Deal with the Devil

When disaster struck, the late televangelist Pat Robertson knew its cause. 9/11 happened to New York City because of all those feminists and gays in the Big Apple. Katrina flooded New Orleans because of its Mardi Gras debauchery. Superstorm Sandy hit NYC because those feminists and gays weren’t all wiped out on 9/11.

Pat didn’t restrict himself to commenting on American disasters. When Haiti erupted in violence in 2004, Pat cited a “Deal With The Devil” back in 1791 when enslaved Haitians arose after a “Voodoo Ceremony” to overthrow their French overlords. Pat would surely cite that “Deal With The Devil” to explain the chaos in Haiti today.

History explains Haiti’s problems differently. In 1791, Haiti was the world’s most lucrative colony. It was the leading producer of coffee (just catching on in Europe) and sugar (tropically-grown cane sugar beats the crap out of Europe-grown beet sugar). The French were brutal slave masters. Men and women were forced to labor in the tropical sun for 12 hours or more a day to fulfill ever-rising production quotas. Those who were injured or became sick were often discarded; the French could import replacements. Punishments for alleged transgressions — working too slowly, feigning illness, running away — included rape, amputation and being burned or buried alive.

Unlike their counterparts in Florida, Haitian slaves didn’t “learn valuable life skills”. In fact, Haitian slaves realized that they outnumbered their overseers ten to one. It took fourteen years but in 1801, the world’s first Black Republic was founded.

The French, of course, refused to recognize the new state as did the United States, Spain, and Britain. “We can’t have this slave revolt idea catch on! Slaves outnumber Whites in the American South and throughout the Caribbean!”

So the world boycotted Haitian coffee and sugar. With no money coming in, Haitians were almost worse off than they were before. The French really liked that coffee and sugar though. They offered to reopen their market for Haitian products if they were paid 150 million francs to repay the former enslavers for the “loss of their property”. To collect the first installment, France sent a fleet of warships to Port-au-Prince.

The problem was that 150 million francs was ten times Haiti’s Gross National Product at the time. Unlike poor Donald Trump who can’t get a bank to cover his $480 million debt, Haiti found a willing lender in the major banks of Paris. Just like anyone attempting to pay off credit card debt with the “minimum payment”, Haiti never really got ahead of its mounting debt. Instead of all that coffee and sugar money building Port-au-Prince, it built Paris. It took Haiti more than 60 years to finally satisfy the indemnity, in 1888, and nearly 60 more to pay off the associated interest, in 1947.

The French were not the only ones taking advantage of Haiti. Absent from our history books is the fact that Haitian debt held by Americans provided a pretext for President Woodrow Wilson to order the Marines into Port-au-Prince in 1915 to establish martial law. US military remained there until 1934. To keep Haitians busy, the Americans installed corvée — forced, unpaid labor — for public building projects. To Haitians, it was the reimposition of slavery. They rebelled, and Marines and the U.S.-trained Gendarmarie killed thousands of Haitians.

Haiti’s problems are not due to a “Deal with The Devil” unless that “Devil” is French and American banks.

By Ed Dufton