Part One: Pappa Doc and Baby Doc: Dictators of Haiti

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
What's a dead man? Donald Rumsfeld? Let Go the Bastards,
the podcast where Donald Rumsfeld is a corpse. Um, it's
he died surrounded by his family, as opposed to surrounded

(00:21):
by the families of his victims beating him with sticks.
But whatever, that's he's dead. That's as good as you get.
I guess um. There's an amazing, amazing ap article out
about him that like describes him as a cunning leader
who was undermined by the Iraq War. Undermine you know how,

(00:43):
You're just going through life and the Iraq War comes
and blindsides you after you spend years working to make
it happen by lying to the international community in the
United States. Come on, its fucking rules. It's so good,
just having the best time here. Pro prop props guys.

(01:04):
Jason Petty, host of the Hood Politics podcast now on
the Heart Radio Network, because we are slowly consuming all
media and and and folding it into our overmind of
content um overmind and just bringing you the best of
the best. Yeah you know what I'm saying, Like like,

(01:26):
you know, real recognized real, you feel me. It's magnetic.
But I wish, I wish listeners could have seen one
Prop and I met in person the first time and
we were just yea, yeah, yeah. It was so crazy.
That was right before the motherfucking like yeah, I was like,

(01:47):
you're the real one. It was really like, I think
she's a real one. I'm I'm pretty sure she's a
real one. And I was like, yeah, yeah, she's a
real one. This is crazy prop. You know what else
is a real one? Rumps veil. Well yeah, he actually,
I mean yes, actually he pulled triggers that do not have.

(02:13):
But another thing that's real is the island nation of Haiti. Jason, Yeah,
this is a natural. This is a real reaction. We've
been to talk about Haiti. We're fixing to talk about Haiti. Yes, Um,
I wanted to do an episode because it's been required.
You know, there's two famous dictators of Haiti, the two

(02:34):
longest serving modern leaders of the country, Papa Doc and
Baby Doc. If you're going to like talk about Haitian dictators,
you have to start with the actual bastard of Haiti,
which is the entirety of Western civilization. Yes, yeah, the
most the only effective slavery uprising. But for us to

(02:57):
get to that moment, and there was a number of
after so tear one of those things you can't like
the end. These are some pretty pretty colorful dictators. But
it would be I think, grossly irresponsible to not talk
about the various nations by which I mean the United States, France,
and most of Europe that were heavily responsible for allowing

(03:20):
a situation in which these guys could could be in power. Um,
because it required takes a whole village to make a
situation as fucked up as the present political situation in
Haiti Um, which is the poorest nation in this hemisphere, yes,
and which engineered to be that way yes, which interestingly enough,

(03:40):
was part of Trump's shiphole country statements because he was like, well,
look at Haiti, it's ran by black people. Why are
you Okay, let's dig into that, analyst, let's ask let's
ask about that. Let's be okay, you just throwing ship out.
Let's okay, let's think about it. Yeah. Yeah. So the
island that both Haiti and the Dominican Republic share is

(04:02):
called Hispaniola Um, and it's the largest island in the
Antilles chain next to Cuba. So Cuba's Cuba's the bigger,
is bigger, but Hispaniola is kind of right number two.
So Hispaniola first entered the annals of European history in
four nine two when some asshole with the same name
as the director of Home Alone sailed three boats from
Spain and landed on their southern shore. He named the

(04:25):
island Hispaniola, in honor of the Spanish crown. So he
was like, this is Spain's basically, that's what Hispaniola means.
This is Spain's island. Um is mine Spain's yeah, um,
because he was as all bad people are Italian. Um.
Now we just recorded with someone else an episode on

(04:47):
Ethiopia and Italy's history, and we really got to throw
out some some some anti Italian hate. Man, good for
the soul, shout out the birthplace, shout out the birthplace
of coffee. Oh yeah yeah um so yeah the the
So he he names the island Hispaniola. He leaves the

(05:08):
crew of the wrecked Santa Maria on Hispaniola when he
goes back to Europe, and Columbus's men form a settlement
called La Navidad, which became patient zero for the European
infestation of the New World. The indigenous people of the
island where the Arawak and the Tino Uh. They were
pretty much immediately enslaved and forced to work themselves to
near extinction mining for gold. Uh. They were all but

(05:29):
wiped out within a century. Um. Meanwhile, European settlement on
the island expanded rapidly. The occupation quickly turned into a
plantation economy, and Spanish domination was replaced by French domination.
Once the gold mines were exhausted, coffee, cotton, indigo and
other cash crops made Hispaniola a hub of the burgeoning
global economy. Now, of course, if you know anything about

(05:51):
in that period of time, farming cotton, coffee, indigo and
other cashpots, it was a fucking nightmare um, super deadly,
super pleasant, grueling, backbreaking work. And white people were not
about to do that themsel, not at all in a
in a tropical paradise too. Yeah, no, you're not gonna
do that, No, no no. By the fifteen hundred, slaves

(06:12):
were being imported onto the island in huge numbers. Over
several hundred years, African slaves grew to be the majority
population of Haiti. By the late seventeenth century, only about
five thousand African slaves had been brought to the island,
but by seventeen eighty nine, a century or so later,
the island had half a million slaves, thirty two thousand
Europeans and about twenty four thousand of what we're called

(06:34):
a Francis, which were free mulatto's or people of mixed
African and European heritage. And that's really key here because
since it's French dominated, it's a different spin on racism
than you got in the US South. UM. So you
you actually have not I mean, you have some free blacks,
but you have a lot of free mixed race people, UM.

(06:56):
And they form kind of a buffer, like chunk of
society between white people and enslaved black people. It's like
a thing in Haiti, and you have to really talk
about it. Yeah. Yeah, It's so interesting how every place
that UM imported African slaves had to deal with their

(07:17):
categories of race and how they decided to like work
it out, you know, with us, with like America having
like Plessy versus Ferguson and like the one drop, you know,
the one drop, you know what I'm saying, and like
whereas like that don't exist nowhere else, you know, and
like everyone else going well, what do you mean, you know,
and how colorism sort of like ruled in Central and

(07:40):
in South and Latin America. Uh. But and and then
and then places like this that figured out like well
there there's something else, you know, it's something else. You know,
there's still a lot of racism against totally these people,
but it is and they have a lot more rights,
and like yeah, we'll talk, We're about to talk. Yeah. Yeah.
So French transported more enslaved people to send them aang

(08:03):
their colony than to any other part of the French Caribbean. Now, again,
as we were talking about enslave owning regions of the US,
the racial cast system was very simple. You've got the
one drop rule for a big chunk of that time,
you're either white or you're black. Uh. And in many
slave states, even if a black person was freed, it
was illegal for them to continue to live in that state.
I think that was the case in Virginia, number of
other places. French Haiti was different. While the right status

(08:26):
of of black people changed over time, from an early point,
free mulattos were able to accrue significant wealth and power.
And we don't use the term mulatto here anymore, but
it is you can't really talk about Haiti without using
it because it's a huge chunk of the history and
the and the um um and the culture there. So
at the top of the hierarchy, you would have the

(08:48):
big whites, which are your standard white plantation rich white
plantation owners, and that is the same kind of dude.
So we've got all throughout the US South, right, the
guys who make a confederacy happen. Then you have the
little whites, which we'd we'd call like working class white people.
They don't own plantations, and most maybe they have a
small farm, they probably don't own slaves. If they do,
it's a small number um. And they kind of vied

(09:10):
with the mixed race people for second billing in the
power hierarchy, which is obviously great for the big whites, right,
because if you're the big whites, you're worried about the
little whites because they want your ship um. And you've
also got this other group of people who have accrued power.
So if you can have those two groups who are
kind of both broadly speaking, we wouldn't call it middle
class in the modern sense, but kind of within that

(09:31):
like are kind of like the middle middle cast. Yeah,
noddle cast. If you've got them at each other's throats,
you the big whites don't think you have to worry
about as much. Now, that doesn't work out in the
long run for the big whites because as they all
get murdered. Um, which is rad It's one of the
fun parts of the story. So there's so much about
history where you're just like, yeah, yeah, that happened. But

(09:55):
that is the idea, right, You've got these two groups
to keep met eas others throats, And I'm simplif ying
all this significantly. Um. There's a great podcast series called
Revolutions by Mike Duncan, and he gives like a thirty
episodes history of the Haitian revolutions because there's a bunch
of goes into tremendous detail, um and does a much
better job. Obviously, we are like criminally simplifying things here,

(10:18):
but like that's that's the broad I think that's pretty
accurate to the broad strokes of it. Um. So the
gist of how this story goes is that over the decades,
the fact that the majority of the island's population were
enslaved under brutal conditions led to a series of revolutions.
The enslaved blacks killed an awful lot of the big
whites and the little whites, but they also went after

