The Origins of Haitian Underdevelopment

For some strange reason, it took us a few years to finally complete Benoit Joachim's classic work on Haitian economic history, Les racines du sous-développement en Haïti. Joachim's analysis covers everything from colonial slavery to the semi-feudal, bourgoisie d'affaires who coexist to control a parasitic independent state suffering from neocolonialism. But while this already sounds familiar to the scholarship of other Haitians, particularly on the nefarious impact of the bord de mer on Haiti's economic development and the imperialist actions of the Western powers (France, USA, Germany, Britain), Joachim raises a number of interesting questions and problems.

For instance, Haiti's economy in the period 1804-1915 did experience growth. However, it was never enough to alter the backward agricultural production, pillaging of the coffers by the state, the lack of industrialization or the toxic power of the international & local bourgoisie d'affaires who engaged in constant forms of corruption, graft, loans, fake indemnities, financing revolutions and outright thievery. Nonetheless, Joachim raises a number of intriguing questions by shifting attention, momentarily, to the Haitian internal markets and consumption. Thus, the levels of exports are not entirely useful for a holistic view of Haiti's economy (and not solely due to widespread contraband and illegal exports). After all, local production of subsistence crops and the large local use of coffee, sirop, tafia, tobacco and other crops grown within Haiti appear to have grown after independence. Similarly, in his critique of the 19th century Haitian intellectuals who believed the country lacked sufficient workers, Joachim called attention to the underestimated impact of immigration on Haiti. While it remains a topic for further research, it is probable that a large part of the Haitian population descend, at least in part, from foreigners who came after 1804. This would include African Americans, West Indians, Europeans, Levantines, Latin Americans, and even a few Africans. 

Joachim also sought to elucidate the development of social classes within the Haitian economy burdened by neo-colonialism/international capitalism and the "feudal" landowning class, professionals (above all lawyers and other educated people who occasionally hailed from petite bourgoiesie or even the popular masses) and the Haitian elites. It was an alliance frequently shaken by competing claims to power and control of the government (to pilfer the nation), and sometimes operated with colorist biases but never seriously meaning to reform the state and economy. This negatively impacted the paysans, the urban poor, the small, embryonic working-class, and the petite bourgeoisie. Unsurprisingly, paysan resistance, often flaring up when coffee prices were low in the international markets and the economic repercussions led to crises and an increase in suffering for the Haitian lower class, upon whose backs the state lived, but the peasantry never could completely undermine the three-part powers that be without being coopted or snuffed out. That said, Joachim appears to put himself in the camp of Haitian intellectuals who believe that the Cacos active in 1911-1915 represented a real revolution that was thwarted by the US Occupation in 1915. If, however, the Cacos did represent a real revolution and the US had not invaded, perhaps some reforms or actual changes in the Haitian state and economy could have taken place. Undoubtedly, this would have been more meaningful and radical than the "talk" of reforms and the mild changes recommended by the intellectuals of the period who usually limited themselves to education, agricultural tools, and industry.

The Idea of Haiti: Rethinking Crisis and Development

The Idea of Haiti: Rethinking Crisis and Development, edited by Millery Polyné, is uneven but useful for general and academic audiences. The text consists of a collection of essays and one phone conversation on Haitian development and the need for new narratives and approaches after the 2010 earthquake. Some essays were quite informative and challenged common notions of Haitian underdevelopment or responses to the earthquake, particularly Karen Richman's nuanced explanation of Protestant conversions in Leogane after the catastrophe. Instead of arguing, like some Western journalists did, that Haitians turned away from Vodou after the earthquake because the lwa did not stop the natural disaster (clearly, these US journalists know nothing about Vodou, as Richman demonstrates), Richman argues that we must see the religious landscape of Haiti as fluid and inseparable as people adopted new religious identities for various reasons, often temporary. 

