Haiti (1972) | American TV Report

it was just a year ago this week that francois duvalier president for life of the caribbean republic of haiti died and passed on his rule to his young son jean-claude during the fourteen years that papadoc was in the palace in port-au-prince tales of savagery there became a common place his dread tongtong makut his secret police imposed a rule as fearful as any in the long and bloody history of haiti but what has happened in the year since papadoc died 60 minutes went to haiti to find out we begin with a recital of some basic if unlovely facts of haitian life [Music] for 167 years ever since its revolution dislodged the french in 1804 haiti has been torn by terror bloodshed and despair [Music] of its 34 presidents only six have finished their term in office the others were either overthrown or killed [Music] still haiti likes to call itself the pearl of the antilles it had surely been that for the french said to be the richest the most prosperous colony in all the world coffee and sugar mahogany and molasses were the treasures but after the half million blacks revolted against their white masters they began to fight among themselves the agricultural economy disintegrated the big plantations were broken up today haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere most of her five million people live at their subsistence level the average annual income for a haitian is 75 his life expectancy is 48 years 80 of every 100 haitians are illiterate [Music] and like so many undeveloped countries this one too is in the middle of a population explosion [Music] the finance minister of haiti eduard francisc told us candidly of the most serious problem his country faces how serious is the unemployment what is the unemployment rate oh it is a very big problem i guess that um 70 70 70 of the active population in haiti is composed of unemployment price of course some of them live on a subsistence economy rather than a month yes as a matter of fact we have around 80 percent of the total population of haiti living in the countryside in the rural area um living on an agricultural of subsistence i must say agriculture is one of the key problems we have here in this country you have to improve poultry the husbandry the cattle breeding the foodstuffs and things like that you know but we do have also a big part of this agriculture dedicated to exploitation and we do have some cocoa sugarcane and things like that you know of exportation we have received a lot of experts from israel the israelian are very good agricultures and they are used to cooperatives and they have made a lot of progress and we plan to extend the program in other areas in the country [Music] the haitian peasant has heard promises and optimism before but promises and optimism have not put food into his belly nor money in his pockets his leaders have enriched themselves they have milked the country and deposited the proceeds in their foreign bank accounts they have kept the peasant ignorant while they fought among themselves for the palace spoils while through the years in their voodoo and their rara the peasant in the countryside and in the city has eked out his existence and each year when land ends and easter's renewal comes he sings and dances in the streets [Music] here lies papadoc francois duvalier the 34th president of haiti he ruled this black republic from 1957 to 71 and during those years tens of thousands of his countrymen fled their homeland hundreds of thousands more lived here under terror if the king is dead long live the new king baby doc jean-claude duvalier 20 years old now at the end of his first year in power a year in which it seems the winds of change began to blow in [Music] haiti [Music] the tourist is the weather vane he shows which way the wind is blowing 27 planes a week unloaded their cargoes of the curious this season in port-au-prince the cruise ships have begun to call again the street vendors and the taxi cabs are making money holiday inn has purchased a site to build on down by the waterfront [Music] they come in search of something comfortably exotic and they feel a good deal safer now that papadoc is gone [Music] at the embassy residence up the hill from port-au-prince u.s ambassador clinton knox tells about the change you believe that haiti is no longer a country of terror i would say that very emphatically it is no longer a country of terror because because of they realized that the the need if there ever were a great need for the coupe disappeared and they no longer had any interest in them and they also felt that uh it was necessary to begin to turn the country around in terms of its image francois duvalier papadoc built a monument to himself and he called it duvalierville but no haitian worker could afford to live there for years it was an empty folly but today little by little some of the houses here are filling up because cash has finally begun to find its way into the pockets of some haitian workers papadoc proclaimed that his revolution was political that he gave haiti back to the haitian then he decreed shortly before he died that his 19-year-old son and heir would be president for life and baby doc jean-claude duvalier promptly proclaimed an economic revolution in fact the change had gotten underway before papadoc succumbed transformation industries had begun to arrive in port-au-prince two years before what are transformation industries the makings of a pair of pants a wig a doll a pair of slippers or a baseball are shipped down to haiti they're the