(10:39):
mulatto property owners too, because they rightly saw these people
as oppressors to um. And there's other like they're like
the kind of mixed race community has their own sort
of movements and their own militia. Like there's this. It's
a whole process, and it it occurs over a long
period of time. It started. The kind of series of
revolutions started when small numbers of slaves began escape into

(11:00):
the Mountainous Island interior, where they became known as maroons.
Like the term maroon, you know, that's I think that's
where it comes from. I mean also has a side note.
I don't know if you got if you if this
came up or it's going to come up later, but
the concept of a zombie is from Haitian slaves. Yeah,
we're going to get into that a lot. Like, yeah,
we do have to talk about voodoo a bit because

(11:21):
it's a really significant chunk of yeah. Yeah. Um, Now,
the Maroons, these escaped slaves in the Mountainous interior, developed
their own self sufficient society and they wage a slow
guerilla war against colonial militias. There's a couple of big
kind of outbursts of this. From seventeen fifty one to
seventeen fifty seven France, Swim Makandal, who was the most

(11:42):
famous Maroon leader, let his six year long insurgent war
to try to overthrow the white slavers. Alongside Maroon guerrillas,
the most prominent form of black resistance in Haiti became voodoo,
which was a slave religion whose practice was forbidden by law.
Uh and there was a bunch of different like suicide
and fantasy, i'd arson, poison. These are all aspects of
the faith and I think in some cases like denying

(12:04):
your body to being exploded by slavers, and they also
become elements of resistance to the regime. And again there's
a lot of history there that we're not going to
be giving a proper do but it is fascinating. But
but voodoo has this, it's it's rooted in resistance to
this this in human regime and a and a throwback
to your African history and animus of like I'm just

(12:28):
yeah that the act of resistance. I think it's super
interesting and it's funny how uh even among sort of
the black diaspora, like your your your American slave descendant
versus your Caribbean whether they're Jamaican or Haitian or be
easy and like even this like you know, I'm doing
this injustice too, but like they they feel as though,

(12:51):
like in a lot of ways they're tied to that,
to to their to their animous faith and they're not
willingness to and they're no, we need to overthrow their
oppressors in some ways, like you know, and and the
lowest debased versions of us made made that community feel
as though they were stronger than like American black people,

(13:13):
you know what I'm saying, because they threw their oppressors
off and they didn't lose hold of their their animous
traditions like they rebelled. We didn't, you know what I'm saying.
And um and and in the reverse, it's like black
people from America American descent, it's looked at them, it's like, well,
y'all are something else, like y'all, well, yeah, y'all or
something else you're you're we're not the same, rather than

(13:35):
being like now you just got off the boat earlier
than us. And you know what I'm saying, it's really
interesting is some of those like sort of like in
house sort of issues that like, hey, we gotta be
better and really understand the diaspora much better to be
like they're just as black as we are. They just
like I said, you just got off the boat earlier,
you know, And it's it's it's you know, another area

(13:56):
where this becomes specifically, voodoo becomes kind of an issue
as these dictators who have to talk about today um
really use there's kind of I think debate over how
actually into the practice of it they are, but they
use it um and it becomes kind of this it's
used as fuel in like the media covering them is like, oh,
look at these these dangerous third world lunatics and there

(14:19):
and there, and they're creepy you know, witchcraft and stuff.
And the reality is that these dictators are co opting
voodoo because it has this powerful tradition as a as
a resistance religion, like you have to, you have to.
It's it's it's not wildly different from like, well, I
mean there are aspects of it that are similar from
like politicians in the US South kind of co opting

(14:40):
aspects of like revolutionary history totally um and trying to
turn it towards their own political ends and getting a
lot of it wrong. But it's because it has this
powerful hold on people's um consciousness. UM. So voodoo is
a huge aspect of religion or of resistance as well. UM.
And Yeah, at the same time time this is all

(15:01):
going on, You've got again, you've got this mixed race
community who actually has some political power and who has
some wealth. And they're not they they are these the
black slaves are not really connected to the rest of
of the French Empire because they're stuck on this island.
They have no rights. But these mixed race people are
a part of the larger empire and they get to
go back to France. Um, they get to do a

(15:23):
number of things that are they are participating in this
broader empire. Several hundred of them joined the Royal French
Army In seventeen seventy nine, Haitian mixed race people travel
to North America and fight in the American Revolutionary War.
They take part in the Siege of Savannah, Georgia. UM.
And these guys, a lot of them are very inspired
by the American Revolution and these ideas of what democracy

(15:46):
could be. UM. At the same time as they're inspired
by some of like the promise of the American Revolution,
they're deeply frustrated by the racism they experience in the
new United States and from their their white French officers. UM.
And this kind of leads to after the French Revolution,
because right, the French help us out with our revolution,
then they have their own revolution. Suddenly they've got these

(16:08):
people's assemblies and a democracy, the guillotine stuff, YadA, YadA, YadA.
After this point, after that point, um, mixed race. You know,
people from Haiti start increasingly coming over to France and
agitating for equal rights within the Parisian Citizens Assembly, because
this part of the revolution was this idea that all
men have equal rights. And so these people who are

(16:30):
not white from French possessions start coming to Paris and
being like, well, all right, right, that's pretty cool with
you guys, said remember you guys said that. And the
history of this is complex because a number of these,
you know, these mulatto guys also were like, well, but
obviously these black slaves don't get rights because I own
some of them. In some cases, some of them are
very much for completely like it's it's again. This is like,

(16:54):
there's a lot of really complex history here. Yeah. Um,
I'm gonna quote from a rite up by the University
of Texas. The impact of the revolution reached San Domag,
escalating tensions between grounds blancs, big whites, the elites, plantation
owners and the like petit blancs, the little whites and
the free people of color. Uh. Big whites wanted local
autonomy from France, Mulatto saw their chance for citizenship and equality,

(17:17):
and little whites were eager to protect their position in
the color based class system. All of these groups were
against freeing the slaves. Amid all this in fighting, the slaves,
who outnumbered the free population more than ten to one,
began to organize why was liberty and equality not meant
for them as well? In August, the rebellion began with
a voodoo priest predicting that a revolt would free the

(17:38):
slaves of San domg. The slaves set about burning plantations
and killing all of the whites they encountered. Sant Doman
was an inferno for months the revolution had begun. During
the following two years, the attacks continued and eventually France
sent agents to try to quell the uprising. In see
the remarkable Toissant Levature, a former slave rose to power.

(17:58):
Lovature battle French, Spanish and British forces and by eighteen
o one head control of Santo Domingo, the current day
Dominican Republic, where he eradicated slavery. Um Man, could you imagine,
I mean, thank god the phrase big whites didn't make
it into America. Yeah, could you imagine if that was

(18:20):
in our lexicon? Just how just just think about the
last twenty Just think about the last year in your
time in Portland's fighting. When I you know, when I
hear the phrase big whites associated with the United States,
one guy's picture pops into my fucking head and it's
Mark McCloskey, the guy with the a R fifteen and

(18:41):
his mansion, And immediate like, yeah, that's exactly that guy.
A version of that guy got burnt to death by
Haitian revolutionists. You see that, See that dude's rally with
teen people showed up. He is cut out, he's waving

(19:05):
his gun, which by the way, didn't have sights. So
if you don't put modern a rs usually don't come
with sights on them, because you can install a variety
of optics, and sites might get in the way of
some more advanced optics. You don't necessarily have iron sights,
but you need some sort of sights otherwise you can't
aim the gun, which means he essentially had like a blunderbuss,

(19:28):
like he had a weapon. He could not have aimed
a damn toy. You're playing around throngs of fans. Yeah
you could. You couldn't shoot someone attacking you, but you
could fire bullets in their broad direction and hit a
variety of other things. Um, yeah, it's yeah, big whites,
that big whites, that guy. Yea. So the Haitian revolution

(19:51):
there were you know, some of the inspiration was the
ideas of liberty and equality proposed by revolutionaries in North
American in France. But a lot of these same revolutionaries,
these white evolutionaries, are horrified by what happened in Haiti
because they're all galloping racists, right. The Haitian revolutionaries massacred
a ton of white people, particularly plantation owners and their families,
which good for them. Uh. This bloodshed was often horrifying,

(20:15):
But obviously, if you're enslaving people and making them heritable property.
You can't be surprised if they murder you and your
kids when they get the chance. I mean, Thomas Jefferson
expressed that he's like, uh, if they ever get guns, Yeah,
they are not going to treat us. I'm not going
to treat us kindly. Yeah. It's the same attitude like

(20:36):
you have about the morality if I don't know the
execution of the czars and their family and revolutionary Russer
where it's like, on one hand, no, of course, children
are always innocent and can't be held accountable for the
crimes of their parents, even if their parents is the regent.
At the same time, if you grew up property of
this family, and you can say that in a way

(20:56):
like all of the citizens of the Csars were just
I can't lame you for being like, well, we just
gotta get rid of all this out like you can.
It's a cancer. It's not a good thing to do,
but it's an understandable to make given the situation these
people were put in, which is impot The situation they
were put in made a reasonable response of any kind impossible.
They had to do what they had to do. Um, Now,

(21:20):
the reason why to Sauant fought basically every major European
power and this guy we may we may talk about
him for fucking a Christmas even even amazing. Man. Again, yeah,
I was gonna say, like his solutions. This motherfucker is illiterate,
like he's aborted, like he doesn't know how to read.
And he creates an army from nothing out of people

(21:41):
who also had no formal education in many cases and
who are basically just stealing weapons that they that they
find and learning on the go how to be an army.
And he beats all of the major world powers. Now
he has helped by the fact that it is really
hard for white armies to function in Haiti because they
don't have immunity to like malaria and ship Obviously that helps.

