{"id":8901,"date":"2024-09-18T13:43:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T17:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=8901"},"modified":"2024-09-18T13:43:00","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T17:43:00","slug":"theyre-eating-pets-another-example-of-u-s-politicians-smearing-haiti-and-haitian-immigrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=8901","title":{"rendered":"\u2018They\u2019re Eating Pets\u2019 \u2013 Another Example of U.S. Politicians Smearing Haiti and Haitian Immigrants"},"content":{"rendered":"
A man in Tucson, Arizona, carries an AI-generated image referencing falsehoods spread by Donald Trump and his running mate about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio. Rebecca Noble\/AFP via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance continues to defend<\/a> the false claim that migrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been abducting and eating<\/a> area cats and dogs.<\/p>\n

That outlandish idea has been thoroughly debunked<\/a> since former President Donald Trump repeatedly raised it as an anti-immigrant talking point in the Sept. 12, 2024, presidential debate. Trump never mentioned where the migrants allegedly \u201ceating the pets\u201d came from, but many viewers understood it as a reference to Haitians<\/a>, a population that Trump has previously degraded<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As debate moderator David Muir stated in his real-time fact check, there is no evidence that any pets in Springfield have been taken or consumed<\/a>. NPR<\/a> and other media outlets<\/a> have also declared the rumor, which began with local right-wing advocates and officials in Springfield decrying the city\u2019s disorganized response to an influx of Haitian migrants in recent years<\/a>, to be false.<\/p>\n

The Republican ticket\u2019s untrue rumors about Haitians in Springfield reflects a long history of prejudice toward Haitians in the United States. As a scholar of Haitian history and literature<\/a>, I have identified three anti-Haitian ideas prevalent in the United States that will help put the Springfield story into context.<\/p>\n

1. The unfitness of Haitians \u2018to govern themselves\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

In July 1915, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson invaded Haiti under the guise of restoring order and economic stability<\/a> following the assassination of Haitian President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam.<\/p>\n

Five years into what would become a 19-year military occupation<\/a>, the American diplomat and civil rights leader James Weldon Johnson was sent by the NAACP to investigate the supposed benefits of the occupation. His resounding takeaway: \u201cThe United States has failed Haiti<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In related pieces for The Nation<\/a> and The Crisis<\/a>, Johnson chronicled abuses ranging from extra-judicial killings of Haitian citizens \u2013 U.S forces killed 15,000 Haitians between 1915 and 1934<\/a> \u2013 to the harassment and rape of Haitian women. Johnson said the U.S. occupation amounted to nothing more than a belief in the \u201cunfitness of the Haitian people to govern themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

By undermining Haitian sovereignty, Wilson\u2019s administration had successfully created a justification for seizing control<\/a> of Haitian banks, rewriting its constitution and importing American Jim Crow-style segregation into the capital city of Port-au-Prince. This was a clearly racist presidential administration that hosted White House screenings of D.W. Griffiths\u2019 anti-Black film \u201cBirth of a Nation<\/a>,\u201d as historian Yveline Alexis demonstrates in her book \u201cHaiti Fights Back: The Life and Legacy of Charlemagne P\u00e9ralte<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRacism,\u201d Alexis writes, \u201cwas at the core of the seizure of Haiti and all interactions with Haitians.\u201d<\/p>\n

2. The \u20184H disease\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

In June 2017, Trump reportedly \u201cstormed into a meeting\u201d on immigration from Haiti and repeated a slanderous anti-Haitian claim: \u201cThey all have AIDS<\/a>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The account, from author Jake Johnston, a senior research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, shows the then-president repeating a falsehood that has circulated since HIV erupted in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Ever since a number of Haitians fell ill while at a Florida immigrant detention center<\/a> in June 1982, Haitians became part of what the late public health expert Paul Farmer called the \u201cgeography of blame\u201d<\/a> that linked this highly communicable disease to certain places and people.<\/p>\n

The federal government turned a small disease cluster into a migration policy designed to keep Haitians out of the U.S.<\/p>\n

