Forgotten Angels

Poverty is the worst form of violence.
-Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)




Imagine yourself so poor & hungry that your only way to feed yourself outside of begging is to eat dirt? Many of you may have read of Haiti's poor having to resort to
eating mud cookies made of butter, salt, water and dirt to stave off hunger. 80 percent of Haiti's eight million citizens live on less than a dollar a day. 85 percent are illiterate. Most children suffer from malnutrition. Life expectancy is under 50. How did such a thing happen to a place, once the most prosperous island in the Antilles and the first in the Americas after the United States to gain independence?

The answer is as old and sad and pathetic as empire itself.

In a nutshell, during the 1600s and 1700s the French plantation owners brought in black slaves & brutally enslaved them to turn sugar into profit. From 1791 to 1804, the proud and resilient Haitians held Destiny in their tight, calloused hands & fought courageously against the French (British & Spanish as well) until they finally got the upper hand with a dazzling display of strategic planning & ferocious fighting under the brilliant leadership of Toussaint Louverture & Jean Jacques Dessalines. Napoleon was sent packing and the first black independent nation was born.

But no Empire just folds its' arms and walks away. The French felt insulted by this monumental defeat of their colonial forces & thus devised a counter-attack: Britain, France, Spain and the US, all rivals but united in exploitation and dehumanization, imposed an economic naval blockade from the moment of its independence for about 60 years. Without the ships of these countries and their traders, the plantations of Haiti could not sell any of the sugarcane, tobacco, cotton or coffee. This led increasing desperation and poverty for the vast majority of the population. What finally bought Haiti to its' knees was when they were forced to pay compensation (an equivalent of $21 billion) to France for taking over the slave plantations during the revolution. The familiar cycle of poverty, indebtedness and political instability was established and continues to this day (aided and abetted by numerous U.S military invasions and political meddling to keep things "in order").This is how the promise of their inspired revolution ('a beacon for freedom in the Western Hemisphere') was killed and with wave after wave of brutal dictatorships (except for Jean-Bertrand Aristide who was politically assassinated), Haiti is today one of the world's poorest countries.

For information on what you can do to help and to learn more about what is happening in Haiti, check out these resources:

Food For The Poor
Jubilee2000
Institute For Justice & Democracy In Haiti

OneLove

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