(22:04):
He's an impressive dude. Yeah. Yeah. And the reason why
all of these European powers get involved, because kind of
everybody winds up rolling into Haiti during this period, is
because in part because they see the Haitian revolution as
a threat to white domination tale man. Yeah yeah. And
it's very complicated because like the British are actually fighting

(22:25):
France at this same time, um, and they get involved
in Haiti because they back the independence desires of the
big whites. Because the big whites are like, I don't
like this whole idea about the declaration of the rights
a man. That seems like it could lead to an
into slavery at some point, which is why I have money.
So the British, who will not much after this enslavery
in their own empire officially are like, we will support

(22:46):
you guys because it will hurt the French government. Um
and we'll let you keep your racial dominance over Haiti
if we win this war. Um. So, England basically sends
an army into Hispaniola in the hope that it would
defray the cost of losing their North American colin these
by giving them access to the products that are being
made in Haiti. And of course Toussant massacres English soldiers
as he had French and Spanish soldiers in sight. The

(23:09):
English commander in chief signed a treaty with General Tossant
and evacuated his soldiers in disgrace. Four years later, Napoleon
played at negotiating with Tossant and the new Haitian government.
He kidnapped the revolutionary leader and sent him to a
prison in this French Alps, where Toussant died. On the
eve of his death, he was said to have stated,
in overthrowing me, you have cut down and sandoming only

(23:31):
the trunk of the tree of liberty. It will spring
up again from the roots, for they are many and
they are deep um. And he was not wrong about that.
I do not retake hatie. And I'm going to quote
now for a book titled Haiti The de Voliers and
their Legacy by Elizabeth Abbott. Toussant's faith and the Haitian
people's determination was justified when Napoleon sent his brother in law,

(23:51):
General le Clerk, to fight a war of extermination. His
words against the Haitians follow your instructions exactly, Napoleon wrote,
and yourself of Toussaint Christophe de Selens and the principal brigands.
Napoleon instructed rid us of these gilded Africans, and we
have nothing more to wish. They're gilded, because they're they're
putting themselves up as equal to to white. Right, that's

(24:14):
what he means by gilded um. Against Aussant's generals, including
Desslines and Christophe le Clerk, fought a hopeless campaign which
lasted until November eighth, eighteen oh three, and cost the
French fifty thousand soldiers lives, with countless more wounded. We
have concluded le clerk glumly a false idea of the
Negro grossly underestimated. Yeah, we we didn't think these people

(24:38):
were as smart as us. Turns out they are. Turns
out they're just humans. Yeah, who knew they might be
better at war than us? Yes, um, at least war
in this place. They know very well, you know, French
are like, I think we discovered something that will later
be called home court advantage. Yeah, don't worry. Napoleon's government

(25:01):
would never again make the mistake of invading someone else
on their home tariff and getting read this is the
last time that happens to Yes, Napoleon learned is Oh
wait a minute, I'm just I'm checking the record here,
and maybe maybe we're wrong. Funny, you know, who else

(25:22):
never invades people's home countries. That's that's that's quite a
You don't know that, I mean, do not know that? Yeah,
you're right, you're right. I'm fairly certain none of our
sponsors have invaded Russia. Yes, yeah, that seems fair. That

(25:42):
seems fair to say because we are not currently sponsored
by Mercedes, right, this is true because if Mercedes throws
and ads, then yes, they have absolutely invaded Russia. I'm
aware of. But yeah, well we'll put a pin on that.
SOB too. I think I don't know whatever BMW for sure,

(26:03):
UH probably can't get any UM can't get any Hugo
boss ads either if we're really probably not if we're
going for hasn't invaded Russia? UM in a sponsor anyway,
We'll we'll figure it out. Okay, we're back. Okay. So

(26:25):
January one, eighteen o four, Sandoman proclaims its independence from France. Uh.
They adopt as the name of their new country an
ancient Uh indigenous Arawak name Haiti, which is where Haiti
comes from. So there's some acknowledgement there that like this
belonged to some other people before. Yeah. But at the
same time, they're not colonizers. They got forced there, right,

(26:47):
it wasn't um. Yeah, So they adopt this, and they
adopted as their flag the revolutionary tricolor, so the flag
that France had had, but they take the white out
of the French flag. Basically because as they represents them
the white man, right, they don't want that, and they're
fucking flag um. So a guy who had been one
of Toissaint's generals and who had helped beat the clerk,

(27:08):
general John Jacques Dessalines Um had himself declared emperor just
as Napoleon had uh. And the history of Haiti, which
was the world's first black republic, starts at this point
as like a government. So up to this point not
a bad direction, right, rough start with the slavery and
the genocide, but in the end, the better guys beat
the worst guys. They liberate themselves, and it's one of

(27:30):
the great stories in global revolutionary history. This is the
only time, um in modern history where a slave population
successfully rebels against their masters. They even are we going
to get into like some of the economic developments to
like how they put out how to okay cool, how
they figured out how to like subsidize income and like
all this good stuff. Oh no, no, no, we're going

(27:52):
to talk about how French the French. No. I don't
know much about the actual I mean, I I know
that there's a lot of people will argue that like
kind of the destruction of the plantations cost some some
economic issues. There's a lot of complications here we talk about. Okay, Yeah,
so there were some moves like I'm getting some of
the names and dates wrong because I haven't. I'd have
to brush up on it. But some of the moves

(28:13):
that they made was like, okay, um, first of all,
we already showed you that we could wipe you out,
but we do now since we burnt all our cash crops,
we need to figure out if y'all gonna stay, how
we're gonna subsidize our income here. So there was a
couple of economic incentives that after they overthrow them, after

(28:35):
they overthrew their owners, they were like, okay, so but
we still need income and jobs. So here's y'all's role. Okay,
here's our role. Usually don't get his own us and
m so that yeah, like I said, I'm getting some
of the information wrong, but uh, there was there was
a few shrewd moves that this emperor does to like

(28:56):
stabilize their income for or stabilize their economy for a while.
That it goes to ship but yeah, yeah, and we're
we're going to talk about like kind of what goes
awry there. But Yeah, it's a promising start, right, some
some good moves, some good luck. But um, you know,
obviously today things are not great in Haiti, uh poor,
one of the poorest nations on the planet. The infrastructure

(29:16):
is pretty much in a constant state of free fall.
Their numerous endemic diseases and almost unimaginable corruption. And it
didn't just get that way by the naturally. This was
not the natural course of events. It was. It was
heavily manipulated. So let's start about talking by talking about
the USA's role and how we got here. So, as
a republic built on slavery, our founding fathers were very

(29:37):
frightened of Haiti, particularly the massacres of big whites in
eighteen o one and eighteen o two UM. Now, at
this point in time in the United States, the idea
that a black slave might want to be free was
seen as a mental illness. There was even a diagnosis
for drapetomania UM and they treated Haitian independence thus lee.
They consider a desire for freedom from an enslaved person
to be a mental illness. They consider Haitian independence to

(29:59):
be a kind of viral infection. So they want to
stop any contage any They want to stop any possibility
of it's spreading, right, that's what they see. What they
don't they don't see, oh hey, another people has overthrown
the chains of of of their colonial you know, owners
and become a republic. They see, oh, this is a threat. Um.
So when one Haitian veteran who had fought to liberate

(30:22):
the United States from Great Britain at the Battle of Savannah,
attempted to return to the country he had helped fought
to find and tried to land in Charleston, he was
denied the right to set foot on the soil he's
fought for. That's just one kind of example of how yeah, no,
you're dangerous. Yes, And of course he was obviously like,
this is a danger to them because it's a it's
a it's a country built on the human bondage um.

