Invision Power Board: FROM REGAN BOYCHUK to PETER SHAWN TAYLOR - Invision Power Board

BELOW AN EMAIL FROM REGAN BOYCHUK to PETER SHAWN TAYLOR


Mr. Taylor,

In the Globe, your praise of the US occupation as a “‘golden’ era of development and modernization in Haiti” that built roads, harbours, and a telephone system is premised on the dubious assumption that all this was done for the benefit of Haitians.

That “the Americans single-handedly brought the country into the 20th century” is only true in the sense of counterinsurgency.

Far from being some beneficent donation from the still segregated US to black Haitians, those roads, harbours, and telephones were the latest tools in the evolving system of US counterinsurgency (which killed thousands of Haitians), imported from the laboratory of US occupation in the Philippines.[1]

They were a means of control, not a gift. Moreover, they were built – you neglected this minor detail – by re-imposing virtual slavery.

Not being paved, those roads could only be maintained by massive forced-labor (corvée) and quickly eroded when the American guns were removed from the laborers’ backs in 1934 – not, as you suggest, because of “incompetence and corruption.”

US occupation actually does provide “a convenient frame of reference for what the rest of the world can expect as it tries to rebuild the benighted country” – though not quite as altruistic as you imply.

You also wrote that “Canada and other developed countries” need to “make an equally massive commitment to leave behind a real democracy” or billions in aid “will all be for naught.”

Our government could start by ending the sort of policies that undermined, overthrew, and suppressed Haitian democracy over the last decade.

Canada’s role in starving Haiti’s elected government of aid from 2000, their role in the February 2004 coup, and their role in training the murderous Haitian police and supporting the exclusion of Haiti’s largest political party from elections since the coup does not bode well.

Setting aside assumptions of our selflessness, the media could play a valuable role in ensuring our government does actually support genuine democracy in Haiti.

Ill-informed cheerleading like your op-ed is likely to have precisely the opposite affect.

Take care,

Regan Boychuk

Calgary

[1] See Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the rise of the surveillance state (University of Wisconsin, 2009).

TAYLOR REPLIES TO BOYCHUK

Hi Regan,

Sorry to take so long to reply to your email.

I appreciate all your comments about the corvee and the absence of democracy in the US occupied Haiti of 1915-1934. My only point in writing the article was to note that if rebuilding infrastructure is the goal of the current Haiti relief efforts, then the colonial period is quite an important reference point.

The US built more hospitals, roads, ports, bridges etc then at any other time in Haitian history. I think I was quite clear that they did not inculcate a workable democracy and they left at the earliest opportunity once it became political unpleasant back home. So on that score the US occupation clearly failed. But to repeat, the marines did bring modern infrastructure to Haiti.

It seems to me the outraged reaction I have gotten from some readers has been driven more by their own opinions on Haiti and the US than on the points I was making.

Nonetheless, thanks for the note.

Best,

PST