Revisiting the crisis that turned Haiti upside down and examining how U.S. foreign policy has played such a pivotal and, in some cases, devastating role in Haiti's history.
When an earthquake devastated Haiti in 2010, the international community pledged billions of dollars toward recovery. Much of that aid never went to rebuilding Haiti – or even to the Haitian people. But Haiti’s instability goes back even farther. In fact, it has a lot to do with outside political forces dating back to the country’s origin story as the world’s first Black republic.
Today, episode 4 of “Line in the Land,” a podcast from Texas Public Radio and the Houston Chronicle. We’ll be back with episode 5 next Tuesday. We’re airing an episode from “A Line in the Land” every Tuesday through the end of August.
Read the full transcript here.
Host: Joey Palacios with Texas Public Radio and Elizabeth Trovall with the Houston Chronicle.
More reading:
Haiti’s struggle has worsened in the year since the slaying of its president
As Haiti reels from crises, U.S. policy decisions are called into question
Op-Ed: The West owes a centuries-old debt to Haiti
Binge all the episodes of "Line in the Land" here. Episodes are in both English and Spanish. "Line in the Land" was made possible, in part, by the Catena Foundation, providing more than 100,000 asylum seekers in the U.S. with community and legal support. Learn more at asylum.news
GUSTAVO: Hey, what’s up. It’s Gustavo Arellano and you’re listening to The Times, essential news…from the LA Times.
Today… episode 4 of “A Line in the Land,” from our friends at Texas Public Radio and the Houston Chronicle. It’s a podcast that explores the human story behind the Haitian immigration journey to the U.S.
It’s Tuesday, August 23, 2022.
When an earthquake devastated Haiti in 2010, the international community pledged billions of dollars to help.
But…a lot of that aid never went to rebuilding Haiti – or even to the Haitian people.
Haiti’s instability, though, goes back even farther. In fact, it’s fundamental problems are deeply rooted in outside political forces, dating back to the country’s origin story as the world’s first Black republic. That’s the history you’ll hear, in episode four of Line in the Land.
By the way…If you haven’t listened to the first three episodes, you should go back and do that first. And we’ll be back with episode 5 next Tuesday. We’re airing an episode from “A Line in the Land” every Tuesday through the end of August.
Intro mux out
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*This is an automated transcript. We apologize in advance for the errors. The robots did their best.
Hey, there are episodes of line in the land in English and in Spanish. This is the English version.
That one, I just right back to avenue too. In Del Rio, Texas racial justice, activists, Faroh Clark and Jose Garcia from San Antonio. Sit in the front seats of a tan SUV. They're towing a trailer full of clothes, shoes, and toys. About how many trips do you think you guys have made out here? Shoes and rices.
Um, 10. Yeah, minimum, minimum 10. We need to do better with our tracking. You need to know everything kind of runs together. It runs together. Cuz we just move it's November 20, 21, 2. After the chaos under the bridge came then yeah, we came quite a bit, quite a bit of times and 12. That's why, that's why your husband is met, is met.
Cause I'd saved the world. If I could, ever, since they saw the black migrants in need at the Texas Mexico border, they've been fundraising in San Antonio and bringing back donations multiple times. We literally spend like 14 hours a day, six days, six to seven days a week. Um, working whether like literally we go from event to event, to event trying to talk to people, drum up support she's no, she literally has, she has taken clothes off her back and I'm like, You know, especially, I think, as being a veteran who served, you know, I mean, we, we had a vow, we made an oath to protect our country, that this is the land of freedom, you know, send me your, your weekend masses yearning to be free.
Then I wanna live up to that. It feels alone sometimes. Oh, we need dollars. I think we did pretty good though. They paid across the international bridge and drive into Mexico. They look to the side at an empty dirt and grass lot underneath the bridge. This is the area that was packed with that was where people crossed in on this side- or was it this side, this side?
The sea of distressed families under the Del Rio bridge is gone just because the camp has been cleared. Doesn't mean any of the problems at the root of this crisis have been resolved. We quickly pull up to short cemented walls.
It's an abandoned dance hall where a shelter has been set up for Haitian migrants who were under the bridge people approach the trailer. It's a little chaotic. You had to get everybody in that line as much as possible. Some people pushed their way to the front. To grab donated clothes and toys. At this point, they've been months without a home, tensions are high, many believed they would be in the us by now and their journey would be over and aside from non-profits some Mexican officials and volunteers like Clark and Garcia, the Haitians at the border have been more or less forgotten.
