Haiti: A Case Study in Futility

HAITI: A CASESTUDY IN FUTILITY Edwin M. Martin . part from collecting its stamps as a boy, I was almost unaware of Haiti until, by an unlikely series ofevents, I became assistant secretary ofstate for American Republic Affairs early in March 1962. My involvement with Haiti over the next three years was to confirm an observation made by a former professor ofmine at Northwestern University. A man with considerable experience in municipal politics, he cautioned his students that "a political reformer must have the time sense of a geologist ." He was a wise man. In retrospect, it is clear that President Kennedy took an unprecedented and, since his time, unequaled interest in the affairs of Latin America, even including neglected Haiti, and in promoting the economic , social, and political "development" of its peoples. I put development in quotes to call attention to the fact, too often overlooked, that while we use the word to describe progress toward political and economic institutions that function more like ours, Duvalier and the leaders ofmany other developing countries had, for good or bad reasons, different interpretations of it. Why did President Kennedy pay so much attention to Haiti, which had no obvious economic, political, or military ability to help or hurt U.S. interests? There were two related reasons: the Alliance for Progress and the cold war. As to the first, 90 percent of Haiti's population was illiterate, life expectancy was some 33 years with an infant mortality rate of 170 per thousand, and per capita income was around $75—an average that meant much lower incomes for the majority. By all ofthese measures, Haiti was poorer from the standpoint of both quality of life Edwin M. Martin was Assistant Secretary ofState for American Republic Affairs from 1962 to 1964 and Ambassador to Argentina from 1964 to 1968. He is currently Director ofthe Diplomatic Liaison Unit of the Population Crisis Committee. 61 62 SAIS REVIEW and human productivity than any ofthe Latin American countries and was close to the bottom half of those in Africa. Moreover, there were no important unexploited resources so far as anyone knew. Some 90 percent of the population lived on the land, relatively little of which was arable due to the mountainous nature of most ofthe country. What arable land existed was reduced each year as added population led to more deforestation and erosion. The goals ofthe Alliance, at least for the United States, included progress toward political democracy and civil liberties. No country in Latin America had farther to go in these respects. Conditions in Haiti reflected and perpetuated a fatal lack of social cohesion, of community or national loyalty, even of rudimentary channels ofcommunication. The government had no network into the countryside except, in a spasmodic way, through its instruments of repression . Any attempt to organize opposition to the government was equally handicapped. Basically, the source ofcold war concern was nearby Cuba, though to some degree there were also worries about the effects ofinstability in Haiti on the situation in the Dominican Republic, historically an almost permanent enemy of Haiti and passing through its own period of high tension culminating in Trujillo's assassination in 1961. In February 1963, after an interim regime, Juan Bosch became the first elected president in more than 30 years. How far Castro might go in promoting communist takeovers in other countries was not yet entirely clear, though his ambitions in this regard could not be doubted. There were 300,000 Creole-speaking Haitians living in Cuba who could be drawn upon. A very modest infiltration attempt had been made in late 1959, all of whose participants lost their lives. But it was a warning. There were also many reports of Communists in Haiti, both in the government and in the opposition. It was an easy label to attach to reformers or opponents of Duvalier, but clearly some ofthe educated minority both in and out ofthe government had acquired communist leanings during their student days in France. A communist takeover in Haiti would have to have been regarded as a disaster for U.S. foreign policy. The linkage, derived from a basic rationale of the Alliance for Progress, was expressed in an...