haitian worker quick adept and grateful for employment puts the pants or wig or baseball together the wage is less than a dollar and a half a day and the finished product is shipped back to the united states so wherever ten thousand workers in port-au-prince now make their living this way more and more small industries are moving in encouraged by the fact that the hydroelectric plant is finally completed the power is on the government and the tax structure is bidding them welcome and the telephone is no longer just an artifact of the interior decor but has begun to work again the architects of all this new benevolence are called lesia antigra the young tigers the cabinet their leader number one luchnik cambron 41 years old a trusted aide of papadoc an ex tonto makut he has said duvalier made mistakes we're going to rectify those mistakes they are all publicly deferential to babydoc to the duvalier dynasty to the palace where the national arsenal is stored which incidentally has led to the blowing up of three palaces in the past but their public deference cannot obscure the plain fact that it is they who run the country they prepared the answers to the questions we submitted for their young president to read jimmy i have at present the good fortune of being advised and inspired by my mother the first lady of the republic the aim of my government is to increase the volume of foreign investment and at the same time to promote the development of tourism thus to proceed along the same guidelines namely the speeding up of the social and economic growth of the country i expect to obtain the best results from these two sectors by conducting an open door policy the open door policy includes an invitation to the 24-hour divorce trade lurking in the united states the cost of same in haiti now runs to less than 500 it includes in a three-day package deal the sun a whirl at the gaming tables a rum punch and your divorce papers virtually without leaving the sheltered comfort of your hotel and there is a new medical trade of sorts sprung up in haiti plasma and cadavers the undernourished haitian can now furnish his plasma for a dollar and a half a pint to a stateside company in port-au-prince it is frozen and available for export overseas and medical schools in various countries are already market for haitian cadavers the only word written on the death certificate is anconu unknown and the corpse is shipped north for the medical students to work with but divorce and plasma and cadavers will contribute only petty cash to haiti's economy there are grander plans afoot tourism will be the backbone of haiti's new prosperity if and when it comes hotels are going up and some texas promoters who call themselves grandly dupont caribbean have undertaken the most ambitious project of them all a haitian island called tortuga lies just seven miles off haiti's north coast buccaneers used to headquarter here two centuries ago plundering the ships of the spanish maine if a latter day adventurer were lucky he might find chests of gold beneath these sands but the latter day adventurers of dupont caribbean have something else in mind they intend they say to put up a resort here the equal of anything in the caribbean plus light industry plus a free port it will be the hong kong of the west they claim a tourist venture much less grandiose and much closer to becoming fact is called habitacion leclerc under construction now on the grounds of pauline bonaparte's old port-au-prince mansion it is the brainchild of a steward to the jet set olivier coquelin who runs the hippopotamus club a watering spot for the rich and jaded in new york i understand that mick jagger is one of your backers meet your software i mean meek has been here and stay here for two weeks with the bianca before they got married well then once you're here now it certainly is handsome but there's no there's no golf there's no tennis so what will people do well basically they are going to relax they are going to be with each other and you know the american have a fantastic word is groove they are going to groove doing nothing the people who are picked up at the airport are going to come through some of the poorest sections of it yes so they're coming in an open rolls royce if you will no no but it doesn't matter you know as long as they are friendly and the asians are the most friendly people in the world so they are poor it's a fact they are extremely poor but they are friendly and that really make up for everything in the world because i come from new york and let me tell you the people are not poor over there but they are goddamn not friendly of course the man is right the haitian is in fact poor and friendly just about the poorest and the friendliest of men their art shows it best of all the haitian primitive full of color and vitality full of innocence [Music] innocence in haiti seems incongruous in the light of all of the grizzly tales that have come from there in the last decade or more but anyone who travels there must be enchanted by the gentleness of the haitian people and by the brooding beauty of their land if the men who rule in haiti now have determined they'll be faithful to their promises of stability and justice these haitians may have just a chance to realize the hope of the easter they are celebrating these haitians who have sung and danced their way through so many hopeless years you

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Id: S-MUab_54cQ

Length: 15min 25sec (925 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 18 2020