MORE ABOUT HAITI
More About Haiti - History
Officially called Republic of Haiti
(2002 est. pop. 8,000,000), 10,700 sq mi (27,713 sq km), West Indies, on the
western third of the island of Hispaniola. It is bounded on the north by the
Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Caribbean Sea, and on the east by the
Dominican Republic. Jamaica lies to the west and Cuba to the northwest. The
offshore islands of Tortuga and Gonaives also belong to Haiti. The capital and
largest city is Port-au-Prince.
Land and People
The country is mostly mountainous, but about one third of the land is arable.
Haiti is divided into nine administrative departments. In addition to the
capital, other important cities include Cap-Haitien and Gonaives.
Haiti is the most densely populated country in Latin America and has the lowest
per capita income, with about half the people unemployed and three quarters
living in the severest poverty. Prolonged economic inequality, political
instability and repression, and a near total lack of medical care continue to be
serious problems.
The economic and political situation
have caused numerous Haitians to emigrate, especially to the United States.
About 95% of the inhabitants are descendants of African slaves who still follow
West African cultural patterns. Since the mid-19th cent.; however, Haiti has
been dominated by the mulatto minority, which clings to the French cultural
tradition. French is the official languages of Haiti, although the vast
majority of the people speak Haitian Creole, a French dialect. Roman
Catholicism is the predominant religion, but African nature gods are still
worshiped and vodun (voodoo) rites are practiced.
Economy
Agriculture is the principal economic activity in Haiti. Subsistence crops
include cassava, rice, sugarcane, sorghum,
yams, corn, and plantains. Most
Haitians own and farm tiny plots of land, and great population density has
caused rural poverty and extensive deforestation. Haiti's major exports
are light manufactures and coffee; other exports include cotton, sugar, sisal,
bauxite, and essences. The United States is the country's leading trading
partner. Industry in Haiti consists largely of light manufacturing;
products include refined sugar and other foodstuffs, textiles, cement, liquors,
essential oils, leather goods, soap, and footwear. Some bauxite and copper
are mined, but other mineral deposits have barely been tapped. Economic
sanctions imposed by the United States and others to force a military regime to
return power to the elected government, and later the government's inability to
meet aid conditions, further damaged the impoverished economy during the 1990s.
History
Early History to Independence
The island of Hispaniola was
inhabited by the Arawaks prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1492.
Disease, ill treatment, and execution by the Spaniards annihilated the Arawaks,
who gave Haiti its name. While establishing plantations in E Hispaniola
(now the Dominican Republic), the Spanish largely ignored the western part of
the island, which by the 17th century became a base for French and English
buccaneers. Gradually French colonists, importing African slaves,
developed sugar plantations on the northern coast. Unable to support its
claim to the region, Spain ceded Haiti (then called Saint-Dominque) to France in
1697.
Haiti became France's most prosperous
colony in the Americas and one of the world's chief coffee and sugar producers.
The pattern of settlement took the French south in the 18th cent. and society
became stratified into Frenchmen, Creoles, freed blacks, and black slaves.
Between the blacks and the French and Creoles were the mulattoes, whose social
status was indeterminate. When French-descended Creole planters sought to
prevent mulatto representation in the French National Assembly and in local
assemblies in Saint-Dominque, the mulattoes revolted under the leadership of
Vincent Oge. This rebellion destroyed the rigid structure of Haitian
society. The blacks formed guerrilla bands led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, a
former slave who had been made an officer of the French forces on Hispaniola.
When the English invaded Haiti in 1793 during the Napoleonic Wars, Toussaint maintained an uneasy alliance with the mulatto Andre Rigaud and cooperated with the remnant of French governmental authority. In 1795, Spain ceded its part of the island to France, and in 1801 Toussaint conquered it, abolished slavery, and proclaimed himself governor-general of an autonomous government over all Hispaniola. Napoleon sent his brother-in-law, Gen. Charles Leclerc, with a huge punitive force to restore order in 1802, but he was unable to conquer the interior.
A peace was negotiated, and Toussaint, taken by trickery, died in a French
prison; but the revolt continued and forced the French troops, already ravaged
by yellow fever, to withdraw. The rebels received unexpected aid from U.S.
