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Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

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Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#41
post #30
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's another thing that is missing, the article says " Haiti and the D.R. share the same geography " but that is quite wrong, as Haiti was actually the undesirable part of the island, an unexploited part that was opportunistically colonised by France because Spain didn't use it. They don't share the same geography or natural resources at all, most of the settled, economically important places both in Haiti and DR…

The article claims the opposite: > Haiti [...] is steadily losing arable land. But it still has more arable land than the entire Dominican Republic, despite being only about half as large in terms of territory! So the D.R. actually had — and has — less opportunity to farm. Seems almost the opposite of your argument, if we substitute "plains that are not salt marshes" for "arable land". I don't know which is true or w…

Weird, but Wikipedia does say of the DR that almost 80% of the total land area [is] suitable for crop production and that the main exports are fruits such as avocado, papaya, bananas, cocoa, etc, which don't grow on arable land anyway. In 1998, arable land totaled 1,020,000 hectares; with land under permanent crops at 480,000 hectares.[0]

While on Haiti, it says that of the total arable land of 550,000 hectares, 125,000 hectares are suited for irrigation, and of those only 75,000 hectares actually have been improved with irrigation.[1]

So while I'm sure Haiti could do better than what they are doing now, it seems curious to say that it is more suited for farming than the Dominican Republic. I think the author might have misread numbers.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Dominican_Repub...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Haiti#Agriculture,_...

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#42

This is kind of ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that Haiti was born from a successful slave revolt and and one of the first things it did as an independent country was to expel or kill virtually all the whites, expropriate their property and destroy all the institutions associated with them. Both culturally and genetically (95.5% per Wikipedia), Haiti thus has a lot in common with sub-Saharan Africa, anot…

expropriate their property and destroy all the institutions associated with them An odd phrasing considering that their own bodies were considered their property and slavery was among the institutions. Government was the primary institution and one which the freed slaves did not abolish.

Government and the economy are just people, they're not actually a 'thing'. If you kill off the people who have experience running the economy, government, education system (I know, Haiti's was likely tiny and only for the ruling class and likely consisted of a few private tutors), then there's no one to teach the next generation and you have no government or economy.

Instead of killing off the slavers, pressing them into forced restitution as advisors and educators would have been better for Haitians, more satisfying, and just.

Why kill the governor who knows not only how to builds roads but where and when they should be built, and instead force him to continue doing his job, only his payment is now a stay of execution?

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#43
post #31

This is kind of ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that Haiti was born from a successful slave revolt and and one of the first things it did as an independent country was to expel or kill virtually all the whites, expropriate their property and destroy all the institutions associated with them. Both culturally and genetically (95.5% per Wikipedia), Haiti thus has a lot in common with sub-Saharan Africa, anot…

There is LOTS of context missing before we get to the 1804 massacre of the remaining whites in Haiti. Thirteen years of conflict and war took place before this happened. Why? Enslaved people wanted what the French Declaration of the Rights of Man guaranteed, that "all men free and equal." In struggling for this Haitians were bounced around like a football, between the great powers of France, Spain, and Britain. Every…

>He had also seen brutality the likes of which we cannot imagine

We don't need to imagine because ISIS filmed it in 1080p for us.

Of if you want something a little less cultural exotic there's plenty of examples from the Balkans.

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#44
post #18
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what is the marshmallow in this analogy? The surplus of resources, I guess. The disposable income of a nation.

If Haiti had, say, vast oil wealth but wasted the proceeds and you compared it specifically to Norway (who have, all things considered, responsibly handled their oil wealth) then sure. But I cannot see what resources or wealth representing the "marshmallow" that they are supposed to have foolishly, greedily gobbled up. It doesn't make sense, it's just someone painting the Haitians as a short-sighted and reckless peop…

>But I cannot see what resources or wealth representing the "marshmallow" that they are supposed to have foolishly, greedily gobbled up.

The entire reason they were a colony was due to having vast amounts of arable land where coffee and sugar cane was grown. That's ignoring the natural beauty of the country that would be ripe for tourism if they had corruption and crime under control.

It doesn't make sense to act as if Haiti is a barren wasteland with no possible way to generate wealth. The "marshmallow" is quite literally the wealth the country as a whole can generate. They are one of the worst countries in the entire world when it comes to corruption index:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#45
I didn't see it mentioned but I had heard that the Haitians deforested most of their more mountainous side of Hispaniola so what little top soil was there was washed away. This is also why there is a torrential flood risk especially during and after tropical storms.

The Cibao on the Dominican side is a really fertile and productive agricultural area.

Haitians are pretty much screwed, especially with friends like the Clinton Foundation, who needs enemies.

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#46
post #25

As an American expat who has lives on Hispaniola for more than a decade, I have a pretty strong opinion on this. I can’t be sure how much of this is casual and how much is symptomatic, but I I strongly believe that the main driver of the -current outlook- is culture. Both Haiti and the Dominican Republic are majority slave- descendants. Spanish were inclusive with their culture, tending to extend it to slaves, and Do…

Bingo! I'm Dominican and completely agree with your points. Just to add one important difference as well is that Spaniards converted their slaves into Christianity or Catholicism religion where the French never bothered with institutionalizing their religion to theirs. One of the many reason why Haitians culture gravitates more towards Afro descendant rituals and traditions.