Understanding and respecting Vodou is one of the central themes of the text (McAlister's excellently researched essay on Bois Caiman as a pact with Satan in the eyes of evangelical Christians was also informative) tied to the need for inclusion of grassroots organizations, the peasantry, and the urban lower classes in government and decisions made by NGOs. In a similar context, arguing for the philosophical underpinnings of Haitian univeralist freedom and the importance of the Haitian Revolution, as well as the detrimental impact of the Western powers, indicates the importance of understanding Haiti's history, positive meanings and contributions of the nation, and how Haiti cannot be solely reduced to a aberration of international standards or crises. Patrick Sylvain's essay buttresses these points, too, focusing on the silence of Preval in the aftermath of the quake as a lost opportunity for fostering Haitian solidarity and national identity. The President's failure to speak to the people was, as Sylvain suggests, a form of violence that materialized in protest, anger, social distrust, and lamentable conditions as NGOs and the US became the real arbiters of authority and providing services in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. 

The impact of NGOs on taking away resources from the Haitian state and lacking any real accountability to Haitian citizens is also superbly elucidated by Mark Schuller through his analysis of several camps established after the earthquake for internally displaced people. Moreover, the funding of NGOs and the shift after the Cold War in donors' relationship with NGOs was new information to me, and quite useful for explaining how Haiti became the 'Republic of NGOs. The transformation of Port-au-Prince, also included in the text, was a dry read but the essay on Duvalier's relationship with Kennedy via the Alliance for Progress aid program was an enlightening reminder to the geopolitical and strategic purposes of international aid  the difficulties of delivering that aid to the Haitian state. The author of that essay, Arthus, unfortunately, seems to have a more conservative conclusion that is at odds with most of the other writers, but certainly is in the right for placing part of the burden on the Haitian state for not taking enough measures to ensure compliance with some of the conditions of donors for aid. 

Unfortunately, Yveline Alexis's chapter was the weakest part of the text. It was lacking in enough sources and felt redundant, which is odd given how strong her dissertation on the same subject reads. Regardless, her chapter supports the aforementioned role of remembering the caco resistance as part of Haitian historical memory, just like Bois Caiman, as important in Haitian self-identity and key to local ideas of democracy as rooted in the popular classes. Nesbitt's chapter, alas, was too pedantic for my taste and nothing new from his earlier writings, but useful for introducing new concepts and arguing for Haiti's place in history as part of universal liberation, not as the cause of Haiti's 'ruin' or persistent series of crises. Fischer's essay on Gilden's photography was likewise one of the weaker sections of the text, albeit certainly important for understanding how Haiti is framed by the outside world as exceptional, savage, mysterious, irrational, ultimately working against the possibility of supporting a sovereign Haiti.

For scholars and lay audiences, this is certainly a worthwhile read. The editor's useful introduction places everything into context and the essays, for the most part by Haitians or Haitian-Americans, offer different perspectives that reorient questions of development and what Haiti represents to those more meaningful to Haitians. Instead of blindly supporting NGOs, Western governments, and imperialist or racist readings of Haiti's history and present poverty, one must see Haiti as part of modernity (the incarnation of the radical Enlightenment, to paraphrase Nesbitt) that is a highly complex society in need of multiple solutions (some, seemingly so simple, like formal cadastres). Overall, the text seems consistent with leftist ideas on Haitian development, while some individual essays in the text are more aligned with neoliberal development.

Michel-Rolph Trouillot's Haiti, State Against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism

 “It must be said in all sincerity that in Haiti, the most productive, the most useful class is surely the peasantry. After all, is it not this class alone that pays taxes? Is it not they who bear all the nation’s costs?” 

Finally got around to completing Trouillot's well-written text. The man was a gifted writer unafraid to use the first person or throw in sarcastic and bitter words toward certain figures of Haitian history, such as Beaubrun Ardouin. Ever since I first read his excellent essay on the rise of free people of color planters due to the coffee boom in Saint Domingue a few years ago, and his Silencing the Past was also a thought-provoking read. After his untimely death, I felt reading his Haiti, State Against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism was a must. Furthermore, I heard a humorous story involving him and a former professor of mine traveling in Cuba. Not to speak ill of the dead, but Trouillot apparently recoiled in fear when the two were approached by a beggar in Cuba!

