Power in the hands of the old business community and now broadened to include the most extreme thugs, and that’ll be called democracy. Meanwhile, the US intends to send in ‘trainers’. ibid.
This policy of forcibly returning Haitians to terror and oppression goes back to Jimmy Carter … That in violation of Article 14. That agreement was formalised under the Reagan administration … continued under the Bush administration. Noam Chomsky, lecture 1999, ‘Case Studies in Hypocrisy: US Human Rights Policy, Rhetoric and Practice’
The first democratic election … The United States was totally appalled … The US was instantly hostile and tried to undermine the regime; it terminated aid … it also changed the refugee policy. ibid.
Old Mother Teresa in this 1991 photo op with Baby Doc’s wife claimed that the Duvaliers loved the poor, the poor loved them, and most outrageous of all: ‘It was a beautiful lesson for me.’ Penn & Teller, Bullshit! s3e5: Holier Than Thou, Showtime 2005
They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, ‘Okay it’s a deal.’ Pat Robertson, Christian Broadcasting Network 700 Club 13th January 2010
Cheap labour has always been at the heart of US/Haitian relations, ever since the Haitian Revolution in 1804. It was actually a slave rebellion, the first and still the only successful one in modern history. The US sided with French colonialism as the US economy was based on slavery at the time and Haiti represented the first ‘dangerous example’. Ricky Baldwin
I got quite annoyed after the Haiti earthquake. A baby was taken from the wreckage and people said it was a miracle. It would have been a miracle had God stopped the earthquake. More wonderful was that a load of evolved monkeys got together to save the life of a child that wasn’t theirs. Terry Pratchett
Haiti is an amazing country. Even though the people there have so little, their attitudes resonate a crazy amount of love and joy. It is truly inspiring to see that. My love for the country starts with them. Noah Munck
Former Haiti dictator Papa Doc Duvalier was said to have a private army of zombies called Tonton Macoute. Zombies: The Truth, National Geographic 2010
Some scientists do believe the idea of a zombie-like virus is not entirely out of the question in the future. ibid.
The theft of Haiti has been swift and crude. On 22 January, the United States secured ‘formal approval’ from the United Nations to take over all air and sea ports in Haiti, and to ‘secure’ roads. No Haitian signed the agreement, which has no basis in law. Power rules in a US naval blockade and the arrival of 13,000 marines, special forces, spooks and mercenaries, none with humanitarian relief training.
The airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is now a US military base and relief flights have been rerouted to the Dominican Republic. All flights stopped for three hours for the arrival of Hillary Clinton. Critically injured Haitians waited unaided as 800 American residents in Haiti were fed, watered and evacuated. Six days passed before the US air force dropped bottled water to people suffering dehydration.
The first TV reports played a critical role, giving the impression of widespread criminal mayhem. Matt Frei, the BBC reporter dispatched from Washington, seemed on the point of hyper-ventilating as he brayed about the ‘violence’ and need for ‘security’. In spite of the demonstrable dignity of the earthquake victims, and evidence of citizens’ groups toiling unaided to rescue people, and even a US general’s assessment that the violence in Haiti was considerably less than before the earthquake, Frei claimed that ‘looting is the only industry’ and ‘the dignity of Haiti’s past is long forgotten’.
Thus, a history of unerring US violence and exploitation in Haiti was consigned to the victims. ‘There’s no doubt,’ reported Frei in the aftermath of America’ bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003, ‘that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now to the Middle East ... is now increasingly tied up with military power.’
In a sense, he was right. Never before in so-called peacetime have human relations been as militarised by rapacious power. Never before has an American president subordinated his government to the military establishment of his discredited predecessor, as Barack Obama has done. In pursuing George W Bush’s policy of war and domination, Obama has sought from Congress an unprecedented military budget in excess of $700bn. He has become, in effect, the spokesman for a military coup.
For the people of Haiti the implications are clear, if grotesque. With US troops in control of their country, Obama has appointed Bush to the ‘relief effort’: a parody lifted from Graham Greene’s The Comedians, set in Papa Doc’s Haiti. Bush’s relief effort following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 amounted to an ethnic cleansing of many of New Orleans’ black population. In 2004, he ordered the kidnapping of the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and exiled him to Africa. The popular Aristide had had the temerity to legislate modest reforms, such as a minimum wage for those who toil in Haiti’s sweatshops.
When I was last in Haiti, I watched very young girls stooped in front of whirring, hissing binding machines at the Superior baseball plant in Port-au-Prince. Many had swollen eyes and lacerated arms. I produced a camera and was thrown out. Haiti is where America makes the equipment for its hallowed national game, for next to nothing. Haiti is where Walt Disney contractors make Mickey Mouse pyjamas, for next to nothing. The US controls Haiti’s sugar, bauxite and sisal. Rice-growing was replaced by imported American rice, driving people into the town and jerry-built housing. Year after year, Haiti was invaded by US marines, infamous for atrocities that have been their speciality from the Philippines to Afghanistan. Bill Clinton is another comedian, having got himself appointed the UN’s man in Haiti. Once fawned upon by the BBC as ‘Mr Nice Guy ... bringing democracy back to a sad and troubled land’, Clinton is Haiti’s most notorious privateer, demanding deregulation that benefits the sweatshop barons. Lately, he has been promoting a $55m deal to turn the north of Haiti into an American-annexed ‘tourist playground’.
Not for tourists is the US building its fifth-biggest embassy. Oil was found in Haiti’s waters decades ago and the US has kept it in reserve until the Middle East begins to run dry. More urgently, an occupied Haiti has a strategic importance in Washington's ‘rollback’ plans for Latin America. The goal is the overthrow of the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, control of Venezuela’s abundant petroleum reserves, and sabotage of the growing regional co-operation long denied by US-sponsored regimes. John Pilger, article January 2010, ‘The Kidnapping of Haiti’
Haiti in the Caribbean was first to feel the effects: flooding killed 52 people, caused food shortages and made 200,000 homeless. Stacey Dooley, Superstorm USA: Caught on Camera, BBC 2012
‘The first problem is to know when the dead are truly dead.’ Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia: Investigating the Haitian Zombie, Dr Nathan Kline, Vice 2012
Wade Davis (anthropologist) travelled to Port au Prince to investigate the biological underpinning of the Haitian zombie. ibid.
‘And was able to secure the formula for the preparation … ‘A Whitman’s sampler of poisons.’ ibid.
I will travel to Haiti to investigate the zombie and attempt to collect poison samples for the first chemical analysis in almost thirty years. ibid.
The past 100 years have been especially turbulent for Haiti: including more than 10 US military interventions. ibid.
Puffer fish: its internal organs contain one of the most potent neurotoxins ever discovered: it is the TTX in the puffer fish which induces a total body flaccid paralysis, almost indistinguishable from death. ibid.
Toussaint Louverture, St Dominique: emerged as the rebellion’s national leader … and abolished slavery from Hispaniola for ever … Bonaparte’s army suffered huge losses. 400 Years of Taking the Knee I, Dotun Adebayo narrator, History 2020
The silencing of the Haitian revolution is part of a narrative of global domination; nevertheless, the revolution played a central role in the collapse of the entire system of slavery and in the liberation of the land in America. Haiti created the possible. Exterminate All the Brutes II: Who the Fuck is Columbus? HBO 2021