(30:45):
Thomas Jefferson, the great philosopher of liberty, slash rapist, child
rapist um, proposed that slaves convicted of crimes and remember,
wanting to be free was a crime, should be exiled
to haiti Um. And again his goal here is he
wants to quarantine the black desire for liberty. That's kind
of how Jefferson sees this. The most positive moment in
US Haitian relations came after Haiti's independence, but before Toussant's capture,

(31:10):
when Toussant found his new government locked in a civil
war with a Mulatto general named uh Regald Uh and
Regald was a mulatto supremacist who wanted to massacre all
the white people on the island and also re enslave
the black population. That's at least how to Sant framed
the problem this guy posed. In a letter he sent
to US President Adams requesting military aid, he wrote, quote,

(31:32):
Regard has has assassinated many whites, and this is but
the beginning of his hainous crimes. His criminal and atrocious
misdoings have left no alternative to the government agent but
to brand him as a lawless rebel and to muster
an army to punish his outrages. Now, the massacre of
white people justified the first U. S military intervention on
the island. We sent over some ships ammunition in two
thousand muskets. The aid played a meaningful role in allowing

(31:55):
Tossants government to smash Regard's rebellion. This would be the
only broadly positive move the US made towards Haiti um
after eighteen hundred when the US and France reconciled, because
we're having a bit of a tiff when we send
those rifles over, the official government policy towards Haiti grows
more hostile, and after the massacres of eighteen o one
eighteen to uh, the United States refuses to recognize the

(32:17):
Haitian government as independent. This was justified by the United
States and by everyone else because this is broadly speaking,
how most of the West handles Haitian independence, and it's
justified by them because the French had refused to acknowledge
Haitian independence. Now, France was like one of the big
world powers right then, and they're like the military power.

(32:38):
So acknowledging Haiti as its own thing is a dicey
thing diplomatically, right. You see versions of the same thing
today with fucking Taiwan and stuff. There's a constant like
do we recognize this country? Yeah, you can't acknowledge the
L Like, hey man, you know you took it. L's
like no, we didn't. No, that was different. Now we
don't count. Yeah, the US refuses to acknowledge like China,

(33:01):
the Chinese government for for years as the legit like
after the Civil War. Like we do this all the time,
is what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love the
like yeah, like even just America being like we've never
lost a war, Like what about Vietnam. That was different,
That wasn't our war. That wasn't a war, because you

(33:21):
have to declare it, you know, you gotta go declare.
It's only if it comes from the from different. It's
just a sparkling conflict. Yeah that's different. Yeah. Yeah, so
it'd be like, nah, I don't know, I don't think.
I don't think eight's a country, Like yeah, fam, yes
they are, okay. Yeah. So the US fights another war

(33:44):
against Great Britain in eighteen twelve, and we rely heavily
on trade and aid from the French. So obviously there's
a there's a lot of vested interest in not recognizing
Haiti because we don't want to piss off France. As
a result from independence. From its independence up to about
eighteen five, Haiti is a pariah state. Uh. This enables
the first emperor of Haiti, de Selenes, to justify an

(34:05):
increasingly repressive regime. Haiti had nothing but enemies, and the
entire effort of the state was devoted towards maintaining a
huge army and a massive system of protective fortresses. Uh.
And Desoleines becomes basically a military dictator. And this is
again she she's got a point, right, Like they want
to they want to funk us up. They want to
take like us, they want to take our liberty back.

(34:25):
They want to take this island back. Like we have
to always be ready to fight. Um. The problem is
that when you base your whole society around that, it's
not the healthiest way under society. Yeah you can't, you can't.
That's not that's not sustainable. Yeah. Now, Desolines again, like
all of these kind of founding fathers, was illiterate and

(34:45):
was a like yeah, he comes from, you know, a
background where that was not education of much any formal
kind was not really an option. And as a result
of his influence, the military becomes dominated by black officers
who were like him, gen really illiterate former slaves. Meanwhile,
the civil administration of the Haitian government becomes dominated by Mulatto's,
most of whom had benefited from a better education, and

(35:08):
this contributes to the You've already got this really bloody
racial divide and this long history of fighting. And it
just after independence that divide doesn't get erased, um and
and Desolines leans into this divide. He massacred tens of
thousands of French civilians after independence. Uh and at the
same time he had massacred a lot of Mulatto saying

(35:29):
he couldn't tell the difference between them. In eighteen o four,
he declared, I will go to my grave happy we
have avenged our brothers. Haiti has become a blood red
spot on the face of the globe. Um. Now, of
course it was born in blood, right had he starts
as an act of labor genocide and is depopulated by
violent force. Desolines is not starting a process here, it's

(35:50):
just the natural continuation of that kind of violence. Um. Now.
That said later on in his reign, Desolines takes an
extra step to words. I think he saw it as
kind of an attempt to destroy these racial barriers. He
declared a policy of bronze ification um, which was his
goal was to destroy all distinctions of color on the

(36:11):
island by forced intermarriage of blacks and mulatto's. Uh. Now,
to start this process, he ordered a mulatto general, Alexandra Petition,
to marry his daughter sal Amine, who was, unbeknownst to him,
already pregnant. When he found out, he murdered her lover
and Pettian declined the marriage, and shortly thereafter Dessolens is
assassinated by an unknown group of assailants. Um it's still

(36:36):
why he was killed. Who exactly killed him is a
mystery in Haiti today. There's theories that he was murdered
by unpaid soldiers, that it was general Petition. What matters
more than the specifics of like who did the did
the deed, is that from the beginning, Haiti is burdened
by a history of authoritarian leaders, which again starts with
the white rulership of the colony and is burned by

(36:58):
a history of violent changes of power. Right it's born
in blood and that they don't break the cycle. Um
power would swing wildly over the next years between mulatto
and black generals, generally representing different geographic and racial chunks
of the island. Um the term it's so funny, it's like, well,
not funny, but the word bronze vocation. Just if you

(37:19):
just say, you're like, actually sounds kind of rad, Like
you know what I'm saying, Like if you just just
just the idea of like let's just get this like
that beautiful brown on people, you know what I'm saying,
Like it's kind of dope, you know. But then it's
still like you're still addressing this like scourge of a
racialized society that for multiple millennia we didn't have, you know,

(37:45):
and like in in in terms of a social construct
where it's like we just you dated regionally, you dated
tribally because this was like who was around, you know
what I'm saying. But once you started putting these like
rules around, you know, the phrenology and and the you know,
the the eugenics of the ship that like created this

(38:08):
like racial colorized cast that like has just become a scourge.
You just see how many attempts we've had to try
to undo this curse across across the cultures. And this
was just one of his thought was well, well, if
your kids is all, we'll look and we'll find you
somebody that's hot, It's that's fine, you know, and make

(38:32):
a baby with him. Like you can't be mad at
this little brown baby, could the baby look good? You know?
So you just I it's like you you're following the
logic and it's just but it's like being able to
step back and examine like damn, like just the racialization
of our world. Like, man, we're still trying to solve

(38:53):
this issue, you know. Yeah, yeah, and like it's it's
it's super messy. Yeah, it's one of those things like
you'd be you can talk about how it happened and
like what the actual impact was. But it is kind
of this like as much as many fucked up things
as like different players in this period carry out as

(39:13):
guys like Desolens do, it's like, also, well, I don't
know what would have worked better? Right, Yeah, Like you're
coming in in a messy as situation, hella messy, so
you like I got to start somewhere. I can't like
I can say, yeah, that didn't doesn't seem like it
worked out great, But I can't be like, well, here's
what would have worked better? Right? Right? Right? The guy
and yeah, like trying to do the hardest thing ever, right,

(39:35):
some suggestions in the year Yeah, I think word for
what I'm saying, like, yeah, you guys got ideas, Oh, three,
three centuries later, you still have figured it out and
stopped looking back at me. Yeahs Haiti air conditioning probably
would have solved some problems. Why don't you Why don't
you guys condition could have some American conditioning also, antibiotics.

