The Rise of Haiti, (Bohio and Kiskeya)

Haiti’s history began on 5 December 1492 when the European navigator knew as Christopher Columbus in the search of spices and a new route to avoid England; their worst enemy at the time. His convoy ends in a large island in the region of the western Atlantic Ocean that later came to be known as the Caribbean. It was inhabited by the Taíno and Arawakan people, who variously called their island (Ayiti), (Bohio), and later (Kiskeya). Columbus quickly claimed the island for the Spanish Crown, naming it La Isla Española ("the Spanish Island"), later renamed to Hispaniola.

 

Christopher Columbus established a small settlement called La Navidad, near the modern town of (Cap Haitien), built from the timbers of his wrecked ship Santa María, during his first voyage in December 1492. When Christopher returned in 1493 on his second voyage he found the settlement had been destroyed and all 39 settlers were killed. As a result, Christopher continued east and founded a new settlement at La Isabella on the territory of the present-day known as the Dominican Republic in 1493. After the arrival of Europeans, La Hispaniola's indigenous population suffered near-extinction, possibly the worst case of depopulation in the American continent due to hard labor, mistreatment and foreign diseases.

French buccaneers established a settlement on the island of Tortuga in 1625 and were soon joined by like-minded English and Dutch privateers and pirates. They formed a lawless international community that survived by preying on Spanish ships and hunting wild cattle. Although the Spanish group destroyed the buccaneers' settlements in 1629, 1635, 1638 and 1654, on each occasion they returned. In 1655 the newly established English administration in Jamaica sponsored the re-occupation of Tortuga under Elias Watts as Governor. In 1660 the English made the mistake of replacing Watts as Governor by a Frenchman named Jeremie Deschamps, on condition he defended English interests. But as soon as Deschamps took control of the island, he proclaimed it for the King of France, set up French colors, and defeated several English attempts to reclaim the island. It is from this point in 1660 that unbroken French rule in Haiti begins.

In 1711 the city of Cap-Français was formerly established by Louis XIV and took over as capital of the colony from Port-de-Paix. In 1726 the city of Les Cayes was founded on the Southern coast which became the biggest settlement in the south. In 1749 the city of Port-au-Prince was established on the West coast, which in 1770 took over as the capital of the colony from Cap-Français, however that same year, Port-au-Prince was hit by an earthquake and tsunami destroyed the city and killing over 200 people immediately, and 30,000 later from famine and diseases. This was the second major earthquake to hit the island as it followed the 1751 Port-au-Prince earthquake which had left only a single stone-built building standing in the town.

Prior to the Seven Years' War (1756–63), the economy of Saint-Domingue gradually expanded, with sugar and, later, coffee. After the war, which disrupted maritime commerce, the colony underwent rapid expansion. In 1767, it exported 72 million pounds of raw sugar and 51 million pounds of refined sugar, one million pounds of indigo, and two million pounds of cotton. Saint-Domingue was known as the "Pearl of the Antilles;" the richest colonies in the 18th century French’s empire. By the 1780s, Saint-Domingue produced about 40 percent of all the sugar and 60 percent of all the coffee consumed in Europe. This single colony, roughly the size of the state of Maryland, produced more sugar and coffee than all of Britain's West Indian colonies combined.

 

After the extinction of the Indians who inhabited the island, the French colony had to find new laborers quickly in order to keep production moving; this is when slavery had begun on this island. The French rulers got into a new trade business with certain African countries to buy colored people as slaves so they can take them to the Island to work. From that time, the labor for these two plantations was provided by an estimated 790,000 African slaves. Between 1764 and 1771, the average importation of slaves was varied between 10 000–15 000, by 1786 about 28 000, and, from 1787 onward, the colony received more than 40 000 slaves a year.

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However, the inability to maintain slave numbers without constant resupply from Africa meant the slave population, by 1789, totaled 500 000. Ruled over by a white population, by 1789, the slaves’ population was numbered only 32 000, the rest were killed by all types’ atrocity from their French masters and illnesses. At all times, a majority of slaves in the colony were African-born, as the brutal conditions of slavery prevented the population from experiencing growth through natural increase. African culture thus remained strong among slaves until the end of French rulers, in particular, the folk-religion of Vodou, which commingled Catholic liturgy and ritual with the beliefs and practices of Guinea, Congo, and Dahomey. Slave traders scoured the Atlantic coast of Africa, and the slaves who arrived came from hundreds of different tribes, their languages often mutually incomprehensible, in order for them to understand each other they created the Creole language which is spoken today by many countries in the Caribbean.

To regularize slavery, in 1685 Louis XIV enacted the Code Noir, which accorded certain human rights to slaves and responsibilities to the masters, who were obligated to feed, clothe, and provide for the general well-being of their slaves. The code noir also sanctioned corporal punishment, allowing masters to employ brutal methods to instill in their slaves the necessary docility while ignoring provisions intended to regulate the administration of punishments. A passage from Henri Christophe's personal secretary, who lived more than half his life as a slave, describes the crimes perpetrated against the slaves of Saint-Domingue by their French masters: they hung slaves with heads downwards, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars, forced them to eat excrement,  flayed them with the lash, cast them alive to be devoured by worms, or onto anthills, or lashed them to stakes in the swamp to be devoured by mosquitoes.

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The French maters also threw them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup, they put men and women inside barrels studded with spikes and rolled them down mountainsides into the abyss, consigned these miserable blacks to man-eating dogs until latter, sated by human flesh, left the mangled victims to be finished off with bayonet and poniard. Those slaves’ treatment was a pure atrocity, but at the time, it was legal because slaves were considered objects owned by their masters and obedience was a must.

Saint-Domingue also had the largest and wealthiest free population of color in the Caribbean, the gens de couleur (French, "people of color").

 

The mixed-race community in Saint-Domingue numbered 25,000 in 1789. First-generation gens de couleur were typically the offspring of a male French slave owner and an African slave chosen as a concubine. In the French colonies, the semi-official institution of "plaçage" defined this practice. By this system, the children were free people and could inherit property, thus originating a class of "mulattos" (mulattres) with property and some with wealthy fathers. This class occupied a middle status between African slaves and French colonists. Some Africans also enjoyed status as gens de couleur.

