A Thumbnail History of HAITI
Thum
bnail: HISTORY OF HAITI
As heard on WBAI
by Kim Ives
On
Democracy Now
With
Amy Goodman
January 20, 2010
in
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Haiti has been systematically destroyed over the last 200 years
• In 1804 HAITI was the
FIRST and LAST SLAVE Revolution in History
First Black Republic in the World
First Independent Nation of Latin America . . .
Which became the Touchstone of all the other
R E V O L U T I O N S !
It wasn’t until 60 years later that it was recognized by the government of Abraham Lincoln after the Civil War.
• In 1915 US Marines invaded
the country, took control the Bank, took control of government They stayed there for 19 years until
• 1934. After that they
put in place the “Guard Deity,” the Guard of Haiti which acted as a proxy force to maintain U.S. interests in Haiti. Then finally that gave birth to
• In 1957 to the Dictatorship
Of François 'Papa Doc' Duvalier he became “President for Life”
• In 1971 when he died, he
Passed his title of “President for Life” to his son Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier. The role of the U S was essentially supporting those governments all the time, for geopolitical reasons. Haiti was the principal bulwark against the East ward push of quote unquote, “Communism” coming from neighboring Cuba.
So therefore the Duvalier Regimes – hugely unpopular were propped up, given military support by, and economic cooperation from the United States. US-kleptocracy – The dictators getting richer and the people getting poorer.
• Then in 1986 they started to see
that this particular paradigm was creating too many Che Guevaras, too many revolutions in Latin America and they switched over to these “façade” elections . .. of supposedly putting in these Democratically elected leaders in but they were “purchased elections”.
Haiti was the first country in Latin America to foil this US engineered election scenario by electing a poor parish priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the presidency and at the time of his inauguration
• on February 7, 1991
he declared the 2nd Independence of Haiti because Haiti was going to become independent of the imperial domination of the United States and France.
And they quickly responded with a coup d’etat 8 months later. He was sent into exile and again the earthquakes centered in Washington and Paris of the past 24 years begin.
So the 1st coup against Aristide kept him out for three year. The coup happened under George H. W. Bush but continued through president Clinton. By the way one of the major platforms of President Aristide when he first came to power was to increase the minimum wage.
The 2nd time Aristide was elected was
• In 2004
he was immediately pushed out. Taken out by Us Military and Security He and Mildred Aristide were dumped in the Central African Republic where they were essentially being held [hostage].Maxine Waters and Randal Robinson, founder of Trans Africa went to the Central African Republic and brought back the Aristides to Near by Jamaica and ultimately to South Africa where they are {still in exile}today.
They cannot come back to their country Haiti. Severe US pressure forced them to stay out of this hemisphere.
• Now In 2010
President Aristide had a press conference in South Africa stating that he wants to go “home” to Haiti to help.