Returning to the text, Trouillot traces the development of Duvalierism before Duvalier to the colonial period and early independent black and mulatto-led governments of the 19th century. Indeed, as he pointed out through a careful examination of the writings of Beaubrun Ardouin, an important figure in Haitian liberalism, Ardouin was the first to articulate a form of despotism in which the Executive held complete control and civil servants were to comply at all times. Furthermore, Trouillot is adamant about the key roles of Petion and Boyer in establishing the pattern in which Haiti became the "Merchant's Republic" where foreign merchants dictated the course of the political system.

Of course, some of the blame for the militarized structure of governance could be attributed to Toussaint Louverture or Dessalines, but, according to Trouillot, Dessalines tried in vain to curb the power of foreign merchants (while urging for capitalist accumulation within the state sector, according to Trouillot) while Petion and Boyer actively courted them and ensured the republic would cater to their needs. This, unsurprisingly, helped fuel merchants cheating the Haitian government, threatening the nation with protective consulships (something Raybaud himself did during the Soulouque years), and worked against the peasantry, the only productive group in Haitian society through indirect taxation on their coffee and other export items at the customshouses (which was unfair for placing favorable duties on luxury goods for elites, hurt peasant producers who received less and less for their coffee and other products but had to pay more for agricultural and other imports from the United States and Europe and the peasantry had few options to resist it, given their exclusion from the towns and cities dominated by the import and export firms acting in collusion with the Haitian state. Indeed, foreign consignment merchants also became powerful in Haiti's coastal towns, including prominent families such as the Brouards, Sutherlands, Prices, and Milroys, who, like the rest of the international trading community in Haiti, "fed on the political, financial, and military instability of the state, and had an objective interest in the rate of political succession, since every regime offered them a new and greedier clique of customers” (72).

In a very similar manner as Dupuy, Plummer, and Dubois, Trouillot illustrates how the Haitian taxation system and death of the plantation economy (despite attempts to revive it, such as during the reigns of Louverture, Dessalines, and Christophe, which Trouillot claims only succeeded due to their black skins and honorable positions as military heroes, surely a position a frequent critic of this blog would disagree with) led to many mulatto elites switching to retail and government to profit of the peasantry and their marginalization in the various dictatorships and military coups that claimed power in Port-au-Prince. Foreign merchants benefited the most from this arrangement, providing loans to the Haitian government to keep it standing while using the threat of US or European invasions to ensure compliance with their demands, hence the violation of Haitian waters dozens of times in the second half of the 19th century.

In this context of European and US contempt for Haitians and the threats and intimidation that went hand in hand with the Haitian elite of all shades preying on the vast majority of the people, it's no surprise that productivity stagnated, the population increased, more and more people moved to the cities and Port-au-Prince especially, and the Haitian economy was trapped in a state of dependence and underdevelopment. Without any capital from taxes used by the state or elite to fund technological innovation (well, except for Geffrard, Salomon, and a few industrialists in Haiti and their foreign partners), combined with the corruption of Haitian politicians using government funds to purchase luxuries they believed were deserved, Haitian levels of coffee exports fell despite rising population and their close trade relationships with the US, Germany, France, and other European powers.

One example particularly pertinent is the estimated 150 million francs in gold Boyer and his cronies squandered from the leftovers of Henri Christophe's treasury. What happened to the money? Presumably, it went into the pockets of Boyer, Inginac, and their other closed circle of mulatto elites and the foreign merchants who supplied them with unnecessary luxurious imports. Or, to quote an example from the Soulouque regime, his appointed nobility numbered in the hundreds and drained the treasury far more than Henri Christophe's underpaid and significantly fewer nobility in the North. Soulouque also spent over 30,000 francs one year for a fine French coat one year, the same as his budget for education! Papa Doc's government had numerous examples from the 19th century for corruption, repression, and poor fiscal policy.

