Bush in Haiti? The Tragedy Gets a Slap in the Face

To turn to Bill Clinton and George Bush for help in Haiti is to ignore the harm that both of these leaders inflicted on this suffering country. It also constitutes one of President Barack Obama’s most cynical acts. It was precisely in 1991 when the government of George H. Bush, the elder, supported the coup d’état against the legitimate populist president, Jean Bertrand Aristide. Aristide was intending to return dignity to his people through mild socioeconomic reforms, which Washington perceived as an uprising against global neo-liberalism.

However, Haitian resistance required the U.S. government, by then under Bill Clinton’s control, to order its Marines to reinstall Aristide to power in 1994. But in order to chastise Haiti’s disobedience to the neo-liberal economic plan imposed by the United States — which Haitians called the “plan of death” — Clinton declared an economic embargo to strangle the country, where more than 80 percent of the population lives in poverty and 54 percent survive on less than one dollar a day.

George W. Bush went even further when Aristide, who was re-elected in 2004, tried to create popular committees and form civil defense systems to prevent human tragedies during national disasters like the earthquake that devastated the country last week. Bush’s hawks perceived this initiative as a “Communist threat that would endanger American national interests.”* Immediately, they reactivated the death squads that destabilized the country and gave the United States a pretext on which to detain and deport Aristide, claiming that he had resigned. Then, they put a lackey president in his place and convinced the United Nations to send soldiers to occupy and manage the country according to the interest of transnational corporations.

Big Western Powers have never forgiven Haiti for being the first independent black nation, nor for expelling the French in 1804, despite having helped Thomas Jefferson, who feared that “the rebellion of a half a million slaves in Haiti would encourage the slaves in the United States.”** In revenge for their freedom, the French obligated Haiti to pay compensation that in today’s value would equal $28 billion, which brought the richest country in Latin America at that time on the brink of disaster. Upon the French’s exit, the United States became interested in the wealth of the country: sugar. In 1915, they invaded Haiti and remained there until 1934, the period in which deforestation and environmental disaster occurred. Then, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the future president of the United States, wrote Haiti’s constitution.

In reality, every American president did something to further ruin this country. Ronald Reagan favored breeders of American pigs and ordered Haiti to destroy its 400,000 pigs under the pretext of swine flu that was never confirmed. Bill Clinton destroyed rice production, and now Barack Obama is promising them $100 million of the $500 million retained by Clinton. What sacrificial assistance! Additionally, he sent 10,000 armed Marines in place of rescuers and medics. The International Monetary Fund promised them a $100 million loan with interest.

Today, Obama mocks Haiti and the world, burdening it with the task of helping George W. Bush — the president who looked on from an airplane after hurricane Katrina hit, while African Americans in New Orleans were dying.

*Editor’s Note: Quote could not be verified.

**Editor’s Note: Statement could not be verified.