Debt, Coups & Colonialism in Haiti: France & U.S. Urged to Pay Reparations for Destroying Nation

this is democracy now democracynow.org the war and peace report i'm amy goodman in new york joined by democracy now co-host juan gonzalez in new brunswick new jersey hi amy welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world well the ransom that's the name of a major series of articles published by the new york times detailing how haiti became one of the poorest countries in the world while bankers in france and the united states made a fortune the story dates back to the early 19th century in 1804 the enslaved people of haiti rose up leading a rebellion against french colonial rule founding the world's first black republic under military threat from france in 1825 haiti agreed to pay reparations to france for lost so-called property including enslaved people that french owners lost in the rebellion france threatened to invade haiti and reimpose slavery if haiti did not agree to a staggering amount in reparations 150 million francs 30 times haiti's annual revenue haiti began taking out loans from french banks leading to an economic crisis that continues through to this day the new york times estimates haiti paid the equivalent of what's now 560 million dollars to france over the next seven decades the true economic cost to haiti is estimated to be an astounding 115 billion dollars and that only tells a part of the story in 1880 a french bank established haiti's first national bank essentially putting france in control of haiti's treasury that bank credit industrial ecomarcial used some of its massive profits to help finance the eiffel tower the bank's current owner has just launched an investigation into its dealings with haiti and its role in what's called the ecosystem of colonialism that bank cic the time series also looks at the u.s military occupation of haiti that lasted from 1915 to 1934. a key backer of the u.s occupation was the national citibank of new york the predecessor of citibank former u.s diplomat patrick aspar who knew heads who now heads the center for american progress has called on citigroup to pay reparations to haiti gaspard wrote on twitter a silent scream has been in throats for decades about the role u.s played in depleting haiti no one would listen finally some truths he said over the years haitian demands for reparations have been repeatedly shut down sometimes with force france's former ambassador to haiti terry bukar admitted to the new york times that france and the united states effectively orchestrated the 2004 coup that ousted haiti's first democratically elected president jean-bertrand arrested berkard said one benefit of the coup was that it ended aristide's campaign demanding france pay financial reparations to haiti to talk more about haiti and the devastating impact of colonialism in this massive series in the new york times we're joined by two guests westonly also not is a haitian-american professor at fordham university where he teaches courses on the atlantic slave trade the american abolition movement and afro-caribbean history gerald horn also joins us he's professor of history and african-american studies at the university of houston author of many books including confronting black jacobins the u.s the haitian revolution and the origins of the dominican republic we welcome you both to democracy now professor assanad let's begin with you so this series has come out in the new york times to both criticism and praise it's come out in both creole and in english that's a first for the new york times can you explain the significance of what many are calling revelations at least to the general public but certainly people in haiti have been alleging for centuries not only alleging but of course having proof of this yes um thank you amy thank you for um having me today i'm glad to be here in conversation with you so first let me start by saying that um a great uh acknowledgement to the many reporters and producers who put this uh very special issue together and um to have given it a front-time exposure um it will mean a lot um not really for haitians per se because this the the facts that are being revealed throughout the report are very well known even to the most um illiterate haitian um and even to the youngest haitian grown up in fact given the level of underdevelopment that is prevalent in haiti today one knows at least the haitian people knows that this could have only been the legacy of an external force rather of their own making so i think the significance of the piece will be that it exposes the rest of the world to a knowledge that actually has existed for over a hundred years and shares multiple partners both in the private sector with regards to the financial industry as well as the united states government um germany great britain and most certainly and and most influential friends having played a role in imposing the debt that in many ways will explain haiti's uh poverty today so i welcome the piece i think it's great uh in terms of the many research that it it brought together both from academic literature that had already existed as well as new revelations that are coming up but in terms of calling it revelations that would be a misnomer i myself have written it very extensively on the subject many other fellow academic historians i've written about it there have been movements over the decades to get the united states france and the other parties responsible for this to get them to some accountability and um and i believe a large reason why this never got the fair sort of ear of of listening that it should have gotten is because it's coming from um haitians who many people um view as sort of the africans of the western hemisphere but which is an identity that haitians proudly wear um where proudly for for reasons that reasonably make sense for it in terms of the freedom that they fought and established for all black people yeah i'd like to bring in uh professor gerald horne to the conversation another historian who has covered the issue of of colonialism imperialism and slavery throughout the americas for decades uh i too was uh had the same feeling that a lot of this is only new to people who haven't paid attention to the history of the western hemisphere over the last several hundred years i'm wondering your reaction to uh to the uh the piece because the times really is delving into history uh much more than news i think the the most interesting aspect