Christopher Columbus made his first landing in 1492 on an island in The Bahamas, but the first part of America to be settled by the Spaniards was Hispaniola. At time there were more than a million native inhabitants on the island. Within 50 years most had died from overwork in the gold mines, lack of food, abuse, and epidemics of such European diseases as measles and smallpox. There is no significant indigenous population in present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The gold that could be obtained using 16th-century placer-mining techniques was exhausted by 1530, and Spain lost interest in Hispaniola with the discoveries of Mexico and Peru. The Spaniards who remained on the island turned to cultivating sugarcane, using slaves brought from Africa.
In 1697 Spain ceded the western third of Hispaniola to France. By the end of the 18th century, the new French possession, known as St-Domingue, was one of the worldšs richest colonies, producing vast quantities of sugar and cotton. Of its 524,000 inhabitants, 88 percent were African slaves. France eventually gained control of the whole island in 1795.
After many futile revolts, the black population united in 1789 under Toussaint-Louverture, a freed slave. Captured by trickery, Toussaint died in a French prison, but his successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, ŗThe Tiger,˛ drove out the French in 1803. In 1804 Dessalines proclaimed the colonyšs independence and massacred almost all the remaining white inhabitants. The plantations, sugar mills, irrigation works, and roads fell into ruins.
In 1806, Dessalines was assassinated and was succeeded by his general chief, Henry Christophe. Declaring himself emperor, Chrisophe attempted to reconstruct the ravaged country. His ornate palace of Sns Souci near Cap-Haitien and his vast citadel, though now in ruins, are marvels of massive masonry. After Christophesšs suicide, a succession of military despots seized power.
By 1915, revolutions and banditry had reduced Haiti to misery. Under the Monroe Doctrine, U.S. President Wilson sent the Marines to intervene. They remained until 1934. In 1957 Francois Duvalier was elected president. Soon after he declared himself president for life, enforcing a reign of terror with his secret police, the Tontons Macoutes, until his death in April 1971. During his dictatorship, Haitišs already weak economy deteriorated even more. Extreme poverty caused much civil unrest.
In 1971 the Haitians ŗvoted˛ to approve Duvalieršs 19-year-old son, Jean-Claude, as his successor. The Tontons Macoutes continued to terrorize the population, and corruption was rampant among public officials. Annual per capita income was less than 350 dollars. In July 1985 Duvalier held a fraudulent election that showed him with 99 percent of the popular vote. Anti-Duvalier riots broke out in several towns, and he and his family fled Haiti in February 1986.
For the next four years Haiti was ruled by its generals, except for the six month presidency of Leslie Manigat in 1988. He was deposed by General Henri Namphy in June 1988. Namphy was ousted in September by General Prosper Avril, who held power until forced to resign in March 1990 because of antigovernment protests. Supreme Court Justice Ertha Pascal-Trouillot was appointed acting president, becoming the first woman to lead Haiti.
In December 1990 Jean Bertrand Aristide became Haitišs first democratically elected president. He was a defrocked Roman Catholic priest of the Salesian order who had become an ardent Marxist. Following the election, a coup attempt was mounted on Jan. 7, 1991, by the Duvalierist Roger Lafontant. Thousands of Haitians demonstrated in favor of Aristide, paralyzing the capital, and the coup collapsed. President Ertha Pascal-Trouillot was reinstated for the rest of her term in office. Lafontant was arrested, tried in July, and sentenced to life imprisonment. President Aristide took office on February 7 and set about sweeping away the old order. More than 150 former officials, including Pascal-Touillot, were forbidden to leave the country pending investigation into their conduct, and dozens of suspected Duvalierists were rounded up. A human rights activist, Rene Preval, was appointed prime minister.
The Haitian people were hungry for reform, and their impatience sparked acts of violence throughout the year. In August the Assembly, which had been debating a vote of no confidence in the prime minister, was forced to adjourn when pro-government crowds threatened to kill the members. At the end of September, rebel troops seized the president and persuaded the armed forces chief of staff, General Raoul Cedras, to take over the government. Diplomats from France, the United States, and Venezuela negotiated the release and expulsion of Aristide, who appealed to the Organization of American States for help. Violence between the presidentšs supporters and factions of the Army led to many deaths; Lafontant was murdered in prison and, in a separate incident, Sylvio Claude, the leader of the Christian Democrats, was burned to death with a tire ŗnecklace.˛ Ignoring the efforts of OAS negotiators to restore Aristide, the Army stormed the Assembly and forced it to depose him and install a supreme court judge, Joseph Nerette, as interim president. The OAS called for an economic blockade of Haiti, and the United States announced a strict trade ban. OAS-mediated talks looking toward Aristidešs reinstatement continued through the rest of the year. Meanwhile, with the economy ground to a halt and human rights violations at there worst, many Haitians attempted to flee the country in small boats.
