active Auroral Research Program, is a Pentagon 
operation in Alaska directed at the occasional 
reconfiguration of the properties of the Earth’s 
ionosphere to improve satellite communications. 
Many writers on this program associate this 
military capability with the ability to generate 
‘violent and unexpected changes in climate.’

Whether such capabilities exist could only be 
clarified in a context of full disclosure of the 
role of the drilling of the oil companies in the 
Caribbean and the by-products of deep drilling 
below the ocean floor in the Caribbean. The full 
role of the US military and intelligence services 
in Haiti over the previous one hundred years 
ensured that the US military forces did not 
inspire confidence in the people of Haiti when 
the Obama administration deployed 13,000 marines 
in the aftermath of the earthquake.

RACISM AND MIND GAMES AGAINST HAITI

Whether the earthquake was a natural disaster or 
not, the conservative and racist forces invoked 
God against the people of Haiti. The racist media 
had a field day reproducing images of sloth, 
poverty and hopelessness in Haiti. The media 
repeated the formulation that Haiti was ‘the 
poorest country in the western hemisphere.’ 
Racists and imperialists sought to outdo each 
other in mobilising stereotypes of Haiti. 
Kidnappers and child traffickers used the 
disaster as cover for their trade. Pat Robertson 
claimed that the Haiti was God’s revenge because 
Haiti had made a pact with the evil. 
<http://articles.cnn.com/2010-01-13/us/haiti.pat.robertson_1_pat-robertson-disasters-and-terrorist-attacks-devil?_s=PM:US>Robertson 
said on national TV in the United States that,

‘Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and 
people might not want to talk about it. They were 
under the heel of the French, you know, Napoleon 
the Third and whatever, and they got together and 
swore a pact to the devil. They said, “We will 
serve you if you'll get us free from the French.” 
True story. And so the devil said, “O.K., it's a deal.” ‘

Inside the United States and in the Caribbean 
fundamentalist and born again forces reproduced 
this tale so that even among some sections of the 
poor in Haiti, there was a view that the 
suffering was payback from divine forces. 
According to this rendition of the revolution in 
Haiti, the struggles against France and slavery 
were struggles against Christianity and 
civilization, because the enslaved were being 
Christianised by the French. The evil voodoo 
priests of Haiti had made a pact with the devil 
in order to in order to secure Satan's aid in expelling the French occupation.

The ranting of Pat Robertson was a new variation 
of the kind of racism that had developed in the 
West to oppose black dignity and 
self-assertiveness. Michael West in the book, 
‘From Toussaint to Tupac’ captured the birth and 
support of the racist ideas of Count Gobineau in 
France and how these ideas became part of the 
international arsenal to hold back Haiti and black people.

‘If the Haitian Revolution could not be rolled 
back, it would certainly be contained. Having won 
the war, the Haitians would be denied the fruits 
of victory: they would be made to lose the peace. 
The cost of throwing off the shackles of 
colonialism, slavery and white supremacy would be 
very high, even crippling. European powers and 
white-run states variously isolated Haiti, 
embargoed its goods, demanded reparations, and 
barred from their shores its dangerous 
achievements and citizens 
 scientific racism as 
a mode of securing post abolition global racial 
hierarchies flourished, initially, and not 
accidentally, in post-Napoleonic France, most 
notably in the writings of Count Gobineau, “the father of racist ideology”.’

The crippling of the revolution and the attempt 
to systematically destroy the Haitian revolution 
by military occupation and by thugs and drug 
dealers ensured that the task of reconstructing 
Haiti would require new political forces, 
nationally, regionally and internationally. Such 
forces had begun to coalesce during the 
presidency of Bertrand Aristide and the 
international efforts to support the World Conference against Racism.

REPARATIONS AND RECONSTRUCTION

In the first years after the revolution in Haiti, 
the people were desperate to end diplomatic 
isolation. The history books tell us that the 
‘French government sent a team of accountants and 
actuaries into Haiti in order to place a value on 
all lands, all physical, assets, the 500,000 
citizens who were formerly enslaved, animals, and 
all other commercial properties and services. The 
sums amounted to 150 million gold francs. Haiti 
was told to pay this reparation to France in 
return for national recognition. The Haitian 
government agreed; payments began immediately. 
Members of the Cabinet were also valued because 
they had been enslaved persons before Independence.’

Numerous writers have been chronicling how France 
had worked to systematically destroy the Republic 
of Haiti. Professor Hilary Beckles, principal of 
the University of the West Indies, was among the 
many who added his voice to the exposure of 
France and the US in the destruction of Haiti. He 
argued that France had carried out a merciless 
exploitation, ‘that was designed and guaranteed 
to collapse the Haitian economy and society.’ 
Haiti was forced to pay the sum of 150 million 
francs until 1922 when the last installment was made.

France had used then international balance of 
power in the 19th century to turn the idea of reparations on its head.

At the end of the twentieth century, the 
international balance of forces were shifting and 
in this shift the anti-globalisation forces, the 
forces of peace, the environmental justice 
movement and the anti-racist movements had 
coalesced and came together under the framework 
of the World Conference Against Racism. Coming 
together in differing regions of the world over a 
ten-year period, this WCAR met in Durban South 
Africa in September 2001. It was in the general 
international mobilisation to name the slavery 
and slave trade as crimes against humanity where 
the peoples of Haiti called on the peoples of 
France to repay the forced reparative claims of 
French imperialists of the 19th century.

During the 2001 UN Conference on Race in Durban, 
South Africa, there were strong representations 
that reparations were due to the black peoples of 
the world emanating from the years of 
enslavement. Additionally, it was in agreed the 
Durban conference that the government of France 
had to repay the 150 million francs. ‘The value 
of this amount was estimated by financial actuaries as US$21 billion.’

