Haiti

Leslie Mullin, HAC

In 1987, [new junta leader supported by US] Namphy received IMF loans valued at $24.6 million in exchange for agreeing to slash rice tariffs from 150% to 50%, the lowest in the Caribbean. He opened all of Haiti’s ports to commercial activity and agreed to stop what little support the government had offered Haitian farmers. Meanwhile, Haiti’s military elite saw an opportunity to make a profit smuggling American rice.. In the United States, the passage of the 1985 Farm Bill significantly boosted subsidies to American rice growers. By 1987, 40% of American rice growers' profits came from the government. Heavily subsidized American rice could sell at prices far below the market value of Haitian rice. Haitian farmers never stood a chance against this unfair competition".. In Haiti, imported American rice is called 'Miami rice' because it is shipped from Miami in sacks stamped 'Miami, FLA.' By December 1987, Haiti’s rice production had shrunk to 75% of Haitian needs

Peter James Hudson, Harvard

James Weldon Johnson boarded a.. steamship.. on February 27, 1920, tasked by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to investigate conditions in Haiti under US military rule.. [he] published his findings in the Nation as the four-part report Self-Determining Haiti [where] Johnson’s assessment of the US occupation (1915–1934), by then in its fifth year, was searing..

For Johnson a single institution and a single individual were responsible for the US intervention: the National City Bank of New York - the precursor to the contemporary financial services leviathan Citigroup - and its vice president Roger Leslie Farnham... [he wrote]

[T]o understand why the United States landed and has for five years maintained military forces in that country, why some three thousand Haitian men, women, and children have been shot down by American rifles and machine guns, it is necessary, among other things, to know that the National City Bank of New York is very much interested in Haiti. It is necessary to know that the National City Bank controls the National Bank of Haiti and is the depository for all of the Haitian national funds that are being collected by American officials, and that Mr. R. L. Farnham, vice-president of the National City Bank, is virtually the representative of the State Department in matters relating to the island republic"

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