[News] How the U.S. crippled Haiti's Domestic Rice Industry

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Haiti’s hunger crisis is no accident – it is the direct result of US 
economic policies imposed on rural Haiti beginning in the 1980s. The 
story of how the US undermined Haiti’s domestic rice industry explains 
why a nation of farmers can no longer feed itself.

*HOW THE UNITED STATES CRIPPLED
*
*HAITI’S DOMESTIC RICE INDUSTRY by Leslie Mullin *

/We are all living under a system so corrupt that to ask for a plate of 
rice and beans every day for every man, woman and child is to preach 
revolution/ – Jean Bertrand Aristide, Dignity 1990.

The basic right to eat is at the very heart of Haiti’s struggle for 
democracy.  Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the radical voice of Haiti’s poor, 
aptly characterized slavery when he wrote, “/The role of slaves was to 
harvest coconuts, and the role of colonists was to eat the coconuts./” 
(1) To Aristide, those who have food and those who don’t marks the vast 
chasm separating Haiti’s wealthy elite from millions of impoverished 
citizens:

/The rich of my country, a tiny percentage of our population, sit at a 
vast table covered in white damask and overflowing with good food, while 
the rest of my countrymen and countrywomen are crowded under that table, 
hunched over in the dirt and starving. It is a violent situation, and 
one day the people under that table will rise up in righteousness, and 
knock the table of privilege over, and take what rightfully belongs to 
them. (2)/

It’s no wonder that Haiti’s most popular party, /Fanmi Lavalas/, chose 
the image of Haitian people seated around a dining table as its emblem, 
signifying the overthrow of privilege and the right of every Haitian to 
share the nation’s wealth. This is not mere symbolism. In its 1990 
program, the /Lavalas/ party recognized the right to eat as one of three 
basic principles, along with the right to work and the right of the 
impoverished masses to demand what is owed them.(3) In a very concrete 
way, Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, 
illustrated this commitment on the day of his February 7th, 1991 
inauguration, when he invited several hundred street children to join 
him for breakfast in the Palace garden.

*The Story of Rice*

The story of Haitian rice begins in Africa, where rice has sustained 
African peoples for centuries. Rice was so basic to the West African 
diet that it was an essential provision on slave ships, accompanying 
captive Africans to Brazil, the Caribbean and the southern United 
States. (4) Today, testament to 10 million souls kidnapped from their 
homeland, every region touched by the African diaspora has its own 
unique version of rice and beans. (5)

Rice cultivation in the United States is deeply rooted in slavery. Black 
Rice author Judith Carney writes, “/Few Americans identify slavery with 
the cultivation of rice, yet rice was a major plantation crop during the 
first three centuries of settlement in the Americas… By the middle of 
the eighteenth century, rice plantations in South Carolina and the black 
slaves who worked them had created one of the most profitable economies 
in the world./” (6) European settlers knew nothing about the 
complexities of growing, harvesting and threshing rice. But enslaved 
Africans did.

A basic staple of the Haitian diet, rice has been cultivated in Haiti 
since its 1804 independence. Until the 1980s, Haitian farmers produced 
most of the rice consumed in Haiti. Under the US-backed dictator 
Jean-Claude Duvalier and the brutal military regimes that followed, 
domestic rice cultivation began to plummet. In the space of a few 
decades, Haiti became the world’s fourth largest market for American 
rice. By 2004, the value of US rice exports to Haiti amounted to $80 
billion. How this colossal tragedy came about is a story of foreign 
intervention, government corruption, and corporate greed backed by 
ruthless repression.

*1984: Growth of US Food Aid Undercuts Haitian Farmers*

Food aid played a key role in undermining Haiti’s domestic rice 
production. President Aristide observed, “/What good does it do the 
peasant when the pastor feeds his children? For one night, he is 
grateful to the pastor, because that night he does not have to hear the 
whimpers of his children, starving. But the same free foreign rice the 
pastor feeds the peasant’s children is being sold on the market for less 
than the farmer’s own produce. The very food that the pastor feeds the 
peasant’s children is keeping the peasant in poverty, unable himself to 
feed his children./” (7)

Ronald Reagan’s 1984 Caribbean Basin Initiative prompted a major 
increase in US food aid to Haiti. In 1984, Haiti received $11 million in 
food aid; from 1985-1988, Haiti received $54 million in food aid. (8) 
The Caribbean Basin Initiative called for integrating Haiti into the 
global market by redirecting 30% of Haiti’s domestic food production 
towards export crops, a plan that USAID experts systematically carried 
out. The United States fully recognized that this would lead to 
widespread hunger in rural Haiti, as peasant land was converted to grow 
food for foreigners. Food aid was supposed to compensate rural Haitians 
for this attack on their livelihood. (9) Food aid benefits the big 
American companies who grow and transport it, but wrecks local 
economies. As cheap American food undersold Haitian farmers’ produce, 
domestic agriculture became even less sustainable. In effect, food aid 
created a dependence on foreign imports.

