If You Think Haiti Is a S***hole, Then Blame America for Helping to Make It That Way

[EasyAce]

Centuries of mistreatment by the U.S. is a primary cause of Haiti's plight
By Tate Watkins
http://reason.com/archives/2018/01/12/if-you-think-haiti-is-a-shithole-then-bl/print

President Donald Trump reportedly described Haiti and a slew of other nations as "shithole countries" while meeting with lawmakers about immigration policy yesterday. If you expected more from from him, then you probably expect too much.

But eight years to the day after an earthquake brought Haiti to its knees, most Americans view the country closer to the way Trump describes the place than they'd like to admit. The typical American's understanding of Haiti doesn't go much further than the global press's tagline: the "poorest country in the Western Hemisphere." And there is undeniably poverty in Haiti. The average economic output for a Haitian is $820 per year, compared with their neighbors in the Dominican Republic, who average $6,000 . . . Only about one in five Haitians have a job that pays a steady wage. The rest work informally, or not at all.

Today, if you look at a list of coffee-growing countries, you might not even find Haiti on it. Which is shocking, given that just over 200 years ago, the colony that predated Haiti was the world's biggest coffee producer. The story of how the tiny place that once sold half the world's coffee fell off those lists takes many pages to tell. But the country's current predicament has far more to do with the U.S. government than everyday Haitians.

To be clear, the Haitian state and its leaders have perpetually hamstrung their own people, when not outright decimating them. But Haiti's history also includes a United States that initially refused to acknowledge or trade with the second free republic in the New World—the first free black republic, borne of a successful slave revolution. It includes two decades of occupation by U.S. Marines, a time when free Haitians were conscripted into chain gangs and shot dead for attempting to escape. It includes hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to a father-son dictatorship whose three-decade reign ruined the country's economy and murdered thousands of citizens. And it includes a foreign aid faucet that continues to flow today, despite the ill incentives it creates. Tweaks to immigration policy would do orders of magnitude more to help ordinary Haitians than that aid—as if helping Haitians were a concern of the present administration . . .

[Frank Cannon]

Thank God the "Blame America First" crowd is riding in to save the day.

[dfwgator]

[InHeavenThereIsNoBeer]

The ugly one.

[goatprairie]

Haiti was originally run by the Spanish. The French took over in 1625 and created what was described as its best colony. Thanks to a democracy movement in the late 18th century, Haitian slaves eventually defeated forces aligned against them. Many French troops sent to put down the slave rebellion died from disease.  Eventually, the victorious slaves slaughtered almost all the remaining French colonists.
So the slaves were free to run their country with little white interference for a century.  What was the result? American troops were occasionally sent in to restore order starting in 1917.   Billions of American dollars have been sent to Haiti to help the people.
It is still a sh*thole, because the native people  made it one. Whether the U.S. intervened or not, the result would have been the same. Haiti is an awful place because their people made it an awful place.

[Fishrrman]

On the left: Haiti.
On the right: Dominican Republic.


Aside from what can be seen above, what is the most significant and obvious difference between the two nations?