# And Then There Were Guys On Horseback: We Have Not Yet Forgiven Haiti For Being Black Details Abby Zimet ![logo](https://www.citywatchla.com//templates/ja_teline_v/images/logo.png) September 23 2021 [ ![](https://www.citywatchla.com/images/stories/Sept-2021/076z3.png) ](https://www.citywatchla.com/voices/22622-and-then-there-were-guys-on-horseback-we-have-not-yet-forgiven-haiti-for-being-black) [VOICES](https://www.citywatchla.com/voices) - [ Previous Article **Like FDR, Biden Should Welcome Special Interests Hatred** ](https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22624:like-fdr-biden-should-welcome-special-interests-hatred&catid=375) - [ Next Article **What the Expanded Child Tax Credit Means to Me** ](https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22607:what-the-expanded-child-tax-credit-means-to-me&catid=375) ###### Typography - [](# "Smaller Font") ****Smaller** **Small** **Medium** **Big** **Bigger**** [](# "Bigger Font") - [](# "Previous Font Style") ****Default** **Helvetica** **Segoe** **Georgia** **Times**** [](# "Next Font Style") - [ Reading Mode](# "Reading Mode") > [](https://www.addtoany.com/share) > > [Comments](#disqus_thread) > > > > IMMIGRATION WATCH - For up to 15,000 heartsick Haitians [**languishing ](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/us/texas-migrants-del-rio.html)in fear, thirst, hunger and 100-degree temperatures under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, their slog across the Rio Grande was only the last step of an ineffably harrowing journey - not just the months-long trek through parlous jungle but the centuries-long history of a [**country**](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Haiti?src=hashtag_click&f=live) so beset by relentless calamity it's been deemed "a descent to hell," from colonialism, slavery, occupation to earthquakes, hunger, gangs. Like too many other countries, the world's first black republic became the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation in large part thanks to [**abuses ](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/01/14/racism-has-always-driven-u-s-policy-toward-haiti/)by imperialist powers - first neglect, then conquest and exploitation, most often by an ever-[**racist ](https://origins.osu.edu/article/pact-devil-united-states-and-fate-modern-haiti/page/0/1)U.S.A. Writing to his old ally the Marquis de Lafayette in 1792, Thomas Jefferson [**noted**](https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/jefferson-french-and-haitian-revolutions-1792) the slave rebellion in what was then Saint-Domingue and wondered whether France would “ever be able to reduce the blacks” in its most profitable colony. The world's first state to be born of a successful slave revolt, Haiti declared independence in 1804; the U.S. didn't recognize it until 1862, after which it swiftly moved to ravage it, importing African slaves for its sugar, coffee and other plantations. By the early 20th century it had begun a "gunboat diplomacy" of repeatedly intervening in Haiti to "protect American lives & business interests." In 1915, amidst civil unrest after a presidential assassination, the Marines took control in what became a bloody 20-year occupation; the NAACP [**found ](http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5018)that, "Unquestionably, (America's) race prejudice made possible the brutalities practiced (upon) citizens of the Negro Republic of Haiti." And so it went. Between 1934 and 1986, the U.S. installed several brutal [**dictators**](https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2004-02-27-0402270144-story.html), including Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier, organized two [**coups**](https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/08/world/a-haitian-leader-of-paramilitaries-was-paid-by-cia.html) and interfered in elections in an unsavory arc leading straight to former guy's [**rants**](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/01/11/trumps-shithole-comment-about-haiti-lends-credence-to-report-that-he-said-its-residents-all-have-aids/) about shithole countries and all Haitians having AIDS, never mind all that nonsense about the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Still, Haitians kept leaving. After the devastating earthquake in 2010, thousands left for Brazil, Chile and other parts of South America; when jobs dried up in 2016, many began trying to get here, often by foot through Panama's infamous Darien Gap jungle. This year, U.S. immigration agents encountered over 30,000 Haitians, nearly six times last year's number. They were [**fleeing ](https://reliefweb.int/report/haiti/haiti-flash-appeal-earthquake-august-2021)overlapping disasters: July's presidential assassination, escalating gang violence - 165 gangs reportedly fight it out in Port-au-Prince - over four million hungry people, or almost half the population, crumbling infrastructure, no running water, a hurricane and August [**earthquake**](https://www.newyorker.com/news/as-told-to/after-the-earthquake-a-mayor-in-haiti-struggles-to-console-his-town) that left over 30,000 people homeless, the grim [**sense**](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/world/americas/haiti-president-politics.html) there is "no normal life anymore" and "nothing to go back to." In the face of those crises, four months ago the U.S. [**announced**](https://www.dhs.gov/news/2021/05/22/secretary-mayorkas-designates-haiti-temporary-protected-status-18-months) it would give Temporary Protected Status to some Haitians to allow them to remain in the country. But it only applied to those arriving before July 29, two weeks before the earthquake. The hopeful if inaccurate word spread, and by last week thousands had [**assembled ](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trapped-migrants-collecting-food-try-evade-law-enforcement-us-mexico-border-2021-09-20/)in Del Rio, doggedly wading back across the river to Ciudad Acuña for food and water while [**awaiting**](https://apnews.com/article/health-mexico-texas-caribbean-immigration-9a95f12bd4e425bcdc87d38fa2cad298) a miracle. Facing a [**humanitarian**](https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/immigration/2021/09/19/haitian-migrants-tough-choices-crackdown-del-rio-texas-border/8411152002/) and political disaster, Biden [**unconscionably ](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/20/obscene-rights-groups-slam-us-expulsions-of-haitian-migrants)responded with what could be America's fastest, cruelest, biggest, blackest [**expulsion**](https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/09/18/infuriating-disappointment-biden-dhs-ramping-deportations-haiti) of