As numbers of gens de couleur grew, the French rulers enacted discriminatory laws. Statutes forbade gens de couleur from taking up certain professions, marrying whites, wearing European clothing, carrying swords or firearms in public, or attending social functions where whites were present. However, these regulations did not restrict their purchase of land, and many accumulated substantial holdings and became slave-owners. By 1789, they owned one-third of the plantation property and one-quarter of the slaves of Saint-Domingue. Central to the rise of gens de couleur planter class was the growing importance of coffee, which thrived on the marginal hillside plots to which they were often relegated. The largest concentration of gens de couleur was in the southern peninsula, the last region of the colony to be settled, owing to its distance from Atlantic shipping lanes and its formidable terrain, with the highest mountain range in the Caribbean.​

 

The Uprising of the Slaves (1791–1793)

On 22 August 1791, slaves in the northern region of the colony staged a revolt that began the Haitian Revolution. Tradition marks the beginning of the revolution at a Vodou ceremony at a place called Bois Caïman (Alligator Woods) near Cap-Français. The call to arms was issued by a Houngan (Vodou priest) named Dutty Boukman. Within hours, the northern plantations were in flames. The rebellion spread throughout the entire colony. Boukman was captured and executed, but the rebellion continued to spread rapidly. In 1792, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax was sent to the colony by the French Legislative Assembly as part of the Revolutionary Commission. His main goal was to maintain French control of Saint-Domingue, stabilize the colony, and enforce the social equality recently granted to free people of color by the National Convention of France.​

 

Toussaint Louverture Ascendant (1793–1802).  

On 29 August 1793, Sonthonax took the radical step of proclaiming the freedom of the slaves in the north province (with severe limits on their freedom). In September and October of that same year, emancipation was extended throughout the colony. The French National Convention, the first elected Assembly of the First Republic (1792–1804), on 4 February 1794, under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre, abolished slavery by law in France and all its colonies.

 

The slaves did not immediately flock to Sonthonax's banner, however. White colonists continued to fight Sonthonax, with assistance from the British. They were joined by many of the so-called freemen of color who opposed the abolition of slavery since they were slaves’ owners also. It was not until word of France's ratification of emancipation arrived back in the colony that Toussaint Louverture and his corps of well-disciplined, battle-hardened former slaves came over to the French Republican side in early May 1794. A change in the political winds in France caused Sonthonax to be recalled in 1796, but not before taking the step of arming the former slaves.

With the colony facing a full-scale invasion by Britain, the rebel slaves emerged as a powerful military force, under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Henri Christophe. Toussaint Louverture successfully drove back the British and by late 1798 was the de facto ruler of the colony. In 1799, he defeated the mulatto General André Rigaud, who controlled most of the south and west and refused to acknowledge Toussaint's authority. By 1801, Toussaint was in control of all of Hispaniola, after conquering Spanish Santo Domingo and proclaiming the abolition of slavery there. He did not, however, proclaim full independence for the country, nor did he seek reprisals against the country's former white slaveholders, convinced that the French would not restore slavery and "that a population of slaves recently landed from Africa could not attain to civilization by 'going it alone.'"

Toussaint, however, asserted enough independence that in 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte sent a massive invasion force, under his brother-in-law Charles Leclerc, to increase French control. For a time, Leclerc met with some success; he also brought the eastern part of the island of Hispaniola under the direct control of France in accordance with the terms of the 1795 Treaties of Bâle with Spain. With a large expedition that eventually included 40 000 European troops, and receiving help from white colonists and mulatto forces commanded by Alexandre Pétion, a former lieutenant of Rigaud, the French won several victories after severe fighting. Two of Toussaint's chief lieutenants, Dessalines and Christophe, recognizing their untenable situation, held separate parleys with the invaders and agreed to transfer their allegiance. At this point, Leclerc invited Toussaint to negotiate a settlement. It was a deception; Toussaint was seized and deported to France, where he died of pneumonia while imprisoned at Fort de Joux in the Jura Mountains in April 1803.

Afterward, Leclerc was replaced by Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur, Vicomte de Rochambeau. Rochambeau wrote to Napoleon that, to reclaim Saint-Domingue, France must 'declare the Negroes slaves, and destroy at least 30 000 Negroes and Negresses.' In his desperation, he turned to increasingly wanton acts of brutality; the French burned alive, hanged, drowned, and tortured black prisoners, reviving such practices as burying blacks in piles of insects and boiling them in cauldrons of molasses. One night, at Port-Republican, he held a ball to which he invited the most prominent mulatto ladies and, at midnight, announced the death of their husbands. However, each act of brutality was repaid by the Haitian rebels. After one battle, Rochambeau buried 500 prisoners alive; Dessalines responded by hanging 500 French prisoners. Rochambeau's brutal tactics helped unite black, mulatto, and mestizo soldiers against the French. On the 18th of November of 1803, the Haitian army now led by Dessalines devastated Rochambeau and the French army at the Battle of Vertières.

On January 1st, 1804 Dessalines then declared independence, reclaiming the indigenous Taíno name of Haiti ("Land of Mountains") for the new nation. Most of the remaining French colonists fled ahead of the defeated French army, many migrating to the state of Louisiana and Cuba. Unlike Toussaint, Dessalines showed little equanimity with regard to the whites. In a final act of retribution, the remaining French were slaughtered by Haitian military forces. Some 2 000 Frenchmen were massacred at Cap-Français, 900 in Port-au-Prince, and 400 at Jérémie.

He issued a proclamation declaring, "We have repaid these cannibals, war for war, a crime for crime, outrage for outrage." Despite the Haitian victory, France refused to recognize the newly independent country's sovereignty until 1825, in exchange for 150 million gold francs. This fee demanded as retribution for the "lost property,"—slaves, land, equipment, etc.—of the former colonialists, was later reduced to 90 million. Haiti agreed to pay the price to lift a crippling embargo imposed by France, Britain, and the United States. But to do so, the Haitian government had to take out high-interest loans; a debt that was not repaid in full until 1947.​

 

First Black Republic (1804)

Haiti is the world's oldest black republic and one of the oldest republics in the Western Hemisphere. Although Haiti actively assisted the independence movements of many Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, etc. and secured a promise from the great liberator, Simón Bolívar, that he would free their slaves after winning independence from Spain – Haiti the nation of former slaves was excluded from the hemisphere's first regional meeting of independent nations, held in Panama in 1826. Furthermore, owing to entrenched opposition from Southern slave states, Haiti did not receive U.S. diplomatic recognition until 1862 (after those states had seceded from the Union) – largely through the efforts of anti-slavery Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Upon assuming power, General Dessalines authorized the Constitution of 1804.

