‘The Triumph of the Wolf’
An angry mob dragged the Haitian president out of the French Consulate and killed him in July 1915, part of the political upheaval Wall Street feared – and, some historians say, worse. while withholding money from the shaky Haitian government and confiscating the gold.
American troops occupied the country on the same day.
The invasion followed a detailed plan that the US Navy had outlined the previous year. American soldiers took over the office of the president and customs handled import and export taxes.
The Americans established a puppet government, and in the fall of that year Haiti signed a treaty giving the United States full financial control. The United States appoints American officials, what it calls advisers, but the term barely speaks to their true power: They oversee the collection of Haitian budgets and approve or disapprove. its expenses.
Martial law has become the rule of the land. Private newspapers were stifled and journalists jailed.
The Americans explained the invasion by saying that Haiti would inevitably fall into the hands of Europeans, especially Germany.
Secretary of State Lansing, who replaced Bryan a month before the occupation, said: “If the United States does not take responsibility, then some other great powers will.
Lansing was also influenced by racial prejudice. He once wrote that Negroes were “insurmountable” and had an “inherent inclination to return to atrocities and cast aside the shackles of civilization that plagued their physical nature. ”
Racism has shaped many aspects of the profession. Many U.S.-appointed administrators come from Southern states and don’t care about the worldview they bring with them.
John A. McIlhenny, heir to Louisiana’s Tabasco sauce fortune who had fought in Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War, was appointed American financial advisor in 1919. , which has broad authority over Haiti’s budget.
At an official pre-appointment luncheon, McIlhenny couldn’t stop staring at a Haitian government minister because, as he later told Franklin D. Roosevelt, “that man brought in $1,500. at auction in New Orleans in 1860 for academic purposes.”
Immediately after the occupation, American overseers began building roads to connect Haiti’s mountainous interior with its coast. To do so, they come back to life corvee, 19th century Haitian law on contracted labor.
The law requires citizens to work on public works projects near their homes for a few days a year instead of paying taxes. But the US military, along with a trained and supervised police officer, arrested the men and forced them to work away from home without pay. The rich in Haiti paid the price with contracted labor, but the law imposed on the poor.
Haitians see this as a return to slavery and rebellion. Armed people, called cacos, fled to the mountains and began a revolt against American forces. Workers are forced into corvee Run away from their captors and join the fight. A leader of cacosCharlemagne Péralte, calling for Haitian revolution against France to urge his compatriots to “throw the invaders into the ocean.”
One person reading a poster plastered on the walls in the capital Port-au-Prince said: “The occupation has offended us in every way.
The person who posted the article “Long live independence”. “Down with the Americans!”
The United States responded strongly. The soldiers tied the workers with ropes so they wouldn’t run away. Anyone trying to escape corvee workers were treated like deserters, and many were shot. As a warning, the Americans killed Péralte and released images of his corpse tied to a door, evoking a crucifixion.
Leaked military documents from that time show that “indiscriminate killing of indigenous people has been going on for some time”, with 3,250 Haitians killed. When Congress began investigating in 1921, the U.S. military downplayed the number, saying that 2,250 Haitians had been killed during the occupation, a number that Haitian officials denounced as a low number. Up to 16 American soldiers were killed.
Antoine Bervin, a Haitian journalist and diplomat, wrote in 1936: “It was a strict, victorious military regime of wolves.
The first few years after the invasion brought little economic benefit to Haiti. American advisers appointed by the President of the United States collect as much as 5% of Haiti’s total salary and expense revenue – many times more than the nation’s public health spending.
In 1917, the United States directed the Haitian Congress to ratify a new Constitution allowing foreigners to own land. Since independence, Haitians have outlawed ownership of the country as a symbol of their freedom and a bulwark against aggression.
When Haitian legislators refused to change the Constitution, General Butler dissolved parliament using what he called “real Marines methods”: Soldiers marched into Parliament and forced the legislators had to disperse by gun. The Americans then adopted a new Constitution that Franklin Roosevelt later declared at a campaign rally to be valid. self-writing.
American businesses lease thousands of acres of land to plant forests, forcing farmers to do cheap labor at home or to migrate to neighboring countries for better wages. The Haitian American Sugar Company once boasted to investors that it paid just 20 cents a day of labor in Haiti, compared with $1.75 in Cuba.
According to Haitian historian Suzy Castor, women and children in Haiti were paid 10 cents a day.
Displaced farmers arrived in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, posing what some historians say is the most enduring effect of the American occupation: the mass emigration of Haitians to other countries in Americas.
“This is a great legacy,” said Weibert Arthus, Haiti’s ambassador to Canada and a historian.
As Secretary of State Bryan suggested in his letter before the invasion, Farnham was unhappy with part of Haiti’s national bank, so he worked with the State Department to arrange a full takeover . By 1920, the National City Bank had acquired the entire national bank’s shares for $1.4 million, effectively displacing the French as the dominant financial power in Haiti.
Historians say, with the Haitian national bank under his control and the military defending American interests, Farnham began acting as an official envoy, often sailing on American warships.
James Weldon Johnson, executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who visited Haiti in 1920, writes: “Mr Farnham’s words supersede anyone else on the island.
Farnham is also not shy about his views on Haiti and its people.
“Haitians can be taught to be a good and productive worker,” he told senators investigating the profession. “If the army generals are left alone, he is as peaceful as a child, and harmless.”
“Actually,” he continued, “it’s nothing but grown-up kids these days.”