How was the United States able to impose its will on rural Haiti? At the 
time, Jean-Claude Duvalier, the son of Haiti’s infamous dictator, 
Francois Duvalier, ruled Haiti. Like his father, the younger Duvalier 
held onto power by controlling Haiti’s repressive security forces. He 
received millions in US aid intended to maintain US influence in the 
Caribbean as a bulwark against Cuba. The Reagan administration 
conditioned US aid on Duvalier’s support for the plan to restructure 
Haiti’s economy.

Thus began the most massive foreign intervention in Haiti since the 
1915-1934 American occupation.

*1986: The Game is Rigged - Miami Rice Invades Haiti*

“/We cannot sell our rice…rice is coming in from Miami, and now we 
cannot live,/" said Emanuel Georges, manning the barricade at L'Estere. 
LA Times, Dec 21, 1986

In February 1986, a popular uprising forced Baby-Doc Duvalier out of 
power. After he fled Haiti, raiding the treasury as he left, a military 
junta headed by General Henri Namphy took power. Predictably, the United 
States aligned with the junta and intensified measures to restructure 
Haiti’s economy. In 1987, Namphy received IMF loans valued at $24.6 
million in exchange for agreeing to slash rice tariffs from 150% to 50%, 
(10)  the lowest in the Caribbean. (11) He opened all of Haiti’s ports 
to commercial activity (12) and agreed to stop what little support the 
government had offered Haitian farmers. Meanwhile, Haiti’s military 
elite saw an opportunity to make a profit smuggling American rice.

In the United States, the passage of the 1985 Farm Bill significantly 
boosted subsidies to American rice growers. By 1987, 40% of American 
rice growers’ profits came from the government. (13) Heavily subsidized 
American rice could sell at prices far below the market value of Haitian 
rice. Haitian farmers never stood a chance against this unfair competition.

In Haiti, imported American rice is called “Miami rice” because it is 
shipped from Miami in sacks stamped “Miami, FLA.” By December 1987, 
Haiti’s rice production had shrunk to 75% of Haitian needs. (14) 
Outraged Haitian peasants barricaded highways and ports for three months 
to protest the cheap American rice that had begun to flood Haitian 
markets. They attacked truckloads of Miami rice with machetes, picks and 
clubs, dumping rice onto the earth.

The late Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste, a Haitian priest and human rights 
advocate, later recalled this era: "/In the 1980s, imported rice poured 
into Haiti, below the cost of what our farmers could produce it. Farmers 
lost their businesses. People from the countryside started losing their 
jobs and moving to the cities. After a few years of cheap imported rice, 
local production went way down./" (15)

*1990: Democracy Brings Hope*

By 1990, the year Fr. Jean Bertrand Aristide was elected President in 
Haiti’s first democratic election, US rice imports outpaced domestic 
production. (16)  Aristide was the candidate of Haiti’s popular movement 
Lavalas. He won with 67% of the vote. His February 1991 inauguration 
marked a victory for Haiti’s poor majority after decades of Duvalier 
family dictatorships and military rule, signaling participation of the 
poor in a new social order. The new administration began to implement 
programs in adult literacy, health care, and land redistribution; 
lobbied for a minimum wage hike; and proposed new roads and 
infrastructure. Aristide enforced taxes on the wealthy, and dissolved 
the rural section chief infrastructure that empowered the paramilitary 
force known as /Tonton/ /Macoute/. He closed Fort Dimanche, the dreaded 
Duvalier-era torture center. (17) The Aristide government met with a 
large coalition of farmers’ associations and unions and proposed buying 
all Haitian-grown rice in order to stabilize the price, limiting rice 
imports during periods between harvests.

*1992: American Rice Inc Profits from Haiti’s Bloody Coup*

Just seven months after his inauguration, President Aristide and the 
democratic government were overthrown in a bloody military coup led by 
General Raoul Cedras. Trained in the United States and funded by the 
CIA, Cedras commanded the Haitian Army. His regime unleashed the 
collective violence of Haiti’s repressive forces against its own people. 
>From 1991-1994, nearly five thousand /Lavalas/ activists and supporters 
of the constitutional government were massacred; many others were 
savagely tortured and imprisoned. Rape as a political weapon was 
widespread. Three hundred thousand Haitians were driven into hiding, 
while tens of thousands fled the country.

