Invade Haiti, Wall Street Urged.The U.S. Obliged.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Excellent point. It has always seemed that the only righteous revolution happened here.

It was only a few years ago I read accounts the Haitian mothers, the poor ones, of course, almost everyone, were using actual dirt from the ground, mixing it with sugar, and some binding, like oil or grease, cooking them and giving them to their desperately hungry children to at least fill their little stomachs, to temporarily fight the overwhelming emptiness.

A segment from the article which drove me around the bend when I saw it:

The Americans explained the invasion by saying Haiti was bound to fall to the Europeans, particularly Germany.
“If the United States had not assumed the responsibility, some other power would,” Secretary of State Lansing, who had replaced Bryan a month before the occupation, later said.

Lansing was also blinkered by racial prejudice. He once wrote that Black people were “ungovernable” and had “an inherent tendency to revert to savagery and to cast aside the shackles of civilization which are irksome to their physical nature.”

Racism shaped many aspects of the occupation. Many administrators appointed by the United States came from Southern states and made no bones about the worldview they brought with them.

John A. McIlhenny, an heir to Louisiana’s Tabasco sauce fortune who had fought in Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders cavalry during the Spanish-American War, was appointed American financial adviser in 1919, with broad authority over Haiti’s budget.

More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/haiti-wall-street-us-banks.html

Really glad to see your comment. It advances perspective, for sure!