The Haitian Curse: A Legacy of Occupation (Part 4)

We trace how the 1915 U.S. occupation seized Haiti’s gold, reworked its laws, and built security forces that later empowered dictatorship, then follow the same logic into the earthquake era and the politics of foreign aid. The story connects sovereignty, profit, and the long afterlife of imposed institutions.

Chapters

• 0:00 Marines Land And Seize Power
• 2:45 Why Washington Intervenes
• 4:26 Chaos, Germany, And The Opening
• 6:02 Occupation On The Ground
• 8:23 Forced Labor And Resistance
• 10:38 Charlemagne Peralte’s Rebellion
• 12:31 Aerial War And Propaganda
• 14:15 Laws Rewritten For Foreign Land
• 16:05 Plantations Replace Food And Futures
• 18:05 Building The Haitian National Guard
• 20:05 Duvalier Rises On Imported Structures
• 22:19 Terror As Governance
• 24:35 Earthquake, Aid, And New Dependence
• 26:10 Best Practices Versus Local Knowledge
• 27:45 The Pattern Of Punishment

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

US Marines by Tom Beach. Just walk a point. Asian government is a kid. The president was decided by a mob yesterday. Marines are right. Haiti. July 28, 1915. Within that, Marines occupy the National Bank of Haiti and removed$500,000 in gold reserves. Haiti's entire national treasure. They transfer it to the National City Bank of New York for safekeeping. The gold will never return. By evening, Marines control all government buildings, all ports, all major roads. The Haitian flag still flies over the presidential palace, but American officers are already installing themselves in administrative offices prepared to run the country. According to Washington, after 111 years of independence, Haitians need help governing themselves properly. At least that's what Washington tells itself. Colonel Lyttleton Waller, who commands the occupation force, addresses his officers that first evening.

SPEAKER_00: 1:38

Gentlemen, we are here to civilize these people, to teach them proper governance, fiscal responsibility, and respect for American investment. This will be a long mission. Poverty, instability, defaulted deaths, to rebuild Haiti the right way. The American way.

SPEAKER_01: 2:05

The American way. Securing the Caribbean against potential German influence. Ensuring that Haiti never again threatens American investment with political instability or national policies. The occupation will last nineteen years. When the Marines finally leave in 1934, they will have restructured Haiti's economy to serve American corporations, destroyed local banking institutions, created the authoritarian military structures that enable future dictatorships and embedded a psychology of external control that persists to this day. But now, 111 years after declaring freedom from France, Haiti's about to learn that sovereignty is meaningless when more powerful nations decide you're incapable of exercising it properly. This is the final episode of the Haitian Curse, a legacy of occupation. You know how they say you can't understand someone until you walk a mile in their shoes? Well, I'd argue you can't understand a nation until you've walked through its history. Not just to highlight Rio or the sanitized version you find in textbooks. I mean really getting into its DNA. Those defining moments that shaped everything that came after. Those moments where paths were chosen, where decisions were made in palaces and backrooms and city streets that changed the course of millions of lives. I'm your host, Paul, and this is Double Helix, Blueprint of Nations, where we unravel the genetic code of countries through their most transformative moments. Think of it like ancestry testing, but for entire nations. We dig deep into the historical DNA, finding those crucial moments that made countries who they are today. To understand why the United States invaded Haiti in 1915, you need to understand what had been happening in the decades before. The invasion was the culmination of increasing American economic penetration and political pressure in a country struggling with chronic instability. By the early 1900s, American corporations had significant investment in Haiti, including plantations, railroads, and utilities. National Citibank of New York, which later became Citibank, controlled Haiti's national bank and manages foreign debt. American companies owned prime agricultural land, employed thousands of Haitians, and expected their investments to be protected by the United States government. But Haiti's politics remained chaotic. Between 1911 and 1915, seven different presidents held power, most overthrown by coups or assassinations. Germany was also invested in Haiti. German merchants controlled significant trade. German influence in Haiti could mean German naval bases in the Caribbean. And this was unacceptable. The Monroe Doctrine had declared the Western Hemisphere off-limits to European powers. And now, with World War One raging in Europe, the United States couldn't risk German presence in the Caribbean. So when Haitian president Gilbrun Guillaume-san was literally torn apart by a mob in July of 1915, killed in revenge for ordering the execution of 167 political prisoners, the United States saw its opportunity to restore order, to protect American lives and property, and prevent German influence.

