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Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who's simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Want to say I don't know less? Listen to stuff you should know more. Join host Josh and Chuck on the podcast packed with fascinating discussions about science, history, pop culture, and more episodes. Dive into topics like was the lost city of Atlantis Real? And how does pizza work? Say goodbye to I don't know, because after listening to stuff, you should know you will. Listen to stuff you should know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's a dead man? Donald Rumsfeld? Ohhh. Those ******** the podcast where Donald Rumsfeld is a corpse. It's so tight. Jimmy rum. He died surrounded by his family, as opposed to surrounded by the families of his victims, beating him with sticks. But Oh my God, whatever, it's he's dead. That's as good as you did, I guess. Yeah, 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. Exactly. My man says undermine. You know how you're just going through life in the Iraq war comes and blindsides you? Yeah, after you spend years working to make it happen by recommending lying to the international community and the United States. Come on, it's ******* rules. It's so good. Yeah, just having the best time here. Prop, prop. Props here, guys. Jason Petty, host of the Hood Politics Podcast, now on the iHeartRadio network. Because we are slowly consuming all media and and and and folding it into our Overmind of content over mind, and it's OK. Just bringing you the best of the best. Yeah, you know, I'm saying like, like, you know, real, recognize real. You feel me? It's it's it's it's it's magnetic. I wish, I wish listeners could have seen one prophet I met. Person the first time and we were just like. Yeah, yeah. It was so crazy. I was like, that was right before the ************* kick off. Right before the play. We're like twins. Yeah. I was like my friend, real one. I think she's a real one. I'm, I'm. I'm pretty sure she's a real one. And I was like, yeah, yeah, she a real one. This is crazy. Ah, prop. You know what else is a real one, Rumsfeld. Well, yeah, he actually. I mean, yes, actually. He was crazy. He pulled triggers. That's not, that's not the not that man's gangster. Do not deny that man gangster. But another thing that's real is the island nation of Haiti. No, Jason, tell me, are we gonna tell the. Yeah. This is a natural. This is a real reaction. We going to talk about Haiti? We're fixing to talk about Haiti? Yes. I wanted to do an episode because it's been required. You know, there's two famous dictators of Haiti, the two longest serving modern leaders of the country, Papa Doc and Baby Doc. But if you're going to, like, talk about Haitian dictators, you have to start with the actual ******* of Haiti, which is the entirety of Western civilization. The most, the most the, the, the only effective slavery uprising. But for now for us to get to that moment had to be and there was number of horrible things, Terry, after, yes. So it's one of those things you can't like the and 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. A situation in which these guys could could be in power. Uh, yeah, because it it required takes a whole village. Yeah. To to make a a situation as ****** ** as the present political situation in Haiti, which is the poorest nation in this hemisphere. Yes. And with engineered to be that way, yes. Which interestingly enough was part of Trump's shithole country statements. Yeah, because he was like, well, look at Haiti. It's ran by black people. It's like, why are you OK? Let's dig into that. Ask. Let's ask about that. Let's. OK, you just throwing **** out? Let's. OK, let's think about it. Yeah. Yeah. So the island that both Haiti and the Dominican Republic share is called Hispaniola, and it's the largest island in the Antilles chain next to Cuba. So Cuba is, Cuba is the bigger is is bigger. But Hispaniola is kind of right #2. So Hispaniola first entered the annals of European history in 1492, when some ******* with the same name as the Director of home alone. Failed three boats from Spain and landed on their southern shore. He named the island Hispaniola in honor of the Spanish Crown. So he was like, this is Spain. Basically, that's what Hispaniola means. This is Spain's island. Mad is spades, yeah, yeah, because he was as all bad. People are Italian now. We just recorded with someone else an episode on Ethiopia and Italy's history and we really got to throw out some some some anti Italian hate. It was good for the soul. Shout out the birthplace. Shout out the birth place of coffee, Ethiopia. Let's go. Oh yeah, yeah, so yeah. The the so he he names the island Hispaniola. He leaves the 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 were the Arawak and the Taino. They were pretty much immediately enslaved and forced to work themselves to near. Distinction. Mining for gold? Uh, they were all but wiped out within a century. 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 hub of the burgeoning global economy. Now, of course, if you know anything about in that period of time, farming cotton, coffee, indigo and other cash crops, it was a ******* nightmare. Super Deadly, super unpleasant, grueling, backbreaking work. And white people were not about to do that themselves. Not at all. In a in a tropical paradise, too. Yeah, no, you're not going to do that. No, no, no. By the 1500s, slaves were being imported onto the island in huge numbers. Over several 100 years, African slaves grew to be the majority population of Haiti. By the late 17th century, only about 5000 African slaves had been brought to the island. But by 1789? A century or so later? The island had half a million slaves, 32,000 Europeans, and about 24,000 of what were called Affranchis, which were free mulattos, 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 S so you you actually have not. I mean, you have some free blacks, but you have a lot of free mixed race people 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 imported African slaves had to deal with their 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 rule, you know what I'm saying? And like, where is 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 in South and Latin America but and and then and then places like this that figured out like, well, there are there's something else, you know, it's something else. You know, there's still a lot of racism against these people, but it is. And they have a lot more rights and and like yeah, we'll talk. We're about to talk. Yeah. Yeah. So. The French transported more enslaved people to send Amang, uh, their colony than to any other part of the French Caribbean. Now again, as we were talking about in slave owning regions of the US, the racial caste 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. 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. A number of other places. French Haiti was different while the right status 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. And the culture there, so at the top of the hierarchy you would have the big whites, which are your standard white plantation, rich white plantation owners. And that is the same kind of dudes who we've got all throughout the US S right. The guys who make a confederacy happen. Then you have the little whites, which we, we'd call like working class white people. They don't own plantations at most. Maybe they have a small farm. They probably don't own slaves. If they do, it's a small number and they kind of vibe 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 **** 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, like, are kind of like the middle cask. Yeah, middle 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 the Oilers. I'll get murdered. Yes. Which is rad. It's one of the fun parts of the story. So me, there's so much about Haitian history where you're just like, yeah, yeah, that happened. Yeah. Yeah. But that is the idea, right? You've got these two groups to keep Medicaid others throats, and I'm simplifying all this significantly. There's a great podcast series called Revolutions by Mike Duncan and he gives like a 30 episodes history of the Haitian revolutions because there's a bunch of goes into tremendous detail and does a much better job. Obviously we are like criminally simplifying things here, but like that's that's the broad. I think that's a pretty accurate to the broad strokes of it. 