of it was the particular uh individuals in france and and the institutions that directly benefited uh from uh the ransom that haiti was caused was forced to pay but largely this is this is a history that is known by people who know any part of the history of of latin america and of the western hemisphere so imagine your reaction to the piece as a historian who studied this carefully well first of all i would urge and encourage the new york times to follow through with their point that they have uncovered new documents by putting these documents online so that other historians can take advantage of their excavations and or secondly placing them at the new york times archive which i believe has been cited at the new york public library but i think that the story also is of significance and of moment for us in the united states for we in the united states because there has been this myth that has been created that the united states and the haitian revolution were twins even though we know as i begin my book on the haitian revolution george washington the founding father of this country was quite nervous about the eruption in haiti in august 1791 and this was understandable because the haitian revolution culminating in 1804 led to a general crisis of the entire slave system in the americas that could only be resolved with its collapse therefore the united states was probably second to friends and being an antagonist of the haitian people from their point of view this was a reaction to the fact that many of the slave revolts in the united states had haitian fingerprints all over them i'm speaking of gabriel's revolt in virginia in 1800 the revolt in louisiana circa 1811 denmark vesey about a decade later in south carolina in fact destiny had sailed in vessel had sailed in and out of haiti before that eruption in charleston south carolina and then culminating this hostility to haiti there is substantial evidence to suggest that when the island the island that we refer to as hispaniola was split in 1844 with the secession from haiti of what became the dominican republic that this was an early success for u.s covert operations so this story in the new york times is of significance for we in the united states hopefully it will cause us to re-examine the history of this country and move away from the propaganda point that somehow the united states was an abolitionist republic when actually it was the foremost slaveholders republic and i'm wondering also if it wouldn't have been uh uh worthwhile for the new york times to do it another piece on its own coverage of haiti over the past 100 years or so i'm thinking back for instance during the first coup uh against president aristide when there were numerous articles in the new york times about how aristide was considered to be mentally unstable and and uh and uh and erratic in his uh behavior all of it fed to it by intelligence uh sources uh and even the times his coverage perhaps of the the u.s occupation that long occupation in the early 20th century the time seems to be willing to go after france uh and the us but really doesn't look at its uh its own role in creating the narrative of haiti as a dysfunctional country wondering what you think about that gerald well you're absolutely correct obviously criticism should be accompanied by self-criticism and there is much work to be done in that sphere by the new york times you mentioned the occupation 1915-1934 the united states did not excuse me the new york times did not necessarily stress and emphasize in their coverage the mass opposition to the u.s occupation particularly by black americans particularly by a founder of the naacp speaking of w.e.b du bois who as you know his ancestral roots were in fact on the island and he led a vigorous campaign against this murderous and bloodthirsty occupation that in some ways involve the reassertion of unpaid labor the so-called corvae as it was called euphemistically in haiti and the new york times would do well to re-examine its own coverage because hopefully that would improve today's coverage well i want to go back to 2004 juan just referred to this france's former ambassador to haiti has admitted france and the united states effectively orchestrated the 2004 coup that overthrew haitian president jean patron aristide haiti's first democratically elected president the former french ambassador terry bukar told the new york times one benefit of the coup was that it ended aristide's campaign demanding france pay reparations to haiti i want to turn to an interview we did with kim ives of haiti liberte this was right after president aristide was put on a plane and sent to the central african republic this was what kim ives described this is a u.s french-led operation in fact didn't aristide say he holds the french ambassador to haiti as well responsible for his kidnapping and wants to bring charges yes the french were involved in all this pressure and in fact uh were in some ways leading the charge this was a purely u.s french operation and of course france probably more than the united states had more to lose from irisd continuing in the presidency since he was beginning to lay claim to to reparations from france for the period of colonialism and slavery well this is precisely it you had the restitution for 2.21.7 billion dollars which was on the table and we saw a lot of rivalries were put aside to get aristide out between the ruling groups in haiti of the comprador bourgeoisie and the big land owners who generally are constantly squabbling throughout haitian history for power they put aside their differences to get together which we see with andy uphead representing the bourgeoisie and gee philippe and jodel champlain more than makut wing and we saw the france in the us who have also been sort of vying put aside their differences so you saw this this union unity come between uh rivals against aristide because he represented uh the people and because he he was a representative of popular will in haiti so just to be clear this is mid-march 2004 that kim ives was speaking right after that democracy now i flew to the central african republic on a small plane covering a group of african-american activists and politicians including randall robinson of transafrica as well as congressmember maxine waters to who went to the central african republic to retrieve the our steeds and then brought them back to the western hemisphere as the u.s government was saying how dare you bring them to this