 

This constitution, in terms of social freedoms, called for 1. Freedom of Religion 2. All citizens of Haiti, regardless of skin color, to be known as "Black" (this was an attempt to eliminate the multi-tiered racial hierarchy that had developed in Haiti, with full or near full-blooded Europeans at the top, various levels of light to brown skin in the middle, and dark-skinned "Kongo" from Africa at the bottom). 3. White men were forbidden from possessing property or domain on Haitian soil. Should the French return to reimpose slavery, Article 5 of the constitution declared: "At the first shot of the warning gun, the towns shall be destroyed and the nation will rise in arms."



On 22 September 1804, Dessalines, preferring Napoleon's style rather than the more liberal yet vulnerable type of political government of the French Republican Radicals, and proclaimed himself Emperor Jacques I. Yet two of his own advisers, Henri Christophe and Alexandre Pétion, helped provoke his assassination in 1806. The conspirators ambushed him north of Port-au-Prince at Pont Larnage (now known as Pont-Rouge) on 17 October 1806 en route to battle rebels to his regime.

 

After the Dessalines was assassinated, the two main conspirators divided the country into two rival regimes. Christophe created the authoritarian State of Haiti in the north, and the Gens de couleur Pétion helped establish the Republic of Haiti in the south. Christophe attempted to maintain a strict system of labor and agricultural production similar to the former plantations. Although, strictly speaking, he did not establish slavery, he imposed a semi-feudal system, in which every able man was required to work in plantations (similar to Latifundios) to produce goods for the fledgling country.

 

His method, though undoubtedly oppressive, produced the most revenues of the two governments. In 1811, Christophe proclaimed himself King Henri I in the North and commissioned several extraordinary buildings. He even created a nobility class in the fashion of European monarchies. Yet in 1820, weakened by illness and with decreasing support for his authoritarian regime, he killed himself with a silver bullet rather than face a coup d'état. Immediately after, Pétion's successor, Boyer, reunited Haiti through diplomatic tactics and ruled as president until his overthrow in 1843.​

 

Boyer's domination of Hispaniola (1820–1843)

Almost two years after Boyer had consolidated power in the west, in 1821, Santo Domingo declared independence from Spain and requested from Simón Bolívar inclusion in Gran Colombia. Boyer, however, responding to a party on the east that preferred Haiti over Colombia, occupied the ex-Spanish colony in January 1822, encountering no military resistance. In this way, he accomplished the unity of the island, which was only carried out for a short period of time by Toussaint Louverture in 1801. Boyer's occupation of the Spanish side also responded to internal struggles among Christophe's generals, to which Boyer gave extensive powers and lands in the east.

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This occupation, however, pitted the Spanish white elite against the iron-fisted Haitian administration and stimulated the emigration of many white wealthy families. Even today, the various memories and interpretations of this occupation still fuel animosities between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The entire island remained under Haitian rule until 1844 when in the east a nationalist group called La Trinitaria led a revolt that helped convert the country into the Dominican Republic.

 

From 1824 to 1826, while the island was under one government, Boyer promoted the largest single free-Black immigration from the United States in which more than 6000 immigrants settled in different parts of the island. Today remnants of these immigrants live throughout the island, but the larger number reside in Samaná, a peninsula on the Dominican side of the island. From the government's perspective, the intention of immigration was to help establish commercial and diplomatic relationships with the US, and to increase the number of skilled and agricultural workers in Haiti.

In exchange for diplomatic recognition from France, Boyer was forced to pay a huge indemnity for the loss of French property during the revolution. To pay for this, he had to float loans in France, putting Haiti into a state of debt. Boyer attempted to enforce production through the Code Rural, enacted in 1826, but peasant freeholders, mostly former revolutionary soldiers, had no intention of returning to the forced labor they fought to escape. By 1840, Haiti had ceased to export sugar entirely, although large amounts continued to be grown for local consumption as taffia-raw rum. However, Haiti continued to export coffee, which required little cultivation and grew semi-wild. The 1842 Cap-Haitien earthquake destroyed the city, and the Sans Souci Palace, killing 10,000 people. This was the third major earthquake to hit Western Hispaniola following the 1751 and 1770 Port-au-Prince earthquakes, and the last until the devastating earthquake of 2010 that killed more than 300,000 people.​

 

Instability and Chaos (1843–1849)

Haiti is very well known for its state of instability. In fact, in 1843, a revolt led by Charles Rivière-Hérard overthrew Boyer and established a brief parliamentary rule under the Constitution of 1843. Revolts soon broke out and the country descended into near-anarchy, with a series of transient presidents until March 1847, when General Faustin Soulouque, a former slave who had fought in the rebellion of 1791, became President.​

Second Haitian Empire (1849–1859)President Faustin Soulouque took full advantage of his popularity in 1849 and proclaimed himself Emperor Faustin I. His iron rule succeeded in uniting Haiti for a time, but it came to an abrupt end in 1859 when he was deposed by General Fabre Geffrard.

 

Geffrard's military government held office until 1867, and he encouraged a successful policy of national reconciliation. In 1860, he reached an agreement with the Vatican, reintroducing official Roman Catholic institutions, including schools, to the nation. In 1867 an attempt was made to establish a constitutional government, but successive presidents Sylvain Salnave and Nissage Saget were overthrown in 1869 and 1874 respectively. A more workable constitution was introduced under Michel Domingue in 1874, leading to a long period of democratic peace and development for Haiti. The debt to France was finally repaid in 1879, and Michel Domingue's government peacefully transferred power to Lysius Salomon, one of Haiti's abler leaders. Monetary reform and a cultural renaissance ensued with a flowering of Haitian art.