Around the world and in the United States, there was a massive outcry 
demanding the restoration of democracy and the return of President 
Aristide. Aside from the Vatican, few governments recognized the illegal 
Cedras regime, widely condemned for its sweeping human-rights abuses. 
This did not stop American Rice Inc from collaborating with the ruthless 
military regime to turn a profit. In September 1992, barely a year after 
the coup, American Rice Inc negotiated a nine-year contract with the 
illegal Haitian government, importing American rice under its newly 
formed Rice Corporation of Haiti. (18)

American Rice Inc is a subsidiary of Erly Industries, a powerful 
international agribusiness. The company holds an almost monopolistic 
position in Haiti’s rice market. (19) In the 1980’s American Rice Inc 
imported rice under its brand Comet Rice, which constituted much of the 
Miami rice that ravaged Haitian rice production at the time. (20)

In the 1990s, American Rice Inc supplemented its profits in “legal” rice 
imports by smuggling rice to avoid paying import taxes. Lawrence 
Theriot, the Washington lobbyist for American Rice Inc, was a former 
director of Reagan’s Caribbean Basin Initiative. He had powerful friends 
in Washington, DC like Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse 
Helms (R-NC). In March 2000, the Haitian government fined the company 
$1.4 million for evading Haiti’s customs duties. Jesse Helms retaliated 
by withholding $30 million in US aid, and denying high-ranking Haitian 
officials visas to enter the United States. The American Securities & 
Exchange Commission later found Theriot and two other American Rice Inc 
executives guilty of corrupt foreign practices for smuggling rice into 
Haiti.

*Bill Clinton’s Crocodile Tears*

“/The dilemma is, I believe, the classic dilemma of the poor; a choice 
between death and death. Either we enter a global economic system, in 
which we know we cannot survive, or, we refuse, and face death by slow 
starvation. With choices like these the urgency of finding a third way 
is clear. We must find some room to maneuver, some open space simply to 
survive./” – Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Bill Clinton’s 1992 election took place during Haiti’s repressive Cedras 
regime, when President Aristide lived in exile in the United States. 
After Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, Clinton famously apologized for forcing 
Haiti to lower its rice tariffs during his administration. He 
acknowledged that he helped big Arkansas agro-businesses reap profits at 
the expense of Haiti’s rice farmers. But Clinton left a lot out of the 
story.

Clinton posed as mediator between the coup leaders and President 
Aristide to negotiate the return of Haiti’s democratically elected 
government. He took advantage of this role to use the threat of 
continued repression as a bargaining chip. While the US stalled, 
demanding more and more economic concessions - displaying not-so-covert 
support for Haiti’s military regime - the junta continued murdering 
supporters of the constitutional government.

Within this coerced context, Aristide resisted the US neoliberal plan. 
He insisted that discussions demanded by the financial institutions for 
the proposed sales of state-owned enterprises include benefits for the 
poor – opportunities for co-ownership, funding for health and education, 
reparations to the victims of the coup. (21) Aristide would later refuse 
to move forward with privatization, disband the Haitian military over 
strong US objections, raise the minimum wage and bring paramilitary 
leaders charged with extra-judicial killings to justice. (22)

By the time President Aristide returned to Haiti, the collapse of the 
country’s rice production was a /fait accompli,/ victim of a long and 
deliberate US campaign waged against Haitian farmers in collusion with 
successive Haitian dictators and military regimes. Imported Miami rice 
constituted 80% of Haiti’s domestic consumption.  Rice smuggling was 
common, enabled by the corrupt Cedras regime, which accepted bribes 
instead of enforcing tariffs. (23)

Nothing changed after Clinton’s apology either. Haiti’s 2010 earthquake 
became yet another business opportunity for foreign corporations to 
overrun Haiti’s economy, while food aid, callously tossed off trucks to 
desperate Haitians, meant more revenue for US corporations. Nor should 
we let Clinton off the hook for forcibly repatriating thousands of 
Haitian “boat people” fleeing tyranny under the junta, and intercepting 
12,000 other refugees who were illegally imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.

