Haiti, the only country to emerge from a successful slave revolt, wasn't always a nation in shambles. Western powers refused to allow it to succeed.
About 50,000 Haitians might be forced to return to their homeland by mid-2019 if the Trump administration is successful in ending the special immigration status granted following the catastrophic 2010 Port-au-Prince earthquake.
Haitians living and working legally in the United States since the earthquake that killed 200,000 could have to go back to a country that is the most impoverished and environmentally degraded in the Western Hemisphere.
Though the number of Haitians living temporarily in Greater Cincinnati and is believed to be small, strong ties exist in the area with the Caribbean nation. Two local relief organizations maintain a regular presence in Haiti.
Matthew 25: Ministries, based in Blue Ash, operates a mission hotel north of Port-au-Prince, in Bon Repos, as a base for its and other organization's humanitarian and medical trips to Haiti. A Child's Hope International, based in Sharonville, has sent hundreds of thousands of nutritious, pre-packaged and rice-based meals to Haiti and other impoverished nations over the past decade. Both organizations had teams on the ground in the wake of the January 2010 earthquake.
A number of other faith-based organizations in Greater Cincinnati are involved in relief drives and have or continue to send teams to Haiti.
The situation in Haiti remains dire. Advocates who favor extending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians say the country has been hit since 2010 by a series of natural disasters – a cholera outbreak and a cycle of hurricanes and drought – that have created a humanitarian crisis. Water, food and medicine remain in short supply.
Sending tens of thousands of Haitians back would strain the small country's limited resources, endanger the lives of those returning and sever a financial pipeline from Haitians working in the United States that is helping to keep family members alive in Haiti.
Yet Haiti wasn't always a nation in shambles. As the only nation to emerge from a successful slave rebellion, its history and survival are remarkable.
The island of Hispaniola, today shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, was once the richest colony of the New World. The western third of the island – today Haiti – was known as Saint Domingue and was the central destination of the transatlantic slave trade. At the height of Saint Domingue's prosperity, colonial power France had brought in 800,000 enslaved Africans from the nations of Senegal, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Slaves provided the muscle for an economy that during the 1780s – the decade before the slave revolt – produced 60 percent of the coffee and 40 percent of the sugar consumed in Europe. Indigo and cotton were other big cash crops that earned the colony the nickname "Pearl of the Antilles."
At one time, the land yielded 30 percent of the world's sugar, and the French drove their cane-cutting Haitian slaves especially hard. From the plantations came a former slave, Toussaint Louverture, skilled in veterinary medicine, who at age 50 became what historians call an effective self-taught military strategist and leader.
The 13-year Haitian Revolution started in 1791, ended with Haiti's independence in 1804 and influenced events across the Americas. Napoleon, defeated in his attempt to reconquer Haiti, accepted defeat in the New World, which included negotiating the Louisiana Purchase with Thomas Jefferson in 1803.
In the Caribbean, Jamaica was poised for the next revolution, and the British would not have been able to win, say many historians. Eventually, the slave trade ended altogether by 1808, and Western policies have been punishing Haiti ever since for winning its independence.
"The problem was not politics or commerce. The central issue was the not to have the specter of blacks ruling themselves," said Barrymore Bogues, professor of Africana Studies and director of the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University. "The fragile example of ex-slaves ruling themselves, the Western powers had to make sure it failed."
After its independence, Haiti was a fledgling country trying to find its place in a world dominated by slavery across the Americas and in the United States, Bogues said.
"Their question was, 'Are we going to be able to survive?' " Bogues said.
The answer: Barely. In 1825, Haiti started to pay France the equivalent today of $21 billion in reparations to French slaveholders it had fought to overthrow.
The United States, fearing that the rebellion would give slaves across the U.S. South ideas about staging their own revolution, refused to trade with Haiti and would not diplomatically recognize Haiti until 1862.
The United States then invaded Haiti in 1915 and didn't leave until 1934, holding veto power over all Haitian government decisions during that time.
"Haiti has been ruthlessly exploited by Western powers many times in its 200 years of independence," said Madison Smartt Bell, an English professor at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, Louverture biographer and author of a trilogy of novels about Louverture and the slave revolt.
Along with the exploitation of people, ecological exploitation predates Haitian independence.
"When Columbus' crew got there, though they thought they were in paradise, they went about destroying the place," Bell said.
Haiti's arid soil and erosion are caused by its excessive deforestation, which Bell said started in the late 17th century when Europeans started harvesting its forests to make furniture.
Scholar Bogues said the Western powers' propping up of ineffective Haitian governments, including U.S. support for dictators Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who ruled Haiti from 1957 through 1986, cemented the idea in the minds of everyday Haitians that the government did not care for them.
"The Americans did not want another Cuba," Bogues said, referencing the communist regime of Fidel Castro. "In the countryside, people retreated, and there was a strong sense they had to make do however they could, even if that meant cutting down all of the trees."
Despite government corruption, acute poverty and environmental destruction, Bogues and others say Haitians are among the world’s most resilient people.
"It's in their art, their artistic practices, in which Haitians show their spirit is not broken," said the Jamaica-born Bogues. "It's as if they're saying, 'You can bend us, but you will never break us.' "
Mark Curnutte, the race and social justice reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer, has written extensively on Haiti since the 2010 earthquake. He is the author of "A Promise in Haiti: A Reporter's Notes on Families and Daily Lives."