Haiti and American Neocolonialism

Haiti is best understood in the contexts of the modern world as an American neocolonial protectorate. Besides US policy in Cuba, which includes a genocidal blockade depriving the Cuban people of precious resources needed to function society, it’s hard to find another case of such an ongoing and sustained assault from the largest empire in the world on a tiny island country like Haiti, which has been dominated by foreign rulers for well over five centuries at this point. It’s being exploited, looted, and destroyed for a few simple and extremely perverse purposes.

• Haiti is rich in resources and minerals. Western corporations will need the rare earth minerals, natural gas, and oil reserves as they’ve lost Russian resources. Western power is also declining in Africa—rich in oil, gas, minerals, etc—and the American empire seeks to compete with the Chinese on pioneering future technologies that use tons of rare earth minerals.

• Like Cuba, Haiti suffers from its strategic location to the US. If a tiny country located just off its coast can exercise proper self determination, then other countries suffering under the weight of American neocolonialism, who are bigger and stronger than Haiti, may get ideas of their own.

• Haiti was the only country established via slave rebellion—therefore an example needed to be made at the time. The roots of punishing those who dared to question their colonial rulers still lives with Haiti to this day.

As fascist Republicans spouted anti-immigrant rhetoric directed at Haitians and other migrants while gearing up for their mass deportation plan, the neoliberal Biden administration deported more people back to Haiti, as well as other Latin American and Caribbean countries, using COVID-era immigration policies, than even during Trump’s rule. The dehumanization of migrants (especially brown and black refugees), the American domination of Latin America, and the annihilation of Haiti is a bipartisan operation. Every single Haitian, as well as others suffering in Latin America from corporate corruption and greed traced back to imperial power in Washington, deserves to be granted asylum in the US. For what this empire and its French colony (since August 1944 when the US conquered France from Nazi Germany) have done to Haiti. Let’s examine the history for some clarity and contexts regarding American and French responsibility for the current state of affairs in the war-torn, gang-led and deeply impoverished country.

It started out as a Spanish operation when they conquered Haiti in 1496 from the indigenous populations who were wiped out from the island by the mid-1500s. Haiti was part of their empire until 1697 when the French government took over the Western portion of Hispaniola. French colonists subsequently established sugarcane plantations, worked by slaves taken from Africa, which made the colony one of the world’s richest.

During the French Revolution, the enslaved peoples and their supporters launched the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), led by a former slave and general of the French Army, Toussaint Louverture. Napoleon’s forces were defeated by his successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who declared Haiti’s sovereignty on January 1, 1804. Followed by a massacre of the French colonialists. Haiti became the first independent nation in the Caribbean, the second republic in the Americas, the first country in the Americas to officially abolish slavery, and the only country in history established by a slave revolt.

After Haiti suffered from years via trade embargo’s following their “independence”, the French empire then forced the “Haiti indemnity controversy” onto them. This occured via gunboat diplomacy (“give us your resources or we will slaughter you”). This was France saying “you owe us” for the lost colonial/slave profits and resulted in Haiti using most if its revenues to pay back debts to foreign nations by the mid 1800s. The French essentially ran the operation before passing the torch—so to speak—to the Americans. The US was interested in controlling Haiti since the Revolution in 1804 as a way “to secure a US defensive and economic stake in the West Indies” per the US State Department. The French were too strong and deeply entrenched, and America merely a rising power on the international stage, in the early to mid 1800s. However, by 1868, President Andrew Johnson began the pursuit of annexing the entirety of Hispaniola, including Haiti.

In 1890, the administration of President Benjamin Harrison and his Secretary of State James G. Blaine decided to begin the American conquest of Haiti by sending US Navy admiral Bancroft Gherardi there to persuade the Haitians to lease the Môle-Saint-Nicolas port to the US Government. Gherardi arrived with his fleet to demand the acquisition of the port. Haiti refused any agreement and Haitians were reportedly furious at the presence the US military on their shores. After returning to the US, Gherardi said in an interview with The New York Times that in a short while Haiti would experience further instability, suggesting that future governments in Haiti would abide by the demands of the US.

