Thread: Country Without a Net

Country Without a Net


By TRACY KIDDER
New York Times
January 13, 2010


THOSE who know a little of Haiti’s history might have watched the news last night and thought, as I did for a moment: “An earthquake? What next? Poor Haiti is cursed.â€

United States occupation of Haiti

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Causes

From 1911 to 1915 there were six different Presidents of Haiti, each of whom was killed or forced into exile.[1] The revolutionary armies were formed by cacos, peasant brigands from the mountains of the north, along the porous Dominican border, who were enlisted by rival political factions with promises of money to be paid after a successful revolution and an opportunity to plunder.

The United States was particularly apprehensive about the role of the small German community in Haiti (approximately 200 in 1910), who wielded a disproportionate amount of economic power. German nationals controlled about 80 percent of the country's international commerce. They also owned and operated utilities in Cap Haïtien and Port-au-Prince, the main wharf and a tramway in the capital, and a railroad serving the Plaine de Cul-du-Sac.

The German community proved more willing to integrate into Haitian society than any other group of white foreigners, including the more numerous French. Some Germans married into the nation's most prominent mulatto families, thus bypassing the constitutional prohibition against foreign land-ownership. They also served as the principal financiers of the nation's innumerable revolutions, floating innumerable loans-at high interest rates-to competing political factions.

In an effort to limit German influence, in 1910-11 the State Department backed a consortium of American investors, assembled by the National City Bank of New York, in acquiring control of the Banque National d'Haïti, the nation's only commercial bank and the government treasury.

In February 1915 Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam established a dictatorship, but in July, facing a new revolt, he massacred 167 political prisoners, all of whom were from elite families. Sam was then lynched by a mob in Port-au-Prince.

It is alleged that a popular uprising against Sam threatened American business interests in the country (such as HASCO). Because of these competing interests and the possibility of the cacos-supported anti-American Rosalvo Bobo emerging as the next President of Haiti, the American government decided to act quickly to preserve their economic dominance over Haiti.[2]

American President Woodrow Wilson sent 330 U.S. Marines to Port-au-Prince on July 28, 1915. The specific order from the Secretary of the Navy to the invasion commander, Admiral William Deville Bundy, was to "protect American and foreign" interests. However, to avoid public criticism the occupation was labelled as a mission to “re-establish peace and order...[and] has nothing to do with any diplomatic negotiations of the past or the futureâ€

Honest interview of Tracy Kidder allowed on MSM:

(Located at 3:35 into the broadcast)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#34870541