Some Info On Haiti

The Trouble with Haiti: And why is it so poor?


Q. Who are the Haitians and what divides them?

A. The French first colonised Haiti in 1659, but it became an independent state in 1804 after a successful uprising by African-descended slaves, led by Pierre Dominique Toussaint-l'Ouverture. Tensions persisted between the negro population and the mulattos, those of mixed race.

Class and race go together. The vast majority of the 7 million population are descended from slaves, and are black. These are almost all impoverished. The elite, known as les blancs, are mainly coffee-coloured mulattos. Now the divisions are not quite so cut and dried. There is a black elite too. But few mulattos are poor.

Q. What are Haiti's main products / exports?

A. exports included light assembled goods and baseballs.

Q. How much of Haiti is American-owned?

A. Very little. The industry that does exist is mainly in light assembly. It is controlled by five mulatto families of Syrian and Lebanese origin.

Q. Why is Haiti so poor? Whose fault is it?

A. It used to be rich, because slaves were exploited to grow sugar. That came to an end 200 years ago. According to the most recently available World Bank data, Haiti's gross national product is less than dollars 400 per capita, and falling. Sanctions have made things worse. Three-quarters of the population is out of work. The country has no mineral wealth. It imports twice what it exports. There are also great disparities in wealth.

The poverty worsens with the high annual rate of increase (1.8 per cent) in the population, 75 per cent nominally Catholic.

Much of the natural forest has been devastated by excessive exploitation for charcoal, the main source of energy, which has contributed to soil degradation and erosion. This has further degraded the environment, leaving less and less arable land. Pollution in coastal waters has reduced the fishing catch.

Q. Why have the Americans invaded Haiti so often?

A. Actually, they haven't. Between 1849 and 1913, US warships entered Haitian waters 24 times 'to protect American lives and property'. But they invaded only in 1915, in an attempt to end tensions between the blacks and the mulattos. They left in 1934 after 40,000 died.