American Occupation

The U.S. Occupation of Haiti, beginning in 1915, was a huge step backwards for what would become the Haitian human rights movement. Haiti’s major religion, Vodou, which played a key role in Haiti’s independence, was made illegal. Every rural district and town had their leaders replaced with American whites, mainly Southerners, which led to a wide variety of Jim Crow era repression laws (5).

Furthermore, U.S. occupying forces created the Haitian Gendarmes Army, which played a key role in the rise of the later Duvalier Regimes. By forcing the Haitians to create a strongly centralized government based in Port-au-Prince, the U.S. government created conditions which limited the widespread political participation Haitians had once experienced (7).

In addition, forced labor was common in order for the United States to extract Haitian resources (6). An extensive roadbuilding program was also undertaken based on forced labor by Haitian peasants. (7)