Hypocrisie
Daniel mentioned to me the fact that a French minister, as well as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, had made remarks about the U.S. military “occupying” Haiti. He had an interesting theory as to the motivation behind the remarks in question. It bothered me that the French government in particular would say such a thing, but I couldn’t immediately put my finger on why. Then I remembered my world history and the answer became quite clear.
Haiti, as one commentator put it, is a country with a last name, “The Poorest Country in the Western Hemisphere”. When people talk about why the country is so poor, mostly it is in terms of wasted natural resources and government corruption. Both of those things clearly play a role, but in at least so far as the former is concerned, the deforestation that has taken place in Haiti is largely the responsibility of France. When the French were sending ships full of African slaves to their colony, on the return trip the ships were full of timber.
France’s responsibility for the economic struggles of Haiti do not end there though. France refused to acknowledge Haiti as a sovereign nation until 1825 and only then in return for a payment of 90 millions gold francs as restitution for the colonialists’ “lost property” (by that, of course, they meant slaves). The government of Haiti agreed so that an embargo in place by France, Great Britain and, sadly, the United States would be lifted. The Haitian people were stuck paying off that debt until 1947.
My point is that the effects of the hurricane would not have been as devastating if the country had a better infrastructure and the infrastructure would have been much much better if the Haitian people didn’t have to spend more than 120 years paying off the French government. I don’t really care if Chavez wants to criticize the U.S. military’s involvement in Haiti. He’s so busy destroying the economy of his own country, that we’ll in all likelihood be there too when the time comes to clean up after a major catastrophe. But France doesn’t get to say word one about our involvement in Haiti. I wonder what the interest on 90 million francs would be. I wonder if that amount would be enough to rebuild Port-au-Prince, I suspect it would go a long way.