 

The last two decades of the 19th century were also marked by the development of Haitian intellectual culture. Major works of history were published in 1847 and 1865. Haitian intellectuals, led by Louis-Joseph Janvier and Anténor Firmin, engaged in a war of letters against a tide of racism and Social Darwinism that emerged during this period. The Constitution of 1867 saw peaceful and progressive transitions in government that did much to improve the economy and stability of the Haitian nation and the condition of its people. The constitutional government restored the faith of the Haitian people in legal institutions. The development of industrial sugar and rum industries near Port-au-Prince made Haiti, for a while, a model for economic growth in Latin American countries. This period of relative stability and prosperity ended in 1911 when the revolution broke out and the country slid once again into political and financial chaos.​

 

Failing State (1911–1915) 

From 1911 to 1915, there were six different Presidents, each of whom was killed or forced into exile The revolutionary armies were formed by cacos, peasant brigands from the mountains of the north, along the porous Dominican border, who were enlisted by rival political factions with promises of money to be paid after a successful revolution and an opportunity to plunder. The United States was particularly apprehensive about the role of the German community in Haiti (approximately 200 in 1910), who wielded a disproportionate amount of economic power. Germans controlled about 80% of the country's international commerce; they also owned and operated utilities in Cap Haïtien and Port-au-Prince, the main wharf and a tramway in the capital, and a railroad serving the Plaine de Cul-du-Sac.

 

The German community proved more willing to integrate into Haitian society than any other group of white foreigners, including the French. A number married into the nation's most prominent mulatto families, bypassing the constitutional prohibition against foreign land-ownership. They also served as the principal financiers of the nation's innumerable revolutions, floating innumerable loans-at high-interest rates-to competing for political factions. In an effort to limit German influence, in 1910–11, the US State Department backed a consortium of American investors, assembled by the National City Bank of New York, in acquiring control of the Banque Nationale d'Haïti, the nation's only commercial bank and the government treasury. In February 1915, Vilbrun Guillaume Sam established a dictatorship, but in July, facing a new revolt, he massacred 167 political prisoners, all of whom were from elite families, and was lynched by a crowd in Port-au-Prince.

 

United States occupation (1915–1934)

In 1915 the United States, responding to complaints to President Woodrow Wilson from American banks to which Haiti was deeply in debt, occupied the country. The occupation of Haiti lasted until 1934. The US occupation was self-interested, sometimes brutal, and caused problems that lasted past its lifetime. Reforms, though, were carried out. Under the supervision of the United States Marines, the Haitian National Assembly elected Philippe Sudré Dartiguenave President. He signed a treaty that made Haiti a de jure US protectorate, with American officials assuming control over the Financial Adviser, Customs Receivership, the Constabulary, the Public Works Service, and the Public Health Service for a period of ten years. The principal instrument of American authority was the newly-created Gendarmerie d'Haïti, commanded by American officers.

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In 1917, at the demand of US officials, the National Assembly was dissolved, and officials were designated to write a new constitution, which was largely dictated by officials in the US State Department and US Navy Department. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Under-Secretary for the Navy in the Wilson administration, claimed to have personally written the new constitution. This document abolished the prohibition on foreign ownership of land – the most essential component of Haitian law. When the newly elected National Assembly refused to pass this document and drafted one of their own preserving this prohibition, it was forcibly dissolved by Gendarmerie commandant Smedley Butler. This constitution was approved by a plebiscite in 1919, in which less than 5% of the population voted. The US State Department authorized this plebiscite presuming that."

The people casting ballots would be 97% illiterate, ignorant in most cases of what they were voting for." The Marines and Gendarmerie initiated an extensive road-building program to enhance their military effectiveness and open the country to US investment. Lacking any source of adequate funds, they revived an 1864 Haitian law, discovered by Butler, requiring peasants to perform labor on local roads in lieu of paying a road tax. This system, known as the corvée, originated in the unpaid labor that French peasants provided to their feudal lords. In 1919, a new caco uprising began, led by Charlemagne Péralte, vowing to 'drive the invaders into the sea and free Haiti.' The Cacos attacked Port-au-Prince in October but were driven back with heavy casualties.

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Afterward, a Creole-speaking American Gendarmerie officer infiltrated Péralte's camp, killing him and photographing his corpse in an attempt to demoralize the rebels. The leadership of the rebellion passed to Benoît Batraville, a Caco chieftain from Artibonite. His death in 1920 marked the end of hostilities. During Senate hearings in 1921, the commandant of the Marine Corps reported that, in the twenty months of active resistance, 2 250 Haitians had been killed. However, in a report to the Secretary of the Navy, he reported the death toll as being 3 250. Haitian historians have estimated the true number was much higher; one suggested, “the total number of battle victims and casualties of repression and consequences of the war might have reached, by the end of the pacification period, four or five times that somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 persons."

The Great Depression decimated the prices of Haiti's exports and destroyed the tenuous gains of the previous decade. In December 1929, Marines in Les Cayes killed ten Haitians during a march to protest local economic conditions. This led Herbert Hoover to appoint two commissions, including one headed by a former US governor of the Philippines William Cameron Forbes, which criticized the exclusion of Haitians from positions of authority in the government and constabulary, now known as the Garde d'Haïti. In 1930, Sténio Vincent, a long-time critic of the occupation, was elected President, and the US began to withdraw its forces.

 

​The withdrawal was completed under US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), in 1934, under his "Good Neighbor policy". The US retained control of Haiti's external finances until 1947.  All three rulers during the occupation came from the country's small mulatto minority. At the same time, many in the growing black professional classes departed from the traditional veneration of Haiti's French cultural heritage and emphasized the nation's African roots, most notably ethnologist Jean Price-Mars and the journal Les Griots, edited by Dr. François Duvalier.