hemisphere to which randall robinson responded whose hemisphere they eventually brought them to haiti and the aristides then went to exile in south africa for years before they eventually went back to haiti where they are today i'd like to get response starting with professor horn and then professor alcinat about the significance of these coups whether we're talking about aristide in the early 90s or again in 2004 the coups against them and what that meant for this country i mean no president again would demand reparations well the reparations questions is obviously key uh keep in mind that what makes the united states unique is that the slave owners were expropriated their property and the bodies of the slave africans was taken without compensation that helped to give rise to the terrorism of the ku klux klan in haiti as we've been discussing the haitians were obligated to pay back believe it or not the enslavers and likewise if you look at the british possession so-called jamaica barbados etc you had london compensate the enslavers and by some measures that total was not paid off until just a few years ago and so this question of reparations is quite key and also quite key is the role of haiti in helping to ignite this entire process of abolition leading to capital loss not least in the united states of america the enslaving class and their descendants have a very long memory they have not forgotten haiti's role that's why they continue to punish haiti for having the temerity to rise up against slavery and even today they continue to punish havery because haiti because they see haiti as a haven for low-wage labor u.s baseballs in the u.s national pastime are largely manufactured by cheap labor in haiti so there is still much to sort out with regard to this entire controversy and professor alcinat if you could also respond right through today to the uh u.s diplomat uh patrick gaspard who now runs center for american progress demanding citibank launch an investigation and the whole issue of reparations whether you could see it actually being real given the devastation of haiti um okay thank you amy i think i want to quickly uh go back to uh what was asked with regards to the new york times let me remind our audience that it was in 2010 um not just days after an earthquake had devastated the country and killed upwards of 200 000 and more people that the new york times provided a platform for one of its columnist david brooks to say some of the most racist things that i've ever read in the new york times about haiti um so if we are going to also give the new york times the credit for what is a phenomenal job about talking on this issue they should also start by apologizing for what mr brooks had said then which let me quote real quick haiti like most of the world's poorest nations suffers from a complex web of progress resistant cultural influences there is the influence of the voodoo religion which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile there are high levels of social mistrust responsibility is often not internalized child rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years in harsh retribution when kids hit nine or ten we're all supposed to politely respect each other's cultures but some cultures are more progress resistant than others and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them so i call on the new york times to both acknowledge the statements of racist um demography on its pages from uh mr david brooks as anyone can judge for themselves they can go back and look at um the op-ed um and it's pseudo intellectual uh anthropologizing of haitians so that's one and with regards to mr gaspar i believe he actually served in the uh obama administration and most people should know that president obama being himself the first black african-american president of the united states actually never made an official visit to the first black republic in the world the very nation without which mr obama would have not assumed the role of leading a society like the united states as he had so i would like to know from mr gaspar why is that the administration never actually took the very official position that he is taking right now with regards to um haitian poverty and under development and the explicit role that the united states france canada and germany have played in all of that and then lastly i just want to uh uh respond to your question with regards to just the immensity of the debt and and the destructive legacy it has had for haiti um the tragedy of all of this is that even um what's this debt is paid if it were to ever be paid um which i like professor horn i believe uh there are parties that are invested in never actually making um realizing that possibility even if that debt were to be paid we are already talking about decades of gaps in development that were missed in the process because of where the money was going something like upwards to 80 of all haitian expenditures up until uh the early part of the 20th century was going to financing the debt and the fact that american firms from wall street and cahoots with the federal uh government in terms of the state department the navy uh and you have uh names like general smedley butler who actually wrote about his role as a marines and haiti and how he secured the interests of the financial corporate groups as well as working with the state department to make sure that haiti becomes a haven uh for capitalism as as he said and um and also we can even see uh fdr president um franklin delano roosevelt himself had been um secretary of the navy um upon the uh the time that haiti was invaded and becoming a protectorate essentially of the united states and he too um had professed to actually amending the haitian constitution to take out a very revolutionary constitutional uh clause that had banned white male from owning land in haiti among the first constitutional clauses that the occupation targeted was that and therefore opened the country up to internal uh meddling by the international powers but lastly i just want to to also note the fact that uh with regards to what you had said about the eiffel tower um credit indus industrial uh which is now a part of credit agriculture one of the largest banks in the world i think among the 10th largest banks in the world having funded the building of the eiffel tower which is now this massive monument to french industrial progress that it was happening at a moment in which the united states