Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

Patterns of Intervention
7. Elsewhere in the Region
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
229
T
o fully appreciate the US role in Nicaragua and El Salvador, one
must consider the broader picture of US intervention in the region
throughout the century. There is no space here for a
comprehensive review, so a few examples must suffice.
7.1. Torturing Hispaniola
Consider the island of Hispaniola, containing Haiti and the Dominican
Republic. Its population of 7.8 million “had been virtually exterminated
by disease, mass murder, and oppressive labor” within a generation by
Christopher Columbus, the genocidal monster whose exploits we
celebrate each October. 161 The first US Marine landing was in 1800;
there were eight landings in the independent Haitian republic between
1867 and 1900. The most serious intervention, however, was under
Woodrow Wilson. The “nigs” were put in their place in Haiti in the
manner noted earlier, but the “damned dagoes” in the Dominican
Republic held out for over five years.
The occupation of Haiti lasted for nineteen years. In 1922, the
president imposed in the US-run “free election” was removed in favor of
“an outspoken advocate of American paternalism and intellectual
devotee of Benito Mussolini’s fascist experiment in Italy” when he
“defied American wishes in negotiating a public loan delivering Haiti’s
debt to New York banks.” The Duvalier dynasty was established in
1957, and remains, while the country is owned by a wealthy elite and
foreign (largely US) business, and the population either flees abroad or
languishes in misery in one of the poorest and most oppressed corners