Here's the article.
The country's history reads like a book from the Old Testament. They haven't had a good day in over 500 years. They started with colonialism:
The Spaniards exploited the island for its gold, mined chiefly by local Amerindians directed by the Spanish occupiers. Those refusing to work in the mines were slaughtered or forced into slavery. Europeans brought with them chronic infectious diseases that were new to the Caribbean, and therefore the indigenous population lacked immunity to them. These new diseases were the chief cause of the dying off of the Taíno,[5] but ill treatment, malnutrition, and a drastic drop of the birthrate also contributed.
... moved on to slavery ...
The French-enacted Code Noir (Black Code), which was prepared by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and ratified by Louis XIV, established rigid rules on slave treatment and permissible freedom. It has been described as one of the most brutally efficient slave colonies there ever was - a third of new arrivals died within a few years.[8]
... then revolutionary war. The guy they put in charge, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, ruled the newly independent nation as a despot. After nearly two centuries of political instability and regular invasions from various European powers, the country was occupied by the United States. Not long thereafter, along came good ol' "Papa Doc" Duvalier:
From 1957 to 1986, the Duvalier family reigned as dictators, turning the country into a hermit kingdom with a personality cult and excessive corruption. They created the private army and terrorist death squads known as Tonton Macoutes. Many Haitians fled to exile in the United States and Canada, especially French-speaking Quebec.
The 90's were not all that much better. The Haitians managed to elect a president (Jean-Bertrand Aristide) in 1990 only to have him ousted in a coup d'etat a year later, followed by three more years of political chaos. The US intervened again and put Aristide back in power, but he was ousted again in 2004! That was the same year Mother Nature turned against them:
In addition to soil erosion, deforestation has caused periodic flooding, as seen on 17 September 2004. Tropical storm Jeanne skimmed the north coast of Haiti, leaving 3,006 people dead in flooding and mudslides, mostly in the city of Gonaïves.[16]Earlier that year in May, floods killed over 3,000 people on Haiti's southern border with the Dominican Republic.[17]
Yesterday's 7.0 earthquake is only the most recent horror that has befallen Haiti. It's like the universe just keeps taking one dump after another on that poor country.
These people need all the help they can get. As you can see from the above, they've pretty much needed help for half a millennium now, but this is an exceptional case. It's still pretty early for an impact analysis, but at this point it looks like much of their infrastructure is in ruins. When you're as downtrodden as Haiti, losing your roads, electricity, and communication lines is the equivalent of stepping on someone's throat when they're lying beaten on the ground. This is to say nothing of the loss of life, homes, and livelihood.
Red Cross
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