Why is Haiti the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere ?
Much of Haiti’s current problems go back to the Reagan era. There was an outbreak of a deadly swine virus that had gotten into the country from the pigs eating contaminated garbage and the US forced Haiti to kill every pig on the island that could be found. For most of the country, this was the only form of wealth that they had. At the same time, Reagan started putting import limits on sugar to benefit American sugar growers and this was very bad for Haiti because most of the men worked seasonally in the Dominican Republic cutting sugar cane. The ruling Duvalier family also made it illegal to import kerosene because they had a monopoly on importing gasoline and did not want any competition for its use as a fuel. Because of this, the primary cooking fuel became charcoal so almost all of the trees were cut down in the country to make charcoal. It is so bad now that in some areas people mine tree roots to use as cooking fuel. Meanwhile the Dominican Republic made strict laws against cutti