Tens of thousands of people appealed to the United States for political asylum, and people flooded into Florida by boat. Amnesty International accused the United States of flouting international law because it repatriated Haitian refugees without examining their cases to determine whether they were at risk of human rights abuses in their own country. The United States held that they were economic refugees and therefore not entitled to asylum.
In 1993 President Clinton announced a billion-dollar international aid package for Haiti if democracy was restored. He also threatened fiercer economic sanctions if no progress toward Aristidešs reinstatement was made. The UN stepped up efforts to resolve the crisis. By June 1993 international pressure had still failed to make the unelected government relinquish power. On June 23 the UN Security Council imposed a worldwide ban on oil and arms shipments to Haiti. This proved to be the catalyst for talks, which began on June 27 on Governors Island, N. Y. Accords were signed between the army and Aristide on July 3.
A plan for Aristidešs October 30, 1993, return included the suspension of the oil embargo once an Aristide-nominated prime minister had been installed. Publisher Robert Malval was appointed. General Cedras was to leave office on October 15, and Port-au-Prince police chief Lieutenant Colonel Michel Francois would be replaced.
Violence remained unchecked. In September, Antoine Izmery, a businessman was dragged from church and shot by attachešs, plainclothes affiliates of Francoisšs police force. Opponents of Aristide threatened Malvalšs choice of Cabinet members as well as UN personnel in Haiti. A dockside protest in October forced a United States ship with UN soldiers onboard to retreat from Haitian waters. Since neither Cedras nor Francois surrendered office as agreed, the UN reimposed the oil and arms embargo. Malval announced that he would resign on December 15, but he agreed to stay on as acting prime minister. On May 11, 1994, the military rulers of Haiti selected 80 year-old Emil Jonassaint as provisional president of Haiti. The new president had been a justice of Haitišs Supreme Court. Installing a new president was widely regarded as a hostile move towards the United States.
The policy of the United States remained firm in one respect- the determination to be rid of Haitišs military leaders one way of another. How to achieve this remained uncertain. President Clinton had adopted the policy of his predecessor, George Bush, on sending Haitian refugees back to their homeland. Congressional Democrats, led by the Congressional Black Caucus, wanted an American invasion of Haiti and a much more open policy on accepting refugees. In April and May 1994, the executive director of the TransAfrica Forum, Randall Robinson, staged a hunger strike in an effort to force Clinton to reverse his Haitian refugee policy. Clinton did so early in May, and masses of Haitians started leaving their island in homemade boats to join the more than 50,000 who had already left since the military coup of 1991.
So great was the potential flood of refugees that the president revised his decision. He ordered that Haitians picked up at sea by the Coast Guard be taken to various sites for processing and to determine whether they merited the status of political asylum. Florida had also exerted pressure on the Administration to keep the number of refugees down because the state had to pay for the support of incoming aliens.
Tensions between the United States and Haiti remained high through June and July. On June 12, the Haitian military leaders declared a state of emergency, suggesting an imminent invasion by American armed forces. On June 24, direct flights from Haiti to the United States ceased by the order of the Clinton Administration. The American envoy in Haiti recommended that all citizens of the United States living on the island leave. Of the 8,000 Americans in Haiti, only 2,700 took his advice. By the 28th of the month, the flood of refugees from the island had reached unprecedented proportions, with the Coast Guard picking up as many as 1,000 a day.
The trade embargo against Haiti was tightened, and it had all but destroyed the economy of the country. Unemployment was more than 90 percent, and there were shortages of many goods. Although the blockade had loopholes, its effects were gradually being felt by most of the population. The embargo, not the generals, was the main reason why so many Haitians were trying to escape their country. Rumors of invasion were floated by the Clinton Administration. On July 10, the Department of Defense dispatched four amphibious landing craft, carrying 2,000 United States Marines, to lie off Haitišs coast. Their purported mission was to evacuate Americans if hostilities broke out. Six days later, the Haitian government ordered 100 human rights observers to leave the country immediately. These observers had been sent to Haiti by the United Nations and the OAS.
The Clinton Administration, the State Department, and the Defense Department were all divided within themselves over how to deal with Haiti. Many recalled the 19-year occupation of the country by the United States Marines from 1915 to 1934, after which came the dictatorship of Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier. Others in the government, less concerned with the past, were wary of President Aristide. Although elected democratically, he had proved himself no democrat when in office. He was also an avowed Marxist. Aristide was eventually re-instated as President in time to serve out the final year of his term. The country then elected former Prime Minister Rene Preval as President of Haiti. Preval received much popular support from the Haitian people with Aristidešs support, and is often seen as an extension of his predecessor.