 

The transition government left a better infrastructure, public health, education, and agricultural development as well as a democratic system. The country had fully democratic elections in 1930, won by Sténio Vincent. The Garde was a new kind of military institution in Haiti. It was a force manned overwhelmingly by blacks, with a United States- trained black commander, Colonel Démosthènes Pétrus Calixte. Most of the Garde's officers, however, were mulattoes. The Garde was a national organization; it departed from the regionalism that had characterized most of Haiti's previous armies. In theory, its charge was apolitical—to maintain internal order, while supporting a popularly elected government. The Garde initially adhered to this role.​

 

Elections and coups (1934–1957)​​

Vincent's Presidency (1934–1941)

President Vincent took advantage of the comparative national stability, which was being maintained by a professionalized military, to gain absolute power. A plebiscite permitted the transfer of all authority in economic matters from the legislature to the executive, but Vincent was not content with this expansion of his power. In 1935 he forced through the legislature a new constitution, which was also approved by plebiscite. The constitution praised Vincent, and it granted the executive sweeping powers to dissolve the legislature at will, to reorganize the judiciary, to appoint ten of twenty-one senators (and to recommend the remaining eleven to the lower house), and to rule by decree when the legislature was not in session. Although Vincent implemented some improvements in infrastructure and services, he brutally repressed his opposition, censored the press, and governed largely to benefit himself and a clique of merchants and corrupt military officers who supported him.

 

In 1941 Vincent showed every intention of standing for a third term as president, but after almost a decade of disengagement, the United States made it known that it would oppose such an extension. Vincent accommodated the Roosevelt administration and handed power over to Elie Lescot. Lescot was a mulatto who had served in numerous government posts. He was competent and forceful, and many considered him a sterling candidate for the presidency, despite his elitist background. Like the majority of previous Haitian presidents, however, he failed to live up to his potential. His tenure paralleled that of Vincent in many ways.

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Lescot declared himself commander in chief of the military, and power resided in a clique that ruled with the tacit support of the Haitian national guard. He repressed his opponents censored the press, and compelled the legislature to grant him extensive powers. He handled all budget matters without legislative sanction and filled legislative vacancies without calling elections. Lescot commonly said that Haiti's declared state-of-war against the Axis powers during World War II justified his repressive actions. Haiti, however, played no role in the war except for supplying the United States with raw materials and serving as a base for a United States Coast Guard detachment.

In January 1946, events came to a head when Lescot jailed the Marxist editors of a journal called La Ruche (The Beehive). This action precipitated student strikes and protests by government workers, teachers, and shopkeepers in the capital and provincial cities. In addition, Lescot's mulatto-dominated rule had alienated the predominantly blackguard. His position became untenable, and he resigned on January 11th of 1946. Radio announcements declared that the Garde had assumed power, which it would administer through a three-member junta.

The Revolution of 1946 was a novel development in Haiti's history, as the Garde assumed power as an institution, not as the instrument of a particular commander. The members of the junta, known as the Military Executive Committee (Comité Exécutif Militaire), were Garde commander Colonel Franck Lavaud, Major Antoine Levelt, and Major Paul E. Magloire, commander of the Presidential Guard. All three understood Haiti's traditional way of exercising power, but they lacked a thorough understanding of what would be required to make the transition to an elected civilian government. Upon taking power, the junta pledged to hold free elections. The junta also explored other options, but public clamor, which included public demonstrations in support of potential candidates, eventually forced the officers to make good on their promise. Haiti elected its National Assembly in May 1946. The Assembly set August 16, 1946, as the date on which it would elect a president. As a result, Dumarsais Estimé, a former school teacher was elected president of Haiti in 1946.​

 

Estimé's Presidency (1946–1950)

Estimé's election represented a break with Haiti's political tradition. Although he was reputed to have received support from commanders of the Garde, Estimé was a civilian. Of humble origins, he was passionately anti-elitist and therefore generally anti mulatto. He demonstrated, at least initially, a genuine concern for the welfare of the people. Operating under a new constitution that went into effect in November 1946, Estimé proposed, but never secured passage of, Haiti's first social- security legislation. He did, however, expand the school system, encourage the establishment of rural cooperatives, raise the salaries of civil servants, and increase the representation of middle-class and lower-class blacks in the public sector. He also attempted to gain the favor of the Garde—renamed the Haitian Army (Armée d'Haïti) in March 1947—by promoting Lavaud to brigadier general and by seeking the United States military assistance.

 

Estimé eventually fell victim to two of the time-honored pitfalls of Haitian rule: elite intrigue and personal ambition. The elite had a number of grievances against Estimé. Not only had he largely excluded them from the often lucrative levers of government, but he also enacted the country's first income tax, fostered the growth of labor unions, and suggested that voodoo be considered as a religion equivalent to Roman Catholicism—a notion that the Europeanized elite abhorred.

Lacking direct influence in Haitian affairs, the elite resorted to clandestine lobbying among the officer corps. Their efforts, in combination with deteriorating domestic conditions, led to a coup in May 1950. An army escort conducted Estimé from the National Palace into exile in Jamaica. The events of May 1946 made an impression upon the deposed minister of labor, François Duvalier. The lesson that Duvalier drew from Estimé's ouster was that the military could not be trusted. It was a lesson that Francois Duvalier would act upon when he gained power at a later time.​

 

Magloire Era.

After the election was held, Magloire became president. He then restored the elite to prominence. The business community and the government benefited from favorable economic conditions until Hurricane Hazel hit the island in 1954. Haiti made some improvements in its infrastructure, but most of these were financed largely by foreign loans. By Haitian standards, Magloire's rule was firm, but not harsh: he jailed political opponents, including Fignolé, and shut down their presses when their protests grew too strident, but he allowed labor unions to function, although they were not permitted to strike. It was in the arena of corruption; however, Magloire overstepped traditional bounds.

 

The president controlled the sisal, cement, and soap monopolies. He and other officials built imposing mansions. The injection of international hurricane relief funds into an already corrupt system boosted graft to levels that disillusioned all Haitians. To make matters worse, Magloire followed in the footsteps of many previous presidents by disputing the termination date of his stay in office. Politicians, labor leaders, and their followers gathered the streets in May 1956 to protest Magloire's failure to step down. Although Magloire declared martial law, a general strike essentially shut down Port-au-Prince. Again like many before him, Magloire fled to Jamaica, leaving the army with the task of restoring order.​

 

The Rise of Francois Duvalier (1956–1957).

