why does it require a large-scale disaster before people pay attention? upsetting enough that haiti was already framed as the ‘poorest western nation’, usually with no context given as to WHY it was in such a poor state. it would be terribly unfortunate if such continuation of decontextualised framing were to continue – that it will only be thought of in relation to the earthquake, or its ‘helplessness’.
france, america, britain and other post-imperial powers: do not forget that being ‘generous’ with aid after the fact does not excuse you from past oppression, present oppression.
–
Extension of this destitution to the country as a whole was guaranteed by the isolation of its ruined economy in the decades following independence. Restoration France only re-established the trade and diplomatic relations essential to the new country’s survival after Haiti agreed, in 1825, to pay its old colonial master a ‘compensation’ of some 150 million francs for the loss of its slaves—an amount roughly equal to the French annual budget at the time, or around ten years’ worth of total revenue in Haiti—and to grant punishing commercial discounts. With its economy still shattered by the colonial wars, Haiti could only begin paying this debt by borrowing, at extortionate rates of interest, 24 million francs from private French banks. Though the French demand was eventually cut from 150 to 90 million francs, by the end of the nineteenth century Haiti’s payments to France consumed around 80 per cent of the national budget; France received the last instalment in 1947. Haitians have thus had to pay their original oppressors three times over—through the slaves’ initial labour, through compensation for the French loss of this labour, and then in interest on the payment of this compensation. No other single factor played so important a role in establishing Haiti as a systematically indebted country, the condition which in turn ‘justified’ a long and debilitating series of appropriations-by-gunboat.
- Peter Hallward, Option Zero in Haiti (2004)
read the rest on New Left Review