Linvestigation of New York Times probably did not reach Cité Soleil and Martissant, those slums of Port-au-Prince crushed by heat and misery. But one wonders if the misfortune of the hundreds of thousands of men and women who crowd into these neighborhoods of the Haitian capital does not have its roots in a history dating back to the 19th century.e century. Reconstructed by the American daily after a year of investigation, published in English, French and Creole, she made the headline of her European edition May 21-22.
This story is that of “the ransom of independence” – expression used by François Hollande in 2015 – paid by Haiti to France from 1825 to the early 1950s to compensate slave owners; and the hitherto unknown involvement of Crédit Industriel et Commercial (CIC), now a subsidiary of Crédit Mutuel. Like the State, the bank knowingly deprived the first black republic in history of the means to invest in education, health and development-enhancing infrastructures, and thus to integrate into the world economy.
Summary. In 1875, Haiti had already settled a large part of its “debt”, the weight of which sometimes exceeded 40% of its annual revenue. It plunged its population into the mize, a word on everyone’s lips when talking about the poorest country in the northern hemisphere. The CIC then grants it a first loan to build roads, bridges, railways, and refinance its remaining debt. But he keeps some of it and collects half of the taxes on coffee exports to reimburse himself. The balance ends up in the pocket of the “big eaters” these rich Haitian profiteers, who continue to put the country in regular cut.
Paying for freedom twice
But it’s not enough. A few years later, the CIC founded the National Bank of Haiti, which is only “national” in name: it is located at the Paris headquarters of the CIC, its shareholders are French and it must pay them commissions on each of its operations. Capital that will, among other things, finance the Eiffel Tower. Wall Street and the ancestor of Citigroup will take over at the beginning of the XXe century, before an occupation of the country by the American army (1915-1934), preceded by a drain on the gold stocks of the National Bank.
The investigation of New York Times is overwhelming for France and the United States. Historian Eric Monnet, professor at the Paris School of Economics and 2022 winner of the Best Young Economist Prize awarded by The world and the Circle of Economists, qualifies the actions of the CIC as “pure extraction”. There is no other example of people having had to pay twice for their freedom – with weapons and with money.
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