(39:58):
Just throwing it out there, I'm just saying, how about automation.
You have all these people, there's a machine. Hello, We
eventually invented the Ford truck and that made a lot
of money. Could you guys have tried that in eight
Why don't you try not slavery? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, could
you try not being taken from your homeland and forced

(40:21):
onto an island to farm cotton? Maybe give that one
a shot. Can't try it? And then they were like,
you know what, here's the idea. We're gonna try not
being dark. I mean yeah he does eventually kind of yeah. Um,
but yeah, there's no good. There's no good. No, there's
no auctions for for any of these people in this period,
which is not to like, also not to whitewash the

(40:42):
fun up stuff that all of these different Haitian leaders do,
but like, what are you gonna do? Um again? So
Haiti is also and the thing that really makes this difficult, right,
because every every new nation that's been born has different
kinds of divisions and hurdles to overcome. Haiti is additionally
hobbled by something that makes it kind of impossible for
them to thrive economically, which is the fact that they

(41:04):
are completely locked out of the global market, which contributes
to rampant poverty and misery. In in order to gain
diplomatic recognition and entrance into the world market to be
able to trade with people, right, to be able to
actually like make things and sell them and import goods,
which you need to do in order to be a
part of the modern world. Right, Like it's that's just

(41:25):
the way it works. They're not allowed to. Um. So
they start negotiating with France in order to gain diplomatic
recognition and entrance into the world market. Um. Now, by
this point, the French had accepted that they were not
going to regain military control of the island, so they
agreed to recognize Haiti as a sovereign nation if it
paid reparations. Well, you stow yourselves from us, so you

(41:51):
owe us so you kind of oh my god, real, real,
real asshole move from France. There. Quote from a write
up by the Origins Project at Oklahoma State University. The
French government sent a team of accountants into Haiti in
order to place a value on all lands and physical assets,
including the five hundred thousand citizens were formerly enslaved, and

(42:13):
declared the value at a hundred and fifty million gold francs,
in which in contemporary terms would equate to well over
twenty billion dollars. Payments began immediately, and although Haiti was
able to officially by its economic freedom and diplomatic recognition,
the debt of a hundred and fifty million francs was
a massive burden from which Haitians have never been able
to fully recover. Although the official debt was later reduced,

(42:36):
France four Haiti to pay an annual fee for its
national sovereignty for nearly a hundred years, from eighteen twenty
five to nineteen twenty two. Good lord for almost a century.
Then Haiti endured French imposed pinury. By nineteen fifteen, and
we'll talk about what happens. In nineteen fifteen, Haiti still
owed France a hundred and twenty one million francs. So

(43:00):
for nearly a century they pay off their hundred and
twenty million debt, and in nineteen fifteen they undred and
twenty one million. Oh my god, oh my god. France
is a nation of fucking payday loan. Yes, just such
a such a bit of faccory right there. Uh man.

(43:22):
So much of their resources as a nation went to
paying off this debt. For instance, fifty one percent of
haities revenues from coffee went to service the exterioror debt
scent went to pay internal debts associated with building the
nation's infrastructure, with only two percent available for all other expenses.
Why doesn't Haiti have a functional state because they are

(43:43):
forbidden by law from building one, otherwise they won't be
able to pay off the debt that guarantees their their freedom. Yeah.
Think about that for a second. Yeah, yeah, you're just
it's on purpose. Yeah, This suffocating debt, more than any
other single factor, is why and how hate becomes the
poorest country in the Western hemisphere. That's it, right. We

(44:03):
can talk about funded up things different leaders did. We
can talk about mistakes made by and there's plenty of mistakes,
of course, all leaders make mistakes. Haiti is not allowed
to build a public sector. Yeah, they're not allowed to.
They've got that money is why France is so nice.
Part of it, right, for it steals from a lot
of people. If you want to know why Haiti so
fucked up, walk down the streets of Paris and look

(44:25):
at the nice monuments, like, oh, some of this was
paid for by the reason Haiti doesn't have functioning sewers. Damn,
that's why it's fucked up now. Of course, the fact
that Haiti agreed to bribe bribe France for access to
the world did not mean that the world accepted Haiti.
The United States continue to have a profoundly toxic opinion

(44:45):
of the ailing republic, and most European powers were equally
unwilling to do business with a nation who's founding with
such a threat to their domestic and international order. Again,
all these powers are based on slavery or based on
colonialism that verges on slavery. So even if the Haitians
themselves mostly just want hope and opportunity, right there, not
saying like our goal is Haiti is to overthrow the

(45:06):
global colonial system. They just want to have food and
ship right most people, um, they're very existence though, is
dangerous to the myth of white supremacy that the European
world order is based on think about every time we
talked about this in the Ethiopia episode, to think about
like you know, you and I talked about this, and
we talked about Spain in Algeria, Right, they get beaten

(45:27):
by this, by this African army and then they go
in with France with chemical weapons to massacre these people
because they can't stand the thought that they were defeated
to all the colonized people. Um, that's the very much
all of the West's attitude towards Haiti. These people beat
every Western army put against them. That can't be allowed
it and it unravels all of your origin stories, your

(45:51):
creation myths, your formation of identity. It unravels. You're looking
at evidence that you're full of crap and that you
can't let that that can't exist in your world. You know, Yeah,
it's kind of crazy. It's gonna feel like a jump,
But like I mean it, like when I think of
like that same sort of fear of of the unraveling

(46:16):
of your reality, I think a lot of ways it's
that same sort of like germ that's in this like
aversion towards like trans rights and like LGBT Q stuff,
because it's like, you have this universe that is ordered
a certain way, and these the existence of these people

(46:39):
means you've ordered the universe incompletely, you know what I'm saying,
So it has its genesis. There's something element of like
that idea of fomo. Right, you hear about your friends
going to a party that you're not going to and
it makes you feel like you're missing out. It's it's
this idea that like, if things elsewhere or if things
for their people are fundamentally different than they are for me,

(47:03):
then maybe I'm not doing things the best way possible.
Maybe the way I live isn't the the absolute best
way someone could live, And that makes me so angry
that I will commit a genocide totally because it's not
like because it's not about it's so true because it's
not about. When you start listening to like people's arguments
about rights, it's like, oh, you're not talking about rights.

(47:25):
You think they shouldn't exist. Like the reality of their different. Yes,
the reality of their existence is an affront to your universe.
So if I can take their rights, maybe they'll stop existing.
Is that your is that? Is that your logic? Because
that's what it sounds like your logic is so when
I think about like you said, like, well, well we

(47:48):
won't trade with Haiti, Well we wanted that. It's like,
because you all want them to exist, you don't think
this should have happened, but it did. And rather than
saying maybe I should rethink what I consider reality, I'd
rather just say no, we just we'll just make them
pay forever. Yeah, we'll just we'll just we'll just go

(48:10):
out of our way to sabotage them forever. Um, you
know who else will go out of their way to
sabotage hey t forever sabotage money going into black community. Yeah, boy,
this is it's not a great way to do an
ad plug prop. How do you feel about getting food

(48:35):
delivered deer House. I'm not gonna lie to you, man.
It's one of those one of those things that are
clearly a privilege. But that's what that word means because
it is great. Well, there we go. That's a better
way to lead a nats uh uh, So we're bad.

(49:03):
I guess we are. We're back. That's the sound that
you find in your place in this script. It is
it is so Haitian politics doesn't grow more functional over
the course of the eighteen hundreds for reasons we've discussed.
There's a bunch of revolts. Right when people can't build
any kind of uh, functional civil society, or when it's
a lot harder and all of their money is going

(49:25):
to other countries, it's difficult to um, you know, have
a happy civil anyway. So the republic had kicked off
with an emperor than reverted to a republican government with
presidents and stuff. But in the eighteen forties they go
back to having emperors. And also the eighteen forties and
the eighty four when the Dominican Republic fights a war
with Haiti and they separate, so there's there's two different

(49:45):
countries on the same island. The Menican Republic is definitely
it seems to be in a better position than than
Haiti has been lately. Uma, but they have constant they're
like always kind of at each other's throats, like there's
a bunch of a bunch of a bunch of issues
going on between the anyway that all happens, uh. And
then in eighteen fifty nine there's a military coup in
Haiti and that brings back a republican government and president

(50:07):
presidents again. So we go from emperor to president to
emperor to president right. Um. In eighteen sixty one, the
outbreak of the Civil War gives the people who didn't
totally suck in US politics an opportunity to recognize the
Haitian government. After a long Congressional debate, President Lincoln enacts
the law recognizing Haiti and appointing the first U S
Haitian Commissioner. So that is, we recognize Haiti kind of

(50:30):
as like a fuck you to the Confederacy. Yeah, that's
what you really don't like somebody like, you know what.
A matter of fact, Haiti, I'll rock with y'all. Yeah,
I'll take it, like yeah, all right. So the political situation, though,
does not grow more stable in the late eighteen hundreds.

