Decompiling Oppression #122
Sam McVeety
State troopers are being called in to protect students; hospitals and schools are being shut down by bomb threats. It's 2024 (though you'd be forgiven for thinking it was 1957), with Haitian Americans in Springfield, Ohio targeted by a siege of racist invective in their adopted nation.
When it comes to anti-immigrant rhetoric, there's a persistent ahistoricity to it all, which manifests in multiple ways. Yes, there is the underlying truth that most of the people making these statements are themselves the descendents of immigrants. What's more, Springfield sits on the historical land of the Shawnee people (now three federally recognized tribes), and yet this rhetoric would deny others' right to reside on stolen land. These are all true. For Haiti, though, there's even more to the story.
We might superficially look at where people are coming from, but it's rare that we ask what might lie at the root of their desire to leave. When we bother to ask, we often take a similarly ahistorical view of countries of origin, idly wondering how they got to be the way that they are. When it comes to Haiti, it belongs to a special category of places (though it is a somewhat crowded category), where its present state can be directly linked to the legacy of colonialism, slavery, and American military aggression.
We'll begin in 1804, with Haitians victorious against their French enslavers, the first (and only) colony of formerly enslaved people to successfully rebel against their aggressors and assume the mantle of power. This victory was not to last, though. Beyond its immense human toll, an enraged France sought to reassert its dominance, not through overt military conquest of the island, but through financial means.
Rather than attempt to reconquer the island, France instead surrounded it with gunships and demanded that the Haitian government agree to repaying their "debt" to France, set at 150 million francs. For a sense of scope the first debt payment was set at six times the national revenue of Haiti at the time. Haiti immediately defaulted, and was forced to take out loans (from French bankers, and later those in the United States). Thus, it then ended up repaying not only the original principle, but huge amounts of interest on the loan.
Lest we miss it, the "debt" that France asserted here corresponded to the monetary value ascribed to "lost property" (as in: people who were now free, instead of enslaved). So when France "abolished slavery" (for the second time) in 1848, it was still demanding payment premised on the idea of slavery. All told, France extracted a staggering amount of wealth from Haiti, estimated at more than $21B in today's dollars (roughly equivalent to Haiti's current GDP).
Meanwhile, the United States refused to recognize diplomatic ties with Haiti until the 1860s, effectively condoning France's extortionary policy. In the 1890s, France essentially dropped any pretense of self-governance, and installed its own bank to act as the national treasury of Haiti. By 1914, however, the loans had shifted to the United States, which demanded payment. At the urging of National City Bank (Citibank's predecessor, with this ironic coda), United States Marines invaded Haiti to extract $500,000 in gold bullion from its treasury, and transport this back to Wall Street.
This ushered in a period of occupation by the United States, which saw the decimation of the peasant class and the emergence of a military state, setting the stage for horrific dictatorships over the course of the following century (exacerbated by a genocidal campaign led by Rafael Trujillo of the neighboring Dominican Republic). To this day, immigration continues to be a painful issue on Hispaniola itself, with thousands of people who are still officially stateless.
When the 21st Century arrived in Haiti, with its earthquakes, hurricanes, and political violence, too many people were (or are) willing to erase this history and ascribe it to some failing of the Haitian people. In actual fact, Haiti has been systematically deprived of resources by some of the most powerful nations on the planet. Rather than stigmatize Haitians, in Haiti or in Springfield, we should be instead looking to repair the damage of the past few centuries, in particular, the violence wrought by the United States.
Here are this week's invitations:
Personal: If the above history was unfamiliar to you, what feelings and thoughts is it bringing up? Where do you see parallel situations in other countries or regions?
Communal: How can we look to repair the damage wrought by more than a century's worth of militaristic foreign policy?
Solidarity: Support OneAmerica and their work to organize immigrant and refugee leaders and allies to build power, create a just immigration system, promote inclusive education for all, and realize a truly representative democracy.
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