Haiti in Brief

Geographical position

Haiti covers the western third of the island known as Hispaniola, the second largest of the Caribbean islands. It is bounded on the same island by the Dominican Republic to the cast; its nearest neighbours are Jamaica to the south-west and Cuba 50 miles to the north-west.

Statistical acid other information cm the Haitian economy has been taken from documents produced by the World Bank, IMF, US Government, Inter-American Develop merit Bank, UN agencies and similar bodies, as well as by (he Haitian government. However, all statistics on the Haitian economy should be treated with Caution, partly due to inaccuracies of compilation, partly because the 'subsistence' economy cannot easily be measured in conventional statistical terms.

The Economy

Haiti occupies the western third of the island of Hispaniola, with the Dominican Republic taking up the eastern two-thirds, During the Spanish colonial period, the whole colony was known as Santo Domingo, after the city which remains the capita] of the Dominican Republic.

When the western part was ceded to France by (he Treaty of Ryswick in 1697, it took the name Saint-Domingue. When Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared independence on J January 1804, he named the country Haiti. This was the name, meaning 'land of mountains,' given to the island by its Taino indian inhabitants before the arrival of the Spanish.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the name was commonly spelt Hayti, and this spelling has been followed here when quoting from documents of the time.

Chronology

1492 5 December — Christopher Columbus lands at the Mole St Nicholas.

1492-1503 The Amerindian population (Arawaks and Caribs) are enslaved by the Spaniards and decimated by work in the gold mines

1520s African slaves are first brought to Haiti.

1629 French pirates and buccaneers seize La Tortue and make it their base. They gain a foothold on the mainland, and move progressively into the interior.

1685 Publication of (he Negro Code — a series of regulations inspired by Colbert which set out to organize the black slave trade and colonial methods of production.

1697 The treaty of Ryswick confirms France's sovereignty over the western part of Hispaniola island.

1749 Foundation of Port-au-Prince, capital of the French Windward Islands.

1770-1790 Saint-Domingue, known as La Petite France (Little France), or the Grande Isle à Sucre (the Great Sugar Island) accounts for two thirds of France's foreign trade. The population in 1791 is made up of 40,000 white settlers. 28,000 mulattoes and 450,000 black slaves. Increasing numbers of maroons (slaves who escape to the mountains and live there free).

1791 General slave uprising.

1793 Slavery abolished in Saint-Domingue.

1795 Treaty of Bâle, under which Spain cedes the eastern part of the island to France, Spain recovers sovereignty in 1809.

1801 Toussaint L'Ouverture establishes the island's autonomy under French suzerainty.

1802-03 Napoleon Bonaparte sends a punitive expedition to restore colonial rule and reintroduce slavery. War of Independence. Toussaint captured and exiled in June 1802; dies in French prison, 27 April 1803.

1804 1 January, Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaims independence. The country readopts its Indian name of Haiti (mountainous land).

1806 Dessalines assassinated.

1807-20 Henry Christophe rules north, from 1811 as King.

1807-18 Alexandre Potion governs separate republic in south, Peasant uprisings in Grande Anse.

1820 Haiti reunified under Pétion's successor, Jean-Pierre Boyer.

1822-44 Haiti Occupies Santo Domingo.

1825 Independence of Haiti recognized by France in exchange for huge indemnity.

1888-1915 Political instability and factional government increase.

1915-34 Occupation by US Marines.

1915-19 Resistance by peasant guerrillas led by Charlemagne Péralte.

1946, 1950 1956 The army seizes power after outgoing presidents try to remain in office.

1957 François 'Papa Doc' Duvalier elected President.

1958 Civil militia known as the Tontons Macoutes or Volontaires de la Securité Nationale (VSN — National Security Volunteers) founded.

1964 Proclamation of the Presidency-for-Life.

1971 Duvalier dies. Proclamation of his 19-year-old son Jean-Claude as Haiti's ninth President-for-Life.

The Haitian cabinet

The composition of the cabinet in May 1985 was as follows:

Ministers of state

Presidency, information and public relations: Jean-Marie Chanoine

Interior and defence: Roger Lafontant

Finance and economy: Frantz Merceron

Justice: Théodore Achille

Ministers

Foreign affairs and worship: Jean-Robert Estimé

Labour and social affairs: Arnold Blain

Public works, transport and communications: Maxime Léon

Education: Gérard Dorcely

Agriculture, natural resources and rural development: Frantz Flambert

Planning: Yves Blanchard

Youth and sports: Serge Conille

Mines and energy: Franck Romain

Health and population: Victor Laroche

Trade: Jean-Michel Ligondé

Without Portfolio: Jules Blanchet

Introduction

Less than 200 years ago, the Haitian people launched a revolution which overthrew slavery and established the world's first independent black republic. In the course of the revolution the Haitians defeated British, French and Spanish armies and shook the colonial slave empire throughout the Caribbean.