The crisis that spawned a tent city of thousands beneath the Del Rio bridge has slipped from the headlines like so many stories before hurricane Katrina, one shot the scene is nothing short of apocalyp. Dick 80% of new Orleans, including much of downtown is underwater. The waves of refugees crowding onto Greek islands in the past five years, more than 1 million, 150,000 asylum seekers have landed on their beaches.
A disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, Taliban fighters, marching through the streets, dressed in all white, the color of the Taliban's. And assemble. They're ready for Mar.
But as the world moves on the people at the center of these stories, they're the ones who have to continue to worry about their next meal, where they're going to live, how to protect their children. This is where aid from governments non-profits and individuals like Clark plays an absolutely critical role in determining whether recovery.
Any level is even possible. It's all about the follow through. That's why in this episode, we're going to back up and revisit a crisis that turned Haiti upside down and how the us responded and will dive deeper into the us government's actions and Haiti and how the us involvement in the country from aid to occupation has been a double edged sword for Haiti.
To better understand us Haitian relations. We spoke with Haitians across the Americas in person through WhatsApp and video calls, the people who can best tell this story, who can help us understand why so many people took this perilous journey, what they faced along the way and how us foreign policy has played such a pivotal and in some cases, devastating role in Haiti's history. I'm Joey Palacios with Texas public radio. And I'm Elizabeth Troval with the Houston Chronicle. This is episode four of line in the land.
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When the earthquake struck Haiti on January 12th, 2010. It was a global news story offers of international aid are being made tonight for Haiti around the world. People saw the reports of crushed bodies and the toppled presidential palace. The quake struck just before dusk its power shook. The densely populated capital pulled a prince to its core.
The aids started to pour in billions of dollars of aid. The people of Haiti will have the full. Of the United States in the urgent effort to rescue those trap beneath the rubble and to deliver the humanitarian relief, the food, water, and medicine that Haitians will need in the coming days, Biden, who was vice president at the time is standing right behind Obama at this news conference, by the.
Even Hollywood chiton with the help of Haitian American musician. Why Clev Jean with this? We are the world. We are the world. We are the children. We are. A reboot to help encourage donations for Haiti, Janet Jackson, Celine Dion, a teenage Justin Bieber. All of the biggest stars made an appearance to remake this banger for international aid for Haiti,
the everyday Americans and people from around the world gave to Haiti in the wake of the disaster. What exactly happened to those billions of dollars? Wow. Very little of the money was ever actually delivered in Haiti journalists. Jonathan Katz was in Haiti, working for the associated press. When the earthquake hit, the money that was spent was for the most part spent within the donor countries.
So in the United States, it essentially is. You know, the, the state department paying the defense department, cats wrote an entire book about this called the big truck that went by how the world came to save Haiti and left behind a disaster. He says very little of the billions promised ended up in the hands of actual Haitians.
It went to us agencies and contractors for things. You know, looked good on television. Um, so, you know, to, to use one example, um, a lot of money and a lot of effort was put into search and rescue, um, which sounds from the outside, like a really important thing to focus on, uh, in, in the aftermath of an earthquake.
But the reality is that because the, the, uh, the rescue teams were coming from outside the country and couldn't get there, you know, for, in some cases for a couple of days, he says by the time rescue teams got there, everybody who could have been saved had already been pulled out of the rubble by their friends, family, and neighbors.
Um, and ultimately there weren't that many people to save.
So the money never got to Haiti. So therefore there were never a reconstruction. Darlene Joseph is with the Haitian bridge Alliance, the national palace, like the white house in Haiti. Never got we. We built. Till today, all the buildings that were destroyed, none of them have been reconstructed. None of them, Joseph and others argue that if Haiti would've actually been rebuilt, it could have prevented the massive waves of migration that followed.
I want to go back and I want to be there. I want to be able to enjoy my CocaCola order in the morning. I want to able to eat my fish and be able to just enjoy life, because that is what you can have. So people don't want to leave Haiti, but people are being forced to leave because due to insecurity, the lives really are at risk.
Every single day. The us is the richest country in the Hemis. Haiti is the poorest. The two countries have had a longstanding relationship and to better understand why recent aid endeavors have not managed to make an impact. We need to go back a couple of centuries.