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 mulatto property owners, too, because they rightly saw these people as oppressors, too. And there's other, like, there's 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 occurs over a long period of time. It started the kind of series of revolutions started when small numbers of slaves began escaping into the mountainous island interior where they became known as Maroons like the term marooned. You know, that's I think that's where it comes from. I mean, also as a side note, I don't know if you got if you if if this came up or it's gonna come up later, but the concept of a zombie is from Haitian slaves. Yeah. We weren't going to get into that a lot, but like, yeah, we do have to talk about voodoo a bit because it's really significant. Chunk of yeah, we're about to that. Yeah. Now the the Maroons, these escaped slaves and the mountainous interior developed their own self-sufficient society and they wage a slow guerrilla war against colonial militias. There's a couple of big kind of outbursts of this. From 1751 to 1757, Francois Mackandal, who was the most famous maroon leader, led 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. And there was a bunch of different like suicide, infanticide, arson, poison. These are all aspects of the faith, and I think in some cases, like denying 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 we're not going to be giving a proper due, but it is fascinating. But but voodoo has this. It's it's rooted in resistance to this, this inhuman regime. Yeah. In a in a throwback to your African history and animus of like, I'm just, yeah. That the act of resistance I think is super interesting. And it's funny how even among sort of the black diaspora like your your your American slave descendant versus your Caribbean, whether they're Jamaican or Haitian or belizian like even this, like. You know, I'm I'm doing this injustice too, but like. They're they feel as though like in a lot of ways they're tied to that to to their to their animus faith and they're not willingness to and their ability 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. You know I'm saying because they threw their oppressors off and they didn't lose hold of their their animus traditions. Like, they rebelled. Yeah. Did it. You know, I'm saying and and then in a reverse, it's like black people from America, American descendants, looked at them as 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 being like, Nah, you just got off the boat earlier than us, you know? And, you know, I'm saying it's really interesting is some of those, like, sort of like in house sort of issues that like, hey, we got to be better and really understand the diaspora much better to be like, they just. 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 where this becomes we're specifically voodoo becomes kind of an issue is these dictators we're about to talk about today really use. There's kind of, I think debate over how actually into the practice of it they are, but they use it and it becomes kind of this it's used as fuel in like the media covering them as like, oh, look at these, these dangerous third world lunatics and they're and they're and they're creepy. You know, uh, 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 S kind of coopting aspects of like revolutionary history, totally. 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 peoples. Consciousness. So voodoo is a huge aspect of religion or of resistance as well. And yeah, at the same time this is all 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, the, 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, they get to do a number of things that are they are participating in this broader empire. Several hundred of them joined the Royal French. Army in 1779, Haitian mixed race people traveled to North America and fight in the American Revolutionary War. They take part in the siege of Savannah, GA. And these guys, a lot of them are very inspired by the American Revolution and these ideas of what democracy could be. 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. Yeah, 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 peoples assemblies and a democracy, the guillotine stuff, yadda yadda yadda. Yeah, after this point. After that point. Next race, you know, uh, people from Haiti start increasingly coming over to France and agitating for equal rights within the Parisian Citizens Assembly because the, the, the, this part of the revolution was this idea that all men have equal rights. Yeah. And so these people who are not white from French possessions start coming to Paris and being like, well, all right, yo, pretty cool, right? Yeah, it's pretty cool that you guys said you 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 complete. Like, it's it. It's again, this is like, there's a lot of really complex history here. Yeah, I'm going to quote from a write up by the University of Texas. The impact of the revolution reached San Domeng escalating tensions between Grands blancs big whites, the elites, plantation owners and the like, Petit Blancs, the little whites and the free people of color. Big Whites wanted local autonomy from France. Mulatto saw their chance for citizenship and equality. And little whites were eager to protect their position and the color based class system. All of these groups were against freeing the slaves. Amid all this infighting, the slaves who outnumbered the free population more than 12:50 began to organize. Why was liberty and equality not meant for them as well? In August 1791, the rebellion began with a voodoo priest predicting that a revolt would free the slaves of sand omang the slaves set about burning plantations and killing all of the whites they encountered. San Domeng 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 1793, the remarkable toussant low Vichare, a former slave, rose to power. Lovetere battled French, Spanish and British forces and by 1801 had control of Santo Domingo, the current day Dominican Republic, where he eradicated slavery. 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 in our lexicon? Just how? Just just think about the last 20. Just think about the last year in your time in Portland fighting these crazy when I you know when I hear the phrase big whites associated with the United States, one guys picture pops into my ******* head and it's Mark McCloskey, the guy with the AR15 and his mansion in Saint Louis. Ah yeah, that's exact guy. That ******* that guy. A version of that guy got burnt to death by Haitian revolutionaries. See that, dude? Did y'all did y'all see that dudes rally? Yeah. With ten people showed up, yeah, he waved his cut. I was the funniest thing I ever he's waving his gun, which by the way, didn't have sights. So if you don't put, that's a good. Modern AR's 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 sites, otherwise you can't aim the gun. Which means he essentially had like a blunderbuss, like he had a weapon. He could not have aimed, said damn toy. You flaring around to your 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. Yeah, yeah. Big whites, that dude. Big whites bit that guy. Yeah. Yes. So the Haitian Revolution, there were, you know, some of the inspiration was the ideas of liberty and equality proposed by revolutionaries in North America and France. But a lot of these same revolutionaries, these white revolutionaries, 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. This bloodshed was often horrifying. 