SPEAKER_00: 6:27

The Marines landed and they did not leave for 19 years.

SPEAKER_01: 6:34

Let me take you inside Haiti during the first year of occupation to understand what restoring order actually meant. She's 43 years old, has raised six children, has survived Haiti's political chaos through generations of instability. The Americans are different from the chaos that she's known. The old governments came and went, she tells a neighbor. We kept our heads down, whatever taxes we had to, and life continued. These Americans, they're reorganizing everything. They're taking control of customs. Well, the import taxes now go to American-controlled banks. They're surveying land, asking about ownership documents, building roads and making men work on them for free. The Marines revive a system called the Corvée labor system. Forced work on public projects that Haiti had abolished decades earlier. Men are pressed into road-building gangs, forced to work without pay, often beaten if they resist. The system functions as unpaid forced labor under military discipline. He's been gone ten days and no pay. If he tries to leave, they'll arrest him. The Marines justify this by pointing to Haiti's poor infrastructure. Roads, bridges, sanitation systems all need development. But building infrastructure with forced labor while American corporations profit from improved transportation turns development into exploitation. American occupation faces armor systems in the mountains of Haiti. The Kakos, named after a local bird, are farmers mostly, armed with whatever weapons they can find, led by men who remember that Haiti won its independence through guerrilla warfare against European powers. The most significant leader is Charlemagne Peralté, a former Haitian military officer who had been forced to work in a corvée labor gang. When he escaped, he formed a resistance movement, and thousands joined them. By 1919, Peralté commands perhaps 5,000 fighters. They attack Marine positions, ambush patrols, rave towns controlled by Americans. While they lack the strength to drive out the occupation, they make it expensive, dangerous, and embarrassing. The United States' response is overwhelming force. The Marines deployed aircraft. Some of the first uses of aerial bombardment after insurgents to warfare. They guard villages suspected of supporting tactics. They institute collective punishment. If a town helps a resistance, the entire town suffers. We take you to the moment when the resistance effectively ended. In a clear and near Grande Rivière du Nord in October 31st of 1919, Marine Sergeant Herman Hanakin had spent weeks infiltrating Taco Networks. He speaks Creole. The raid was quick, brutal, and efficient. Anakin's team attacks the camp at night. In the chaos, Anakin shoots Peralta through the heart. To prove he's dead and to terrorize the resistance, the Marines crucified Peralta's body on a door and photograph it. They distribute the photo widely as propaganda. This is what happens to those who resist America's authority. The image backfires spectacularly. Instead of terrorizing Haitians into submission, it makes Peralta a martyr. The photo of his crucified body becomes a symbol of American brutality, of Haiti's continued resistance to foreign occupation. It is used by opponents of the occupation, both in Haiti and in the United States, as evidence of American imperialism's true nature. But tactically, it works. With Peralta dead, the Kaco resistance fragments. Some fighters continue guerrilla operations, but without coordinated leadership, they're hunted down systematically. By 1920, organized armed resistance has effectively ended. The Marines have won, but at a cost of approximately two to three thousand Haitian deaths during the insurgency, destroyed villages, and a population that views America as conquerors rather than liberators. With armed resistance crushed, the occupation turns to his real purpose restructuring Haiti's economy to serve American corporate interests. The Marines go beyond providing security. They rewrite Haiti's laws. One law in particular reveals everything about the occupation's actual goals. Before 1950, Haiti's constitution prohibited foreign ownership of land. This was intentional. A protection dating back to independence to ensure that Haiti couldn't be bought by foreigners the way other Caribbean islands had been. Land had to be owned by Haitians. The Marines forced a constitutional change allowing foreigners to own Haitian land, and immediately American corporations begin buying up prime agricultural territory. United Fruit Company acquires thousands of acres of banana plantations. American sugar companies establish operations. These massive industrial agricultural operations displace Haitian small farmers who've been working this land for generations. Let me take you to one of these land acquisitions to understand what this meant on the ground. For a century, it's been divided into small plots farmed by Haitian families who grow food crops, rice, beans, vegetables, for local consumption and markets. Now, the Haitian American Sugar Company, or Hasco, is buying up land. They're offering prices that look attractive to peasant farmers who've never seen that much cash. What farmers discover too late is that once this land becomes a sugar plantation, food crops disappear. The valley that once fed Haiti will export sugar to America instead. Jean-Louis Baptiste owns 15 acres. His great-grandfather received when Boyer distributed plantation land in the 1820s. He grows corn, beans, plantains. His family eats from this land, sells the surplus at the market. The land provides security, if nothing else. American agents arrive with an offer. 