The Importance of Haiti: A conversation of Sandye McIntyre

I am currently engaged in the process of writing my graduate thesis, a project that is heavily focused on the nature of imperialism, past and contemporary, within the Caribbean. I am first and foremost a Cubanologist, however for this project I wanted to expand my scope and bring Haiti in the conversation. Haiti is a extremely important country that not many recognize as being an important country outside of those Black people in the western hemisphere that appreciate the nation’s founding through the victory over slavery.

Haiti was the richest colony in the history of the world in it’s day, and was the epicenter of the global plantation-sugar economy. It was the envious standard of the European enslavers who tried to outcompete the organized regiment of French brutality. The Haitian people would eventually overthrow the system of slavery and establish an independent nation in 1804.

Subsequently, Haiti was then embargoed by all the largest nations of the time, isolated and left to pay a reparations for their war of independence that was meant to compensate France for the loss of its most profitable colonial project. In an interview with HistoryMaker Sandye McIntyre who was the acting U.S. consul in Haiti in the late 1950s he states the effects of that long imposed blockade and financial-imperialist imposition saying “[the Haitian people] are a beautiful people, but the one of the most impoverished people, people on, on the face of the earth, very poor”. This is an artificial poverty that was cultivated.

Boston is home to the 4th largest Haitian community in the United States and so early on, I was enculturated into the pride and historical contributions Haiti has made to the diaspora by my many Haitian friends.

Haiti needs to be explored beyond its fixture as the “most impoverished nation in the western hemishphere” and if one insists on naming it that, they must explore HOW it became that way.