Vol. 74/No. 6      February 15, 2010

In the early part of the 18th century, Saint Domingue, a French colony on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, had one of the richest, most productive agricultural economies in the Western Hemisphere, allowing French landowners to reap giant profits from the sale of sugarcane and coffee.

In the late 18th century the French revolution replaced the monarchy with the rule of the rising capitalist class. That event had strong reflections inside Saint Domingue, where many—not only slaves, but some slave owners, other whites, and mulattos—chafed at continued French colonial rule.

In the midst of the clashes with Paris, the slaves rose up in 1791, forming their own army under the leadership of Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines. Over the course of several years the slave rebellion brought the troops of Napoleon Bonaparte to their knees, abolished slavery, and declared independence from France.

In 1804, the former slaves established the first black republic, naming it Haiti. Some of the old slave plantations were broken up and many freed Africans became small farmers. The new government, heavily composed of officers from the slave army, sought to generate revenue by imposing heavy taxes on the countryside.

The social layer that replaced the French rulers attempted to continue the lucrative trade in sugar and other agricultural products. But they were starting with an economy wracked by more than a decade of civil war and military intervention. Many of the plantations had been destroyed in the course of the fighting. Most ex-slaves, including some of those now administering the country, were only beginning to learn how to read and write.

Paris and other colonial powers in the Caribbean were determined to dominate Haiti and continue the exploitation of its land and labor. Washington feared the example the first black republic would set—for blacks in other nations of the region and most importantly for the millions of African slaves in the United States.

To maximize the economic isolation of the new Haitian government, Washington imposed a trade embargo. It also demanded the Haitian government make reparations to French slave owners for their “losses” when slavery was overthrown!

In 1825 the Haitian government agreed to pay 150 million francs back to the French colonialists. The only way they could do that was to borrow money from French, and later, U.S. and German banks, placing the country further in debt. By 1900, 80 percent of the Haitian national budget went to debt relief, wrote Richard Kim in the January 15 Nation magazine. By 1947, after 122 years of payments, the government had covered about 60 percent of its debt. The massive transfer of wealth to foreign banks stunted Haitian agriculture and prevented the development of modern industry, slowing the rise of a working class.  
 
1915 U.S. invasion
Toward the end of the century U.S. capitalism was emerging as a powerful force in Latin America, rivaling the colonial powers of France, Spain, Holland, and Britain. In 1915 Washington invaded Haiti to ensure that it continued repaying its “debt” to France and to end a factional struggle in the government that threatened stability in the region. The troops stayed until 1934.

During Washington’s direct occupation of Haiti a few development projects were carried out, mostly to provide sufficient infrastructure to export the wealth produced by Haitian farmers to imperialist countries, according to Mark Danner, author of Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War. Some elite Haitians were sent abroad to study and return. In this way the U.S. government hoped to create a stable middle class beholden to Washington.

After a succession of short-lived, corrupt capitalist governments, François Duvalier won the 1957 presidential elections in Haiti. He quickly sought to eliminate opposition from within the officer corps, the Catholic Church, and bourgeois rivals by organizing a private paramilitary force, the Tontons Macoutes, to terrorize opponents.

The brutality of the regimes of Duvalier and his son became an international scandal, but Washington continued to apologize for them. Answering critics a couple of months before the elder Duvalier’s son, Jean-Claude, was overthrown, U.S. secretary of state George Shultz claimed the Haitian ruler was “making a concerted and significant effort to improve the human rights situation in Haiti.”

The Duvaliers were an important counterweight in the Caribbean to the Cuban Revolution, which had triumphed in 1959.

The country’s economy became even further distorted. When the younger Duvalier fled in 1986, the average income of Haitians was lower than it had been in 1957 when his father took office.  
 
1986 uprising overturns Duvalier
In the wake of the Nicaraguan and Grenadan revolutions in 1979, and revolutionary struggles in El Salvador and Guatemala, an uprising exploded in 1986 in Haiti, forcing Jean-Claude Duvalier to flee the country. This victory demonstrated to the world the capacities of Haiti’s workers and farmers despite the centuries of oppression and exploitation.

At the same time, the toll of decades of Duvalierism, with no rights to freedom of speech, assembly, or association, meant the toilers had yet to build elementary organizations like trade unions and farmers associations.

Most importantly, they had no revolutionary party with a perspective of organizing the toilers in a struggle to take state power out of the hands of the tiny Haitian capitalist class and begin to construct a society based on the needs of the majority of producers.

No leaders emerged in the anti-Duvalier struggle with the perspective of the leadership of the Cuban Revolution, which rejected any compromise with U.S. imperialism or the wealthy Cuban property owners, and relied on mobilizing the power of workers and farmers to overthrow capitalism and begin reorganizing Cuban society.

In the second article we will take up what has unfolded in Haiti since Duvalier’s overthrow and the challenges before Haitian working people today.

(To be continued)  
 
 
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