How 20 Years of U.S. Occupation Led to Decades of Human Suffering
By Cameron S. Parsons

It is an unfortunate truth that much of Haiti’s pervasive structural poverty remains unchanged since the turn of the 19^th century when the United States first intervened militarily in Haiti. Though the implicit objectives of the 20-year occupation were largely similar to those of the 1924 U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic, the outcome in Haiti was quite different. Much could have been done to reverse the downward economic spiral of Haiti during the period of direct American control; however, in the end, the eastern part of the island profited little. It may in fact be true that several of the deepest roots of Haiti’s present incapacity were actually set during the years between 1915-1929—owing in large part to failures in U.S. policy, deep seeded U.S. racial prejudices, and a hasty U.S. withdrawal. Each of these undercut many of the improvements touted by U.S. officials in areas such as sanitation, transportation, communication and public health, and left many lasting, negative impacts—that is to say, United States programs in education failed to make increasing literacy a national goal; initiatives designed to boost agricultural production actually ended up causing long term ecological damage; and the occupation failed to secure political stability in Haiti, leaving in its wake only a shoddy example of democracy and heightened racial and political tensions. As we shall soon see, the story of the Haitian occupation is one of misjudgment, miscalculation, and missed opportunity—each with decades of unforeseen and unintended consequences.

Pride and Prejudice

One of the greatest mistakes made by American occupiers was their inability to curb their racial prejudices towards the Haitian blacks during the occupation as this would come to exacerbate social tensions at the expense of political and economic stability. In his 1971 commentary of the United States Occupation of Hispaniola, Rutgers University Professor Hans Schmidt is quick to acknowledge the strong racial prejudices of the United States Marines towards the Haitian blacks, and the long-term impact such had on the development of the Haitian populace. Upon landing on the Haitian shores, the United States Marines insisted in establishing what he labels “The Jim Crow standards of the American South,” (Schmidt, 1971: 149) according to which all Haitians were “black, illiterate peasants and inferior to their own white race” (Frankema and Masé, 2011: 23). The racism was pervasive and immediately felt by those still carrying the legacy and the glory of Haitian revolution.  According to Schmidt, the intolerance caused indignation and resentment across all strains of Haitian society.

The impact of this on the short term and long term goals of the occupation were two-fold. First, the U.S. occupiers immediately lost the cooperation and respect of the majority of Haitian populace, including the large mulatto population who viewed themselves as superior in race and culture to the majority black population. As Schmidt recounts:

Haitians resented being ruled by foreigners, and resistance to the occupation rallied around the central theme of nationalism and patriotism. Haitians also resented the fact that Americans took over the most expensive houses and neighborhoods for themselves. (Schmidt, 153)

This constant racial antagonism that permeated American-Haitian interactions fomented a strong political resistance that robbed the United States government of a much needed coalition partner, and often turned violent. Though effectively suppressed by Marine forces until late in the occupation, without a stable partner on the Island, instituting lasting changes proved difficult and often unwanted.

Second, the various racial and cultural antagonisms exhibited by the occupational hierarchy inhibited the formation and successful implementation of necessary long-term reforms, particularly in the fields of education and agriculture. Not only did the whites not distinguish among Haitians—entirely irrespective of “skin tone, level of education, or sophistication” (Schmidt, 153)—but also the occupying forces firmly believed that Haitians would or could not benefit from intellectual instruction. Despite a proposal by the Haitian Minister of Education recommending school system based on the French model stressing literature and classical studies, US officials chose instead to pursue a program of vocational and agricultural training. Citing a 1925 report of then High Commissioner for Haiti, John H. Russel, Jr, Schmidt reports:

Classical studies led to training for careers in the professions, when what Haiti really needed was agriculture and skilled workers. According to the American view, Haiti already had an overabundance of doctors, lawyers and civil servants, while the country desperately needed skiled workers to increase production and national wealth. (Schmidt, 183)

This was a blatant misevaluation of the economic situation in Haiti by the highest occupation official in Haiti, and a vast overstatement of Haitian civil and medical resources. It also illustrates a misunderstanding of basic economic forces in Haiti. In spite of “dismal agricultural forecasts” for Haitian output, America remained convinced that the only way for Haiti to achieve economic progress and gain capital investment was through agriculture (Lundahl, 1979: 26). As such, educational reform focused solely on the manual and technical aspects of labor and the vast majority of resources set aside for education were allocated towards the formation of schools of agriculture, the Service Technique.  These reforms came at the expense of traditional education initiatives that could have been expanded in order to reduce the dramatic Haitian illiteracy. As result, by the time of the United States withdrawal in 1929, only 15 percent of Haitian children were enrolled in formal schooling programs, and more than 95% remained illiterate—the same as before the intervention. (Schmidt, 182)

It is an unwritten truth of development economics that a country with high illiteracy is one that will forever struggle to stand on its own two feet. Instituting political reform and developing a strong, native civil service is a formidable (if not impossible) task with such high illiteracy, and democratic participation is simply not feasible when voters cannot read ballots. That the United States failed to make increasing literacy a national goal and failed to set the country on a path towards worthwhile educational reform were two of the greatest injustices done to the Haitian people in the 20^th century. As the Haitian populace struggles with democracy and continues to invest in an agricultural industry that persistently has dismal projections, it is abundantly clear that the effects of the U.S. mismanagement and misallocation of educational resources during the occupation can still be felt well into the 21^st century.