migrants in decades - rendered even worse by using the Trump-era [**Title 42**](https://www.npr.org/2021/09/20/1038918197/the-biden-administration-is-fighting-in-court-to-keep-a-trump-era-immigration-po) excuse of COVID to make it seem [**legal**](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-17/biden-administration-appeals-judge-order-to-stop-expelling-migrants-under-public-health-law), if obscene. The first flights of angry, weary, disoriented Haitians have already [**landed ](https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-says-4000-haitian-migrants-moved-border-four-more-flights-come-mayorkas-2021-09-21/)in Port-au-Prince, and the U.S. [**plans ](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/u-s-will-prioritize-single-adult-haitians-some-families-deportation-n1279548)to keep up deportations through the week with between five and eight flights a day despite the outrage of advocates and anyone else [**aware ](https://twitter.com/hashtag/WelcomewithDignity?src=hashtag_click)of our own [**culpability ](https://twitter.com/hashtag/WelcomewithDignity?src=hashtag_click)in the ship-'em-out injustice now playing out. This week, there was also the [**lurid spectacle ](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/us/politics/haitians-border-patrol-photos.html)of likely racist Texas Rangers on horseback rounding up terrified migrants - aka thuggish agents of a dubious state recreating America's original sin by [**acting**](https://twitter.com/rdevro/status/1439733206455050243) the part of slave chasers - and [**wielding**](https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/09/20/border-patrol-accused-unfathomable-cruelty-cracking-whips-haitians) their reins like whips, all as a horrified Twitter endlessly [**debated**](https://twitter.com/search?q=border%20patrol%20whips&f=live) whether they were *actually* whipping them or just *looking like* they were whipping them and a queasy media [**found**](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-homeland-security-chief-heads-border-removal-migrant-camp-accelerates-2021-09-20/) new euphemisms like "whip-like cord" for old, ungodly crimes. Regardless, it was generally agreed that "white people with whips rounding up black people" is not a good look, even in Texas. The White House, meanwhile, expressed its [**concern**](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-homeland-security-chief-heads-border-removal-migrant-camp-accelerates-2021-09-20/) - shades of Susan Collins - which didn't make much of a dent in what remains a moral, legal, racial and political shitshow of towering proportions. For Haitians and anyone else appalled by their fate, there was one last indignity: the racist, hysterical fear-mongering swiftly taken up by a right-wing eager for blood, from the reptillian Greg Abbott - we need to "stop these caravans from overrunning our state" - to GOP Texans decrying an "invasion" of migrants who could "take over our country without firing a shot." On *Fox*, a Del Rio woman ominously [**reported, ](https://www.foxnews.com/media/texas-border-landowner-biden-migrants-security-humanitarian-crisis)"We’ve had footprints from illegals, in the middle of night, underneath our daughters’ bedroom windows"; *Red State* [**blasted ](https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/09/17/ted-cruz-reports-from-the-border-as-shocking-must-see-videos-expose-a-national-security-and-humanitarian-disaster-n444460)a "national security disaster" overseen by "a mental invalid" who's "on the beach again for a long weekend." Leading[ ](https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1438679280154812418?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1438679280154812418%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fredstate.com%2Fbonchie%2F2021%2F09%2F17%2Fted-cruz-reports-from-the-border-as-shocking-must-see-videos-expose-a-national-security-and-humanitarian-disaster-n444460video)the slimy charge was Ted Cruz, never one to miss a performative photo op while spreading hate and lies and pretending to be outraged by something. "I am on the ground in Del Rio," he [**intoned**](https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1438679280154812418?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1438679280154812418%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fredstate.com%2Fbonchie%2F2021%2F09%2F17%2Fted-cruz-reports-from-the-border-as-shocking-must-see-videos-expose-a-national-security-and-humanitarian-disaster-n444460) in a bumptious, Monty-Python-like video, gesturing to huddled black bodies behind him. "As of this moment, there are 10,503 illegal aliens...This man-made crisis was caused by Joe Biden." Bullshit, said America, which noted the GOP runs Texas so maybe some of this is on them: "You're right, Haiti's earthquake, hurricane and collapse of the government probably had nothing to do with it....Mother of God!...I hope they come to my neighborhood - welcome, friends... I assume Cancun Cruz headed directly to his office to work on legislation to double funding to process refugees and sent staff to make sure they are properly fed (as) their processing continues. Or he went out for a lobbyist-paid steak." Finally, you smug, racist, self-righteous, opportunistic son of a Cuban migrant: They're not illegal aliens. They're human beings. *"Haiti is black, and we have not yet forgiven Haiti for being black…After Haiti had shaken off the fetters of bondage, and long after her freedom and independence had been recognized by all other civilized nations, (we) treated her as outside the sisterhood of nations." -* Abolitionist Frederick Douglass in an 1893 speech on the U.S. government's response to the Haitian Revolution and Americans' discomfort with Black self-determination. This is a man-made crisis.[**\#BidenBorderCrisis**](https://twitter.com/hashtag/BidenBorderCrisis?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [**pic.twitter.com/BD1uh9jKKH**](https://t.co/BD1uh9jKKH) *(Abby Zimet has written CD's **[Further](https://www.commondreams.org/further)** column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, involved in women's, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues.)* - [ Previous Article **Like FDR, Biden Should Welcome Special Interests Hatred** ](https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22624:like-fdr-biden-should-welcome-special-interests-hatred&catid=375) - [ Next Article **What the Expanded Child Tax Credit Means to Me** ](https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22607:what-the-expanded-child-tax-credit-means-to-me&catid=375)