(50:51):
In eighteen nineties six, President Hippolyte died of a stroke
on his way to crush a rebellion in the Southwest.
He was replaced by President teresi is Sam, who was
nicknamed the incompetent for reasons that are probably pretty obvious,
right not not because he was so popular. Um. Under
his ages, the Haitian government grew more corrupt and less
functional than ever The most egregious example of this was

(51:14):
the finance minister, the President's cousin, Gilliam Gilliam Sam developed
an extensive grift system, whereby he would have the government
order and pay for non existent goods, and then pocket
the payment himself. President Sam allowed dozens of his relatives
and positions of power. Together they robbed the nation blind
while blinder um. This compounded the economic misery created by

(51:36):
the crushing debt to France. Under Sam's reign, civil service
salaries were cut by public works projects almost ceased entirely.
When Sam came to power. A tramway station had been
under construction in Porta Prince, and the beginnings of a
national railway station had been laid. All of this died
on the vine as the Sam family sucked Haiti dry.
In nineteen o two, dogged by economic disaster and riotous

(52:00):
content among the citizenry, Sam resigned. He barely escaped with
his lute ahead of a mob bent on murdering him
and his family. Foreign diplomats escorted him to the docks,
and he eventually wound up in Europe with his fortune. Again.
The reason part of like he's he's not, He's not
just stealing money. He's greasing palms in Europe because yeah, again,

(52:20):
they're They're always. All of these grifter dictators are very
tied to the West and generally backed by them and
often funded by them. Um, and the wake of his
disastrous regime came political chaos. He was eventually succeeded by
a very old man named Nord Alexis, who was overthrown
himself a couple of years later by a revolt in

(52:41):
the middle of all of this chaos. These just constant revolts, right,
no peaceful transfers of power. And in the middle of
all this chaos, on April fourteenth, nineteen o seven, Francois
du Volier is born into duval in Euritia du Volier. Now,
this is, by the way, the subject of our episode,
Francois Duvolier, the guy better known as Papa Doc. Um. Yeah,

(53:03):
it would be an understatement to say that he did
not grow up in a functional state, right. This guy
doesn't fuck haiti up. This guy is born into fun
and adopts it. You call y'all with that one. Okay,
that's good. So when Papa doc was a toddler, President

(53:24):
Alexis is succeeded by Antoine Simone, who ruled for three
years before another revolt forced him to flee to Jamaica.
The next president, Lecante, came to power when Francois was
about five. He survived only a single year in office.
He was murdered by again unknown assassins. His body was
hidden to cover up their crime. The conspirators blew up

(53:45):
the presidential palace on August eight, nineteen twelve, leaving Haiti
without a capitol building or ahead of state now. Despite
the shall we say tumultuous times, Francois parents managed to
make a decent living. They were lower middle class but
upwardly mobile. His father, Duval, was a school teacher and
his mother, Euridia, worked for a bakery. Duval was politically

(54:08):
active and aware. He wanted a better life for his children,
and he worked like a demon in order to scrape
together the funds necessary to send his son to private
schools in nineteen which is something very few Haitians that
never happens. The education system is not in good shape,
so he grows up very well educated in nineteen. Hold
that thought, because I would be doing you and the

(54:29):
listeners a horrible disservice and if I didn't stop and
acknowledge the name Papa Doc. Papa Doc. Yes, in the
here's a pop culture reference. So he was a character
an eight Mile the the Eminem movie. Oh really, I
gotta happen. Yeah, yeah, I know what eight mile is.
But yeah, so yeah, I was like, I don't know

(54:49):
how far down his rabble I need to go. Papa
Doc was one of the main characters, and it seems
like it seemed like a strange name to choose as
a rapper, unless you know who Papa Dock is. Yeah, Haiti.
So there you go. Connect your dots, guys. That is interesting. Yeah,
I was unaware of that part because all I know
about the eight Mile movie is Rabbit that it's about.

(55:11):
It's about Eminem, Mom Spaghetti exactly, Mom Spaghetti. Um. So.
In nineteen fifteen, when Francois was eight, Haitian President Joseph
daffl Mar Theodore was ousted and yet another coup, this
one of the military variety. He was replaced by General
Jean Phil Brune. Gilliam Sam now the president and of

(55:33):
the United States in this period is a fellow named
Woodrow Wilson, who is one of the most racist people
who's ever been president of the United States, which is
which is bar So you are saying, as listeners of
two people that y'all know on this pod, me and
Robert are bona fide history nerds, we know what the
hell we talk about. Well, we tell you that Woodrow

(55:54):
Wilson Old the Crown. He's up there. Yes, he's competed
with guys like eight Team twin because he would like
Andrew Jackson, and we're probably like you could like like
they named the Trail of Tears after this man. He's
a loyal piece of ship. Yes, so like like, let's

(56:14):
pause for a second, really outraci he is. He is
a repeatedly praised the Ku Klux Klan and screened a
movie about their founding in the White House level races,
and Woodrow Wilson is particularly concerned. Um, he's he's concerned
for a number reasons. Number one, he sees a black
republic as a week is a weak link in the
political structure of the Caribbean, which is really close to

(56:35):
the United States. So you know, um, he's also further
concerned by you know, in this period, World War One
has just kicked off, right UM and Germany, prior to
World War One, had developed strong economic interests on the
island of Haiti. UM German investor or on the island
of Hispaniel. In the Haitian nation, UM German investors had

(56:56):
started to directly impact Haitian politics, and eighteen nine two
Germany had been instrumental in defeating a reform movement within
the Haiti that would have hurt their economic design. So
this is a weak government, it's a country that's in chaos.
Colonizers see the opportunity in this. Germany doesn't colonize Haiti,
but they come in and they help defeat a political
movement that would have been bad for the interests of

(57:17):
German corporations. Right. So, in the months leading to the
coup that brought General Sam to power, Wilson had been
considering sending in US troops to Haiti to replace the
government with one that would be more friendly to us
and interests and less friendly to German ones. And again,
the Germans are against positive reform in the Haitian government.
The US doesn't support positive reform in the Haitian government.

(57:38):
We just want a government that's more friendly to our
companies than to German ones. Right. Um, So the coup
gave him the excuse that he needed, right, and in
short order he sends the United States Marines, including frequent
bastards pod Side character Smedley Butler, into occupied Haiti. Yeah, Smedley,
counterinsurgency work there, dog smed He's still he's still a

(58:02):
heel at this point. Now heel turn. He has a
real good heel turn, which we've talked about, but he's
still a heel at this period. So from nineteen yeah,
Smedley's in play. So from nineteen fifteen to nineteen thirty four,
which is basically all of Francois de Volier's childhood and
early adulthood, the United States rules Haiti with an iron fist.

(58:25):
Protests that break out against the occupation are put down
with machine gun fire. In one protest alone, US soldiers
gunned down two thousand Haitian protesters. So, yeah, we're not
talking like Kent State here, We're talking, are you know? Yeah? Um.
From a write up by the Origins Project. Quote, for

(58:47):
nineteen years, the United States controlled customs in Haiti, collected taxes,
and ran many governmental institutions, all of which benefited the
United States in ninety two, for example, the United States
extended Haiti a debt consolidation and loan that was designed
to pay off its remaining debt to France, but in
many ways, Haiti simply exchanged one master for another. Although

(59:07):
Haiti was finally free if it's debt to France, it
now had a new creditor, the US government and the
US banks, who made a small fortune off the loan arrangement.
So US is is like, I can help you out
with this France problem, because like France, France right nineteen
fifteen desperately needs us help because they have gone broke
fighting this stupid, stupid fucking war, Like we can't really

(59:31):
afford to do anything but barely hold off the Germans.
The US is like, well, we gotta, we gotta proposition
for you, Like when we work this out, we'll give
give you guys some money up front, you cut down
the loan, but also had he's gonna owe us forever.
And now this is why you never open your junk mail.
Thatsolidate your debt. Yeah, like that's what just this is

(59:53):
what you're looking at right now. Yeah, you're about to
get Haiti. Yeah. So although the US finally withdrew troops
from Haiti in nineteen thirty four. The U. S. Government
still maintained fiscal control over the country until nineteen forty seven. Again,
the US has never had colonies. We just maintained military
and control of Haiti for nineteen years and then controlled

(01:00:14):
their finance system until seven, when they finally paid off
their loan to us UM. In order to pay off
this loan, Haiti was forced to expend its entire gold
reserves pretty much, which left the company bereft of any
kind of hard currency. Perhaps more importantly, the removal of
the U. S. Military didn't mean the end of US
military influence in Haiti. In nineteen sixteen, We're gonna talk

(01:00:37):
about some ship that happened while the US was in
charge here. In nineteen sixteen, the all white wives of U. S.
Marine Corps officers joined their husbands on the island. Right.
They were immediately, in the words of one source, I
found squeamish about meeting or socializing with native Haitians. You
have to remember, these women are white women coming from
the segregated United States, where many of them had probably
never met a black person who wasn't a servant, and

