It continues to this day: Half of the twelve textbooks do not even mention Wilsons takeover of Haiti. After U.S. marines invaded the country in 1915, they forced the Haitian legislature to select our preferred candidate as president. When Haiti refused to declare war on Germany after the United States did, we dissolved the Haitian legislature. Then the United States supervised a pseudo-referendum to approve a new Haitian constitution, less democratic than the constitution it replaced; the referendum passed by a hilarious 98,225 to 768. As Piero Gleijesus has noted, It is not that Wilson failed in his earnest efforts to bring democracy to these little countries. He never tried. He intervened to impose hegemony, not democracy.15 The United States also attacked Haitis proud tradition of individual ownership of small tracts of land, which dated hack to the Haitian Revolution, in favor of the establishment of large plantations, forced peasants in shackles to work on road construction crews. In 1919 Haitian citizens rose up and resisted U.S. occupation troops in a guerrilla war that cost more than 3,000 lives, most of them Haitian. Students who read Triumph of tbe American Nation learn this about Wilsons intervention in Haiti: Neither the treaty nor the continued presence of American troops restored order completely. During the nest four or five years, nearly 2,000 Haitians were killed in riots and other outbreaks of violence. This passive construction veils the circumstances about which George Barnett, a U.S. marine general, complained to his commander in Haiti: Practically indiscriminate killing of natives has gone on for some time. Barnett termed this violent episode the most startling thing of its kind that has ever taken place in the Marine Corps.16
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 20:19:55 +0000
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