In order to demonstrate the weakness of the landowners in post-emancipation Haiti, Trouillot cites Beaubrun Ardouin himself, writing about his inability to control the movement of workers from his plantation or what they chose to produce and take for themselves! In addition, the black landowners of the North also took to politics and the military to enrich themselves, while the import-export bourgeoisie remained more mulatto-controlled, perhaps due to their closer phenotype to whites. Trouillot does not offer a definitive answer to that, but certainly diplomats discriminated against darker-hued Haitians, why not many white businessmen?

On the color question, Trouillot provides some insights lacking in other accounts of Haitian history and social relations. For instance, from what I can recall, Dubois and Dupuy do not delve deeper in the the demographic signifiance of the clair groups in Haiti today. How could such a small minority of the population from Saint Domingue, who lost signifiant numbers during the Haitian Revolution, still appear so numerous in 20th century Haiti? Of course, the fluctuating boundaries between 'black' and the 'mulâtre' have shifted multiple times, allowing certain people to become 'mulatto' when a century ago, they would have never passed. Indeed, regardless of color classifications or the fact that not just any noir could marry a clair, the question of color among black and mulatto elites in Haitian political history was never about democracy or sharing power with the black masses, something visible in the Duvalier years when the bourgeoisie and handy mulattoes benefited from supporting or accepting Papa Doc and Baby Doc. 

The 'color question' and conflicts associated with it in Haitian politics was also compounded by Trouillot's 'urban parasites,' a problematic term but, if I understand correctly, refers to the urban proletariat and servants of the state and other members of the Haitian population not engaged in productive labor but merely waiting and betting on political crises to enrich themselves of serve another dysfunctional state. This system consisting of the political marginalization of the peasantry and accumulation of the urban sector into the political realm was contradictory and made political strife inevitable, which thereby helped 'justify' US occupation for some. This crisis in the system was already almost at its nadir in the 1860s, when Geffrard could not control the countryside, revolts were spreading each year, coffee prices and cotton were down, and Geffrard had to rely on the British to stay in power.

Unfortunately, the pattern did not end, but only grew worse after US occupation centralized the system in Port-au-Prince and removed what Trouillot calls the 'feeble restraints' of the system. Soon, everything was leaving through Port-au-Prince, impoverished peasants and the growing black middle-class were moving to Port-au-Prince and other towns, and the military apparatus was more centralized, too. Papa Doc, from 1957-1964, merely had to neutralize opposition in the government institutions, already conveniently centralized through Port-au-Prince, and then declare himself President-for-Life. Duvalier was following in the more recent footsteps of the repression of Magloire, too, for both persecuted the political opposition and changed the face of Haitian political violence. Women were, for the first time, valid targets and anyone nearby or related to a target was fair game. This is much worse than the assassination of Dessalines, when at least Petion had the honor to promise her the protection of the Haitian state!

Anyway, the Duvalier dictatorships witnessed the rise of totalitarianism, a specific cult of personality centered on Papa Doc, the worsening share of peasant-producers in Haiti's exports, a kleptocracy with little restraints, pervasive and new forms of violence, and the reduction of the state to Papa Doc himself. His son, no better for Haiti, ruled in a period of increasing prices for food, excessive flaunting of his wealth and ties to wealthy elites, and popular discontent and the eventual uprisings. However, as Trouillot indicates in his book, dictatorships, the Haitian state acting against the nation, or the majority of its inhabitants, were and are not new phenomena.