(01:00:58):
going to it. Then they went to an island where
the black people were ostensibly in charge. Obviously the US
is in charge, but there we like the fiction that
we're letting them govern this, right. They were disgusted by this.
They refused polite invitations to dance and snubbed even the
Haitian elite. As a result, US occupiers formed essentially their
own micro society in Haiti. This really piste off the

(01:01:20):
Haitian elite. Of course, so again they're the elite. They
also suck right like, but they're also justly piste off
by how racist these white Americans who come over an okay, yeah, yeah,
and they're increasingly disgusted not only by the racism of
these these occupiers, but by how fucking drunk they get.
So at this point, Haitian culture was very conservative in

(01:01:43):
regards to alcohol consumption. Um, crowds of drink and yeah,
these guys are fucking these guys are white people in
nineteen sixteen drunk, which is we still have not eclipsed
those levels of drunk. Yeah. And let's say, I don't know,
by drink like white people boy, so to imagine a boy, yeah,
it's a yeah. Yeah. Their nightcaps are just points of liquor,

(01:02:06):
you know. Um, So how drunk these Americans get when
they get time off, when it's like the weekend or whatever.
This horrifies them. And they're also shocked by the seer
sheer frequency with which US soldiers engaged in whoring. Again,
nobody's I mean nobody whoards like soldiers. I'm not going
to say the US is particularly that's just it. But

(01:02:32):
but yeah, people, but it's it's at a level that
they were not used to see. Um. In a few years,
there are a hundred and forty seven new dance halls
and saloons, most of which are barely disguised brothels. Since
Americans were getting super racist, they had to import girls
to work in these places, generally lighter skinned women from
the Dominican Republic. Rights. Again, you never get over this

(01:02:54):
racial cast system, even when it's like some drunk nineteen
year old Texan boy, like, it's all the fucking you know,
the divide between mixed race and black YadA, YadA, keeps going. Um.
US domination brought Jim Crow hotels, segregated Catholic masses, and
segregated white neighborhoods. The US remade Haiti in its own image,

(01:03:15):
which meant instituting something that looked like democracy if you squinted,
but was really just a way to make sure no
one wound up president who wasn't good for us business interests.
Not all that different from our presences. Yeah, yeah, in fairness,
we do the same thing to ourselves in this regard. Yeah. Um,
this is important because the elections that take place during

(01:03:37):
this period are the first ones. Friendcois Duvalier would have
been really cognizant of. Right. There's again there's a lot
of chaos in his childhood, but by the time he's
eight nineteen years old old enough to like no ship
and actually like think about what's happening. This is the
kind of elections that are happening. And this excerpt from
the book Haiti, the Davoliers and their Legacy makes it
clear that this was not a good thing. Quote though

(01:04:00):
are the Americans insisted on the semblance of democracy, They
refused even the slightest democratic substance. Nowhere was this more
obvious than an American sponsored Haitian presidential elections. The State
Department approved the first occupation, President Philip Sudre, not even
going to try to pronounce that last name. Sorry. After
he agreed to surrender financial control and receivership of the
customs haiti sole source of revenue, asking in return only

(01:04:22):
from marine protection against assassin's He was the sole candidate.
His rival Dr Rosalvo Bobo had earlier disqualified himself with
fits of peak and arrestability. Allow election of president to
take place whenever Haitians want, ordered Secretary of State Daniels,
the US prefers the election of the guy that was
the only real candidate. Um. And again he's saying, I

(01:04:44):
will give you all of our money if you make
me the boss and give me marines to stop me
from being murdered. Right, that's the deal. I want your
jack boots to protect me. I will give you all
of my people's money in response. UM. As a result,
Franchois early political understand name was heavily informed and influenced
by completely understandable hatred of the United States. As a

(01:05:05):
young man, he wrote articles for the nationalist anti occupation
newsletter Action Nationale. He used a pseudonym Abderrahman to avoid
being arrested or murdered by US occupiers. In nine Francois
and a black lawyer in Mystic named Laura more Denise.
Lauramer Denise founded the Haitian Negratude movement. Now, the Negratude, Yeah,

(01:05:26):
have you heard of this great word? It is a
great word, and it's it's in brief, it's a black
nationalist movement that advocates black Haitians overthrowing or otherwise taking
power both from the the Americans who were you know,
colon I well, who were dominating, colonized whatever you wanna
call it their nation, and from the mixed race political
elite who collaborated with European colonizers in the US in

(01:05:49):
this period, but who throughout Like yeah, now, if you'll
remember from earlier in the episode, voodoo had a long
history as part of the black liberation struggle in Haiti,
and voodoo becomes a major part of the neg Tude movement,
right because it's authentically ours, right, you know, it's not
it's not something you've got this kind of mixed race
dominated political and economic elite who's working with the Americans,

(01:06:11):
who's trying who are trying to become more Western, right,
who are adopted Western clothing, Western customs and stuff. Because
that's where the money is in partant because it's just fashionable,
and Francois and others like him, we're like, no, what
we need to do is actually that this is authentically ours.
Voodoo's arms doesn't like like fuck their ship, we don't
need your ship. Very understandable motivations um The negratude movement

(01:06:33):
continued to grow as Francois went to medical school in
the early nineteen thirties. He graduated in nineteen thirty four,
which is the same year that the U. S Marines
finally left his country. He started his medical career working
in hospitals and clinics around Port of Prince. In the
late nineteen thirties, he and Laura mur Denise founded a
pro Voodoo African focused political organization called the Grillo, which

(01:06:55):
means the Bards. The Grio included an academic journal where
France While bushed articles laying out his thoughts on the
negrotude movement. He also wrote a book in which he
urged black Hasians to take power from the mixed race elite.
Despite his hatred of the US government, He traveled to
the mountainous interior of Haiti to work as part of
a US supported effort to wipe out malaria and yaws,

(01:07:15):
which is a horrible disease. I don't know much about.
Yaws is a bad disease. This happens in the night
in the early forties, and you find when you find
writings about this guy, a lot of them portrayed as
like baffling or inconsistent. Will this guy hates the U
S why is he doing because he he's a doctor
and they're helping fight a disease. Like, it doesn't mean
they didn't do a bunch of other fun up shit.
It means he's like, Okay, I'll take your money to

(01:07:36):
vaccinate people. Yeah. I don't think it's in any way inconsistent. Yeah,
um yeah. Francois seems to have been good at this work,
and eventually he becomes the head of a clinic. In
August of nineteen forty four, he briefly travels to the
United States to attend Michigan State University to study public health.
Does he's not in there long? But if you if
you went to Michigan State, what if you're Papa Doc.

(01:08:01):
Papa Doc went to Michigan State man famed in Michigan
State grad Well, but yeah, he goes um. So he
never finishes the program, and he rather quickly goes back
to Haiti to continue his work trying to eliminate laws.
At the same time, he helps another doctor named Price
Mars formed the Bureau of Ethnology, an organization dedicated to

(01:08:22):
studying and propagating indigenous Haitian customs, including voodoo. Now, at
this point Francois d Volier is pretty rad. Unfortunately, in
the mid nineteen forties, he makes the call to get
into politics, which is not a thing that ever tends
to go well for people. And I want to quote
now from a book published by the Federal Research Division
of the Library of Congress in nine Francois de Volier's

(01:08:44):
first overly political act was to become general secretary of
Danielle Fignol's Party of Young Professionals, the m O P.
Incame a I'm sorry, there's so many like a lot
of happening the m O P. As far as like, uh,
the rap group from New York, which I never thought about,
you know what I'm saying, and um, and then when

(01:09:06):
you said the Grio, I always thought that was a
reference reference to the griyachts, you know, we're like the
African storytellers. But yeah, yeah, yeah, it's g R g
R I O T S. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, Okay, cool.
I was just pronounced to it probably wrong, Okay, I
thought it was something else. I was like, no, it
mean it's barred. So yeah, it's like African storytellers. Yeah yeah, yeah, okay,

(01:09:30):
oh man, Okay, well then yeah, there it is. So
there's all these like these ties that like I knew
the Papa doc one, but I didn't think about the
m O p one. You know what I'm saying. That's dope. Okay, Anyway,
may I hope it's I hope MP is referring to that.
Yeah yeah, I honestly don't know. Um, but yeah, it's
fucking yeah, it's it's fascinating. So he becomes a protege

(01:09:52):
in six of a guy named du Marcailles esteem A
uh and then um steam A becomes like the MP candidate.
A steam A gets elected president and Davolier enters his
cabinet as the Minister of Labor. But a steam Ay
gets ousted in a coup in nineteen fifty, right, and
Duvalier loses his job. Um, so when a steam Ay,