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, yes. I mean, Thomas Jefferson expressed that he was like. If they ever get guns, yeah. They are not gonna treat us kind, not gonna treat us kindly. Yeah. It's the same attitude like you have about the morality of, I don't know, the execution of the the the czars and their family and revolutionary Russia, 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 parent is the Regent. At the same time, if you grew up property of this family and you can say that in a way like all of the citizens of the. Cars were just, and I can't blame you for being like, well, we just got to get rid of all this. She's gotta wipe them all out. Like, you can't. Yeah, it's a cancer, you can't. It's not a good thing to do, but it's an understandable chance to make given the situation these people were put in, which is impossible. The situation they were put in made a reasonable response of any kind of possible. They had to do what they had to do. Now, the reason why Toussant fought basically every major European power and this guy, we may we may talk about him for ******* a Christmas even amazing man again. Yeah, I was gonna say, like his solutions. This ************ yeah, is illiterate, like he is aborted, right? He doesn't know how to read and he creates an army from nothing out of people 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. Army and he beats all of the major world powers. Now. He is 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 ****. Yeah, obviously that helps. Mosquito. They 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. Is because in part because they see the Haitian revolution as a threat to white domination. Cautionary tale. Man, yeah. Yeah. And it's very complicated because, like, the British are actually fighting France at this same time, 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 of man. That seems like it could lead to an end to slavery at some point, which is why I have money. So the British, who will not much law after this in slavery in their own empire officially are like, well, we'll support you guys because it'll hurt the French Government and we'll let you keep your racial dominance over Haiti. If we win this war, Umm. So England basically sends an army into Hispaniola in the hope that it would defray the cost of losing their North American colonies 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 1798, the English commander-in-chief signed a treaty with general Toussant and evacuated his soldiers in disgrace. 4 years later Napoleon played it, negotiating with Toussant and the new Haitian government. He kidnapped the revolutionary leader. And sent him to a prison in this French Alps where dissonant died. On the eve of his death he was said to have stated in overthrowing me, you have cut down and sandal Mang only the trunk of the Tree of Liberty. It will spring up again from the roots, for they are many and they are deep. And he was not wrong about that. Yeah, but they do not retake Katie. And I'm going to quote now for a book titled Haiti The Devilliers and their legacy by Elizabeth Abbott. Dussault's faith in the Haitian people's determination was justified when Napoleon sent his brother-in-law, General Leclerc, to fight a war of extermination. His words against the Haitians. Follow your instructions exactly, Napoleon wrote. And rid yourself of Toussant Christophe Dessalines and the principal brigands. Napoleon instructed. Rid us of these gilded Africans and we have nothing more to wish the gilded because they're they're putting themselves up is equal to to white. Yeah, right. That's what he means by gilded against thousands. Minerals including Dessalines and Christophe Leclercq, fought a hopeless campaign which lasted until November 18th, 1803, and cost the French 50,000 soldiers lives, with countless more wounded. We have, concluded Leclerc glumly a false idea of the *****. We grossly underestimated them. Yeah, we we didn't think these people were as smart as us. Turns out they are. Turns out they're just humans. It's. Who knew? Literally might be better at war than us? Yes. At least war in this place they know very well. You know, friends are like, I think we discovered something that will later be called homecourt advantage. Yeah, don't worry, Napoleon's government would never again make the mistake of invading someone else on their home turf and getting wrecked. This is the last time that happens to you guys. Any alert is. Oh, wait a minute. I'm just checking the record here. I don't know, maybe maybe we're wrong. It's funny. You know who else never invades? People's home countries. Thank you. That's so that's quite a. You don't know that I you. I mean, I 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 seems fair to say because we are not currently sponsored by a Mercedes, right? This is true because if Mercedes throws in ads, then yes, they have absolutely invaded Russia. I'm aware of. But yeah, well, we'll put a pin in that Saab 2, I think. I don't know, whatever, BMW for sure. Probably can't get any can't get any Hugo Boss ads either. If we're really, probably not if we're going for hasn't invaded Russia in a sponsor anyway, we'll we'll we'll figure it out, OK? Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family and at Mint. Family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. 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Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. My name is Erica Kelly and I am the host and creator of Southern Freight true crime. There are so many people that just have no idea about some injustices in the world, and if you can give a voice to them, you can create change. To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months after I got on with Spreaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day job. It was incredible. I always felt like an ambassador for speaker. But that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with spreaker, and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Get paid to talk about the things you love. Spreaker from iheart. We're back, OK, so. January 1st, 1804, Sendo Mang, proclaims its independence from France. They adopt as the name of their new country an ancient 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 that's the same time. They're not colonizers. They got forced there, right? It wasn't their choice to be in ******* Haiti. Yeah, so they adopt this and they adopt as their flag, their revolutionary tricolour, so the flag that France had had. But they take the white out of the French flag, basically because they it represents them, the white man, right? They don't want that in their ******* flag. So a guy who had been one of toussant's generals and who had helped beat Leclerc, General John Jacques Dessalines, had himself declared Emperor just as Napoleon had. 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 the great stories in global revolutionary history. This is the only time 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 too? Like how they figured out how to OK, cool, how they figured out how to like, subsidize income and like all this good stuff. Oh no, no, no. We're gonna talk about how front the 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 costs some some economic issues. There's a lot of complications here, but we're mostly talk about. OK, yeah. So there was some moves like I'm getting some of the names and dates wrong. Yeah, because I haven't. I I'd have to brush up on it, but some of the moves that they made was like, OK. 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 going to subsidize our income here. So there was a couple economic incentives that after they overthrow them, after they overthrew their owners, they were like, OK, so but we still need. Income and jobs. So here's y'all's role. OK, here's our role. You just don't get to own us. And yeah. So, yeah, yeah. Like I said, I'm getting some of the information wrong. But there was, there was a few shrewd moves that this emperor does to, like, stabilize their income for or stabilize their economy for a while and then it goes to ****. But yeah, yeah. And 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, you know, obviously. Today, things are not great in Haiti's poor, one of the poorest nations on the planet. The infrastructure is pretty much in a constant state of freefall. There are numerous endemic diseases and almost unimaginable corruption. And it didn't just get that way by the natural. 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 in in how we got here. So as a Republic built on slavery, our founding fathers were very frightened of Haiti, particularly the massacres of big whites in 1801 and 1802. Umm. 