The US State Department on Thursday ordered the departure of non-emergency personnel from Haiti as the security situation in the country deteriorates.
I mean, yeah.
The west did too much evil and not enough good, that’s how that works sometimes.
I don’t think Haiti can be just blamed on the West. The stablest it’s been during its entire history was when it was a French colony with monstrous slavery practices and when it was under American occupation. For a decade or two, they got some decent leaders, but since then, it’s been several decades of robbers and despots, all pulled from the people of Haiti, none of whom were Western puppets.
Oh, sure, if the US and France had treated Haiti better, that would have helped. But the West didn’t cause the current problems of Haiti. They’re domestic.
No matter how much aid is pumped into Haiti, you can’t solve the problem of a country which has degenerated so far that it is essentially a nation of gangs and bandits.
I’ve asked Haitian emigres about it. They don’t have hope. What they’ve told me is that there isn’t any hope, that the country is doomed and hardly even a country any more.
I don’t know what the solution is, if there even is one.
This is beyond not true. If the colonizers hadn’t first killed off the native Taino, then forcibly kidnapped people from Africa, then made sure to destabilize their native culture groups, then made sure they could not access advanced education, then took those that found a way when people took their freedom from the colonizers, then made up an imaginary debt to cover the “cost” of the people they’d enslaved, then had the backing of the international community to force them to pay the imaginary debt all the way through 1947, then consistently interfered with and destabilized the political development of the country up to the modern day while also pushing for export-first agriculture and undermining local production with “aid” - then we could have a conversation about the foibles of Haitian leadership.
The Haitian people can and should challenge their leaders and strengthen their governance, but everyone else can either apologize and look for ways to be supportive or shut up.
You’re right that the country would almost certainly be better off if the French and Spanish hadn’t colonized it in the first place. That almost goes without saying.
The Haitian people can and should challenge their leaders and strengthen their governance, but everyone else can either apologize and look for ways to be supportive or shut up.
That’s the thing. Haiti doesn’t have political leaders or effective governance to challenge. And telling people who recognize that fact to shut up won’t change it.
Haiti has agency. Haitians have agency. They have been free of foreign control since the end of the US occupation, almost a century ago. They have been free of onerous forced foreign debt payments since 1947. Haiti is a country situated right by one of the largest import consumers in the world and has enjoyed favorable trade and investment terms and incentives with the US for decades.
But foreign investment doesn’t flow into the country. Why? Because it is a failed state with no effective leadership, corrupt beyond measure. The Duvaliers and the following dictators are the ones most responsible for making the country that way, and they weren’t Western puppets. They were domestic.
