Recent picture from "The New York Times." See the April 27, 2010 article by Deborah Sontag: "Despair Grows on Devastated Street in Haiti."

The people of Haiti freed themselves from slavery more than 200 years ago, on New Year’s Day, 1804, but they remain slaves to a cataclysmic history.

In 1825 France demanded 100 million francs in return for granting Haiti’s freedom. One can imagine that the French argument centered on payments for investments they had made to develop the island, an island that was founded on exploitation of its land and people, most of whom were slaves. In 1789, e.g., it is estimated that of the 556,000 people on the island, 500,000 were slaves, and almost all of these had been transported from West Africa. (This and other historical information is from “Haiti.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Standard Edition. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010.)

Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former president who fled Haiti in 2004 in the face of internal revolution and the withdrawal of U.S. and French support, has estimated that the current-dollar equivalent of those reparation payments is 21 billion dollars. In a country of some nine and a half million people, this would amount to approximately $2200 per person. While this doesn’t sound like much in a country ravaged by corrupt governments, poverty, disease and natural disasters, including the recent earthquake that killed more than 100,000, it’s important to remember that the per-capita income is ~$1,200 per year.

During Haiti’s 200 years of independence, presidents have named themselves kings and emperors, have been assassinated, have committed suicide, and have generally served themselves more than their people. Between 1843 and 1915, there were 20 rulers, 16 of whom were overthrown by revolution or were assassinated (“Haiti” 12).

And then U.S. Marines occupied Haiti for 19 years, from 1915 to 1934, ostensibly to provide relief, though Haitians tend to believe the Marines were there to protect American interests, among them them Panama Canal, since Haiti could be used as a base of operations to protect access to the canal.

But the U.S. occupation brought a racial attitude in addition to force, for the U.S. during this period was a highly segregated society. The aftermath of a failed reconstruction had intensified southern racism, and the diaspora of African-Americans north heightened racial tensions in urban areas like Chicago, Detroit and New York City. And because the armed services weren’t integrated by President Truman until after WWII, the Marines who occupied Haiti were white.

As a result, Americans favored Haitian’s of mixed race, who seemed more “white,” over their darker brothers, worsening a color divide that was a legacy of French rule.

One effect of the Marine occupation was the nominal reestablishment of the mulatto elite’s control of the government. Black Haitians, in contrast, felt that they were excluded from public office and subjected to racist indignities at the hands of the Marines, including the corvée, an old law permitting forced labour for road construction; in response, peasant cacos (guerrillas) carried out a series of attacks. The Marines’ public works program also included building new health clinics and sewerage systems, but most Haitians felt the effort inadequate.

A Dominican massacre along the border followed in 1937 as did repressive rulers like François Duvalier, “Papa Doc,” and his son, Jean-Claude, “Baby Doc,” who created a paramilitary group, the Tonton Macoutes, the “Bogeymen,” to control and terrorize in their police state.

But nature has had a hand in the disasters as well. AIDs affects 2.2% of the population, which is almost three times the world average. And hurricane Gustav flooded much of the deforested island in 2008, followed by the recent earthquake in an area of substandard housing where the last major earthquake struck in 1842. Since Haiti’s name derives from the Arawak word Ayti, mountainous land, perhaps one might expect some seismic activity, but really, going from nothing to a magnitude 7.0 quake on January 12 of this year is, to say the least, unexpected.

And so the question becomes, can Haiti’s future be changed and how might this happen? Ethics plays a role in analyzing the alternatives, but ethics may not make our decision much easier since resources limit our options whereas the ethical dilemmas presented by Haiti cry out for simultaneous actions on so many fronts.