By the 1890s, Haiti had become reliant on importing most of its goods from the US while it exported the majority of its production to France. French influence was considered benign as Paris had long been a friend to Washington since helping the US win its revolutionary war against the British. German influence, however, was an entirely different matter as the Western powers all had grievances with Berlin. Teddy Rosevelt’s Doctrine—allowing US intervention across Latin America and the Caribbean if any governments stepped out line—also affected Haiti’s relationship with the US. By 1910, President William Taft began to introduce American businesses to Haiti in order to deter European influence and granted a large loan to Haiti to pay off foreign debts, thus bringing Haiti under the defacto control of the US Government.

To further deter foreign economic growth in Haiti, and due to increasing political instability, caused primarily by foreign influence and interference, the US invaded Haiti in 1915 and occupied the country for nearly two decades. Installing a brutal terror regime that had one unstable presidency after another, adhering to the interests of its neocolonial overlords of course. In 1957 the Duvalier dynasty came to power and used state sanctioned violence to quell any political opponents or unrest. Reagan would force the collapse of the regime when it wasn’t politically feasible any longer. A repressive military regime then arose and the US suspended aid. After the fall of subsequent military regimes, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected in 1990. He was toppled in a coup 7 months later and by 1993 Clinton had began an economic blockade of Haiti resulting in massive suffering and another US military intervention in 1994 to restore Aristide to power.

US support for Aristide ended when he was no longer “our kind of guy” and then his corruption became a problem. An armed rebellion in 2004, supported by the US, led to his exile. Aristide’s mistake was very publicly endorsing the idea of reparations from France and the US to Haiti. In 2022, around a dozen former Haitian and French officials told The New York Times that Aristide’s earlier calls for reparations had caused France to side with Aristide’s opponents in Haiti and collaborate with the US to remove him from power, or orchestrate a coup as it’s better known.

With its deteriorating economic outlook, as well as severe natural disasters, Haiti has become plagued by widespread socioeconomic and political crises. Riots, hunger and gang activity are omnipresent. The country is currently in the midst of a gang war where a UN-led intervention, supported primarily by Western powers (US, France, Canada) and using security forces from Kenya, Jamaica, Belize, El Salvador, Bahamas and Guatemala, has been combating the increasing gang violence and control exercised by these groups in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince.

Rival gangs have since formed a coalition with each other in order to combat Haitian government forces, or what remains of them (less than 2,000 per reports in 2023), and the security forces deployed by the UN. This intervention is best understood as the American empire using limited force, as barebones and naked invasion wouldn’t be tolerated or possible geopolitically at the moment, to force Haitians back into submission. This is not to say the gang leaders of Haiti are some sort of radical  revolutionaries intent on Haitian freedom—quite the contrary. They’re ruthless and brutal criminals who want power and control for themselves. Hence the massacres being carried out by these gangs on people from the poorest of slums to the wealthiest sectors of Haitian society. This is, nonetheless, the result of people who’ve been deprived of proper self determination for hundreds of years and are reacting to the capitalist system, imposed against their will, that’s been destroying their lives for centuries.

This has led to many calling Haiti a failed state as it currently stands and it likely won’t be too much longer until complete societal collapse absent another possible American invasion to “save” the country from catastrophe only to then have people live in abject misery, horror and degradation while the US and France continue stealing what little the people of Haiti actually have. This is what’s so infuriating about the rhetoric and policies from American neofascists and neoliberals on immigration: they are dehumanizing people who are fleeing conditions the US Government is primarily responsible for and from conditions where said people have already long been dehumanized and their civilization conquered or destroyed.

“The two main criminals are France and the US. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say, ‘We’re sorry we did it,’ that would be nice. But if that just assuages guilt, it’s just another crime. To become minimally civilized, we would have to say, ‘We carried out and benefited from vicious crimes. A large part of the wealth of France comes from the crimes we committed against Haiti, and the US gained as well. Therefore we are going to pay reparations to the Haitian people. Then you will see the beginnings of civilization.” — Noam Chomsky

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