It's 1804 black formerly enslaved Haitians have defeated their colonizer France. It's a really big deal. It is the only successful large scale slave rebellion in the Americas. The only one that resulted in the creation of a new nation of formerly enslaved people, it was like if the us revolutionary war and the civil war happened at the same time, it meant freedom from colonizers and slavery was abolished.
Haiti did that first before any other country. It was a disruption to the world order. At the time Napoleon Bonaparte himself said this, the prospect of a black Republic is equally disturbing to the Spanish, the English and the Americans, but Haiti, the richest colony in the west. Indies now stood on its own.
Two important things happen at this point. Here's, Sadra see us Haitian author and advocate, the United States, Amy, many other countries, but particularly the United States did not want to recognize Haiti independence. That's right. The us didn't formally recognize Haiti for 60 years until the us civil war.
It's probably no surprise as to why. Gar Joseph again. Having a newly formed black nation of formerly enslaved people present a danger to the United States and the fear of enslaved people in the United States. The us didn't want its own enslaved people. To get any ideas because in the United States, we were still having slave.
And so if we were to say, yay, go Haiti. Oh, good, good for you. They wouldn't do that because they were still having, they were still con you know, having slavery. Another important thing happened at this time in return for recognizing their, I depend. France forced Haiti, the winner of the war to pay an indemnity.
They handed Haiti a bill for what would be today, billions of dollars, the French demanded 10 times what the us paid for the Louisiana territory, an impossible debt, according to his historian, Marlina doubt, but the Haitians agreed to avoid more bloodshed. So let's line this. First the French took over Haiti and decimated the native Taino population.
Then they enslave Africans and bring them to Haiti to work the land. Then when the enslaved population rebels, the French wants their money back. Yeah. And author, Jonathan Katz says this debt business really screwed over Haiti. It took basically the entire 19th century to repay it. But in order to do that in order to sort of, you know, uh, shore up their balance of payments in, in their budget, they had to take out other loans, including from us banks.
And in order to assure the repayment of the loan to Citibank in, in particular,// the us Marines came ashore in port prints in December of 1914 and stole half of the gold reserves out of Hades central bank. Um, they did this at the. Of us banks, especially Citibank the story gets even more complicated. This set Haitian politics into a tailspin and resulted in.
The assassination of a Haitian president, a pro us Haitian president in 1915, which by the way, was the last assassination of a Haitian president until Jovanna Moise was assassinated in the summer of 2021. Everything old is new again, and the us Marines invaded in 1915 and occupied brutally Haiti for 19 years.
This is all to say, when we talk about instability in Haiti, there are many forces at. So just really, to, to really put all of that into context and looking into why people are fleeing, why people are leaving Gar Joseph, it is manmade disasters, natural disasters, political turmoils. A foreign policies that continues to dismantle, uh, the very system in Haiti and, and really making sure that Haiti as a black country is used as a, as an example, that black people cannot govern themselves.
We'll be right back.
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This podcast made possible by the Catana foundation, supporting the asylum seeker advocacy project, providing more than 100,000 asylum seekers in the us with community and legal support. Learn more@asylum.news.
AMBI
We're back at the Aku migrant shelter in Mexico. Reporter Stephanie Corby asks ska about her childhood in Haiti. She responds in French, which warrants some stares from other migrants.
Possibility. She says, says her dad was a painter. He sold his artwork to tourists. They had opportunities back then. DACA remembers doing well in history class, where she learned about slavery, the French freedom when her dad was around, it was her and her sister and brother. She was the youngest and they lived in a four room home with a washing machine.
We made on the coop. The cat was some machine. He took music lessons while in primary school and learned to play the violin. That was when her dad was still alive.
Live your alone, live your, he says she live the happy childhood. He consider.
When her father died, things changed. They couldn't afford the same look stories. As before 19, they depended on her. Mom's low salary as a teacher to make ends meet. Now, both of her parents are death.
At the, a Kuya migrant shelter, Mexican officials from the refugee agency Comad are helping dozens of Haitians apply for asylum in Mexico. Haitians are sitting around, filling out long forms by hand. They decided to stay and not cross into Texas for fear, the US government would send them back to Haiti.
Like they did thousands of others. DACA is one of the last to fill out her application and hand it in. I ask her if she's excited,
Yes, but my hand hurts from writing so much. She says some people are gathering to get pizza. Children are jumping rope and others are preparing for bed. Then out of nowhere says, um, I. She needs to tell me a story.