200 goutes for this land. His neighbor warns him. Haskell brings machines and American supervisors. They're hiring a few local workers. Take their money, and in a year, you'll have nothing. But others are selling. And once enough adjacent plots are sold, holding out becomes impossible. You're a small farmer surrounded by industrial plantations. You can't access water anymore. Corporation controls it. You can't get to market. The roads are private now. Eventually, resistance becomes futile. By 1925, Hasco controls much of the Artibonite Valley. Haiti's most productive agricultural land now grows cash crops for exports while Haiti imports food. The occupation has restructured the economy exactly as intended. Haiti as agricultural supplier for American corporations, not as an independent nation feeding its own people. But the Marines' most lasting legacy is military rather than economic. To maintain order after they leave, the Marines create the God de Haiti, the Haitian National Guard. The Guard serves as an internal security force designed to maintain the political and economic order the Marines have established. Trained by Americans, led initially by American officers, the Guard is built to suppress dissent rather than to defend sovereignty against external threats. The Guard is recruited heavily from rural areas, from men with limited education, from those willing to enforce American-approved governance in exchange for steady pay and power. The Marines trained them in counter-insurgency, crowd control, and maintaining authoritarian control. When the Marines finally leave in 1934, withdrawn due to changing American priorities and criticism of imperialism during the Great Depression, they leave the Guard as their proxy. And the Guard does exactly what it was designed to do. Maintain the economic and political structures the occupation had established. Within a decade, the Guard will produce Haiti's next generation of authoritarian leaders. Men trained by Americans to suppress Haitian resistance will use those skills to establish dictatorships. In 1957, Francois Dubalier, Papa Doc, becomes president of Haiti. He's a rule doctor, a black nationalist who speaks about recovering authentic Haitian culture and resisting foreign domination. He promises to undo the damage of American occupation, to restore Haitian dignity. Instead, he creates one of the most brutal dictatorships in the Western Hemisphere's history. Dubalier understands something about post-occupation hate. The National Guard, trained by Americans to maintain order through force, can be transformed into an instrument of personal power. He purges officers he doesn't trust, promotes loyalists, and creates a parallel force. The Tonton Macutes. The Tonton Makoutes, named after a folklore figure who kidnaps children, are Duvalier's personal militia. They dress distinctively in denim and sunglasses, carry machetes and guns, and operate with complete impunity. Their job is simple. Terrorize anyone who might oppose Duvalier. Make opposition so dangerous that even thinking about resistance becomes impossible. Let me take you inside Haiti under Duvalier to understand what this meant. It is 1963 in Haiti's capital city of Port-au-Prince. It is 2 a.m. when the Tonton Macudes come for Professor Marcel Dumont. He's a history teacher at Port au Prince's lycée, 48 years old, with a wife and three children. His crying? In class last week, he taught about Toussaint Lobertour's resistance to foreign control. A student or perhaps a colleague reported that he'd drawn parallels to contemporary Haiti. No warrant, no charges, and no trial. His wife's screams bring neighbors to their windows, but no one intervenes. Everyone knows intervention means disappearing, too. Dumont is taken to Fort Dimanche, a prison that becomes synonymous with torture and death. Survivors document what happens there. Systematic torture, starvation, brutal interrogation designed to break people psychologically rather than to extract information. Many prisoners die of Fort Dimanche. Those released are broken completely, incapable of resistance, permanently traumatized, leaving reminders of what happens to those who challenge Duvalier's power. Dumont's family will never see him again. No body, no death certificate, just absence. This is how Duvalier maintains control, to terror so pervasive that even thinking opposition becomes dangerous. By the time Papa Doc dies in 1971, he has killed an estimated 30 to 60,000 Haitians. His son, Jean-Claude Baby Doc Duvalier, inherits power at the age of 19 and continues a dictatorship for another 15 years, finally fleeing to France in 1986 when popular uprisings maked his rule untenable. The Duvalier dynasty, after 29 years of brutal dictatorship, is built on institutional foundations