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 it, drapetomania, and they treated Haitian independence thusly. They consider a desire for freedom from an enslaved person to be a mental illness. They consider Haitian independence to be a kind of viral infection. So they want to stop any contagion, any they want to stop any possibility of it spreading. Right? That's what they see, what they don't see. Oh, hey, another people has overthrown. Chains of of of their colonial, you know, owners and become a Republic, they see oh, this is a threat. So when one Haitian veteran who had fought to liberate 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 he 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 a country built on the. Human *******. Yes. Thomas Jefferson, the great philosopher of liberty, slash ****** child ****** proposed that slaves convicted of crimes and remember, wanting to be free was a crime, should be exiled to Haiti. And again, his his goal here is he wants to quarantine the black desire for liberty. That's kind of how Jefferson sees this. Yeah. The most positive moment in US Haitian relations came after Haiti's independence, but before Toussant's capture, when Toussant found his new government locked in a civil war with a mulatto. General uh named Rigaud and Rigaud 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 saunt framed the problem this guy posed in a letter he sent to U.S. President Adams requesting military aid. He wrote quote regard has has assassinated many whites and this is what the beginning of his heinous 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. Outrageous. Now the massacre of white people justified the first US military intervention on the island. We sent over some ships ammunition in 2000. Muskets the aide played a meaningful role in allowing Toussaints government to smash regards rebellion. This would be the only broadly positive move the US made towards Haiti after 1800 when the US and France reconciled. Because we are 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 1801? 1802 uh, the United States refuses to recognize the 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. So acknowledging Haiti as its own thing is a dicey thing diplomatically, right? You see versions of the same thing. Day. Yeah, the ******* Taiwan and stuff. There's constant, like, do we recognize this country? Yeah. You can't acknowledge ill like, hey, man, you know, you took an L it's like, no, we didn't. No, that was different. That one don't count. Yeah. the US refuses to acknowledge like, China, 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, and we're not the only ones, obviously. Yeah. I love the like, yeah, like even just America being like. You've never lost a war. Like, what about Vietnam? That was different. That wasn't our war. Like, that wasn't a war. Cause you have to declare, you know? Yeah, you gotta go declare it. It's only, you know, if it comes from the from. Yeah. No, that's a difference. Of course. It's just a sparkling conflict that's different. OK, so they'll be like, Nah, I don't know. I don't think, I don't think 80s a country like, yeah, fam, yes, they are. OK, yeah. So the US fights another war against Great Britain in 1812 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 **** *** France. Now, as a result from independence, from its independence up to about 1825, Haiti is a pariah state. This enables the first Emperor of Haiti. Dessalines, to justify an 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. And Dessalines becomes basically a military dictator. And this is, again, she's got a point, right? Like, they won it. They wanna **** us up. They want to take like us. They want to take our liberty back. They want to take this island back, like we have to always be ready to fight. The problem is that when you base your whole society around that, it's not. The healthiest way under. Yeah, you can society. Yeah. You can't. You can't. That's not, that's not sustainable. Yeah. Now, Dessalines again, like all of these kind of founding fathers was illiterate and was a like, yeah. Like 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, generally illiterate former slaves. Meanwhile, the civil administration of the Haitian government. Was dominated by mulattos, most of whom had benefited from a better education. And this contributes to the you've already got this really bloody racial divide in this long history of fighting, and it just. After independence that divide doesn't get erased and and Dessalines leans into this divide. He'd massacred 10s of thousands of French civilians after independence, and at the same time he had massacred a lot of mulatto, saying he couldn't tell the difference between them. In 1804 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. Of course it was born in blood, right? He starts as an act of Labor genocide and is repopulated by violent force. Dessalines is not starting a process here. It's just the natural continuation of that kind of violence. Now, that said, later on in his reign, Dessalines takes an extra step towards. I think he saw it as kind of an attempt to destroy these racial barriers. He declared a policy of bronze ification, which was his goal was to destroy all distinctions of color on the island by forced intermarriage of blacks and mulattos. Now to start this process, he ordered a mulatto general Alexandre Petion to marry his daughter Salamine, who was, unbeknownst to him, already pregnant when he found out he murdered. Lover and petition declined the marriage, and shortly thereafter Dessalines is assassinated by an unknown group of assailants. It's still 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 pantheon. Uh, what matters more than the specifics of like, who did the, the did the deed is that from the beginning Haiti is burdened by an history of authoritarian leaders, which again starts with the white rulership of the colony and is burdened by a history of violent changes of power, right? It's born in blood. And that they don't break the cycle. Power would swing wildly over the next years. Between mulatto and black generals, generally representing different geographic and racial chunks of the island. The term it's so funny. It's like, well, not funny, but the word bronze ification, Umm, just if you just say it, you're like actually sounds kind of rad. Like you said, like if you just just just the idea of like, let's just get this like that beautiful brown on people, you know? 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 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 I'm saying. But once you started putting these like rules around you know their phenology and and the you know the the eugenics of the **** that like created this like racial. Colorize, 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 his thought was, well well, if your kids is all well look, and we'll find you. Somebody that's hot is that's fine, you know, and make a baby with them. Like you can't be mad at this little brown because 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 this issue, you know? Yeah, yeah. And I did 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 ****** ** things as like different players in this. Carry out his guys like Dessalines do. It's like also, well, I don't know what would have worked better, right? Yeah, you're coming in in a messy *** situation. Hella messy. So you like, I gotta 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. This guy. And yeah, like, I mean, what you trying to do? The hardest thing ever, right? Yeah, I got some suggestions in the year 2020. Yeah, I think. Shut the **** ** for you know, I'm saying like, yeah. You guys got any ideas? Ohh, 33 centuries later, you still haven't figured it out. Yeah, well, then stop looking back at me. Yeah, 1800s Haiti air conditioning. Probably would have solved some problems. Why don't you, why don't you guys have this conditioning? You could have some air conditioning also. Antibiotics. Just throwing it out there. I'm just saying. How about automation? Yeah, 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 1825? But you tried not slavery. