Thom Hartmann: Disaster in Haiti. We’ve been talking about this last hour and we will continue throughout the program but I want to give you the story that you’re not gonna get on the evening news, the story that you’re not going to get from the corporate media. The perspective on this, the history of this, the background of this that certainly the story that’s on the front, the superficial story and I don’t mean that in a pejorative way, but the surface story is that there is a disaster there and there are people in need of help which is absolutely true and we all need to be doing everything we can to help them. At our website ThomHartmann.com we’ve put links to charities that we know are, the vast majority of all of the money that you give if not, well I don’t think with any organization you’re gonna have all of it, but the vast majority of it is actually gonna end up there.
And at whitehouse.gov the Obama administration has done the same thin, and contrary to what Rush Limbaugh said in the last hour they are not harvesting your email address to give you a link, and neither are we. But so, we do need to do that support. But there also this is a wake up call for all of us and particularly those of us in the western hemisphere but really all around the world. Because Haiti is not an accident, this thing didn’t just, this country didn’t just suddenly become the poorest country in the western hemisphere out of you know some mystery. It’s even attached, it’s on the island of Hispaniola, the other half of the island is the Dominican Republic which isn’t experiencing, which is not as badly deforested as Haiti, you know what is the difference? Amy Wilentz, is with us. Amy Wilentz is the author of “The Rainy Season, Haiti since Duvalier”, a professor at UC Irvine and an authority on these issues. Amy, welcome to the program.
Amy Wilentz: Thank you.
Thom Hartmann: Give us the back story here. How is it that when I was in Port au Prince in the 1980s it was poverty on steroids. I’ve worked in the slums of Bogota, Columbia and Lima, Peru and all around southeast Asia, in aboriginal communities in the United States and Australia, in Russia, I’ve never seen poverty like I saw in Haiti.
Amy Wilentz: Yes, it sort of inoculates you against poverty everywhere else.
Thom Hartmann: It really, it’s really quite shocking. And my son in law actually grew up in Haiti or part of his life and has some just wild stories to tell about that. And so give us the story, here. How did this happen in our hemisphere?
Amy Wilentz: Well, this is Haiti’s problem. Haiti has a singular spot in world history. In fact, you know, it was the harbinger of the modern world. What happened was in 1791 because of the grotesquely abusive practices of the French slavers on the island, the Haitian slaves rose up in revolt. And it was a protracted and very, very bloody, it’s true, revolution and it took a long time but by 1804 the Haitians could declare themselves the world’s first black republic, it is the only instance of a successful slave revolt in the history of mankind.
Thom Hartmann: Right, and the second, by the way, the second free republic in the western hemisphere.
Amy Wilentz: That’s right, after the US. So, and the US was still a slave holding nation as we all will recall in 1804. The French were an international imperial power. The Louisiana purchase came about because Napoleon could not fight the Haitians and keep Louisiana purchase at the same time, the Louisiana territory, so he sold that to the Americans. So you may all bow down and thank the Haitian slaves for the continental United States from coast to coast.
Thom Hartmann: Right, Jefferson would not have been able to acquire that.
Amy Wilentz: Exactly, it would not have been for sale. He would have acquired it perhaps by military force and that’s what Napoleon didn’t want. So there was this incredible revolution and it was mind blowing to the western world at the time. And therefore the French incredibly demanded reparations from the Haitians for their losses in the war.
Thom Hartmann: And for the loss of their slaves, the productivity of their slaves.
Amy Wilentz: The loss of their slave colony, the loss of their plantations, imperial loss. But they lost the war. So it’s one of the few instances in which the loser has demanded reparations.
Thom Hartmann: Right. It would be like Mexico saying okay you guys took southern California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico from us, now pay us.
Amy Wilentz: Now pay us for it, right, exactly. But the Haitians were in a very precarious position. Teeny little island, and they had to participate in world trade and the French were saying, 'okay, pay us reparations or we’re going to blockade you, you won’t be able to trade'. And so the Haitians began to pay onerous reparations to France, thereby impoverishing the nation for god knows how long. You know, perhaps up until this day we’re feeling reverberations of that. So there are lots of reasons why Haiti is so poor. Also it was then taken over after the revolution by people who, you might say, were not exactly governmental bureaucratic cadres. They were illiterate untutored slaves for the most part and so that was not a very easy beginning for the idea of government. And the model upon which they were basing their idea of government was the French plantation situation which wasn’t good either.
Thom Hartmann: Yeah, which didn’t work. We’re talking with Amy Wilentz, amywilentz.com. Amy, we just have a minute left I’m very sorry. Can you bring us to current moment?
Amy Wilentz: OK. Well, current moment I think what you’re seeing is, this is a terrible earthquake so let’s not be crazy and think that it’s only because they're Haitians that the earthquake has been so bad. This was a serious shallow earthquake in a populated area. But also some of the results are the results of that kind of impoverishment. And what I’m hoping is that, you know, from the ashes can rise something better because what else can you hope at this point? And maybe the destruction of so many symbols of a nation that has not been working so well, the national palace being the premier symbol, will help concentrate Haitians in other people’s minds to develop something new and better and more solid.
Thom Hartmann: Right. And maybe they can take their country back and reinstate things like the rice tariffs and the sugar tariffs that they had.
Amy Wilentz: That’s right and move out of globalization.
Thom Hartmann: That’s right which allowed them to actually have a functioning country, in fact be one of the, in the end of the 19th century, be one of the most prosperous countries in the western hemisphere.
Amy Wilentz: Right.
Thom Hartmann: Amy Wilentz. AmyWilentz.com the website, thank you Amy for dropping by.
Amy Wilentz: Thank you so much.
Thom Hartmann: And the author of “The Rainy Season.”
Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.
