Summary
The Americans abolished an irritating clause in Haiti's constitution that had barred foreigners from owning Haitian property, took over the national bank, reorganised the economy to ensure more regular payments of foreign debt, imposed forced labour on the peasantry, and expropriated swaths of land for the benefit of new plantations, such as those operated by the US -owned Haitian American Sugar Company. Since they could no longer rely on Haiti's own army, in order to overthrow a duly elected government for the second time, US troops were obliged to lever Aristide out of Port-au-Prince themselves.
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Extract
The Land That Wouldn't Lie
After weeks of intense media attention, some of the causes of Haiti's glaring poverty are obvious: years of chronic underinvestment, disadvantageous terms of trade, deforestation, soil erosion. What is less well understood is that - natural disasters aside - the fundamental reasons for Haiti's current destitution originate as responses to Haitian strength, rather than as the result of Haitian weakness, corruption or incompetence.
Haiti is the only place in the world where colonial slavery was abolished by the slaves themselves, in the face of implacable violence. As historians of the revolution that began there in 1791 have often pointed out, there is good reason to consider it the most subversive event in modern histo...See the full content of this document
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