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Could you try not being taken from your homeland and forced onto an island to to, to farm cotton? Maybe give that one a shot like you tried? 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, yeah. But yeah, there's no good, there's no good, no, there's no options for for any of these people in this. Which is not to like, also not to whitewash the ****** ** stuff that all of these different Haitian leaders do, but like, yes, what are you going to do? Again, so Haiti is also, and the thing that really makes this difficult, right? Because every, every Nate 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 are completely locked out of the global market, which contributes to rampant poverty and misery in 1826, 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. An import goods, which you need to do in order to be a part of the modern world, right? Yeah, it's that's just the way it works. They're not allowed to. So they start negotiating with France in order to gain diplomatic recognition and entrance into the world market. 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. Oh my God. Well, you stole yourselves from us, so you owe us so you kind of. Oh my God. It's real, real, real ******* move from France there. I'm going to 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 500,000 citizens who were formerly enslaved, and declared the value at 150 million gold francs, in which in contemporary terms would equate to well over $20 billion. Payments began immediately, and although Haiti was able to officially buy its economic freedom and diplomatic recognition, the debt of 150 million francs was a massive burden from which Haitians have never been able to fully recover. Although the official debt was later reduced, France forced Haiti to pay an annual fee for its national sovereignty for nearly 100 years, from 1825 to 1922. Good Lord, for almost a century, then, Haiti endured French imposed penury. By 1915, and we'll talk about what happens in 1915, Haiti still owed France 121 million francs. So. For nearly a century they pay off their 120 million debt, and in 1915 they owe 121 million. Oh my God. Oh my God. France is a nation of ******* payday loan. Yes. Such a such a bit of ******* right there, man. So much of their resources as a nation went to paying off this debt. For instance, 51% of Haiti's revenues from coffee went to service the exterior debt. 47% went to pay internal debts associated with building the nation's infrastructure, with only 2% available for all other expenses. Why doesn't Haiti have a functional state? Because they are forbidden by law from building 1. 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 Haiti becomes the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. That's it, right? We can talk about ****** ** things different leaders did. We can talk about mistakes made by. And there's plenty of mistakes. Of course. All leaders make mistakes. Of course. Katie is not allowed to build a public sector. Yeah, they're not allowed to. Yeah, they've got it. That money is why France is so nice. Part of it, right? France steals from a lot of people. Yeah. If you want to know why Haiti is so ****** ** walk down the streets of Paris and look at the Nice. Monuments like, Ohh, some of this was paid for by the reason Haiti doesn't have functioning sewers. Damn. That's why it's ****** **. Damn. 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 continued to have a profoundly toxic opinion of the ailing Republic, and most European powers were equally unwilling to do business with a nation whose founding was 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 one hope and opportunity, right? They're not saying like our goal is Haiti is to overthrow the global colonial. Listen, they just want to have food and **** right? Most people. Their very existence, though, is dangerous to the myth of white supremacy that the European world order is based on. Think about every time we talk about this in the Ethiopia episode, but think about like, you know, you and I talked about this and we talked about Spain in Algeria, right? They get beaten 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. Total colonized. People, 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 creation myths, your formation of identity, it unravels. You're looking at evidence that you're full of crap and yeah, you can't let that that can't exist in your world, you know? Yeah, it's kind of crazy. It's going to feel like a jump. But like, I mean it, like when I think of like. That same sort of fear of of the unraveling 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, yeah, LGBTQ stuff. Because it's like you have this universe that is ordered a certain way. Yeah. And these, the existence of these people means you've ordered the universe. Incompletely, you know, I'm saying so like, yeah, it has its genesis. There's an 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 other people are fundamentally different than they are for me, 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, yeah. 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 not talking about rights, you think they shouldn't exist. Yeah. You're 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. The logic is so when I think about, like you said, like, well, well, we won't trade with Haiti. Well, we won't know. It's like because you don't 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 now we just we'll just make them pay forever. Yeah, we'll just, we'll just we'll just go out of our way to sabotage them forever. Yes. You know who else will go out of their way to sabotage? Hey T forever sabotage money going into black community. Yeah, footboy, this is not a great way to do an ad plug. Prep how do you feel about getting food delivered to your house? Not gonna lie to you, man. It's one of those one of those things that are clearly a privileged. But Umm, that's what that word means because it is great. Well, there we go. That's a nice better way to lead a dance. Uh. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family and at Mint. Families start at 2 lines. 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Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. My name is Erica Kelly and I am the host and creator of Southern Freight true crime. There are so many people that just have no idea about some injustices in the world, and if you can give a voice to them, you can create change. To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months after I got on with Spreaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day job. It was incredible. I always feel like an ambassador for speaker. But that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with spreaker, and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Get paid to talk about the things you love. Spreaker from iheart. Ah, so we're bad. I guess we are. We're back. That's the sound that you find in your place in the script, huh? It is. It is. Yep. So Haitian politics doesn't grow more functional over the course of the 1800s for reasons we've discussed. There's a bunch of revolts, right, when people can't build any kind of functional civil society or when it's a lot harder and all of their money's going to other countries. It's difficult to, you know, have a happy civil anyway. So the Republican. Kicked off with an emperor, then reverted to a Republican government with presidents and stuff. But in the 1840s they go back to having emperors. And also the 1840s in the 1844 is when the Dominican Republic fights a war with Haiti and they separate. So there's there's two different countries on the same island. The Dominican Republic is definitely, it seems to be in a better position than than Haiti has been lately. But they have constant, they're like always kind of at each other's throats, like there's a bunch of bunch of bunch of issues going on between them. Anyway, that all happens. And then in 1859, there's a military coup in Haiti, and that brings back a Republican government and present presidents again. So we go from Emperor to president to Emperor to president, right? In 1861, 