It's hard to imagine that this country, rife with poverty, was once ripe with wealth.
Slave labor sweetened European bank accounts for more than two centuries.
But when Africans on the island rebelled, and declared their independence in 1804, Haiti found itself alone--an island of black freedom--surrounded by slave holding countries, including a hostile United States that did not recognize Haiti until Abraham Lincoln was President.
Tonya Sneed of Global Village says "there's just this long history of the United States, France, Canada, and in some cases Great Britain and Spain taking advantage of haiti and exploiting the people and the land. Unfortunately that exploitation has led to this extreme poverty that existed even before the earthquake and that now is just almost unfathomable."
Tonya Sneed and Nancy Long sell fair trade items from Haiti. They say it's the least they can do for people who have lost their rice, mahogany, pig farms, and other resouces to ill fated policies.
Nancy Long of Global Village says "when the railroads went in to service the miners, they got banana rights on each ten miles of the track, so it took farmers away from their land so that those could be banana plantations. That's the kind of thing that has happened over and over, in a way that the rest of the world has treated Haiti."
With their rural areas depleted, Haitians flocked to the capital of Port au Prince, swelling the population to an uncomfortable three million people...so when the earthquake hit, it was profoundly devastating.
Dr. Martha Willi of Haiti Mission Connection says "the centers for most learning, technical schools were in Port au Prince...and Jacmel, both cities that suffered with the earthquake. That's where people with education and technical abilities tended to congregate. So those people have been displaced or injured, or killed."
Bradley University professor Mat Timm also makes relief trips to Haiti, close to the Dominican border. Besides ill fated ag and land policies, America's invasion of Haiti in 1920 still reverberates.
Dr. Mat Timm says "to put it mildly, it was not a friendly occupation. just one example of that is the marines used forced labor to do a lot of the things...they were asking the haitians to do without paying them. and I think without that context, you can't understand the concerns the international community might have and Haitians in particular might have about the presence of the U-S military."
Local relief workers say it should not be lost on Americans that Haiti's history is marked by a sucession of U-S backed dictators. And with Haitii's first democratically elected President ousted twice in military coups during both Bush administrations, many wonder what the future holds for embattled Haitians.
Tonya Sneed says "they do inspire me. In fact, that's why I love going there because I've been so impressed with the resilience of the Haitian people and their graciousness, despite all they've been through, all the suffering they endure."
Dr. Mat Timm says "one of the reasons I got involved in this is that it seemed to me that our foreign policy was not addressing important issues. and I have limited ability to influence our foreign policy, and I decided to go to Haiti to do what i could to give a more positive impression of American people."
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