Mismanagement, Misjudgments, and Miscalculations

At this point, we have thus concluded that the allocation of educational resources was poor, but how was the quality of the agricultural and technical schools that the United States did create? Known as the Service Technique, these schools—like many other programs—were a failure from the outset. It was—in the words of Roger L. Farnham, the President of the National Bank of the Republic of Haiti in 1925—“so woefully mismanaged, so extravagantly conceived and executed, and met with such negligible practical results that anything associated with it was detested by the Haitians without exception.” (Schmidt, 185) American instructors—hardly experts in agriculture in the eyes of both Haitians and Americans—did not know French and had to lecture through student interpreters. The Haitians, for their part, did not trust the wisdom of their teachers, and preferred to abide by traditional agricultural techniques and on subsistence level farming.

Furthermore, despite great capital investment, most agricultural ventures ended in failure. Those that did succeed were so ignorant of long-term resource management that soon Haiti would be depleted of what few valuable resources and arable land it once had. The dual-practice of clear-cutting forests in pursuit of arable land and over-cultivating those lands once they were had contributed to a grave soil-erosion problem that has continued to haunt and hamper Haiti’s agricultural output to this day. In the words of author Wilentz, these actions were the opening lines in a century-long story “of dry earth, of crops that are impossible to raise…of food that just isn’t there.” (Wilentz, 1985: 247)

Furthermore, the United States endorsed large-scale plantations and forced labor as the means of achieving maximum agricultural output. The two largest enterprises in Haiti, The American-owned HASCO and Dauphin Plantations, were the largest employers in Haiti during the occupation; however, as the only way to attract capital investment from the States was by offering a low labor cost, plantation laborers were offered a meager 20 cents a day (in real terms) (Masé, 25). This set a terrible precedent for future agricultural production such that real wages for agricultural workers have not risen substantial. Furthermore, the occupational agricultural system was also distinctly reminiscent of the slave system which Haitians had successful rebelled against in their pursuit of independence. As Schmidt reports, US politicians “entirely underestimated these sentiments,” and—as will be discussed next—they were incapable of overcoming the Haitian resistance that would come next. (Schmidt, 234)

The Haitian Syndrome: The Legacy of Withdrawal

The backlash against the reinstated plantation system and the corveé system of forced labor used to construct roads was so acute and so poorly handled by the U.S. Marines that Wilson had no other choice but to withdraw the troops six years before the expected deadline. Academics in Haiti at the time recognized that the political situation in Haiti was untenable, one American Professor writing as early as 1922 that the Haitians had thus far indicated a blatant “inability to maintain self control,” and that this would likely “lead to revolution” if the Americans failed to take proper precautions. (Kelsey, 1922: 163) Despite warnings such as these to either “get in or get out,” Woodrow Wilson embarked on a “crash program of Haitianizing the government and transferring control of National banks.” The United States departed swiftly in 1929. (Schmidt, 185)

Perhaps no other factor in the history of the 20^th century would have more lasting and more deleterious consequences for Haiti than this. Structural improvement projects went unfinished, those that were completed fell into disarray in the years shortly after the American departure, and political stability would not be found in Haiti for more than a century to come.  Furthermore, the hasty withdrawal and rapid transition of power robbed Haiti of any semblance of political stability as the American occupiers left in their tracks only a semblance of democratic government. Power changed hands more than 50 times over the course of the next century in a seemingly endless series of coups and assassinations. Indeed, the only strong leaders Haiti had during the 20^th century were François and Jean Claude Duvalier, the father and son dictators who drained the Haitian treasury of $900 million during their more than 40 years in power. These incessant political shocks and aftershocks have plagued Haiti, consistently robbing the Caribbean nation of macroeconomic that the country needs to move forward in its development. (IMF Working Paper, 2007, 5)

Conclusion

What then, was the legacy left by Americans after nearly 20 years of occupation? By 1950, improvements in infrastructure had all but disappeared and political and economic stability were nowhere to be found. Instead, Haitians were endowed with a profound distrust towards American interests in the Caribbean, widespread illiteracy, a precedent for low working wages in areas where agriculture could still be produced, and a new racial pride among the Island’s blacks that allowed the Duvalier’s and their moral bankruptcy to come to power.

It should be noted that the Haitian experience was quite different from that of the neighboring Dominican Republic which also endured a period under U.S. occupation. The Dominican occupation was initiated under similar circumstances and was highly unpopular as it was in Haiti, but as Calder tells us, the American occupation proved “a blessing in disguise for the sustainability of the DR and it incipient development.” (Calder, 1984) During six years of occupation, the Americans successfully reestablished the political stability needed to secure business interests and foreign investment, invested heavily in public works, including a new national network of highways, developed and trained a new national army, and oversaw free and fair elections prior to their departure. (Pons, 2010: 362-4) As result of these productive changes, in the years after occupation, “the number of manufacturing establishments nearly doubled, while industrial sales grew with a factor of 12, capital investments with a factor of 9, [and] raw materials input with a factor of 14. (Ibid, 362)

The American occupiers, though equally as repressive in terms of tactics towards the Dominicans as they were to the Haitians, did not harbor the same racial sentiments towards the lighter skinned Dominicans as they did towards their island neighbors. This racial antagonism—coupled with the proud, defiant history of the Haitian people—formed a volatile mix that would explode during the Haitian occupation, and continue to burn for the remainder of the 21^st century. While no one can say for sure that factors set in motion in 1920 are still impacting Haiti today, it seems likely that such is the case. The American mismanagement of the Haitian Occupation, Haiti and the Dominican Republic were set drifting apart on distinctly different economic and political paths. Only time will tell if Haiti will ever be in a place to begin the long process of catching up.

 

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Knight, Melvin M. Los Americanos en Santo Domingo; estudios de imperialismo Americano. Santa Domingo: Universidad de Santo Domingo, 1939.

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