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 a law recognizing Haiti and appointing the first US Haitian Commissioner. So that is, we recognize Haiti kind of as like a **** you to the Confederacy. Yeah. That's what you really don't like. Somebody you like. You know what a matter of fact? Haiti rock with y'all. Yeah, I'll take it. Like, yeah. Cool. Yeah. Alright. So the political situation, though, does not grow more stable. In the late 1800s and 1896, President Hippolite died of a stroke on his way to crush a rebellion in the southwest. He was replaced by President Theresia Sam, who was nicknamed the incompetent for reasons that are probably. Pretty obvious, right? Yes not not because he was so popular. Under his Agis, the Haitian government grew more corrupt and less functional than ever. The most egregious example of this was 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 nonexistent goods and then pocket the payment himself. President Sam allowed dozens of his relatives in positions of power. Together they robbed the nation blind while Blinder. This compounded the economic misery created by the crushing debt to France. Under Sam's reign, civil service salaries were cut by 20%, public works projects almost ceased entirely. When Sam came to power, a tramway station had been under construction in Port-au-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 1902. Dogged by economic disaster and riotous discontent among the citizenry, Sam resigned. He barely escaped with his loot. The head of a mob bent on murdering him and his family's 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 it yeah, again. They're they're always all of these grifter dictators, yeah, are very tied to the West, and yeah, the system generally backed by them and often funded by them. 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 the middle of all of this chaos, there's just constant revolts, right? No peaceful transfers of power. And in the middle of all this chaos, on April 14th, 1907. Francois Duvalier is born into Duvall and Urrutia. Duvalier now, this is by the way, the subject of our episode. Francois Duvalier is the guy better known as Papa Doc. Yeah, yeah. It would be an understatement to say that he did not grow up in a functional state, right? So again, this guy doesn't **** heating up. This guy is born into ****** and adopts it, yeah? They pray. Ohhh, you call y'all guard with that one. OK, that's good. So when Papa Doc was a toddler, president Alexis is succeeded by Antoine Simone, who ruled for three years before another revolt forced him to flee to Jamaica. The next President, Laconte, 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 the presidential palace on August 8th. 1912 leaving Haiti without a capital building or a head of state. Now, despite the, shall we say, tumultuous times, uh Francois parents managed to make a decent living. They were lower middle class, but upwardly mobile. His father, Duvall, was a school teacher, and his mother, Yuridia, worked for a bakery. Duvall was politically 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 19, which is something very few Haitians have never happens. The education system is not. The good shape. So he grows up very well educated. In 19, though. Hold that thought, because I would be doing you and the 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 in eight mile, the the Eminem movie. Ohh, really? I didn't know that happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what eight mile is. But yeah, yeah, I was like, I don't know how far down this 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 Doc 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? It's about M&M's mom spaghetti? Spaghetti. So in 1915, when Francois was eight, Haitian President Joseph Dalbar Theodore was ousted in yet another coup, this one of the military variety. He was replaced by General Jean Vilbrun Gilliam. Sam, now the President of the United States in this. 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 a high bar. I was like, which is a high bar. So USA and his listeners of two people that y'all know on this pod, me and. Robert Art bonafide history nerds, we know what the hell we talk about when we tell you that Woodrow Wilson holds the crown. He's up there, yes. He's competing with guys in like 1820 for race because he would like Andrew Jackson, where I'm like, who you could like. Like, they named the Trail of Tears after this man y'all saying he's a little ***** ** ****. Yes. So like, like, let's pause for a second and appreciate really, how racist Woodrow he is. He is a repeatedly praised the Ku Klux Klan and screened a movie about their founding in the White House. Level raises. And Woodrow Wilson is particularly concerned. He's concerned for a number of reasons. #1. He sees a black Republic as a weak, as a weak link in the political structure of the Caribbean, which is really close to the United States. So of course, you know, he's also further concerned by, you know, in this. World War One is just kicked off, right. And Germany prior to World War One had developed strong economic interests on the island of Haiti's German investor on the island of Hispaniola. In the Haitian nation, German investors had started to directly impact Haitian politics. In 1892, 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 German corporations, right? So in the months leading to the coup that brought General Sam to power, Wilson had been considering sending in U.S. 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. We just want a government that's more friendly to our companies than to German ones, right? So the coup gave him the excuse that he needed, right? And in short order, he sends the United States Marines, including frequent ******** pod side character Smedley Butler, into occupied Haiti. Yeah, Smedley does a bunch of counterinsurgency work there as my dog Smith. So he's still a heel at this point right now. Still bad heel turn. He has a real good heel turn. Yeah. Which we've talked about. Yeah. But he's still a heel at this. So from 19, yeah. Smedley's out on in play. Yeah. So from 1915 to 1934, which is basically all the Francois Duvalier's childhood and early adulthood, the United States rules Haiti with an iron fist. Protests That break out against the occupation are put down with machine gun fire in one protest alone. U.S. soldiers gunned down 2000 Haitian protesters. So 2000, yeah, we're not talking like Kent State here. We're talking Amritsar, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. From a write up by the Origins project quote. For 19 years, the United States controlled customs in Haiti, collected taxes and ran many governmental institutions, all of which benefited the United States. In 1922, for example, the United States extended Haiti a debt consolidation loan that was designed to pay off its remaining. Yet to France, but in many ways, Haiti simply exchanged one master for another. Although Haiti was finally free of its 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 always. So us is is like, I can help you out with this France problem because like France, France, right 1915 desperately needs US help. Because they have gone broke fighting this stupid, stupid ******* war like we can't really afford to do. Anything but barely hold off the Germans. Yeah, the US is like, well, we got a we got a proposition for you. Like, when we work this out, we'll give you guys some money up front. You cut down the loan, but also, Haiti's going to owe us forever. Now, you know, This is why you never open your junk mail that says consolidate your debt. Yeah. Yeah, like that's what just that's this is what you looking at right now? They're gonna hate junk mail. Yeah. You're about to get Haiti. Yeah. So, although the US finally withdrew troops from Haiti in 1934. The US government still maintained fiscal control over the country until 1947. Again, the US has never had colonies. We just maintained military control of Haiti for 19 years and then controlled their finance system until 1947 when they finally paid off their loan to us. 