Haitians today live in conditions of appalling poverty and squalor under the Duvalier family dictatorship. The country is a byword of terror and corruption, living off hand-outs from overseas — principally from the United States, This Special Brief attempts to explain how this stale of affairs came about, and how and why it is maintained.

Haiti: Family Business takes a necessary look at Haiti's past, but is mainly concerned with [he modern Haitian economy, system of government, social structure and international relations.

Certain themes and patterns reappear throughout Haiti's history such as; the tradition of armed intervention in government, the absence of any developed political system and the long standing practice of presidents regarding state finance as their personal property, In ibis respect, Haiti is very much a 'family business' of whoever is the ruling elite of the time. It was this last feature which led a Canadian parliamentary committee in 1982 to describe Haiti as a 'kleptocracy' in which anything of value is liable to be appropriated by the ruling elite and their officials, at every level of the system.

These practices, however, are not a Haitian invention. They arose in the colonial state of Saint-Domingue and have thrived since then because of the circumstances in which the Haitian state came into being, and the conditions under which it has to survive.

Today, as for much of this century, [he attitudes and policies of the United Stales are powerful factors influencing the course of events in Haiti; but the US does not control Haiti and does not always know what to do there. In nearly 30 years of the Duvalier family's rule, the US government has veered from support of the regime, through opposition {even including an attempt to bring Francois Duvalier down in 1%3), back to acquiescence and eventually again to active support. Recent difficulties in the relationship may prove to be yet another passing phase, another tiff to be patched up in due course. There will always be tensions between Port-au-Prince and Washington as long as the Duvaliers insist on operating by their own rules, rather than accepting the position conventionally laid down for heads of client states in the US sphere of influence.

However, like the rest of the Caribbean, Haiti has seen increasingly strong pressure for change. The industrial development of the last fifteen years has led to rising discontent among those dispossessed or bypassed by it; witness the exodus of the boat people, the food riots and demonstrations of recent years. As Haiti is 'modernized' economically and bound more closely to the international financial system, so more Haitians are seeking a political opening and demanding the observance of constitutional and political rights. Arrest, brutality and imprisonment has so far been the regime's response. It could soon prove inadequate.

History

The Spanish settlement

An unknown number of Taino Arawak people inhabited the island of Hispaniola when Christopher Columbus and a band of Spanish gold-seekers landed in December 1492, on what is now Haiti's north coast. There may have been half a million or more Tainos at the lime; within 50 years all but a handful of them were dead.

Although Haiti was the site of the first European landing in the Americas, the discovery of gold in eastern Hispaniola meant that Spanish colonial development was concentrated at that end of the island. The relative neglect of the western part made it possible for French buccaneers to establish themselves there in the seventeenth century, a position which led to the island being divided between the French and Spanish colonial powers and eventually into two separate countries; Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

When he arrived, Columbus described the Taitios as 'loveable, tractable, peaceable and praiseworthy,' The key word was tractable. The Spanish lost no time in enslaving the Tainos to work in the gold mines and supply food to the colonizers. Those who refused were subjected to the customary barbarities: whipping, cutting off of ears and noses, rape and killing. A tribute of gold was demanded of every adult Taino under a royal edict described by the priest Bartolomé de las Casas as 'irrational, impossible, intolerable and abominable,' Fugitives were hunted down by dogs, while those who submitted died of exhaustion and ill-treatment from their overseers. Influenza, smallpox and typhus decimated the remainder. 13y 1508 the Taino population was down to 60,000, and in 1548 there were fewer than 500 left.

In the 1520s it was decided LO import slaves from Africa. By this lime, however, the Spanish settlement had started to decline as the workable gold reserves became exhausted. The Spanish quest for gold led the conquistadores to colonize Mexico in 1521 and Peru in 1532, and Hispaniola became a neglected backwater. The colony fell prey to raids by the English and French, and in 1536 Santo Domingo underwent a month-long attack by British forces led by Sir Francis Drake, during which the city was sacked and looted.

The Spanish decline continued throughout the seventeenth century. By 1681 the population numbered 2,500 whites and 3,300 blacks, of whom 1,100 were slaves. These few inhabitants were engaged in agriculture, producing hides and ginger for trade. From the 1620s onwards, English and French buccaneers established a base in the lie de la Tortue (Tortuga Island), off the north-west coast of Haiti. From there the French, who had emerged as the dominant group among the buccaneers, gradually look hold of the western part of Hispaniola, with the Spanish falling back to the south-eastern part of the island. By the end of the century France was well in control of what is now Haiti, a situation recognised in 1(597 when Spain ceded the area to the French under the name Saint-Domingue.

