"In Haiti, there was a devastating earthquake. Up to half a million people have died. Please donate whatever possible" reads the sign that was created by me and this kid named Trevor Mcky at my school. It's all true and we've raised over 200 dollars for Haiti.
This earthquake all happened about three weeks ago, and this breaking news story has almost disappeared from news networks across the world. I guess even though there are still people dying under the rubble with absolutely no news support.
It was bad enough that it was a 7.0 magnitude, but let me explain further how the earthquake victims were so vulnerable to this earthquake.
First of all it was France. France colonized Haiti some time in the late 1600s or in the early 1700s and they were using Haiti as a port for African slaves. This lasted until the year 1791 when Haitian salves created a revolt lead by Francois Toussaint L'overture which ended in 1804 when Haiti finally defeated the French Military and Haiti became only the second free country in the Americas. However, then France pledged freedom to Haiti only if Haiti gave France a settlement, putting the newly developed Haitian in a great debt. Also, since these people were slaves, they had absolutely no training in running a government at all, and since the slaves had not gotten the right of an education, almost the entire country was illiterate. More than 100 years later, Haiti had a string of bad rulers, which made Haiti even worse.
Then, it was the United States who colonized Haiti from 1915 to 1934. Do you know what's weird to me, the United States Constitution was created because we hated our own English colonization, but then we go off 200 some years later and colonize other countries like Hawai'i, in which we completely eliminated as a country. Haiti is one of these sad examples. We ourselves collected taxes and set some of our affairs in Haiti. During this colonization, we collected billions of dollars from the Haitian people.
Then it was "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" who messed up Haiti even more. "Papa Doc" (Francois Duvalier) started the whole thing when he arranged the "Tontons Macoutes" ("Bogymen"), a secret force of men who would execute or assassinate all of the opponents of "Papa Doc" and whoever he saw as a threat to his power, he would drain all of their power. And he would use corruption to get what he wanted. And then, there was "Baby Doc" (Jean-Claude Duvalier), he did pretty much exactly what his dad did and not in a good way.
And then, it was the United States again. When Haiti finally started to get back up on it's feet again and started exporting it's goods, the U.S. started sending "aid" to Haiti, creating it's dependence on importing goods. This is because of this: when farmers went to the markets to sell their produce, they used to be able to sell their produce, but when the U.S. sent "aid", the farmers could not sell their produce, and so they had to shut down their farm entirely, and since they had no source of income, they could no longer export their goods. These farmers all had to move into Port-au-Prince which created a huge increase in population of Port-au-Prince which is where the earthquake struck.
Post questions and comments as comments
Sam