The period between the fall of Magloire and the election of Duvalier in September 1957 was a chaotic one, even by Haitian standards. Three provisional presidents held office during this interval; one resigned and the army deposed the other two, Franck Sylvain and Fignolé. Duvalier is said to have engaged actively in the behind-the-scenes intrigue that helped him to emerge as the presidential candidate that the military favored. The military went on to guide the campaign and the elections in a way that gave Duvalier every possible advantage.

 

​Most political actors perceived Duvalier—a medical doctor who had served as a rural administrator of a United States-funded anti-yaws campaign before entering the cabinet under Estimé—as an honest and fairly unassuming leader without a strong ideological motivation or program. When elections were finally organized, this time under terms of universal suffrage (both men and women now had the vote), Duvalier, a black man, painted himself as the legitimate heir to Estimé. This approach was enhanced by the fact that Duvalier's only viable opponent, Louis Déjoie, was a mulatto and the scion of a prominent family. Duvalier scored a decisive victory at the polls. His followers took two-thirds of the legislature's lower house and all of the seats in the Senate.​

 

The Duvalier Era (1957–1986)​​'Papa Doc (1957–1971)

As a former Minister of Health who had earned a reputation as a humanitarian while serving as an administrator in a U.S.-funded anti-yaws campaign, Duvalier (known as "Papa Doc") soon established another dictatorship. His regime is regarded as one of the most repressive and corrupt of modern times, combining violence against political opponents with the exploitation of Vodou to instill fear in the majority of the population. Duvalier's paramilitary police, officially the Volunteers for National Security (Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale – VSN) but more commonly known as the Tonton Macoutes, named for a Vodou monster, carried out political murders, beatings, and intimidation.

 

​An estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Haitians were killed by his government. Duvalier employed rape as a political tool to silence political opposition. Incorporating many houngans into the ranks of the Macoutes, his public recognition of Vodou and its practitioners and his private adherence to Vodou ritual, combined with his reputed private knowledge of magic and sorcery, enhanced his popular persona among the common people and served as a peculiar form of legitimization.

 

Duvalier's policies, designed to end the dominance of the mulatto elite over the nation's economic and political life, led to a massive emigration of educated people, deepening Haiti's economic and social problems. However, Duvalier appealed to the black middle class of whom he was a member by introducing public works into middle-class neighborhoods that previously had been unable to have paved roads, running water, or modern sewage systems. In 1964, Duvalier proclaimed himself "President for Life".

 

The Kennedy administration suspended aid in 1961, after allegations that Duvalier had pocketed aid money and intended to use a Marine Corps mission to strengthen the Macoutes. Duvalier also clashed with Dominican President Juan Bosch in 1963, after Bosch provided aid and asylum to Haitian exiles working to overthrow his regime. He ordered the Presidential Guard to occupy the Dominican chancery in Pétionville to apprehend an officer involved in a plot to kidnap his children, leading Bosch to publicly threaten to invade Haiti. However, the Dominican army, which distrusted Bosch's leftist leanings, expressed little support for an invasion, and the dispute was settled by OAS emissaries.



​Jean Claude Duvalier aka Baby Doc Era (1971–1986)

On Duvalier's death in April 1971, power was pass to his 19-year-old son Jean-Claude Duvalier (known as "Baby Doc"). Under Jean-Claude Duvalier, Haiti's economic and political condition continued to decline, although some of the more fearsome elements of his father's regime were abolished. Foreign officials and observers also seemed more tolerant toward Baby Doc, in areas such as human rights monitoring, and foreign countries were more generous to him with economic assistance. The United States restored its aid program in 1971. In 1974, Baby Doc expropriated the Freeport Tortuga project and this caused the venture to collapse. Content to leave administrative matters in the hands of his mother, Simone Ovid Duvalier while living like a playboy, Jean-Claude enriched himself through a series of fraudulent schemes.

​

Much of the Duvaliers' wealth, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars over the years, came from the Régie du Tabac (Tobacco Administration), a tobacco monopoly established by Estimé, which expanded to include the proceeds from all government enterprises and served as a slush fund for which no balance sheets were ever kept. His marriage, in 1980, to a beautiful mulatto divorcée, Michèle Bennett, in a $3 million ceremony, provoked widespread opposition, as it was seen as a betrayal of his father's antipathy towards the mulatto elite. At the request of Michèle, Papa Doc's widow Simone was expelled from Haiti.

 

Baby Doc's inability left the regime vulnerable to unanticipated crises, exacerbated by endemic poverty, most notably the epidemic of African swine fever virus—which, at the insistence of USAID officials, led to the slaughter of the creole pigs, the principal source of income for most Haitians; and the widely-publicized outbreak of AIDS in the early 1980s. Widespread discontent in Haiti began in 1983, when Pope John Paul II condemned the regime during a visit, finally provoking a rebellion, and in February 1986, after months of disorder, the army forced Duvalier to resign and go into exile.

Since then, Haiti has struggled for democracy and stability. From 1986 to early 1988 Haiti was ruled by a provisional military government under General Henry Namphy. In 1987, a new constitution was ratified, providing for an elected bicameral parliament, an elected president, and a prime minister, cabinet, ministers, and Supreme Court appointed by the president with parliament's consent. The Constitution also provided for political decentralization through the election of mayors and administrative bodies responsible for local government.

 

The November 1987 elections were canceled after troops massacred over 300 voters on election day. Jimmy Carter later wrote that "Citizens who lined up to vote were mowed down by fusillades of terrorists’ bullets. Military leaders, who had either orchestrated or condoned the murders, moved in to cancel the election and retain control of the Government." The election was followed several months later by the Haitian presidential election, 1988, which was boycotted by almost all the previous candidates, and saw a turnout of just 4% of the population.

The 1988 elections led to Professor Leslie Manigat becoming President, but three months later he too was ousted by the military. Further instability ensued, with several massacres, including the St Jean Bosco massacre in which the church of Jean-Bertrand Aristide was attacked and burned down. The number of people who were killed during this attack is still unknown.