Yet, Trouillot leaves many questions unanswered. How, for instance, can he say peasants were not aware of who to blame or direct for their worsening poverty in the late 19th and 20th centuries? Even in the 1840s, the Piquet peasant uprisings in the South directed their anger at the exploitative taxation system instituted by Petion and Boyer's governments. Would peasants in the second half of the same century not know who to blame, despite being included in caco uprisings in the North and various military leaders who took it upon themselves to lead a coup against Port-au-Prince? I am sure peasants would have realized they were still being cheated by the same indirect taxation of the Boyer years and the influx of peasants into the coastal towns and interior market towns would have exposed them to the intricacies of urban Haiti and economic/political power. Indeed, as Trouillot argues himself, Haiti was never a society of two separate castes, but rather complementary and unequal worlds where peasants and elites were inseparable sides of the same coin representing society.

Overall, a fascinating overview of Haitian society and a convincing case for the origins of Duvalierism in the 19th century economic and political structure. A frequent topic on this blog, the numerous ways in which Boyer and his cronies firmly institutionalized the patterns of systemic underdevelopment and undemocratic practices, partly inherited from the colonial era and a world hostile to black independence, are fully detailed by Trouillot. However, the question of peasant resistance and pushes for social change requires a secondary look to avoid problematic silence on the question of subaltern agency. Basically, what I would like to see is a thorough account of ex-slaves and their descendants in rural Haiti from the 19th century to the present which may shed some light on the inner thinking of peasant communities and moments in which their actions and reactions shaped the national government (and beyond some of the more obvious ways, such as peasant resistance to the Code Rural).

Well, let me know what you think? Thoughts on Duvalierism and the long first century of Haitian independence? Could capitalist accumulation in the state sector under Dessalines have succeeded in curbing the power of foreign merchants and allow for innovation and improvements in the Haitian economy?

Haiti in the World Economy: Class, Race and Underdevelopment Since 1700

I recently read this gem of an overview of Haitian history by Alex Dupuy. Perhaps the reason I enjoyed it so much is that its in agreement with my own preconceived notions of Haitian underdevelopment as a product of a plantation model or dependency theory in economic relations with the North. However, after reading the text, it is hard to take seriously the neoliberal remedies for Haitian development, or, for that matter, development in a broader Caribbean and African context. Dupuy's thesis is best stated by him on the fifth page of the text:

I argue that Haiti’s underdevelopment stems from its incorporation into the capitalist world-system since the end of the seventeenth century as a peripheral economy specializing in the production of primarily agricultural crops for export and late some manufactured goods. In addition, the emergence of specific class, racial/color, and political relations and structures during the colonial period and after independence reinforced the economy’s dependence on foreign capital and it’s extroverted and unintegrated characteristics.

Hard to disagree with that, eh? It explains the structural flaws of the Haitian economy (and likewise, much of Latin America and Africa) as a product of unequal exchange in a capitalist world-system on the peripheries. Similarly, class and racial factors entrenched unequal economic and power relationships with Europe and North America that have perpetuated Haitian poverty. Fortunately, Dupuy does not attribute most of Haitian economic and political turmoil to the color question, since he spends a considerable amount of time in each chapter on Haitian history detailing the common interests of black and mulatto elites against the peasantry. 

For instance, the transformation of the interests of black military leaders during the Haitian Revolution from the same as the ex-slaves to resembling more and more those of their affranchi elites illustrates the flaws of attributing Haitian social inequality solely to color (57). Of course, one should not assume this was always the case, since Toussaint's nephew, Moise, was believed to have had a role in organizing a revolt against his uncle that sought land reform in favor of the ex-slaves (65). Also, I am not certain how dependable Dupuy's estimate is, but the Haitian War of Independence cost Haiti 1, 144, 258, 948 francs, an astronomical figure (74)! 