france germany and parts of western europe were developing rapidly from the capital that they were extracting from many of their former colonies or their current colonies so imagine what would the history of development in haiti be today if at the same time that the world is undergoing industrial transformations the likes of which we see today in the form of the eiffel tower what if that money that was taken from haiti financing french infrastructure was financing haitian infrastructure instead the fact of the matter is there is no progress resistant genes that somehow haitians are born with perhaps someone like david brooks was born with that with some uh progress resistant gene as he is unable to fathom that haitians can take care of themselves um but the truth uh goes to show where the receipts are in terms of uh why we know haiti is in the position that it is today i'd like to ask gerald horn uh the the bank aspect of this reporting which i to me uh is i i think the most newsworthy in that the times actually was able to get a hold uh in french archives of financial arrangements uh that were made between banking interests in france uh uh and uh haiti as well as uh it's uncovering or more deeply uncovering the role of first national city bank in the early 20th century uh in haiti uh so i think that this is some of the best uh stuff in this report but it's almost like um hey new york times discovers imperialism uh the uh isn't the role of wall street and european banks in controlling the economies not just of haiti but of honduras of nicaragua of of cuba of many of these uh countries in latin america part of the uh the operational mode of of american imperialism most definitely and i think that the series laudable as it has been could also have made a contribution if it had pointed out the close connections between france and the united states that is to say in the 20th century they began to talk about the citibank and citicorp and how it was involved in the depredations inflicted upon haiti but i think if you were to go back to the haitian revolutionary period you would also find similar connections after all we know that what became the united states was involved in a revolt against london that would not have succeeded without the assistance of france we know that there was substantial france french migration uh states and that the french men were involved in similar depredations in louisiana and slave owning for example we know that when texas seceded from mexico in 1836 that texas major diplomatic ally on the international front happened to be france and we also know that when the united states civil war erupted 1861 to 1865 it was friends that opportunistically chose that moment to try to seize and occupy mexico and then as the lease on life of slavery in texas and throughout the south by welcoming slave owners from texas and from dixie into french occupied mexico and it took a mass revolt by the mexican people to overturn that particular scheme so there is much more digging and excavation that needs to be done and i would like to reiterate my call for the new york times to open the kimono and to disgorge these documents they say that they have uncovered in france so that other scholars and other researchers can examine same we haven't even talked about the louisiana purchase but we can't in this show however i want to end on uh the crisis that haitians confront today when they try to come into the united states i think it was last september the u.s special envoy to haiti resigned in protest over the biden administration's policies in a letter the long-time diplomat u.s envoy to haiti daniel foote wrote i will not be associated with the united states inhumane counterproductive decision to deport thousands of haitian refugees foot also criticized the by demonstration for meddling in haiti's political affairs including its support for ariel henry as prime minister following the assassination of haitian president jovenel malice in july foote's resignation came just days after u.s border patrol agents on horseback were filmed chasing grabbing and whipping haitian asylum seekers who gathered in that makeshift camp in del rio texas we only have a minute professor also not but the issue of haitian refugees being deported by the thousands back to a devastated haiti oh well real quick i think what uh you've just demonstrated is that haiti stands as a singular metaphor for understanding the racial legacy of imperial powers like the united states and france in fact as the war in ukraine is happening the sheer magnitude of the difference in the treatment of certain refugees because of their european background relative to say haitians as you um just showed in terms of what's happening at the border that's a very uh revealing example of what haiti not only means uh to the united states but what it means to the world at large in terms of populations from formerly colonized geographies as well as black brown and indigenous people in this country who knows something about the treatment of racism at the hands of the us government so in many ways haiti should be looked at as a singular metaphor for explaining so many of these um various mistreatments and levels of preference for different groups and i think the more we learn about haiti the more we realize how our fate and i'm and this is not an understate um an overstatement our fate is actually uh directly connected to it if we um are going to better understand what world we're living in with regards to how the powers that be um intend to engineer the world um towards uh imperialism our fates intertwined uh going right back to uh the u.s not recognizing haiti's independence for decades fearing that a slave uprising would inspire enslave people in the united states to rise up westernly astonished thanks so much for being with us asian american professor at fordham university where he teaches courses on the atlantic slave trade the american abolition movement and afro-caribbean history and thank you gerald horn professor of history and african american studies at the university of houston author of many books including confronting black jacobins the u.s the haitian revolution and the origins of the dominican republic

Channel: Democracy Now!

Views: 1,349,993

Keywords: Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, News, Politics, democracynow, Independent Media, Breaking News, World News

Id: X2q98odZz2U

Length: 32min 11sec (1931 seconds)

Published: Tue May 24 2022