"So let’s just focus on Haiti. The most blatant act of control was our invasion in 1915, the start of a military occupation that lasted until 1934."
Herb Rothschild
We reap what we sow.
Herb Rothschild has done guest posts here, describing the United States' legacy of suffering and death in Afghanistan and Latin America. Schoolchildren are taught that the United States has been a great benefactor to the world, bringing better health, prosperity, and democracy to grateful faraway places. The full history is more complicated and troubling. We have toppled democratic governments, installed dictators, and have tortured and killed people struggling for self government.
Educated at Yale and Harvard, Herb Rothschild returned to his home state of Louisiana to join the English Department at LSU and get into the Civil Rights Movement. He promoted civil rights and civil liberties in Louisiana. He worked in the Peace Movement in both Louisiana and Texas. After moving to Southern Oregon in 2009, he ran Peace House in Ashland. He has been a political activist on behalf of the environment, justice, economic fairness and opportunity, and peace.
Guest Post by Herb RothschildWhy immigration reform eludes us
Because the news media confines its reporting to what’s happening now, when a flood of refugees from Haiti washed up at Del Rio, Texas in September, they gave us the sketchiest understanding of why that happened. The incoherence of the Biden Administration’s response suggests that it, too, can’t form a coherent understanding despite having access to personnel with knowledge more extensive than the recent earthquake and the assassination of Haiti’s president (the only events even the best mainstream news programs cited as causes).
Donald Trump handled the challenge of immigration across our southern border appallingly but with consummate political skill. Unless a president is willing to imitate Trump, which Democratic presidents can’t afford to do politically even if they have the stomach for it, they cannot successfully handle the challenge. Not unless, that is, they acknowledge, and curb, the behavior that drives people to seek refuge in the very nation that is the primary cause of their misery.
I developed this argument in regard to Mexico. I pointed to the subsidized U.S. corn that poured into Mexico when NAFTA created the Canada-U.S.- Mexico free trade zone, which turned Mexico’s small farmers into landless laborers. I also mentioned our insatiable demand for recreational drugs and our refusal to repudiate the policies that have created a narco-nation across our border, with its pervasive violence and corruption.
Historically, however, the U.S. has rarely been able to control directly Mexico’s economy and government. Not so Central American nations like El Salvador and Honduras, or Caribbean nations like Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Our military interventions and occupations as well as our covert operations—all aimed at securing their resources for U.S. corporations and banks—have been so frequent that I cannot enumerate them here. I urge you to check out the list posted at https://yachana.org/teaching/resources/interventions.html
So let’s just focus on Haiti. The most blatant act of control was our invasion in 1915, the start of a military occupation that lasted until 1934. We instituted a Marine-run regime operating under martial law. Resistance was suppressed with executions and torture. Hundreds of thousands who were forced into near slavery died working on large infrastructure projects. At least 260,000 acres were stolen by North American corporations. Most Haitians lived in dire poverty while the U.S. allowed a small minority, French-cultured mulatto Haitians, a share of power and wealth.
The invasion and occupation were carried out largely at the behest of National City Bank, which had acquired investor control of Banque Nationale de la République d'Haiti, Haiti’s only commercial bank; it served as the national treasury. Shortly after the invasion, Marines seized Haiti’s gold reserves and sent them to National City Bank’s New York headquarters. As if that weren’t enough economic control, U.S. government representatives took control of Haiti's customs houses and administrative institutions. Forty percent of Haiti's national income was designated to repay debts to American and French banks.
When FDR, the only president to repudiate U.S. imperialism in Latin America, ended the occupation, the U.S. left a modernized Haitian army to do its dirty work for the next several decades. We supported dictators like “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son “Baby Doc,” but not leaders who wanted Haiti’s resources to serve its people. In 2004, we again invaded to remove Bertrand Aristide, the democratically elected president.
Our forcible domination of Haiti and our blatant theft of its wealth constitute the worst injustices we’ve perpetrated in Latin America and the Caribbean, but the differences are of degree, not of kind. The only constructive proposal put forward to stem the tide of migration to our southern border is to help their home countries develop economically. This help is spoken of as aid, which panders to our unshakeable conviction that we are a blessing to the world. If people knew the history I’ve just recounted, however, such help would be understood as reparations.
No U.S. administration is going to own up to that history, to the immense harm we’ve done in the past, because we want to keep doing it in the present. Demanding an end to cruel treatment of people who arrive at the border will count for little until we demand an end to our cruel treatment of the general populations of the countries they’ve fled. Comprehensive immigration reform will never be comprehensive if we don’t reform our conduct in the hemisphere.
8 comments:
I certainly thought the US was the good guy growing up and even as a middle age adult. Now, as a senior citizen, I know sometimes we are the bad guy. Ignorance does have its good qualities.
Thank you, Mr. Rothschild, for that enlightening example of how our past actions still affect us. People who prefer to remain clueless dismiss such observations as “woke.” They’d rather imagine that our nation’s bad behavior is behind us and no longer an influence on current events. Such willful ignorance brings to mind the old truism by Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
While this is all true I'd suggest that it's not completely fair to Democrats.
Many see the US economic exploitation unsustainable but, like racism, is entrenched in our society. It's true that the solution is to bring Latin American countries into the modern era. However, this means a change to our society that would end wealth inequality, a primary Progressive value.
It's Regressives who continually block efforts to bring needed change, aided by moderates who refuse to accept reality.
Also, de facto colonialism is not unique to the US. We are just the worst at this moment. All the developed nations are guilty to some degree.
Re: "Democrats hold generally smaller double-digit leads on dealing with climate change, the coronavirus, education, and abortion. That’s really it right now.”
Perhaps those being polled consider other issues more important right now.
There is too much alarmism right now on many topics that campaign managers think will affect a person's vote. Little of substance is actually being discussed.
We will see what happens in the local and state elections this week that will set the agenda for 2022.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans have any edge in the long arc of America’s arrogant and self-interested interventionist (or imperialist) foreign policy. Not a millimeter.
The problem with leaving up Curt's comments is that he becomes the subject of discussion rather than the topic at hand.
The fair accounting in proper historical context lies somewhere between the jingoistic, whitewashed right-wing version of American exceptionalism, and its left-wing corollary with America as exceptionally bad. The legitimate debate is over exactly where along that divide we belong—closer to which pole? Much closer to one than middle?
When we move past supposed procedural details in the immigration policy debate to the substantive underpinning, most leftists want or at least do not oppose nearly virtually borders because they believe America simply owes it to those who show up, partly from our sheer riches and concomitantly from the claim the riches are ill-gotten gains.
The former is a political argument; the latter an historical one. Certainly we along with Western Europe are the only happenstance topdogs across globe and time to spend any considered time in objective self-analysis, let alone recrimination and reparation. It’s a colorable claim that there’s ample reason for that comparatively rare dynamic.
On the other hand, there are blind spots born of limited education or information. I just learned a few rather shocking things from Mr. Rothschild about OUR sins in Haiti, not just the French. And few know late first millennium CE West African warlord Mansa Musa brought a mere 12,000 of his slaves with him on his pilgrimage to Mecca.
Everything in moderation, even—especially—historical moralizing?
Duh on me—second paragraph should read “virtually OPEN borders”.
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