There are some moments where I question Dupuy's assessment of Haitian leaders, though. For example, he claims that the main goal of Dessalines was to establish the black elite as the uncontested leaders of Haiti (81). I don't buy that. Dessalines was willing to marry his daughter to one of the mulatto leaders of Haiti and, assuming we take Charles Mackenzie as a credible source, Dessalines was very trusting of Alexandre Pétion. This alleged pro-nouveaux libres policy of Dessalines was continued under Christophe, even though we know anciens libres were represented in his court and enjoyed positions of prestige and influence (86). Apparently workers fled Christophe's state for the republic to pursue their own subsistence and small landholding production, which suggests the sharecropping and peasant autonomy were stronger than in the north, which is not too surprising given Christophe's maintenance of large estates (88). I just wish Dupuy had some additional sources or figures for the numbers of people who fled Christophe's state for  Pétion's.

Anyway, moving back to the broader structural and economic underpinnings of the Haitian state, race and the particular path taken to Haitian independence hindered development due to diplomatic isolation. As Dupuy rightfully so argues, lack of full diplomatic relations prevented the Haitian bourgeoisie from engaging in complete financial and commercial transactions, limiting the amount of technology, access to markets, and sources of credit from the metropoles (93). Thus, the quest by Boyer to procure French recognition of Haitian independence, and thereby assuring other European powers would follow suit, was closely tied to attempts to restore export-oriented, latifundia-styled agricultural production (92). Now, we know things did not quite turn out well for him, with Boyer's Code Rural being a disaster and his several attempts to prevent the the proliferation of small farms and the sale of national lands, Boyer in 1821, 1832, 1837, 1835, and 1838 by suspending sales (94). 

This aforementioned struggle between peasants and small landholders to control their own productivity and have some degree of autonomy did not stop the merchant bourgeoisie from adopting a predatory position as speculators and merchants who underpaid producers of coffee, cacao and other exports while overcharging them for imported goods (103). Since Haitian rural communities were usually not entirely self-sufficient, they had to work through the merchant bourgeoisie which controlled access to foreign goods and the exchange of items in the port towns, creating a dependency that over time impoverished the peasantry (102). Although the divisions within the peasantry left room for class mobility, over time the conjunction of the merchant bourgeoisie setting prices for Haitian exports and cheating peasant producers, as well as the state's excessive taxation, resulted in greater poverty over the course of the 19th century (103). Added to the fluctuating prices for raw exports such as coffee, Haiti's economy could weaken tremendously if global prices fell, as was the case during the Great Depression (144). 

Haitian piquets, or rebel peasants, such as the movement led by Acaau in the 1840s, tried to resist some of these entrenched patterns in Haitian society by asking for higher prices on their products, but ultimately failed or were incorporated within the state (97). Perhaps the fact that it was the wealthier peasants, usually of the peasant elite and 'middle class,' played a role in weakening the path for radical change in rural Haiti, since the landless or rural proletariat that survived on selling its labor, as well as the poorer tenant farmers, did not arrive at leadership positions within these uprisings (110-111). This lack of a single goal or shared interest among peasantry likely contributed to the lack of a centralized or united revolutionary movement during the various uprisings of cacos and piquets.

Regardless, Dupuy is correct in challenging Lundahl's pro-capitalist stance on Haitian poverty, which suggests that the root causes of poverty are not to be found in the market system when the market and state interact in a vicious way that perpetuates poverty, hunger, and unequal social relations (105). To quote Dupuy, "Lundahl rightly stresses the political marginalization of the peasantry and their exploitation by the state but overlooks how ‘the market’ itself is a product of class relations and the conditions of existence that structured the population into dominant and subordinate groups, expressed through market exchanges" (106). Basically, the market and the state are not separable factors, and the critical role of foreign capital and the merchant bourgeoisie in dictating the rules of the state, comprising the state, and furthering dependency reveal the insidious bias of Lundahl and other European and North American economists who wish to attribute the underdevelopment of the Global South to internal causes not pertinent to capitalism. For this reason alone, Dupuy's text is of immense import for challenging dominant narratives of poverty in the so-called "Third World." 

