Cuba, Haiti, the Helms-Burton and the crime of insubordination
Empires never forgive rebels; an insubordinate rebel plants a seed that can sprout many generations later
Author: Raúl Antonio Capote | informacion@granmai.cu
june 23, 2022 09:06:21
It took Haiti 122 years to pay off its debt of independence, a neocolonial strategy that remains in place and leads to chronic underdevelopment.
Photo: Juvenal Balán
Haiti was the first free nation in Latin America and the Caribbean, the first nation in the modern world emerging from a slave revolt, and the second most long-standing republic in the Western Hemisphere. The Haitian people overthrew the French colonialists in 1804, abolished slavery, and declared independence.
Their revolution was worse nightmare of colonial powers with possessions in the Caribbean – the ghost of Saint-Domingue disturbed the sleep of slave holders for years.
The imperial powers imposed a rigorous cultural, economic and political blockade on the new Haiti, to prevent the extension of its example.
Two decades after independence was proclaimed, in 1825, French warships returned, blockaded the young nation and issued an ultimatum: pay compensation or prepare for war.
An emissary from King Charles X delivered the message. France demanded payment for properties confiscated by the Haitian Revolution: 150 million gold francs, some 21 billion dollars today, payable in five installments.
According to the colonial empire, the young nation was obliged to compensate French planters for the property and slaves they had lost.
On April 17, 1825, Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer signed the Royal Decree presented by Charles X, who promised French diplomatic recognition in exchange for a 50% reduction of tariffs on French imports and the outrageous compensation.
For Haiti the figure was impossible to pay, given the conditions of its economy, ravaged by the French naval blockade and a devastating war, but the “generous” colonialists made a proposal “they couldn’t turn down.”
A group of French banks offered Haiti a loan to cover the compensation, resulting in a double debt that, along with the interest, bled the small country to death, over the course of the 122 years required to pay off its “independence debt.”
What’s more, The New York Times recounts in a recent five-part series of articles, when the U.S. army invaded Haiti in the summer of 1915, a group of Marines entered the national bank and stole some 500,000 dollars in gold, that days later made its way to a Wall Street bank vault.
The United States, using the financial and political chaos the island was experiencing as a pretext, occupied the country militarily, continuing its longstanding policy in the region. Haiti was to be governed by a U.S. military proconsul.
For more than ten years, a quarter of all Haitian income went to pay off debts to the National City Bank, incurred by the country to cover the expense of “assistance from the U.S. government,” according to The Times.
ANOTHER ISLAND DARES TO CHALLENGE THE EMPIRE
In January 1959, another small Caribbean island, Cuba, defying U.S. imperial power, declared itself the first free territory of the Americas and dared to announce its decision to build the first socialist nation in the hemisphere.
Continue reading Cuba, Haiti, the Helms-Burton and the crime of insubordination
