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The earthquake was only the latest catastrophe to hit Haiti. Hugh O’Shaughnessy looks back on two centuries of suffering

For the past 200 years, there has been murder and double-dealing, corruption and fraud in Haiti. The depths of evil have been plumbed in this black republic, which has been independent since 1804. For two centuries, white governments and their quislings among the Haitians have been guilty of crimes against the weak and the poor, black majority. This has been hidden behind a thick veil of racist hypocrisy, lies and sheer inhumanity. That veil is still there, as anyone with an understanding of history will recognise.

At the beginning of the 19th century, it was the rulers and generals of the old world who were at the basis of attempted genocide. Napoleon and the French revolutionaries were keen to underline that, while liberty, equality and fraternity were valid concepts, they didn’t apply to non-whites.

Along with the white plantation owners, they attempted genocide of their former slaves, who had brought immense fortunes to the burghers of France from the cane fields of Port-au-Prince. The monarchists of Britain allied themselves with the regicides of the French Revolution in a vain attempt to clamp slavery back on the necks of the citizens of the world’s first black republic.

The redcoats were sent over to bolster colonial rule and Britain captured Port-au-Prince in 1794. Yet, four years later, the British surrender to the Haitian commander Toussaint L’Ouverture at the port of Mole St Nicolas, following local resistance, took place in circumstances not dissimilar to the recent British departure from Basra.

In 1830, France finally recognised Haiti. However, it imposed a monstrous financial burden of 150 million gold francs in  “reparations” on the Haitians – apparently for the crime of fighting slavery. This was not paid off until 1947.

With slavery blossoming in the United States, it was not long before Washington attacked those who had bravely outfaced and defeated their slave-masters and frightened bosses from Pensacola to New Orleans. With a trade embargo enforced in circumstances akin to those of the modern US embargo on Cuba, the Americans refused to recognise Haiti until 1862. Since then, the US and its underlings have taken the lead in beating Haiti up and doing the Haitians down.

Washington sent in the marines in 1915. A few weeks later, according to one US officer:  “When the National Assembly met, the marines stood in the aisles with their bayonets until the man selected by the American minister was made president.”

Subsequently, Charlemagne Péralte led a resistance movement very similar to Augusto Calderón Sandino’s fight against the US occupation of Nicaragua in the 1930s. Prefiguring the recent atrocities against the population of Gaza, US aircraft were used against civilians. The official US record of casualties shows that 13 American soldiers and 3,071 Haitians were killed.

The last US occupation forces left in 1934, but the Americans went on to back the vicious rule of François Duvalier – the infamous “Papa Doc” and then his baleful son Jean-Claude, “Baby Doc”.

In wildly popular elections in 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former priest with a commitment to the reform of a rotten society, was elected president. Within a year, he was overthrown by the military with the aid of a man who was getting $500 a month from the CIA.

Senator Jesse Helms, a demented US nationalist on the far right of the Republican Party, had the nerve to describe Aristide as  “psychotic”. However, in a murky act of sleight of hand which betrayed the increasing military influence on the US government, Aristide was put back into the presidential palace by a US expeditionary force in 1994. But his powers were severely reduced and he was obliged to allow American exporters free rein in his country. He was also forced to slash the already rickety public services.

After a period of Western-backed chaos, Aristide won elections with 91.5 per cent of the vote and sought closer relations with Cuba and Venezuela. Irrepressibly, he demanded Haiti’s money back from France. In 2003, he presented the French with a bill for $21,685,135,571.48 (including interest and adjustment for inflation) for the  “reparations” exacted since Haitian independence. Unsurprisingly, Paris wanted to see the back of him. Again the Pentagon struck and the democracy was again undermined by US military interference supported by Dominican President Hipólito Mejía, a leader of the Socialist International. In 2004, Aristide was exiled to Africa. That was the signal for George Bush, the latest US leader to undermine Haiti, to say that the US was going in “to help stabilise the country”.

Now, following the earthquake that has devastated Haiti, the Pentagon is taking the wheel from Barack Obama’s White House, seizing the main airport, excluding relief supplies from Mexico in favour of landing slots for yet more US soldiers and promoting the public relations antics of a small group of its Israeli allies.

A few miles across the water, in Cuba at the penal and torture centre of Guantánamo Bay, the US has a wealth of supplies. The base is familiar to those Haitians who were seized by US warships on the high seas and imprisoned there a decade ago, while their vessels destroyed. Sadly, the shadow of the Pentagon disorganisation worthy of Donald Rumsfeld hangs over Port-au-Prince, blighting the chances of swift aid for the victims of the earthquake.

Fortunately though, the real heroes of the rescue – the 1,000 Cuban doctors long established in Haiti – are continuing their jobs. Don’t expect to hear much about the Cubans from the increasingly Americanised BBC. The corporation is keen for the US to buy its products and comments about Cuban aid to the country whose name sounds like  “High-tea” (rather than “Hay-tee”, which the BBC seems to prefer) wouldn’t help sales.