This was originally published on Open Salon back in 2010
Jared Diamond, of all people, has let us down with Collapse and the suggestion that “societies choose” to fail or survive (he is reifying society). This is most evident in his short, shallow, and one-sided analysis of the differences between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
To begin, the best explanation for why Haiti is more deforested and underdeveloped than the neighboring DR is not, as Diamond argues, culture or outstanding individuals. The best explanation is US influence as it has articulated with historic demographic conditions.
When the US banking interests allied with the US government and military expanded into the Caribbean at about the turn of the 19th century, the land in Haiti was saturated with peasants. Getting those peasants out of the way so that they could establish plantations fueled inconveniences like the Caco rebellion, which resulted in the US Marines killing some 20,000 of them. In neighboring Cuba and the DR the US marines met resistance as well, but population density was far less, there were vast tracks of relatively underpopulated agricultural land. The US marines, advised by the financiers of the Caribbean basin sugar empire and comptrollers of the customs houses in all of the occupied countries (specifically, the City Bank of New York), quickly learned that Haitians were better used as migrant laborers–lest they continue being rebels.
It is not hard to continue to follow the consequences of that demographic-imperial interaction. In the cold-war years following the US occupation of these countries and into the neo-liberal politics of the past 40 years, Haiti is best defined as becoming increasingly underdeveloped not because it failed to fight for its own destiny, but precisely because the people of Haiti fought too hard. At every turn, the self-determination of the Haitian masses has been sabotaged, undermined, and in several instances brutalized by neo-liberal, elite-US republican alliances (ultimately guided by the farm lobby, shipping interests and offshore venture capitalists). The most recent example is the masterfully orchestrated undermining of the Aristide government. But the point is, while they may be in a state of cease fire at the moment, the Haitian masses never gave in. They still take to the streets and demand a say, as they did in 2006 when the US Republican interests and Haitian elite tried to abort the elections, again in 2008 with the food riots, again in 2012 when the government tried to steal the elections, again in 2018 when the government tried to raise gas prices, and again for much of 2019 when they learned that they had been bamboozled by corrupt politicians and bureaucrats who had stolen more than $1 billion development funds.
In the DR the opposite occurred. The population was defeated. It was in fact Dominican President Balaguer–who Diamond lauds as the original driving force behind the Dominican conservationist initiative–who the US put in power after overthrowing in 1965 the democratically elected Juan Bosch. And it was Balaguer who was the US puppet government for most of the past four decades. For anyone who has studied the country, Balaguer is synonymous with USAID and CIA. In the end, it was somewhat of a farce. In his 90s, in diapers, blind, advisers having to lean over and put an ear to his mouth, the last campaign slogan–a campaign that was marred by charges of corruption–still makes Dominicans chuckle: “Whatever He Says.”
A couple more specific points on shortcomings in Collapse:
Middle of page 336: Diamond blames Dominican presidents for causing the early 1900s debt crisis. The DR was driven into debt not so much by a Dominican president, but by a US owned company called, “The Improvement Company.” Great story. There was a US Secretary of State involved. They got hold of the Dominican customs houses, cut themselves railroad deals and borrowed loans—just as the US congress and railroad companies had done in the US — and ran the debt up from something like 5 to 35 million. Then, accusing the Dominican Government of fiscal irresponsibility, the US sent the Marines in.
Page 340: Diamond blames the population for deforestation. But both Haiti and the DR were almost entirely stripped of virgin forest during the colonial era and then stripped of trees by logging companies, something that was occurring throughout the 19th century and right up to the 1940s and 1950s. In DR the most recent logging campaigns took place under Trujillo, as Diamond tells us. What he fails to tell us is how it was US logging companies that stripped Haiti during the 1930s and 40s.
Same page: Diamond draws a distinction between the Haitian infatuation with France and Dominican cultural independence. The Dominicans were/are very much infatuated with Spain, every bit as much as the Haitian elite is with France. Also, in pages to come he talks about how DR society was so open to foreigners. Yes there was immigration. Dominican Law 5002 of July 18, 1911, forbid agricultural companies from from importing for their labor needs immigrants “who do not belong to the white race”. The Dominican dictator Trujillo (1930-1961) made efforts at colonization, encouraging the immigration of anyone white, as well as Chinese, Japanese, and Jewish immigrants. He made a concerted effort to put as many such colonies along the border, including relocation of white Dominicans to the border where they were given free housing and land in state-sponsored agricultural colonies. But until 1970 the DR was one of the most closed societies in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti had far more visitors and was considered cosmopolitan. I’ve heard this from the old-timers, seen it in the books, and I think one could come up with the data. Many light skinned Haitians left in the 1960s and 1970s, when Francois ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier consolidated power. An unknown but high number of them crossed the border to the DR, a trend that has been going on for more than 200 years. Trujillo’s grandmother was an educated, light-skinned Haitian immigrant. Also, I know that until 1970 –or at least I think this is correct figure—Haiti had more tourist hotel rooms than DR: 1970 was watershed year. More on that in a moment. Also, old sailors knew to stay away from DR. Haiti was more open.