*Democracy and Reparations
*

/Democracy asks us to put the needs and rights of people at the center 
of our endeavors. This means investing in people. In investing in people 
means first of all food, clean water, education and health care. These 
are basic human rights. It is the challenge of any real democracy to 
guarantee them/ – Jean-Bertrand Aristide

There are two opposing visions of Haiti’s future – one projected by 
/Fanmi Lavalas /benefits the poor majority; the other imposed by the 
United States and wealthy foreign nations enriches international 
corporations and the Haitian elite. What is clear is that Haiti’s people 
must prevail over foreign profits and the wealthy elite. This means real 
democracy and respect for Haitian sovereignty.

-------

Leslie Mullin is a member of Haiti Action Committee.This article was 
originally published in the August 2017 issue of Haiti Solidarity, 
newsletter of Haiti Action Committee, and is available online 
<http://haitisolidarity.net/in-the-news/how-the-united-states-crippled-haitis-domestic-rice-industry/>. 


ENDNOTES:

1 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand. Haiti-Haitii? Philosophical Reflections for 
Mental Decolonization. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2011, p37.

2 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand. Dignity. Charlottesville & London: University 
Press of Virginia, 1996, p9.

3 Sprague, Jeb. Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti. 
New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012, p57.

4 Harris, Jessica B. Iron Pots & Wooden Spoons: Africa’s Gifts to New 
World Cooking. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999, p31.

5 Hess, Karen. The Carolina Rice Kitchen; The African Connection. 
Columbia, So Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1992, p. 95

6 Carney, Judith A. Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation 
in the Americas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

7 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand. In the Parish of the Poor: Writings from 
Haiti. New York: Orbis Books, 1990, p67.

8 DeWind, Josh and Kinley III, David H. Aiding Migration: The Impact of 
International Development Assistance on Haiti. Boulder and London: 
Westview Press, 1988, p98.

9 DeWind, p77, p98

10 Emersberger, Joe. Kicking Away the Ladder in Haiti. [web page]. 
Telesur, February 20, 2015. 
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Kicking-Away-the-Ladder-in-Haiti-20150220-0027.html 
<http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Kicking-Away-the-Ladder-in-Haiti-20150220-0027.html>

11 Gros, Jean-Germaine. Indigestible Recipe: Rice, Chicken Wings, and 
International Financial Institutions: Or Hunger Politics in Haiti. SAGE 
Publications, Inc: Journal of Black Studies, Vol 40, No 5 [May 2010], p981.

12 Wilentz, Amy. The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier. New York: Simon 
and Schuster,  1989 p279

13 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand. Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the 
Poor in the Age of Globalization.  Laura Flynn, ed. Monroe, ME. Common 
Courage Press, 2000, p12.

14 Chavla, Leah. Council on Hemispheric Affairs [COHA]. Haiti Research 
File. Bill Clinton’s Heavy Hand on Haiti’s Vulnerable Agricultural 
Economy: The American Rice Scandal [web page]. April 3, 2010. 
http://www.coha.org/haiti-research-file-neoliberalism%E2%80%99s-heavy-hand-on-haiti%E2%80%99s-vulnerable-agricultural-economy-the-american-rice-scandal/ 
<http://www.coha.org/haiti-research-file-neoliberalism%E2%80%99s-heavy-hand-on-haiti%E2%80%99s-vulnerable-agricultural-economy-the-american-rice-scandal/>

15 Quigley, Bill. The U.S. Role in Haiti’s Food Riots [web page]. 
Counterpunch. April 21, 2008. 
https://www.counterpunch.org/2008/04/21/the-u-s-role-in-haiti-s-food-riots/ 
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2008/04/21/the-u-s-role-in-haiti-s-food-riots/>

16 Georges, Josiane. Trade and the Disappearance of Haitian Rice [web 
page]. Ted Case Studies Number 725, June 2004. 
http://archive.is/20130830194250/www1.american.edu/TED/haitirice.htm 
<http://archive.is/20130830194250/www1.american.edu/TED/haitirice.htm>

17 Stotzky, Irwin P. Silencing the Guns in Haiti: The Promise of 
Deliberative Democracy. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 
1997, p28.

18 Chavla, Leah. COHA.

19 Georges, Josiane. Ted Case Studies.

20 Corbett, Bob. Washington Office on Haiti: Special Issue Report. Rice 
Corporation of Haiti [web page]. November 1, 1995.

21 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand. Eyes of the Heart, p31-32.

22 Myths About Haiti, by Haiti Action Committee, October 2001.

  23 Sprague, p77.

haiti action <action.haiti at gmail.com>

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