(01:10:15):
the guy who had made Duvolier a member a minister
of Labor gets you know, forced out of power. A
new guy, General Magliore, takes power right, so again one
of these things that keeps happening in Haitian history, and Duvolier,
because he was a member of the old government, finds
himself a wanted man, and he winds up hiding from
the government. He befriends a school teacher named Clement Barbeau,
who becomes his trusted friend and helps him move from

(01:10:37):
one hiding place to the next, often dressed as a woman.
For years, Duvolier hid and built a base of supporters
in the mountains, biding his time until the end came
from Magliore, which it did in nineteen fifties six. So
he spends years kind of like a guerilla leader, right,
doing the castro thing, right, hiding in the mountains, building
my support. He's got support in the mountains already because
he's this famous doctor who helped people with these horrible diseases,

(01:10:59):
so he's very well liked there and he starts building.
Uh yeah, he builds up a movement. Um. So nineteen
fifty six, General Magleore gets kicked out in ten months
of chaos follows in which six different governments attempt and
failed to hold onto power. While this was going on,
du Vallier succeeded in appointing his followers to several public offices.
So while all these different dudes are like trying to

(01:11:22):
take power and failing, he's kind of quietly like making
deals with whoever he has due to shotgun guys loyal
to him into different political positions in order to and
he uses these guys a beachheads to build support for
a regime headed by him among civil servants. Right, what
the kind of equivalent to the deep state. That's what
he's trying to hes trying to set his guys up
and positions that don't get overthrown because nobody wants to

(01:11:44):
overthrow the guy keeping the sewers going or whatever. Yeah yeah, yeah,
but if that guy's will to you, and then the
guy doing this, the guy doing that, the guy keeping
power going, right, that you gradually build up a basis
support makes it easy for you to take over. He's
very smart about this, is what I'm saying, very methodical
about it. He doesn't just take the easy grabbed to
get power. Because those motherfuckers are going to get kicked
out by the other people. He lets them fight among
themselves a while. In nineteen fifty seven, after again six

(01:12:08):
different governments try and fail to hold onto power, Haiti
has another election and Davolier runs on a campaign of
what one writer called undeluded africanism um, and one of
the things he advocates is the removal from public life
of all Mulatto's. Well, I say that. But despite this
rather hard line, a number of Mulatto business owners, a

(01:12:29):
lot of these rich mixed race elite, support his run
for president because he assures them in private that he
didn't really mean what he was saying. Okay, Like no,
I'm just I'm saying. We all make campaign promises. It's
like creature, like we're to remove all the light skin.
We're not gonna really all the light skin. Gotta go

(01:12:51):
Drake out of here. Yeah, it was his, It was
his closing Guantanamo. Yeah, I just threw Drake under a buzz.
I was about to say with Rob he just light skinned,
shave it a heart into his head, Like we're not
just put just irrationally salty. We you know, we still

(01:13:15):
beef with the Mulatto's we need to really work this out.
We still we need to really work this out with him.
I got, I got no comment there, No, don't don't
this in house debate here, guys. A matter of fact,
one of the shows we did on the my mama
told me with listing that was my episode about like
light scared people are sensitive, and if this is the case,

(01:13:36):
I'm like, well, we did try to run y'all out
of Haiti, so maybe you got it. Honestly, this is
obviously obviously, this is ridiculous. I don't really think about
this about light scared people. But it was a very
funny thing to point out. So from a right up
by the New York Times here um about how de

(01:13:56):
Volier kind of comes to power because it's not, you know,
the election is a very flawed election, um. And and
it's more a matter of who he's able to get
in his corner before the quote unquote vote happens. Du
Volier had the all important support of the army, whose
generals considered him affectless puppet. Even his campaign workers openly
boasted that they could easily manipulate him, and some rewrote
his campaign speeches without even consulting him. She Haitian intellectuals

(01:14:20):
who were later exiled have speculated that Duvolier, far from
being a stupid pawn, cunningly stepped into a deceptive role
as puppet and figurehead, playing various power blocks and interests
against one another to divide and conquer. And conquer he
did with an overwhelming majority in the election of September
twenty two, nineteen fifty seven. He was inaugurated on October
twenty two. The two dates were felicitous ones from his

(01:14:40):
point of view, as Papa Doc had always considered twenty
two his lucky number. He was to continue to hold
it in superstitious reverence. Francois came to power with the
support of the army, who are again in a very
like themselves, in a pretty desperate situation in fifty seven.
They were very unpopular, disorganized, not very well equipped or trained,
and Francois saw this as an opportunity. He was a
smart guy. He lived through a lot of military coups

(01:15:02):
and he was not going to let that ship happen
to him. So one of his first acts when he
becomes president, um like two years after he takes office
in nineteen fifty nine is he starts building a civilian
militia which will be the Tonton mccoot. Are kind of
described alternatingly as a secret police and a militia and

(01:15:23):
uh an imperial guard. They're not really any of those,
and they're kind of all of them. It's an interesting
organization how he makes this as he starts drawing in
poor young men from Capital City slums and he arms
them with an antique guns that he found in the
basement of the Presidential Palace, and he puts them under
the command of his old friend Clement Barbeau, who had
helped him hide out during the bad years. This militia

(01:15:46):
he calls officially the Volunteers for National Security or vs N,
and they become better known as the Tonton mccoot, whose
name was taken from a myth about a Haitian uncle
who kidnaps and punishes bad kids by trapping them in
a gunny sack and then eating them for breakfast. H Um. Yeah,
that's like they're not they're called that because they're scary,
because people are terrified. Okay. Yeah. From the New York

(01:16:09):
Times quote. Within weeks, hundreds of Davoliers political enemies were
thrown into jail, others simply disappeared, and within a year,
according to the later claim if Mr Barbow, more than
three persons had been killed by the Tontons on Devolier's
personal orders. And as we'll discuss in part two, Jason's
only get worse from there. That's Part one. Some Haitian history,

(01:16:30):
some Papa doc Papa good stuff, Good stuff man, Papa
dot man. Go back to just battle rapping man, when
you were just spitting bars to be rabbit. You know
it was better than Yeah, you got any plugs for us?
Prop man Hood Politics will PROP coming at you. Uh,
We're we're cranking um in the Politics pod uh Instagram

(01:16:55):
and in Twitter is cranking. We're doing silly takes on that.
Uh you know, things that can't you know, become a
full episode. So we're doing takes on that. Uh. Prop
hip hop dot Com for the book and for the
music and for the Instagram and the twitters. It's all
proper hip hop right Well. Check out prop, check out

(01:17:19):
Hood Politics, and check out I Got a book if
you find it at a t r book dot com.
You can find the podcast After the Revolution. Check that
shout out too, I'm a man. I'm I'm I'm I'm
I'm caught up on it with with with skull fucker
on his uh. Every time I hear every time I
hear the names on this, I'm like, I can totally

(01:17:41):
picture Robert just giggling as you keep making these names, like, oh,
oh no, you shouldn't. I will never write a British
person into a story again. Oh would you trying to
do the British terrible mistake on? Oh my god, it's
so unbelively fun for me. Oh my god, I hate it. Yeah,

(01:18:04):
I hate it. Well, I enjoy it. I enjoy you
attempting to do the British accent. I love Robert. Hey,
by the way, he thought he's British, not Australian, so
that an island. I am on record as saying British
and Australian people are the same thing. Um, one could argue, yeah,

(01:18:26):
all right, well if you think British and Australian people
are different, hit me up on Twitter and argue with me,
but I will not respond to you episodes over Hey, everybody.
Initially I was going to plug the go fund me
for the sequel to my book. Um, after the Revolution,
which you can find at a t r book dot com.
But um, here in the Pacific Northwest, we're having an

(01:18:48):
unprecedented heat wave and it's causing disastrous conditions, life threatening
conditions for a lot of houseless people, a lot of
people without air conditioning. UM, particularly in the city of Salem.
UM activists everywhere have been kind of gathering to try
and um mitigate set up cooling stations, hand out cold drinks,
to do things to help people get their temperature down. UM.

(01:19:09):
I want to try and raise funds for the Free
Fridge of Salem, UM, which are doing cooling stations in
the capital of Oregon, Salem. So if you go to
venmo At Free Fridge Salem, that's venemo At Free Fridge Salem,
and send them a couple of bucks, they could really
use it. UM. Local government has destroyed a number like
police particularly have destroyed a number of water and cooling

(01:19:30):
stations they've set out. UM. It's you know, we're not
going to be in triple digit heats for the next
couple of days after I'm recording this on Monday, but
it's still going to be very hot. People still need this,
so please venmo At Free fridge Salem. If you have
the wherewithal and the financial resources to do so one
more time, the Venemo is at free fridge Salem. Thanks

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: Pappa Doc and Baby Doc: Dictators of Haiti