A Brief History of Haiti continued from Part One...

A short time after they gained independence, the people of Haiti were thrown into a fierce civil war; dividing the country for almost 20 years. Dessalines was assassinated, and an illiterate ex-slave named Henri Christophe took his place. King Christophe ruled the North, and Alexandre Petion, a mulatto, ruled the South.

In 1818, Alexandre Pétion died and Jean-Pierre Boyer, the former secretary of Pétion, was appointed President for Life. After the suicide of King Christophe, President Boyer joined the country together. Boyer later led Haitian troops into Santo Domingo, the former Spanish colony and claimed victory, unifying the island. However, President Boyer condemned Haiti to generations of debt that strangled the still fledgling nation and kept it from gaining its foothold as a republic.

By 1915, American marines stepped in to calm the situation. The occupation had both positive and negative effects. The Marines pressured peasants into forced labor. They paved roads, and built houses, hospitals and sewage systems. This bred great resentment. Under the leadership of Charlemagne Peralt a resistance movement formed within the population. Peralt conducted numerous successful guerilla attacks against the American Marines, who later betrayed and assassinated Peralt.

By 1935, the U.S. withdrew from Haiti. After the U.S. withdrawal, Haiti began to expand its economy and grow in population. Haitian settlements began to develop along the border, some within Dominican territory.

The Dominican government, under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, began to forcefully move its citizens to outlying provinces in order to establish border towns and stop the Haitian expansion. Anti-Haitian sentiment flourished.

In 1937, Dominican soldiers along the northern border were ordered to attack any person with dark skin. As a result, some 30,000 Haitians and Dominicans were massacred. Even to this day tensions are high between the island’s neighbors.

Continued...