Haiti Never Had a Chanc

Poor Haiti. And why is Haiti so poor? Because right from the beginning, since its conception as a free and independent nation, foreign powers did all they could to place a stone around the neck of the fledgling state. Its inhabitants, born into slavery, were never given a chance, despite the fact that Haiti is the true America.

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For “people” like Pat Robertson, former Presidential candidate for the Republican Party, Founder and Chairperson of the Christian Broadcasting Network, the earthquake was visited upon Haiti because, in his words, “they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French. True story”.

There are no words to reply to such pig-headed, unadulterated ignorance because there is no vocabulary to describe the ideas of such a simplistic, moronic, shallow and indeed, evil reaction to the plight of three million people, who as Pat Robertson spewed forth his demonic venom, were having hands and legs amputated without anaesthetic.

Haiti is in the state it is in not because it made a pact with the devil, but because forces of evil here on Earth in Europe and North America decided the country would be a non-starter right from the word “go”. Indeed, before this. Haiti and the Dominican Republic are no less than Hispaniola, the isle on which Christopher Columbus landed. This is America.

The Taino people who lived there were systematically massacred by the Spanish, who quickly filled the sugar and coffee plantations with slaves from Africa during the 1500s and 1600s. Haiti’s fate as a territory was signed in the United Provinces, in Europe, at the Treaty of Ryswick (September 20^th 1697) which ended the Nine Years’ War between France on one side and Britain, Spain, the United Provinces and the Holy Roman Empire on the other: Hispaniola was divided between Spain, which took the eastern two thirds (Dominican Republic today) and France was given the western third, Haiti.

Haiti soon became France’s richest colony. It is difficult to state whether the French were less demonic than the Spanish. Louis XIV’s Code Noir, setting out conditions for slaves in the French Territories, had been passed in a decree in 1685 and immediately after the French rule began, the Haitians were subjected to its terms, among which were the permission for a master to execute a slave (Art. 33), to cut the ears off and brand with a hot iron, or cut the hamstring and brand again (Art. 38), to be chained and beaten (Art. 42).

While the Code also laid out conditions for the proper treatment of slaves and forbade torture, many colonial masters performed the most horrific acts of savagery, including boiling slaves in cauldrons, setting dogs onto them, drowning them, burying them alive or an old favourite, crucifixion.