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 US military didn't mean the end of U.S. military. Influence in Haiti. In 1916, we're going to talk about some **** that happened while the US was in charge here. In 1916, the All white wives of U.S. Marine Corps officers joined their husbands on the island. Right there 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 going to it. Then they went to an island where the black people were ostensibly in charge. Obviously US is in charge, but there we like the fiction that we're letting them govern. Yeah, 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 ****** *** the Haitian elite, of course. So again, they're the elite. They also suck, right? Like, yeah, but they're also justly ****** *** by how racist these white Americans who come over are. Money ain't good enough for y'all. OK, yeah, yeah, and they're increasingly disgusted not only by the racism of these these occupiers, but by how *******. Drunk they get. So at this point, Haitian culture was very conservative in regards to alcohol consumption, crowds and yeah, these guys are ******* these guys are white people in 1916. Drunk. Which is we still have not eclipsed those levels of drunk. Yeah. And that's why I don't buy drink like white people. Boy. So to imagine that ancient white boy. Oh yeah. No, it's not again. Yeah, yeah, they're night caps are just pints of liquor, you know? They are. 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 U.S. soldiers engaged in horing again, nobody. I mean nobody. ****** like soldiers. I'm not gonna say the US is particularly, no, that's just, that's just soldiers. But yeah, but it it's it's at a level that they were not used to see. Yeah, in a few years. There are 147 new dance halls and saloons, most of which are barely disguised brothels. Since Americans were again super racist, they had to import girls to work in these places, generally lighter skinned women from the Dominican Republic, right? So again, you never get over this racial caste system, even when it's like some drunk 19 year old Texan boy. Like it's still the ******* you know, the divide between yeah, mixed race and black yadda yadda keeps going. US domination brought Jim Crow hotels, segregated Catholic masses, and segregated white neighborhoods. the US remade Haiti in its own image, 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 U.S. business interests, not all that different from our present system was like, good God. In fairness, we do the same thing to ourselves in this regard. Yeah, yeah, this is important because the elections that take place. During this. Are the first ones Francois 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 819 years old, old enough to like no **** 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 Devilliers, and their legacy makes it clear that this was not a good thing. Quote, though the Americans insisted on the semblance of democracy. They refused even the slightest democratic substance. Nowhere was this more obvious than in. American sponsored Haitian presidential elections. The State Department approved the first occupation. President Philippe 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's sole source of revenue, asking in return only for marine protection against assassins. He was the sole candidate his rival Dr Rosalvo Bobo had earlier disqualified himself with fits of Pique and Aresco ability 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. Yeah, and again, he's saying I 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. As a result, Francois's early political understanding was heavily informed and influenced by completely understandable hatred of the United States. As a young man, he wrote articles for the nationalist anti occupation newsletter Action Nationale. He used a pseudonym, Abdurahman, to avoid being arrested or murdered by US occupiers. In 1929, Francois and a black lawyer in Mystic named Laura Moore, Denise Lorimer. Denise founded the Haitian Negritude movement, now the Negritude. Yeah, 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 the Americans who were, you know, colonized well, who were dominating, colonize, whatever you call it, their nation. And from the mixed race political elite who collaborated with European colonizers in the US in this. 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 negritude 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, who's try, who are trying to become more western, right, who are adopting Western clothing, western customs and stuff because that's where the money is in part because it's just fashionable. And Francois and others like him are like, no, what we need to do is actually good. This is authentically ours. Voodoos arms doesn't like, like, **** their **** we don't need. **** yeah, very understandable motivations. The Negritude movement continued to grow as Francois went to medical school in the early 1930s. He graduated in 1934, which is the same year that the US Marines finally left his country. He started his medical career working in hospitals and clinics around Port-au-Prince. In the late 1930s, he and Laura Muir Denise founded a pro Voodoo African focused political organization called the Grio, which means the bards. The Grio included an academic journal where Francois published articles laying out his thoughts on the Negritude movement. He also wrote a book in which he urged black Haitians 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, which is a horrible disease. I don't know much about yaws. It's a bad disease. This happens in the night in the early 40s and you find when you find write ups about this guy, a lot of them portrayed as like baffling or inconsistent will. This guy hates the US. Why is he doing well? It's 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 ****** ** ****. It means he's like, OK, I'll take your money to vaccinate people. Yeah. I I don't think it's in any way inconsistent. Yeah. Not functional. Yeah. Francois seems to have been good at this work and eventually he becomes the head of a clinic. In August of 1944, he briefly travels to the United States to attend Michigan State University to study public health doesn't. He's not in their log. But if you if you went to Michigan State, what if you're. Yeah. Papa Doc Papa Doc went to Michigan State, man famed in Michigan State Grant. Well, look at that, graduates, but yeah, he goes. So he never finishes the program, and he rather quickly goes back to Haiti to continue his work trying to eliminate yaws. At the same time, he helps another doctor named Price Mars formed the Bureau of Ethnology, an organization dedicated to studying and propagating indigenous Haitian customs, including voodoo. Now at this point, Francois Duvalier is pretty rad. Unfortunately, in the mid 1940s he makes the call to get into politics, which is not a thing that ever tends to go well for people, and I'm going to quote now from a book published by the federal research. Vision of the Library of Congress in 1999, Francois Duvalier's first overly political act was to become General secretary of Danielle Vignoles party of Young Professionals, the MOP. In 1946 he became a pro. What? I'm sorry, there are so many like throw out. There's a lot that are happening the MOP as far as like. The rap group from New York, which I never thought about any of, you know, I'm saying. And and then when you said the grio, I always thought that was a reference, reference to the griots. You know, we're like the African storytellers, but they're. Yeah. Yeah. It's GRGRIOTS. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Cool. I was just pronouncing it probably wrong. OK. I thought it was something else. I was like, no, no means barred. So yeah, it's like African storytellers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. OK, cool. Oh, man. OK, well then, yeah, there it is. Yeah. So there's all these, like, these ties that, like, I knew the papadaki one, but I didn't think about the MOP one, you know? I'm saying that's dope. OK. Anyway, I hope it's. I hope MOP is referring to that. Yeah. Yeah, I honestly don't know. But yeah, it's *******. Yeah, it's it's fascinating. So he becomes a the protege in 1946 of a guy named Dumar Sai Estime, and then Mistime becomes like the MOP candidate. Steam gets elected president and Duvalier enters his cabinet as the minister of Labour's OK but estimate gets ousted in a coup in 1950, right? And Duvalier loses his job. So. Win estimate. The guy who had made Duvalier a member, a Minister of Labour, gets, you know, forced out of power. A new guy, General Migliore, takes power, right? So again, one of these things that keeps happening in Haitian history, and Duvalier, 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 one hiding place to the next. Often dressed as a woman for years, Duvalier hid and built a base of supporters in the mountains. Writing his time until the INT came from Miglior, which it did in 1956. So he spends years kind of as like a gorilla 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. So he's very well liked there. And he starts building, uh, yeah, he builds up a movement. So 1956 General Magliola gets kicked out, and ten months of chaos follows, in which six different governments attempt and fail to hold on to power. While this was going on, Duvalier succeeded in appointing his followers to several public offices. So while all these different dudes are, like, trying to take power and failing, he's kind of quietly, like making deals with whoever he has to to shotgun guys loyal to him into different political positions in order to. And he uses these guys as 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 do. He's trying to set his guys up in positions that don't get overthrown because nobody wants to overthrow the guy keeping the sewers. Go in or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But if that guy's low to you and then the guy doing this, the guy doing that, the guy keeping power going, right, that you gradually build up a base of support, makes it easy for you to take over. He's he's very smart about this is what I'm saying. Very methodical about it. He doesn't just take the easy first grab to get power because those ************* are going to get kicked out by the other people. He lets them fight among themselves. A while in 1957, after, again, six different governments try and fail to hold on to power. Haiti has another election, and Duvalier runs on a campaign of what one writer called. Diluted africanism and one of the things he advocates is the removal from public life of all mulattos. Well, I say that. But despite this rather hard line, a number of mulatto business owners, a 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. OK, like, no, I'm just saying it's all make campaign promises. We remove all the light skin, you know, we're not really remove all light skin, you know, all the light skin. Gotta go. Drake? Yeah, out of here. Yeah. Great. It was his. It was his. Closing Guantanamo. Yeah, I just threw Drake under the bus. He just light skin, doing him lights, shaving her heart into his head like with us, but. Just irrationally salty. We, you know, we still beef with the mulattos. We need to really work this out. We still, we need to really work this out with them. I got, I got no comment there. No, don't don't do this in House debate here, guys. Matter of fact, one of the shows we did on the my Mama told me with Langston, that was my episode about like light skinned people are sensitive. And if this is the case, 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 skinned people, but it was a very funny thing to point out. Yeah. So go ahead and read from a write up by the New York Times here about how Duvalier kind of comes to power. Because it's not, you know, the election is a very flawed election and and it's more a matter of who he's able to get in his corner. Before the quote UN quote vote happens. Duvalier had the all important support of the army, whose generals considered him a feckless 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 who were later. Cells have speculated that Duvalier, 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 22nd, 1957. He was inaugurated on October 22nd. The two dates were felicitous ones from his point of view. As Papa Doc had always considered 22 his lucky number, he was to continue to hold it. In superstitious reverence, Francois came to power with the support of the army, who were again in a very distant. Like themselves in a pretty desperate situation in 57. They were very unpopular, disorganized, not very well equipped to trained and Francois saw this as an opportunity. He was a smart guy, he lived through a lot of military coups and he was not going to let that **** happen to him. So one of his first acts when he becomes president, like two years after he takes office in 1959, is he starts building a civilian militia, which will be the the Taunton Macoute are kind of described alternatingly as a secret police. And a militia and a 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 is 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 he calls officially the volunteers for national security, or VSN, and they become better known as the Taunton Macoute, 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. Sheesh. Yeah, that that like, they're not. They're called that because they're scary. They're called because people. They're terrified of them. OK, yeah. From the New York Times quote, within weeks, hundreds of Duvalier's political enemies were thrown into jail. Others simply disappeared. And within a year, according to the later claim of Mr Barbeau, more than 300 persons had been killed by the Tontons on Duvalier's personal orders. And as we'll discuss in Part 2, Jason, there's only get worse from there. So that's Part 1. Some Haitian history. Papa doc. Papa. Good stuff. Good stuff, man. Papa doc, man. Go back to just battle rapping, man. You were just 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 would prop coming at you. We're we're cranking in the hood politics pod Instagram and and Twitter is cranking we're doing silly takes on that. You know, things that can't, you know, become a full episode. So we doing takes on that prop hiphop.com for the book and for the music and for the Instagram and the Twitters. It's all prop hip hop. Great. Well, check out prop, check out Hood politics and check out I got a book. You find it at a trbook.com. You can find the podcast at after the revolution. Check that **** out too. I'm a man. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm caught up on it with, with with skull ****** on his at his party. Nobody loves school. Every time I hear, every time I hear the names on this. I'm like, I could totally picture Robert just giggling as you keep making these names. Like, hear the outtakes. Oh my. Oh no, you shouldn't. I I will never write a British person into a story again, would you? Trying to do the British. Terrible, terrible mistake on Oh my God. Terrible mistake on the part. So unbelievably fun for me. Oh my God, I hate it. Yeah, I hate it. Well, I enjoy it. I enjoy you attempting to do the. British accent I love. I think Big Robert, hey, by the way, he thought he he's British, not Australian, so he might want to redo that. Wrong, wrong island bro. I I am on record as saying British and Australian people are the same thing, one could argue. Yeah, alright, 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. So it's over. Hey everybody, initially I was going to plug the go fund me for the sequel to my book after The Revolution, which you can find at atrbook.com. But Umm, here in the Pacific Northwest we're having an 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. Particularly in the city of Salem, activists everywhere have been kind of gathering to try and mitigate set up cooling stations, hand out cold drinks to do things to help people get their temperature down. I wanna try and raise funds for the free fridge of Salem, which are doing cooling stations in the capital of Oregon, Salem. So if you go to Venmo at free fridge Salem, that's Venmo at free fridge Salem and send them a couple of bucks, they could really use it. Local government has destroyed a number like police particularly have destroyed a number of water and cooling stations they've set out 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 Venmo is at free fridge. Salem, thanks. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. 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