Why is Haiti so poor? Is it because Haitians are dimwitted or incapable of getting their act together?
Haiti isn’t impoverished because the devil got his due; it’s impoverished partly because of debts due. France imposed a huge debt that strangled Haiti. And when foreigners weren’t looting Haiti, its own rulers were.
The greatest predation was the deforestation of Haiti, so that only 2 percent of the country is forested today. Some trees have been — and continue to be – cut by local peasants, but many were destroyed either by foreigners or to pay off debts to foreigners. Last year, I drove across the island of Hispaniola, and it was surreal: You traverse what in places is a Haitian moonscape until you reach the border with the Dominican Republic — and jungle.
Without trees, Haiti lost its topsoil through erosion, crippling agriculture.
To visit Haiti is to know that its problem isn’t its people. They are its treasure — smart, industrious and hospitable — and Haitians tend to be successful in the United States (and everywhere but in Haiti).
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Thanks for this.
This was a comment on another blog I read, on a post about Pat Robertson's comment:
"Haiti did make a pact with the devil. This is a well known historical fact. Unfortunately, it's not the devil depicted in the movies.
The French showed up with 500 guns and "negotiated" a payment of 21 Billion dollars in today's terms. In exchange for independence, French bankers were happy to re-enslave the country with debt. The French aren't the only bankers who profited from this arrangement, they were just the first.
"Haiti was the only country in which the ex-slaves themselves were expected to pay a foreign government for their liberty."
– Haiti: the land where children eat mud [
Wow, I had heard a little about this, but not those details.