As for Diamond’s long-winded fascination with Balguer, all that he says in the final pages of the Haiti/DR chapter about Balaguer and conservation is true. But the enigma of ‘Balaguer the conservationist,’ an enigma that troubles Diamond, is a hint to what is the best explanation for the environmental movement in the DR. Balaguer wasn’t doing the thinking. USAID was. I have to listen to Dominicans all the time about how great Balaguer was, yet they also all know they got invaded, that the US was completely in charge. The situation was such that the US paymaster literally used to issue paychecks to soldiers in the Dominican armed forces. To this day when you say “the embassy” in the DR everyone knows that you mean the US embassy. So getting to the point, the enigma is best understood in terms of the US neo-liberal plan for industrializing countries like the DR and creating dependencies to satisfy the US farm lobby, interests that meshed well with the plans of elite conservationists. In the DR, in 1970, you had a situation similar to Haiti in that 70% of the population lived in rural areas. Most were farmers. Different than Haiti was that the population density was less, much less. A rural, widely scattered population is not conducive to the neo-liberal agenda. So the planners very conveniently made the conservationist dreams a reality and enforced park legislation and created new parks, effectively legislating out of existence more than a quarter of Dominican Territory. They went even farther by creating buffer zones and passing laws restricting tree felling. With a powerful military and US support, thirty years later the DR had more than 70% of the population in cities, where many conveniently went to work in the offshore assembly sector—ninth largest in the world in 1998—and tourist sector—now the largest in the Caribbean. They complemented this program of conservation by devastating the agricultural sector. In 1966, less than one year after Balaguer was re-installed as the US puppet president, the Dominican Republic, agriculturally fertile and overwhelmingly populated with farmers, became second only to war-torn Vietnam as a beneficiary of US food aid. The US then founded an agency called INESPRE, responsible for enforcing price ceilings on agricultural produce (note the contrast with US own farm price supports). Whenever the price of staples rose in an area, INESPRE would rush in and start selling food below cost. INESPRE still exists and as late as the early 2000s were considered a bane by Dominican farmers.
The Luperon circle in Santo Domingo is a monument to the US neo-liberal invasion and influence. After the invasion of 1965 the US built a huge traffic circle outside of the main city, in the capital. Around the traffic circle are six buildings: headquarters of the armed forces, headquarters of INESPRE, headquarters for the bureau of imports and exports, headquarters for industry, the aviation department, and the election commission. No agricultural division. The central bank is downtown, as is the embassy and USAID. But with those buildings right next to each other, US consultants—who for years comprised much of their staff–could walk back and forth. To me that circle is like a transplanted brain. Around that circle the modern DR was designed and orchestrated.
One last point that Diamond leaves out –and Diamond’s short take on all this is so shallow that it doesn’t even warrant all this attention—this all occurred with respect to Cuba. The DR was the US response to Russian/Cuban alliance. The US government could not fail. That was an overriding element pushing our interests and must apply to the conservation movement as well. US officials must have been competing like hell with Cuban conservationists. An interesting comparison in this respect is DR and Cuba today. Despite everything the US has done to crush Cuba, and everything it has done to build up the DR, I wonder what the landscape in Cuba looks like?
Haiti is in bad shape, we all certainly agree. But what will happen to the DR in the future? It’s population in 1820 was about 1/10th that of Haiti. Today it has about 10.5 million people: the same as Haiti. It has advantages, such as twice the land area, a tremendous sex industry that is marrying into Western European social class at a rate that probably exceeds the social mobility index of any country on earth, and about 10% of the population is financially very well off, such that they’re driving around in late model vehicles that sell for $40,000 or more. It also has about 2 million impoverished Haitian laborers building its high rise condominiums, picking fruits and vegetables, cleaning streets, working the tourist areas and, in general, making sure that wages are low and that about 80% of the Dominican population remains below the international poverty level. Meanwhile the crime rate is considerably in excess of Haiti, corruption is the order of the day, and there has been a massive breakdown in the family. In summary, it is not at all clear that the future is bright.
For other works on the Dominican Haitian relations, see these posts:
TRAVESTY OF THE HAITI VS. DOMINICAN MANGO INDUSTRY
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: THE HAITIAN-DOMINICAN BORDER: MISUNDERSTANDINGS
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: WHERE DID ALL THE GIRLS GO? RURAL DOMINICAN SEX RATIOS
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: JUSTICE SYSTEM IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