that the American occupation created. The National Guard becomes Duvalier's military power. The authoritarian structures enabled one-man rule. The economic systems concentrated wealth in elite hands while impoverishing the masses of Haiti. The occupation's legacy extends beyond the 19 years the Marines controlled Haiti, reaching into the decades of dictatorship that followed. Enabled by structures, Americans built. On January 12th, 2010, at 4.53 p.m., an earthquake hits with devastating force the city of Port au Prince. The earthquake, 7.0 magnitude in the Richter scale, destroys most of Port au Prince. The Presidential Palace collapses, hospitals crumble, schools crush children. In 35 seconds, an estimated 250,000 to 316,000 people die, and millions are left homeless. The international response is massive. Aid pours in from around the world, billions of dollars, thousands of NGOs, military forces from dozens of nations. Haiti becomes the focus of global humanitarian concern. But here's where Haiti's historical curse reveals itself again. Even help comes with strings attached. International organizations take over for governance functions that Haiti's weak state can't perform. Foreign NGOs provide services that should be governmental responsibility. Billions in aid flow through international organizations rather than Haitian institutions, strengthening external control while further weakening local capacity. A cholera epidemic breaks out, later proven to be introduced by UN peacekeepers, killing thousands more. The Haitian government has no authority to hold peacekeepers accountable. Foreign powers make decisions about Haiti's reconstruction without meaningful Haitian input. This is the pattern established during the occupation, repeated after the earthquake. When crisis strikes, external powers intervene to help. That help comes with loss of sovereignty, with decisions made by foreigners about Haiti's future, with structures that keep Haiti perpetually dependent on external aid. Marie Duchamp is one of the few Haitians in a room full of international aid workers discussing Haiti's reconstruction. We are in Port au Prince in 2012 at an NGO coordination meeting. She's a structural engineer who studied in Haiti and France, understanding both earthquake-resistant design and local construction practices. She's trying to explain why the foreigners' plan will fail. We have different building codes, different materials, different maintenance capacity. The signing for an imaginary Haiti that does not exist. The American project manager responds with barely concealed condescension. We appreciate your input, but we have international best practices. We know it works. Haiti needs to modernize his approach to reconstruction. The subtext is clear. Despite this being Haiti's recovery, foreigners following international best practices make the decisions while ignoring local knowledge. Meanwhile, Haitians remain recipient of aid rather than authors of their own development. In 2024, 120 years after independence, Ada remained one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere. The richest colony in the world has become synonymous with poverty, instability, and foreign intervention. This four-part series has traced how that happened through systematic international punishment for succeeding at something the world said was impossible. The brutality that made revolution inevitable, the military victory that proved colonialism's lies, the debt that extracted wealth from over a century, and the occupation that restructure Haiti to serve foreign interests while creating authoritarian structures that enabled decades of dictatorship. Here's what makes Haiti's story so devastating. Being first meant being made an example. Haiti had to be impoverished, had to be occupied, had to remain dependent, because Haiti's success would have inspired colonized people everywhere to attempt the same revolution. It would have proven that black self-governance worked, would have undermined every racial hierarchy that justifies slavery and colonialism. So, Haiti was punished, and remains punished still, through debt, through occupation, through intervention disguised as help. The patterns established by Marines 90 years ago repeat every time crisis strikes and foreign powers arrive to save Haiti while ensuring Haiti never achieves true sovereignty. This is the price of being the first black republic. The curse of proving liberation possible. Understanding this, understanding how revolutionary success can be weaponized into perpetual punishment, is essential to understanding Haiti today. Next time, Double Helix, we're beginning a three-part series on one of history's most extraordinary figures. Joan of Arc, a 17-year-old illiterate passing girl who claimed to hear voices from God, convinced a desperate king to give her an army, broke the English siege at Orleans, and transformed French defeat into sacred national purpose. You'll hear the story of how religious vision became political program, how a teenager created the first truly national movement in European history, how her execution as a heretic became the template for French resistance across centuries. Until then, thank you for listening. And we will see you soon.