Here was a firm basis for reparations and reconstruction.

Neither France nor the United States took these 
deliberations lightly. It was a historical 
coincidence that the attack on the US, 11 
September 2011, took place two days after the end 
of the WCAR in Durban. Since that time the 
resolutions of the meeting were squashed as the 
world was diverted to the global war on terror. 
Inside Haiti, the forces of destruction unleashed 
terror against the peoples of Haiti. When the US 
invaded Iraq in March 2003, France and the US 
were at loggerheads. However, when it came to the 
destabilisation of Haiti, they were in agreement. 
The president, Aristide was removed from power 
and another form of occupation took place. Only 
this time, the French and the USA sought the 
cover of the United Nations with the installation 
of MINUSTAH. This devise of hiding behind the 
United Nations necessitated clarity on the part 
of the forces opposed to imperial domination. The 
Caribbean societies and the South Africans 
rejected the propaganda war against Haiti. Brazil 
and Venezuela gestured towards the progressive 
camp but allowed their troops to be caught to in the UN and NGO occupation.

Whatever the conditions of Haiti before the major 
event of January 2010, there was need for 
clarity; forces such as Patrick Gaspard, 
executive director of the Democratic National 
Committee, who served as director of the Office 
of Political Affairs for the Obama administration 
from January 2009 to 2011, and Paul Farmer, 
world-renowned doctor, had to emerge from the 
shadows to join the required fight back against 
the recolonisation and remilitarisation of Haiti.

SHAM ELECTIONS 2010 AND THE CHALLENGES TO THE INTERNATIONAL LEFT

International divisions over the future paths of 
Haiti simmered as disaster and rubble were 
reinforced by a massive cholera outbreak. The 
strain of this cholera was foreign to the 
Caribbean and instead of seriously investigating, 
the UN mobilised the international media to 
demonise the people of Haiti. It was in the midst 
of these multiple catastrophes that the US form 
of democracy without elections was imposed on the 
people of Haiti. The elections were held in 
November 2010 after the US disenfranchised the 
majority of Haitians by denying the participation 
of the Lavalas in the elections. Two candidates 
who between them received 11 per cent of the vote 
were nominated for the second round of the elections in March 2011.

The Clintons worked overtime to ensure that there 
was media support for this illegitimate process. 
Hilary Clinton, the US secretary of state left 
dealing with the smouldering revolution in Egypt 
to fly to Haiti to bully the government to accept 
a fraudulent process. President René Préval of 
Haiti was promised the same treatment of ouster 
like that which deposed Aristide if he did not 
accept the pressure to sanction the illegitimate 
procedure. In the midst of this farce of 
preparing for the runoff, the exiled Baby Doc 
Duvalier returned to Haiti. In a democratic 
society, Duvalier would have been arrested for 
the criminal actions and it was significant that 
there were no drumbeats for his arrest from the 
western media. Baby Doc is a criminal and 
pressures must be intensified so that he is brought to trial in Haiti.

Pressures on the people of Haiti did not deter 
them and they continued to organise. It was this 
grassroots organisation and pressure that enabled 
Bertrand Aristide to return. Reports coming out 
from the grassroots organisation in the country 
showed that the people were not cowed. Norman 
Girvan, professor Emeritus of the University of 
the West Indies, who attended and participated in 
one such meeting in Haiti, reported on the 
vibrancy of the grassroots social movements 
inside Haiti and their call for international 
solidarity. Girvan reported that approximately 
one hundred representatives of social 
organisations from throughout the country – 
including farmers, women, labour, students, human 
rights, and professionals – concluded three days 
of intense debate about the kind of Haiti they 
want to see, the obstacles they face, and the 
nature of the financing they need. 
<http://www.normangirvan.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/report-papda-forum.pdf>According 
to Norman Girvan,

‘Among other conclusions, they agreed on an 
agenda for collective action that includes 
creating a permanent Assembly of Social 
Movements, campaigning for the non-renewal of the 
Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of 
Haiti – a veritable parallel government set up a 
year ago under the tutelage of the U.S., World 
Bank, IDB and other so-called “international 
donors”, and reinforcing a regional campaign for 
the withdrawal of the MINUSTAH military occupation.’
I am in support of the calls from within Haiti 
for a new path to reconstruction that begins with the people of Haiti.

The installation of Michel Martelly as president 
of Haiti on May 14 demanded that the left and 
progressive forces internationally organise to 
expose and oppose the forces of violence and 
destruction inside Haiti. The process that 
brought Martelly to the presidency was a sham, 
and this farce will force popular forces to 
distinguish between processes of democratisation 
and pseudo-elections without democratic participation.

The constellation of class and military forces 
fighting to oppose reparations and reconstruction 
in Haiti are the same constellation of forces 
that hid behind the view that Haiti is cursed. 
The majesty of the Haitian revolution continues 
to inspire new forces as we enter a new 
revolutionary moment. The events of the current 
revolutionary moment in world politics demand 
that Haitians and all those in solidarity with 
Haiti cannot give up on Haiti. I am in agreement 
with C.L.R James that the people of Haiti and the 
people of the Caribbean will move again and when 
they move they will shock the world.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Horace Campbell is professor of African 
American studies and political science at 
Syracuse University. He is the author of 
‘<http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745330068&>Barack 
Obama and 21st Century Politics: A Revolutionary 
Moment in the USA’. See <http://www.horacecampbell.net>www.horacecampbell.net.
* Please send comments to <mailto:editor at pambazuka.org>editor at pambazuka.org




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