Betweeen 1981 and 1991, more than 27,000 Haitian asylum-seekers fleeing Jean-Claude Duvalier\u2019s dictatorship were intercepted off the coast of Florida and detained<\/a>. The vast majority were repatriated, in part because of a deportation agreement with Duvalier<\/a> and in part because stopping Haitians at sea was a \u201cscreening strategy\u201d to prevent HIV\/AIDS from spreading in the U.S.<\/p>\n

The Reagan administration called the virus the \u201c4H disease<\/a>,\u201d referring to Haitians, hemophiliacs, homosexuals and heroin users. This designation spread harmful lies about four groups, but Haitians were the only nationality singled out as an \u201cat-risk\u201d population for contracting HIV\/AIDS.<\/p>\n

By the time the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed Haitians from its list of highest-risk groups<\/a> in 1985, the damage had been done. Haitians in the U.S. were effectively vilified as vectors of a deadly virus.<\/p>\n

As a young Haitian man in Port-au-Prince remarked to writer Martha Cooley in 1983, \u201cThis 4H thing is just one more way to keep us out<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. Haiti\u2019s problems are homegrown<\/strong><\/p>\n

Haiti\u2019s occupation<\/a> by foreign forces has continued on and off in different forms since the U.S. invasion of 1915.<\/p>\n

United Nations troops were stationed<\/a> there for nearly two decades following the the 2004 ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide. After the devastating 2010 earthquake, they were joined by the Red Cross<\/a> and Oxfam<\/a>. As all three organizations have since acknowledged, their humanitarian interventions left numerous crises in their wake, including cholera, chronic corruption in rebuilding projects and a market for sexually exploiting young girls.<\/p>\n

Haiti\u2019s capital, Port-au-Prince, was left in ruins by the January 2010 earthquake; the rebuilding process spearheaded by foreign aid organizations was slow and mired in corruption. AP Photo\/Gregory Bull<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Still, Haiti has long faced the accusation that its instability is homegrown. It is widely portrayed in the U.S. as a basket-case nation incapable of managing its own affairs. Trump, as president, once dismissed the entire country as a \u201cshithole<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

At present, Haitians are coping with overlapping crises that have U.S. fingerprints.<\/p>\n

After President Jovenel Mo\u00efse<\/a> was assassinated in July 2021, the Biden administration hand-picked Haiti\u2019s interim prime minister, Ariel Henry, as its new leader. This undemocratic decision was such a resounding failure<\/a> that in March 2024, Haitian gangs revolted against Henry\u2019s administration, unleashing a wave of gruesome violence that ultimately forced Henry out of office.<\/p>\n

So many catastrophes in Haiti over the past four decades<\/a> have created an overwhelming sense of insecurity<\/a> among its people. Many hundreds of thousands have fled the country<\/a> for the U.S., Dominican Republic, Brazil and beyond.<\/p>\n

In July 2024, the Biden administration granted temporary protected status<\/a> to 500,000 Haitian migrants in the U.S., allowing them to stay in the country, in recognition of the life-threatening conditions back home.<\/p>\n

The people Trump insists are \u201cillegal aliens\u201d are in fact authorized U.S. residents from a country buffeted by American meddling in its politics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A very old pattern<\/strong><\/p>\n

In barking about cats and dogs in Springfield, Trump, Vance and their right-wing supporters are spreading the same kind of anti-Haitian rhetoric<\/a> that has sown a harmful distrust of Haitian migrants for over a century.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not the first time that we [Haitians] have been the victims of \u2018yon kanpay manti,\u2019\u201d said the Ministry of Haitians Living Abroad in a press release following the debate<\/a>, using the Haitian Creole phrase for \u201ca campaign of lies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result of such misinformation, it added, is \u201cmistreatment, hatred, and misunderstanding in the interest of politics.\u201d\"The<\/p>\n

Nathan H. Dize<\/a>, Assistant Professor of French, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance continues to defend the false claim that migrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been abducting and eating area cats and dogs. That outlandish idea has been thoroughly debunked since former President Donald Trump repeatedly raised it as an anti-immigrant talking point in the Sept. 12, 2024, presidential debate. Trump never…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":8903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/619644\/original\/file-20240916-16-ui5jln.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&rect=0%2C12%2C8660%2C5743&q=45&auto=format&w=926&fit=clip","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polity-governance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8904,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8901\/revisions\/8904"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}