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#47
post #31

This is kind of ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that Haiti was born from a successful slave revolt and and one of the first things it did as an independent country was to expel or kill virtually all the whites, expropriate their property and destroy all the institutions associated with them. Both culturally and genetically (95.5% per Wikipedia), Haiti thus has a lot in common with sub-Saharan Africa, anot…

There is LOTS of context missing before we get to the 1804 massacre of the remaining whites in Haiti. Thirteen years of conflict and war took place before this happened. Why? Enslaved people wanted what the French Declaration of the Rights of Man guaranteed, that "all men free and equal." In struggling for this Haitians were bounced around like a football, between the great powers of France, Spain, and Britain. Every…

Exactly this. To discuss Toussaint and 1804 and not discuss the French commander Rochambeau is extremely misleading. He brought gas chambers to Haiti via and was systematically massacring blacks. The entire war turned brutal.

Haiti knew trade was key as they were the wealthiest colony in the west. Toussaint actually negotiated treaties with John Adams and welcomed American investment and trade deals along with other nations. What happened (and again Haiti perspectives comes in to play of who was writing history and what gets emphasized), was a nation of slave gaining independence and defeating Napoleon in military combat. That absolutely shocked the European powers. They were all slave holding counties and their immediate acts was to stop Haiti from succeeding at all costs.

In the US Thomas Jefferson took over, and being a southern pro-plavery president he immediately blocked all trade with Haiti knowing that the colony depended on trade to survive financially. France as well planned to essentially starve the country economically and take it back over later. The entire western powers effectively put the country under embargo. They were deathly afraid it would inspire other slave areas to want freedom (lots of texts written about this) and the way they decided to stop it was to ensure Haiti fails as a country.

The fighting in that war for independence was brutal and ugly on all sides. Toussaint was a brilliant leader and likely would've taken the country to success. He beat what were considered to European armies is the time. Final after winning again against the French, they invited him to "parley" and when he came for the discussion they captured him and threw him in a prison where he died. They could not beat him and finally that was his they stopped him. For diplomatic negotiation and the capture. And that was maybe the third back stab by the European powers at the time. He was the father of Haiti, their George Washington.

His replacement is the one who never forgave that and who militarily was against Rochembeau and who was after this betrayal we no longer want any Europeans here. Previously the British betrayed them, said they'd fight with with against France to end slavery. They agreed - allied with the British and then a the hatians they took all the militarily losses and handed territory to the British to be British free colonies the British came in and started enslaving the Haitians again.

The period of that time is insanely complex. All of a sudden I've seen the narrative of OP being pushed everywhere. Because it's "easy" and people can think of Zimbabwe as an easy analogy - that's wrong. And frequently people pushing it then turn it into discussions of current US politics. [And that's where I'll stop because I don't want this to start down that trail]. What went on in Haiti is way more complex than that simplistic narrative.

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#48
post #11

This is kind of ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that Haiti was born from a successful slave revolt and and one of the first things it did as an independent country was to expel or kill virtually all the whites, expropriate their property and destroy all the institutions associated with them. Both culturally and genetically (95.5% per Wikipedia), Haiti thus has a lot in common with sub-Saharan Africa, anot…

What exactly do you think is the significance of the “genetic similarity to sub-Saharan Africa” Please be very, very specific

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_A

"5.2% of Black men, 0.1% of European men, and 1.3% of Asian men carried the 2R allele"

"2R allele of the VNTR region of the gene and an increase in the likelihood of committing serious crime or violence has been found"

"the 2R allele and a higher likelihood of violent behavior in adolescents and young adults"

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#49
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, history shows that revolutions which consist killing or expelling all the educated, well-off citizen typically end up having pretty bad results for everybody. Even if you successfully capture their wealth, the future will be poor when there's nobody competent enough left to manage administration, education, farms, industry, infrastructure and so on. And once things go downhill like that, it's not easy to turn t…

It's fairly easy to take the racial pieces out of this and talk about it in abstract. What you're losing when you kill / expel the wealthy (whomever they are) and expropriate / redistribute property is cultural investment in institutions. In that people may feel the previous system was unjust , but they nevertheless believed in it. That belief (aka trust) takes generations to build. Revolutions which violently disloc…

another point I remember being made on the aftermath of successful revolutions was how revolutions tend to select leaders which are ill-suited to rebuild the institutions after they have won

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#50
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fairly easy to take the racial pieces out of this and talk about it in abstract. What you're losing when you kill / expel the wealthy (whomever they are) and expropriate / redistribute property is cultural investment in institutions. In that people may feel the previous system was unjust , but they nevertheless believed in it. That belief (aka trust) takes generations to build. Revolutions which violently disloc…

another point I remember being made on the aftermath of successful revolutions was how revolutions tend to select leaders which are ill-suited to rebuild the institutions after they have won

To some degree, revolutions feel like the primary / general election distinction.

In that the things you have to say and positions you have to hold to inspire people to revolution, are ill suited to post-revolution rebuilding.

Which is probably why it's rare: you'd need someone who's self-aware enough to hold both views, talented enough to have both skillsets, and politically astute enough to navigate that pivot with their colleagues and constituents.

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