So according to Pat Robertson, Haiti is earthquake- and poverty-stricken because they made a deal with the devil to overthrow French rule and become independent.

Let's take a look at this deal, starting from the beginning.

Haiti had been occupied by the French and the Spanish for sometime, but officially became a French colony in1697. It was at that point that Haiti (then known as Saint-Domingue) became the richest French colony in the New World, made possible by the slave labor brought from Africa and the rigid yet efficient policy of Code Noir - the rules on treatment of slaves. It was brutal, barbarous, and effective.

In 1791, the slaves of Saint-Domingue, inspired by the French Revolution, instigated social upheaval of their own. Tension built, particularly after the execution of Louis XVI, and the French caved to the growing pressure and abolished slavery. However, with the change in the French government and the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, they began to rethink their stance on slavery. France wanted slavery back in Saint-Domingue.

Napoleon sent sent men to retake the island, but a combination of yellow fever and bloody battles cut down French numbers, until finally on 18 November 1803, the slaves won the battle. They declared their independence 1 January 1804, calling the new nation "Haiti". It is the only nation to be born out of a slave revolt - and it seems as though the West never forgave them for it.

In July 1825, the then-king of France, Charles X wanted Haiti back. He sent a fleet and soldiers to reclaim the island, but Jean Pierre Boyer, second President of Haiti, agreed to a treaty with France - all the Haitians had to do was pay them 150 million francs, to replace the profits lost from the slave trade. In the words of abolitionist Victor Schoelcher, "Imposing an indemnity on the victorious slaves was equivalent to making them pay with money that which they had already paid with their blood." While slave owners have never paid reparations to slaves, slaves have been forced to pay reparations to their owners.

Haiti could not afford such a sum, and given the option between independence and debt or slavery and the brutal slave code, they did the only thing they could do - accept the very high-interest loan helpfully provided by other countries, including France and US. This debt bankrupted a country already crippled by war, effectively rendering the once-prosperous island into the poorest country in the Americas. By the turn the of century over 80% of Haiti's budget went to paying off these debts, with the final payment not being made until 1947. During that time the country had seen 32 riots, occupations, and a massacre of native Haitians by the dictator of the neighboring Dominican Republic. No other countries offered them aid during these events.

In just the ten years after paying the debt off, Haiti was taken over by the Duvalier family, first led by François "Papa Doc" Duvalier. The Duvalier family bankrupted the country financially, politically, and socially in just a few short years, taking out high-interest loans and killing tens of thousands of Haitians with their Tonton Macoutes - death squads with more power than the army, known to terrorize and torture, raping and/or killing anyone in the way of the Duvalier regime. A vote rigged so heavily as to be nothing less than absurd ensured Duvalier would be president of Haiti for life, resulting in one of the bloodiest, most oppressive regimes this century has known. In fear, Haitians fled the country, resulting in wide-scale human capital flight. The educated Haitians who had the means to flee did so, leaving the country with a mostly unskilled, uneducated population, from which Haiti has never recovered.

Via several agencies and banks, the Duvalier family received loans from institutions such as the World Bank, Inter-American, and (again) from the governments of the United States and France. The Duvalier family was overthrown in 1986, but to this day they are still working to pay off the debt acquired by a brutal, oppressive dictator that no one would help them get rid of for almost 30 years.

Today, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. As of 2003, 80% of the population lived below the poverty line; of that number almost %54 live in abject, catastrophic poverty. Only 50% of the population is literate.


So in a way, Pat Robertson is right, Haiti is cursed after making a deal. Multiple deals with multiple devils even. And the United States is one of those devils.

Now would be a good time to make a donation and then contact your Congressperson about the Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation.

Sources: The CIA World Fact Book, Times Online, Wikipedia.