She needs to explain why she left her country. Why she left after her mother died
young. Paul gimme my mouth.
It's because my mom died of HIV. She says.
It's still taboo in her country to have HIV there's discrimination. She explains, nobody will talk to you.
It's a constant fear. Anytime she can. She gets tested for HIV. She's not just afraid of. But after seeing the way her mom was treated, she's afraid of what it would mean to live with it.
Haitians have dealt with a lot of unfair stigma and hatred related to the spread of aids in the Americas. Even the CDC played a role in perpetuating anti Haitian discrimination relating to the disease, right? The CDC identified Haitians in the 1980s as a group with high risk factors for HIV. The FDA barred Haitians in the US from giving blood.
It provoked protests in New York city. Don't blame the Haitians for what they do not do. One healthcare worker who works in Brooklyn, says the evidence linking Haitians in Africans to aids here in the US does not hold up in your dealings in the hospitals. You don't see any large percentage of Haitians or Africans or no, because you see as, and all colors, all nation, all nationality white.
Whatever country you come from. And then there's the 1991 military coup in Haiti. Thousands of Haitian migrants escaped on boats. Many were intercepted by the US and brought to Guantanamo bay. A lot of them were literally packed like sardines in Guantanamo bay in sub human Conditions. Haitians with HIV were segregated from the rest of the migrant detainees.
And weren't released until a federal judge ordered it in 1993. That was one of the most cool policies of the United States towards refugees and towards Haitian migrants coming to the United States, asking for, for asylum and again, using the aids as the reason why those people. Needed to be controlled, needed to be caged.
Remember title 42, the policy that has basically shut down the us asylum system for more than two years, because of concerns about the spread of COVID. The jailing of Haitians and Guantanamo is another example of where health policy is weaponized as part of an effort to keep people out of the country.
Back at the Acuna border shelter, Domingue Paul and Kele FFA are making the most of a bad situation on a sunny November day. They are lined up in jackets with suitcases and their two kids ready to start their new lives in Mexico. They're headed to a day's bus ride south of Akua. That's where local business owners have agreed to help Haitians find jobs there.
In order to close down this Haitian migrant shelter F smiles in anticipation of finally leaving Mexican.
Han, thanks. The Mexican people and says this town has a heart of gold. They would be dead without the generosity. She's ready to move on with her life. Especially for her kids, both JLAs citizens. She hopes they can forgive her and understand it was all done for them.
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She says God willing in Mexico. They'll find what they're looking for. What happens with this family with DAKA and John John Baptist, who we met in the jungle that's in our next episode.
Next time online in the land.
Line in the land is reported and produced by Elizabeth Tral. Sophia Sanchez, Stephanie Cordy and Joey Palacios. Our editor is Elisa Barbara cultural competency assessment by Miriam chassis sound design and music by Jacob Rosati, audio mixing by Bennett Smith. Special. Thanks to Dan. Lily Thomas and Maria Reeve line in the land is a production of Texas public radio in collaboration with the Houston Chronicle.
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GUSTAVO: And that’s it for this episode of THE TIMES, essential news from the LA Times.
LINE IN THE LAND is reported and produced by Elizabeth Trovall (TRO-vall), Sofia Sanchez, Stephania Corpi (CORE-pee)… And Joey Palacios. Their editor is Alisa (Uh-LEE-suh) Barba (BARB-uh).
Cultural competency assessment by Myriam Chancy (Meer-ee-am Chaw-see). Sound design and music by Jacob Rosati.
Audio mixing by Bennett Smith. And special thanks to Dan Katz, Lily Thomas and Maria Reeve.
LINE IN THE LAND is a production of Texas Public Radio in collaboration with the Houston Chronicle.
You can find and follow the show and binge all the episodes in season 1 on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.
The Times is produced by Shannon Lin, Denise Guerra, Kasia Brousalian, David Toledo and Ashlea Brown. Our editorial assistants are Madalyn Amato and Carlos De Loera. Our intern is Surya Hendry. Our engineers are Mario Diaz, Mark Nieto and Mike Heflin. Our editor is Kinsee Morlan. Our executive producers are Jazmin Aguilera, Shani Hilton and Heba Elorbany. And our theme music is by Andrew Eapen.
I'm Gustavo Arellano. We'll be back tomorrow with all the news and desmadre. Gracias.