Dupuy also dismantles the myth of overpopulation as a cause of Haitian underdevelopment when high birthrates are actually a product of that poverty. In cases of hunger, too, high population density does not explain hunger in societies with high income inequality (110). So instead of attributing Haitian underdevelopment to the high birthrates or looking at population density per cultivated acre, one should aim to diminish or eliminate the underlying causes, which, in the case of Haiti, would be income inequality, the market system, etc. Such a view aligns well with my critiques of the plethora of annoying North Americans and Europeans who believe that if only (insert poor country or poor continent) had fewer children, then everything would be okay or they could 'develop.'

Like the peasantry, even the merchant bourgeoisie and speculators were not impervious to foreign penetration and dependency. Described by countless scholars, such as Plummer, who analyzes the rise of "Syrians" as well as Europeans (particularly Germans) in controlling internal trade in Haiti and replacing the merchant bourgeoisie by the end of the 19th century (116). Clearly, by the end of the first century of Haitian independence, dependency, debt, foreign meddling, internal divisions, and a vested state interest in what some describe as a plantation model of economic growth, Haiti was firmly on the path of underdevelopment and ripe for US occupation. Though there were attempts to foster industry, education, modern technological innovations and transportation, it did not alter the pattern of Haitian turmoil, poverty, and dependency.

On the question of 20th century (and with some relevance to 21st century Haitian development plans), Dupuy, in my opinion, correctly reveals the inadequacy of light-manufacturing in urban Haiti as a possible solution to unemployment. These initiatives fueled rural to urban migration, thereby worsening overcrowding and the urban infrastructure of Port-au-Prince while only employing a marginal percentage of the workforce (178). Similarly, it reinforced Haitian dependency on foreign capital to establish the factories (175). Indeed, for every dollar of profit earned in Haiti from the manufacturing industries, 85 cents went to the US and a yearly average of 50 million USD of private capital was transferred to the US between 1977 and 1984, which illustrates the insanity of putting faith in what are really sweatshops as a pathway to Haitian development (179). The industrial park project, Caracol, for instance, has proven itself to be a disappointment and waste of time and money in a region of Haiti barely affected by the recent earthquake.

The following articles from Al-Jazeera and The New York Times are worthwhile reads for illuminating the lack of change in the US approach to Haitian underdevelopment. Essentially the same as the sweatshop industries supported in the 1970s and 1980s, which, as one can see from above, failed spectacularly. If the plan for 'reconstruction' is to expand textile factories due to low wages and the lack of unions, then Haiti could resemble the Dominican Republic in some ways, where egregious violations of workers' rights and low wages is the pattern at industrial parks there. Indeed, one can already see the development strategies favored by Martelly's government as a replica of some of the Dominican Republic's, such as tourism.

Agricultural policies of the US have also devastated the Haitian economy through cheap rice imports that weaken Haitian producers who cannot compete, the elimination of black pigs in the 1980s over an alleged swine flu outbreak that destroyed pig production, and other cheap food imports which has led to Haiti importing twice of what it exports (181, 183) In other words, a very poor country is getting worse and worse while other parts of Latin America are booming or at remaining static. 

The remainder of the text looks at Duvalier regimes, 20th century Haitian politics and the question or class and color, and contains some insignful commentary on 'black nationalism' and the dynamics of race and class that could easily pertain to the rest of the Caribbean or the US. At one point Dupuy seemingly becomes a class reductionist who sees race as a product of class dynamics, which seemingly contradicts his earlier position on race and class as mutually influencing each other (155). I find it odd that Dupuy never tackles the broader question of a less naive and fully informed by class form of black nationalism. Perhaps something along the lines of black nationalist strands of leftist economics and social movements in Trinidad or even among some segments of the US Black Power Movement. But I digress, this book is essential for mainstream readers. It can dispel so many of the myths we receive in the media, the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, and the US government on root causes of poverty. Keep in mind that Dupuy never obfuscates the role of Haitians themselves in perpetuating these problems, but the critical role of the European powers and the US certainly have not made any improvements.