 

The Rise of Aristide and the Lavalas Mouvement (1990–1991)

In December 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a liberation theology Roman Catholic (Salesian) priest, won 67% of the vote in elections that international observers deemed largely free and fair. Aristide's radical populist policies and the violence of his bands of supporters alarmed many of the country's elite, and, in September 1991, he was overthrown in the 1991 Haitian coup d'état, which brought General Raoul Cédras to power. The coup saw thousands of Aristide supporters killed, and he was forced into exile, his life saved by international diplomatic intervention.​

 

Military rule (1991–1994)

An estimated 3 000–5 000 Haitians were killed during the period of military rule. The coup created a large-scale exodus of refugees to the United States and other neighboring countries. The United States Coast Guard interdicted (in many cases, rescued) a total of 41 342 Haitians during 1991 and 1992. Most were denied entry to the United States and repatriated back to Haiti. According to Mark Weisbrot, Aristide has accused the United States of backing the 1991 coup. In response to the coup, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 841 imposing international sanctions and an arms embargo on Haiti. On February 16, 1993, the ferry Neptune sank, drowning an estimated 700 passengers.

 

This was the worst ferry disaster in Haitian history. The military regime governed Haiti until 1994, and according to some sources included drug trafficking led by Chief of National Police Michel François. Various initiatives to end the political crisis through the peaceful restoration of the constitutionally elected government failed. In July 1994, as repression mounted in Haiti and civilian human rights monitoring mission was expelled from the country, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 940, which authorized member states to use all necessary means to facilitate the departure of Haiti's military leadership and to restore Haiti's constitutionally elected government to power.​

 

The return of Aristide (1994–1996)

In mid-September 1994, with U.S. troops prepared to enter Haiti by force for Operation Uphold Democracy, President Bill Clinton dispatched a negotiating team led by former President Jimmy Carter to persuade the authorities to step aside and allow for the return of constitutional rule. With intervening troops already airborne, Cédras and other top leaders agreed to step down. In October, Aristide was able to return. The Haitian general election, 1995 in June 1995 saw Aristide's coalition, the Lavalas (Waterfall) Political Organization, gain a sweeping victory, and René Préval, a prominent Aristide political ally, elected President with 88% of the vote. When Aristide's term ended in February 1996, this was Haiti's first ever transition between two democratically elected presidents.​

 

Preval's first Presidency (1996–2001)

In late 1996, Aristide broke with Préval and formed a new political party, the Lavalas Family (Fanmi Lavalas, FL), which won elections in April 1997 for one-third of the Senate and local assemblies, but these results were not accepted by the government. The split between Aristide and Préval produced a dangerous political deadlock, and the government was unable to organize the local and parliamentary elections due in late 1998. In January 1999, Préval dismissed legislators whose terms had expired – the entire Chamber of Deputies and all but nine members of the Senate, and Préval then ruled by decree.​

 

Aristide's second presidency (2001–2004)

In May 2000 the Haitian legislative election, 2000 for the Chamber of Deputies and two-thirds of the Senate took place. The election drew a voter turnout of more than 60%, and the Fanmi Lavalas won a virtual sweep. However, the elections were marred by controversy in the Senate race over the calculation of whether Senate candidates had achieved the majority required to avoid a run-off election (in Haiti, seats where no candidate wins an absolute majority of votes cast has to enter a second-round run-off election). The validity of the Electoral Council's post-ballot calculations of whether a majority had been attained was disputed.

The Organization of American States complained about the calculation and declined to observe the July run-off elections.

 

The opposition parties, regrouped in the Democratic Convergence (Convergence Démocratique, CD), led by Paul Denis, Sauveur Pierre Etienne, Gerard Gourges, demanded that the elections be annulled and that Préval stand down and be replaced by a provisional government. In the meantime, the opposition announced it would boycott the November presidential and senatorial elections. Haiti's main aid donors threatened to cut off aid. At the November 2000 elections, boycotted by the opposition, Aristide was again elected president, with more than 90% of the vote, on a turnout of around 50% according to international observers. The opposition refused to accept the result or to recognize Aristide as president. Aristide spent years negotiating with the Convergence Démocratique on new elections, but the Convergence's inability to develop a sufficient electoral base made elections unattractive, and it rejected every deal offered, preferring to call for a US invasion to topple Aristide.​

 

​The 2004 Coup d'état.

Anti-Aristide protests in January 2004 led to violent clashes in Port-au-Prince, causing several deaths. Since Aristide destroyed the Haitian Army soon after he returned from exile, in February of 2004, a revolt broke out in the city of Gonaïves, which was soon under ex-military rebels’ control, having Guy Phillip as their lieutenant. The rebellion then began to spread, and Cap-Haïtien, Haiti's second-largest city, was captured. A mediation team of diplomats presented a plan to reduce Aristide's power while allowing him to remain in office until the end of his constitutional term. Although Aristide accepted the plan, it was rejected by the opposition, which mostly consisted of Haitian businessmen and former members of the army (who sought to reinstate the military following Aristide's disbandment of it).

 

On 29 February, 2004, with ex-military rebels’ contingents marching towards Port-au-Prince, Aristide departed from Haiti. Aristide insists that he was essentially kidnapped by a U.S. convoy at his own house, while the U.S. State Department maintains that Aristide resigned from office. But what remains unclear is that why the U.S. would be the first to know that Aristide resigned from office without telling the public?

 

Aristide and his wife left Haiti on an American airplane, escorted by American diplomats and military personnel, and were flown directly to Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, where he stayed for the following two weeks, before seeking asylum in a less remote location. This event was later characterized by Aristide as a kidnapping. Though this has never been proven, many observers in the press and academia believe that the US has not provided convincing answers to several of the more suspicious details surrounding the coup, such as the circumstances under which the US obtained Aristide's purported letter of "resignation" (as presented by the US) which, translated from Kreyol, does not actually read as a resignation.

Political organizations and writers from all over the world, as well as Aristide himself, have suggested that the rebellion was in fact a foreign-controlled coup d'état. Caricom, which had been backing the peace deal, accused the United States, France, and the International community of failing in Haiti because they allegedly allowed a controversially elected leader to be violently forced out of office. The international community stated that the crisis was of Aristide's making and that he was not acting in the best interests of his country. They have argued that his removal was necessary for future stability in the island nation.

The government was taken over by Supreme Court Chief Justice Boniface Alexandre.