Sugar and slavery

The French established an extremely lucrative colony based on slavery; producing coffee, indigo, cocoa, cotton and above all, sugar. In 1767 Saint-Domingue exported 72 million pounds of raw sugar and 51 million of white, plus 1 million pounds of indigo and 2 million of coffee. Coffee exports, which had amounted to 7 million pounds in 1755, had increased to some 68 million by 1739, The colony's exports to France were worth more than twice its imports from that Country, The E00 sugar plantations in Saint-Domingue produced more than all the English Caribbean islands put together and the colony's overall trade is said to have outstripped that of the thirteen North American colonies, requiring the use of 700 ships to carry the vast volume of goods.

The labour of hundreds of thousands of slaves shipped from Africa was behind this wealth. From 2,000 in 1681, the number of slaves in Saint-Domingue increased to 117,000 in 1730 and to 480,000 in 1791. Since the number of slaves imported over the same period is estimated at 864,000, the figures provide ample evidence of the extremely high death rate. Some estimates have suggested that the equivalent of the entire number of slaves was replaced every twenty years.

The basis of the colonial economy, including relations between Saint-Domingue and France, was exploitation. Trade with France amounted to 95 per cent of the total and the system known as the 'Exclusive' laid down that all exports and imports were to be carried in French ships. Sugar and cocoa had to be shipped raw for refining in France or heavy duties were payable. No manufacturing industry was allowed in Saint-Domingue or other French colonies, so that all manufactured goods required in the colony had to be purchased from France, The system brought immense prosperity to French ports like Nantes, Dieppe, Bordeaux and Marseilles, as well as supplying the capital inflow ort which French industry could develop. This colonial pattern of trade remains intact to the present day in the French 'overseas territories' of Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyane.

Essentially, the French saw their colonial possessions purely as a source of wealth which they were not even concerned to develop through long-term investment. The economic system which reigned in Saint-Domingue was a predatory one based on an enslaved labour force and unequal trade relations. As such, it contained the seeds of multiple conflicts between French metropolitan and colonial interests, and between rich and poor whites, whites and mulattoes and owners and slaves in Saint-Domingue.

The grands blancs — the rich planters and merchants — enjoyed the profits and status derived from their possessions, but nevertheless held grievances against the French government which from time to time broke out into open protest. The Exclusive prevented them from trading as they wished and was a prime source of discontent, tempered only by the substantial amount of illicit trade they were able to carry on with the North American colonies. Generally, the grands blancs were excluded from the political position in the colony which they thought was theirs by right; the colonial government gave effective power to a military governor and a civilian intendant appointed in Paris.

Saint-Domingue, however, was not a settler society in the way that North America, Latin America or South Africa were, Many of the grands blancs were impoverished aristocrats whose dream was to return to France as soon as they had amassed sufficient money. Those who could afford it left their estates in the hands of overseers while they absented themselves in France. Similar ambitions, with even less chance of realization, were harboured by the petits blancs — small farmers, craftsmen, shopkeepers, low-ranking officials and an assortment of adventurers and refugees from the law.

In an even more equivocal position were the mulattoes or gens de couleur, the children of white planter fathers and black slave mothers who had been given their freedom. Their numbers rose from 500 in 1703 to 28,000 in 1791, against 40,000 whites and 450,000 slaves. Many gens de couleur became property and slave owners themselves, a situation permitted by Louis XIV's Code Noir of 1685. By the end of the French regime, they controlled a third of the colony's plantations. In an effort to hold them in check, the while-dominated colonial council passed a series of measures in the 1760s and 1770s restricting their rights. Certain professions were dosed to them and they were forbidden to intermarry with whites or to reside in France. They were also obliged to wear different clothes from whites, sit in different parts of churches and theatres, and observe a 9pm curfew.

If the mulattos were subject to legal discrimination, the slaves were kept down by extreme and arbitrary terror which went far beyond the provisions of the Code Noir. The owners, living in perpetual fear of the more numerous slaves, invented the most atrocious tortures for real or imagined infractions. Saint-Domingue, it was said, was 'a mill for crushing negroes as much as for crushing sugar cane.

The colony was thus a volcano of irreconcilable conflicts and racial hatreds. To keep the conflicts in check and ensure that the process of extracting wealth continued to function, a militarized and authoritarian slate was developed, run by the Navy Ministry in France, Saint-Domingue was first and foremost a military outpost, on guard against attack from rival colonial powers. The towns were heavily fortified, and administered by a military officer. There was a standing army of up to 1,000 men, and a militia comprising all adult white males. This military apparatus was also required for internal security, frequently in action against groups of runaway slaves or maroons. One such example was in the 1750s headed by Makandal, who planned an unsuccessful mass poisoning of slave owners but was captured and burnt alive in 1758.