President Thomas Jefferson, who feared that Napoleon would use Saint-Dominque as
a base to invade Louisiana. In 1804, Haiti became the second nation in the
Western Hemisphere, after the United States, to win complete independence.
The Struggles of Nationhood
After independence the remaining
French and Creoles were expelled, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, an ex-slave,
proclaimed himself emperor. His assassination (1806) led to the division
of Haiti into a black-controlled north under Emperor Henri Christophe and a
mulatto-ruled south under President Alexandre Petion. After their deaths,
Haiti was unified by Jean Pierre Boyer, who also brought Santo Domingo under
Haitian control. Seeking to indemnify French planters, Boyer brought
financial ruin to Haiti; he was exiled in 1843. Haiti's last emperor was Faustin Soulouque. Since the end of his reign, the country has been a
republic. Political and social conflict persisted, intensified by the
mulatto-black hostility, and Haiti's economy, which had never recovered from the
violent struggle for independence, declined further.
After the dictator Guillaume Sam was
killed in a popular uprising in 1915, the United States, troubled over its
property and investments in the country and fearing Germany might seize Haiti,
took the opportunity to invade Port-au-Prince. The Haitian congress was
forced to accept an agreement permitting U.S. control over customs receipts; two
years later the resident American naval commander dissolved the congress and
dictated a new constitution. Although financial and general material
progress advanced under American military occupation, Haiti protested against
U.S. violation of its sovereignty, and a U.S. Senate investigation in 1921 found
that the avowed purpose of preparing Haiti for responsible self-government had
been ignored. In 1930 a U.S. presidential commission recommended
that Haiti be allowed to elect a legislature that would, in turn, name a
president. Stenio Vincent, a vocal opponent of U.S. military occupation,
was chosen by the legislators. The marines were finally withdrawn in 1934,
although U.S. fiscal control was maintained until 1947.
Political instability persisted in
Haiti after World War II, and the country's future was clouded by rising
turbulence in the Dominican Republic and by the emergence of a Communist Cuba.
Francois Duvalier, who was elected president in 1957, suppressed opposition
through the creation of his paramilitary secret police, the tonton macoutes.
In 1964 he proclaimed himself president for life. Upon his death in 1971
he was succeeded by his 19-year-old son, Jean-Claude, who also became president
for life. After 15 additional years of corruption, repression, and
inequality under the younger Duvalier, popular discontent became great enough to
induce him to flee the country in 1986.
Starting in 1986 there were several brief attempts at civilian democracy,
each terminated by a military coup. In Sept., 1991, Jean-Bertrand Aristide
was forced to flee the country only nine months after becoming the first freely
elected president in Haiti's history. The United States and the
Organization of American States responded with a trade embargo, and in 1993 a
UN-sponsored oil embargo was imposed. An accord in 1993, providing for
Aristide's return, was repudiated by the army, which used terrorist violence to
maintain power.
In 1994 the United Nations approved a
nearly total trade embargo, and
later authorized the use of force to restore
democratic rule. On Sept. 18, 1994, as U.S. forces were poised to invade
the island, an accord was negotiated. Haiti's military leaders
relinquished power under an amnesty, and U.S. forces landed to oversee the
transition. Aristide returned on Oct. 15 as president; U.S. troops were
largely replaced by UN peacekeepers in Mar., 1995. In the Dec.
presidential election that year, Rene Preval was elected to succeed Aristide.
In Apr., 1996, the last U.S. troops left, except for a few hundred in the
capital who remained until Jan., 2000; meanwhile, after a wave of political
killings, the United States suspended aid to Haiti.
In Jan., 1999, following a series of
disagreements with Haitian legislators, Preval declared that their terms had
expired, and he began ruling by decree. Parliamentary elections were
finally held in May to June, 2000. They gave Aristide's Lavalas Family
party an overwhelming majority in both houses, but the method of counting the
votes, in which only those won by the four leading candidates were tallied and
candidates thus did not need to win an actual absolute majority, was widely
criticized. In Nov., 2000, Aristide was again elected president, winning
nearly 92% of the votes cast, but turnout for the election was light.
