‘The triumph of the wolf’
An angry mob dragged Haiti’s president from the French consulate and killed him in July 1915, part of the political turmoil Wall Street feared — and exacerbated, some historians say, by withholding money from the shaky Haitian government and the gold. to confiscate.
US troops occupy the country the same day.
The invasion followed a detailed plan drawn up by the US Navy the previous year. US soldiers took over the presidential office and customs offices that handled import and export taxes.
The Americans installed a puppet government, and by that fall Haiti had signed a treaty that gave the United States complete financial control. The United States appointed American officials, whom they called advisers, but the term barely reflected their true power: They oversaw Haiti’s collection and either approved or denied spending.
Martial law became the rule of the country. Private newspapers were muzzled and journalists imprisoned.
The Americans explained the invasion by saying that Haiti would inevitably fall into the hands of the Europeans, especially Germany.
“If the United States hadn’t taken responsibility, another power would,” Secretary of State Lansing, who had replaced Bryan a month before the occupation, said later.
Lansing was also blinded by racial prejudice. He once wrote that black people were “ungovernable” and had “an inherent tendency to revert to cruelty and cast aside the shackles of civilization that hinder their physical nature.”
Racism shaped many aspects of the occupation. Many executives appointed by the United States came from Southern states and didn’t flinch at the worldview they brought with them.
John A. McIlhenny, an heir to Louisiana’s Tabasco sauce fortune who had fought in Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders cavalry during the Spanish–American War, was appointed an American financial adviser in 1919, with broad authority over Haiti’s budget.
At an official luncheon for his nomination, McIlhenny couldn’t stop staring at a minister of the Haitian government because, as he later told Franklin D. Roosevelt, “that man would have brought $1,500 at an auction in New Orleans in 1860 for decking purposes.” .”
Shortly after the occupation, American overseers began building roads to connect Haiti’s mountainous interior to the coast. To do this, they are resurrected corvée, a 19th-century Haitian indentured labor law†
The law required citizens to work on public works near their homes for a few days a year instead of paying taxes. But the US military, along with a police force it trained and supervised, seized men and forced them to work far from home without pay. Wealthy Haitians paid their way out of indentured labor, but the law trapped the poor.
Haitians saw this as a return from slavery and revolted. Gunmen, called cacos, fled to the mountains and started a revolt against American troops. Workers forced into gentleman’s work fled their captors and joined the fray. A leader of the cacosCharlemagne Péralte, invoked Haiti’s revolution against France to call on his compatriots to “throw the invaders into the ocean”.
“The occupation has insulted us in every way,” a poster read on the walls in Port-au-Prince, the capital.
“Long live independence,” the poster read. “Down with the Americans!”
The United States reacted strongly. Soldiers tied up workers with ropes to prevent them from fleeing. Anyone who tried to escape gentleman’s work Labor was treated like a deserter, and many were shot. As a warning, the Americans killed Péralte and distributed an image of his corpse tied to a door, evoking a crucifixion.
Leaked military documents from the time revealed that the “indiscriminate killing of natives has been going on for some time,” killing 3,250 Haitians. When Congress began the investigation in 1921, the U.S. military cut the number and said 2,250 Haitians had died during the occupation, a figure Haitian officials denounced as an undercount. As many as 16 American soldiers also died.
“It was a strict military regime, the triumph of the wolf,” wrote Antoine Bervin, a Haitian journalist and diplomat, in 1936.
The first years after the invasion brought little economic benefit to Haiti. American advisers appointed by the President of the United States collected up to 5 percent of Haiti’s total revenues in salaries and expenses — sometimes more than public health expenditures for the entire country.
In 1917, the United States ordered the National Assembly of Haiti to ratify a new constitution to allow foreigners to own land. Since independence, Haitians had banned the possession of foreign land as a symbol of their freedom and a bulwark against invasion.
When Haitian lawmakers refused to change the constitution, General Butler dissolved parliament in what he called “true Marine methods”: Soldiers marched into the National Assembly and forced lawmakers to disperse at gunpoint. The Americans then pushed through a new constitution that Franklin Roosevelt later claimed at a campaign rally that he had written himself.
American companies rented thousands of acres of land for plantations, forcing farmers to either serve as cheap labor at home or migrate to neighboring countries for better wages. The Haitian-American Sugar Company once boasted to investors that it paid just 20 cents for a day’s labor in Haiti, compared to $1.75 in Cuba.
According to Haitian historian Suzy Castor, women and children in Haiti were paid 10 cents a day.
Displaced farmers moved to Cuba and the Dominican Republic, causing what some historians say is the most lasting effect of the American occupation: the mass migration of Haitians to other countries in the Americas.
“This is the great legacy,” said Weibert Arthus, Haiti’s ambassador to Canada and historian.
As Secretary of State Bryan suggested in his pre-invasion letter, Farnham was unhappy with a stake in Haiti’s National Bank, so he teamed up with the State Department to orchestrate a full-scale takeover. By 1920, National City Bank had bought all of the National Bank’s stock for $1.4 million, effectively replacing the French as the dominant financial power in Haiti.
With Haiti’s National Bank under his control and the troops protecting American interests, Farnham himself began acting like an official envoy, often traveling aboard American warships, historians say.
“Mr. Farnham’s word exceeds that of anyone else on the island,” wrote James Weldon Johnson, the executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who visited Haiti in 1920.
Farnham was also not shy about his views on Haiti and its people.
“The Haitian can be taught to be a good and efficient worker,” he told senators investigating the occupation. “If the military leaders don’t talk about it, he’s as peaceful as a child and just as harmless.”
“In fact,” he continued, “there are only grown children these days.”