 

Alexandre petitioned the United Nations Security Council for the intervention of an international peacekeeping force. The Security Council passed a resolution the same day "taking note of the resignation of Jean-Bertrand Aristide as President of Haiti and the swearing-in of President Boniface Alexandre as the acting President of Haiti in accordance with the Constitution of Haiti" and authorized such a mission. As a vanguard of the official U.N. force, a force of about 1,000 U.S. Marines arrived in Haiti that same day; and Canadian and French troops arrived the next morning. The United Nations indicated it would send a team to assess the situation within days. These international troops have been criticized for cooperating with rebel forces, refusing to disarm them, and integrating former military and death-squad (FRAPH) members into the re-militarized Haitian National Police force following the coup.

On June 1st, 2004, the peacekeeping mission was passed to MINUSTAH and comprised a 7,000 strength force led by Brazil and backed by Argentina, Chile, Jordan, Morocco, Nepal, Peru, Philippines, Spain, Sri Lanka, and Uruguay. Brazilian forces led the United Nations peacekeeping troops in Haiti composed of United States, France, Canada, and Chile deployments. These peacekeeping troops were a part of the ongoing MINUSTAH operation. In November 2004, the University Of Miami School Of Law carried out a Human Rights Investigation in Haiti and documented serious human rights abuses. It stated that "summary executions are a police tactic." It also suggested a "disturbing pattern."

On October 15, 2005, Brazil called for more troops to be sent due to the worsening situation in the country. According to many observers, after Aristide's overthrow, the violence in Haiti continued, despite the presence of peacekeepers. Clashes between police and Fanmi Lavalas supporters were common, and peacekeeping forces were accused of conducting a massacre against the residents of Cité Soleil in July 2005. Several of the protests resulted in violence and deaths.

 

​​The second Préval Presidency (2006–2011)

In the midst of the ongoing controversy and violence, the interim government planned legislative and executive elections. After being postponed several times, these elections were held in February 2006. Because of his past relationship with Jean Bertrand Aristide and his promise to bring him back from exile,  René Préval was elected, because he had strong support among the poor, with 51% of the votes. Préval took office in May 2006. In the spring of 2008, Haitians demonstrated against rising food prices and Preval’s indifference toward the poor. In some instances, the few main roads on the island were blocked with burning tires and the Port-au-Prince airport was closed on many occasions. Protests and demonstrations by Fanmi Lavalas continued until the end Preval’s presidency in order to make him keep his word on bringing Aristide back.​

 

Earthquake 2010On January 12, 2010, around 5:00 pm Eastern Time, Haiti has suffered a devastating earthquake, magnitude 7.0 with a death toll estimated by the Haitian government at over 300,000; more than 25% of that total were innocent children. However, non-Haitian sources from other countries argued the number of death is approximately 200,000 to 350,000. Aftershocks followed, including one of magnitude 5.9. The capital city, Port-au-Prince, was effectively leveled. Over 1 million Haitians were left homeless, and hundreds of thousands in starvation.

The earthquake caused massive devastation, with most buildings crumbled, including Haiti's presidential palace. The enormous death toll made it necessary to bury the dead in mass graves. Most bodies were unidentified and few pictures were taken, making it impossible for families to identify their loved ones. The spread of disease was a major secondary disaster. Many survivors were treated for injuries in emergency makeshift hospitals, some of those surgeries were done without proper medical procedures; as a result, many of those patients died of gangrene, malnutrition, and infectious diseases.

​

​The Martelly Presidency (2011–)​

A few months after the earthquake, Rene Preval’s administration was called by many foreign countries such as (the United States of America, Canada, and France), to organize elections despite everyone in the country was still suffering physically and emotionally. According to many experts and witnesses, these are the same countries that helped oust former president Jean Bertrand Aristide on two different occasions (September 30th of 1991 and February 29th of 2004,) for the fact that he doesn’t represent their best interest.

 

After a run-off against the ex-first lady candidate, Mirlande Manigat. Joseph Martelly won the Haitian general election by a small margin due to a low turnout of the population. An election where Martelly had come in third place in the first round, until the Organization of American States forced Jude Célestin, the projected winner of the election to withdraw due to alleged fraud. According to experts, among the 5 million registered voters in the country, which represent roughly half of the population, only 792,000 of them went to vote that day, because most of the population was still on choked and agony after the earthquake that kills approximately 300,000 people. ​

 

​​After many disputes, on April 4th, 2011, a senior Haitian official announced that Joseph Michel Martelly had won the second round of the election against candidate Mirlande Manigat. Michel Martelly also was known by his stage name "Sweet Micky" is a former musician and businessman from the upper class. Since then, the social situation of most people in the country has deteriorated and continue to deteriorate every single day, because under his presidency; only his closest friends are appointed to a public office position without having proper qualification. It’s been the same scenario in Haiti that continues under Martelly's presidency; the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. Many have confirmed if it was not for NGOs and other foreign humanitarian groups, the majority of the population would starve to death.

​

 

Sources: 

Historic Cities of the Americas:An Illustrated Encyclopedia (2005). David Marley. Page 121
2. Knight, Franklin, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism, 3rd ed. p.54 New York, Oxford University Press 1990
3. Robert Heinl, (1996) Written in Blood: The History of the Haitian People. University Press of America: Lantham, Maryland.
4.  Haiti the land where children eat mud, US and Americas, London: Times, 17 May 2009
5. oodling, Bridget; Moseley-Williams, Richard (2004), Needed but unwanted: Haitian Immigrants and their Descendants in the Dominican Republic, London: Catholic Institute for International Relations, p. 24.
6.  Carter, Jimmy (1 October 1990), Haiti's Election Needs Help, Carter Center, "Two months later, these generals conducted an election that was boycotted by almost all the previous candidates and in which fewer than 4 percent of the people voted; the victor was peremptorially removed when he dared to exert some independence as president."
7. Whitney, Kathleen Marie (1996), "Sin, Fraph, and the CIA: U.S. Covert Action in Haiti", Southwestern Journal of Law and Trade in the Americas, Vol. 3, Issue 2 (1996), pp. 303–32, esp. p. 319.