Since Elena is retired, she has the luxury of being able to read articles in detail. Haiti is the economic basket case of the Western hemisphere. A lot of the population is truly illiterate and cannot read and write. Oddly, Haiti shares an island with the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic is not a rich country. On the other hand, it is not an economic basket case.
What went wrong with Haiti? It all started
when the island had a 10% European population and a 90% African population.
Brutal slavery was practiced. There was a slave uprising. They won and slavery
was abolished in this country. This event happened around the time of the
French Revolution.
When Napoleon came to power, the former
slave owners protested about their grievous financial losses. Napoleon mounted
one military operation that failed. On the second try, he occupied this
country. He forced the former slaves to pay reparations to the slave owners
using a vehicle of high-interest-rate loans. For 80 years any money made in
Haiti was used to pay reparations. When the French left, the US occupied the
island for 20 years and took a lot of money. After this occupation, dictators
ran the country and stole whatever was left.
I hope that all of you learned
something new today! The New York Times devoted two years of careful research
in several different countries to assemble data for this article.
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