It isn’t just my belief that reporting on events on the southern border—and Hispanic concerns in general—are framed by a “mainstream” media in which no one seems to “speak” their “language” or is willing to confront ignorant and racist attitudes and beliefs that the media itself perpetuates. Outside of the opinions of Geraldo Rivera—on Fox News of all places—Hispanics are always whatever non-Hispanics in the media say they are. During the recent “crisis” of migrants crossing under the Del Rio Bridge in Texas, CNN’s initial hysterical coverage made it seem as if a pack of rats were swarming into the country, which is fairly typical of the media’s reporting on the border.
But that changed, and likely because some people, likely black anchors and commentators, were not happy about the implication. Why? Because it seems that most of the “vermin” were in fact Haitians. While the mainstream media never speaks to the conditions—usually exacerbated by U.S. policies—that lead to migration from Central America, the New York Times was ready and willing to lend a “helping hand” for people who don’t “understand” the plight of Haitian migrants. And that means that there is no need to discuss how it is possible that Haiti shares an island with the Dominican Republican which maintains its tropical ambience while Haiti by all appearances is a barren wasteland, and the thoughtless deforestation of Haiti has made natural disasters much more destructive.
Of course having said that it is obvious why many Haitians have fled their country. Many of them have settled, according to The Times, in Chile, Brazil and Panama, and they had good jobs and stable lives in those countries, we are told. Yet many of them decided to pack up and head to the United States. Why? Because those countries were just stop off points before they were ready to go where the real dough was. They waited until Donald Trump was out of office, and longing “for the possibility of a better life in the United States, under a president who had protected Haitians in the United States from deportation and many believed would relax entry requirements. So they sold their belongings, left their jobs and pulled their kids out of school. And they headed north.”
People don’t even want to hear about the violence that the U.S. “deported” to Central America, and what its addiction to illegal drugs has wrought in Mexico, or the fact that the reason why Trump never complained about CAFTA is because it has yielded far more benefit to the U.S. economy than to those of Central America, despite the fact that the U.S. has a far larger marketplace for trade. No, for the Haitians its pull out the hankies time:
“But instead of the reception they’d expected, they were detained in the small border town of Del Rio, Texas, and without warning deported—to Haiti, a broken country many no longer recognized—in a head-spinning sequence that left them feeling mistreated and betrayed.”
Well, join the “club.” Why should they expect any better treatment than Hispanic migrants who the Biden administration has been expelling back across the border without asylum hearings, and only recently by court order was forced to put on hold expelling families? Well, apparently the reporter of this story does. “I thought the United States was a big country, with laws. They treated us terribly,” said one Haitian migrant. “They didn’t even give me an interview with an immigration agent. What am I going to do? I don’t know this country (Haiti) anymore.”
Of course these people “know” perfectly well what Haiti is like; that is why they escaped to places like Brazil and Chile when Trump and Stephen Miller wouldn’t take them in. It is a perfectly good question to ask if, as The Times claimed, that they already had good jobs in those countries, then why come here? The Times of course could be fudging reality, trying to portray them as “good” people and not as vermin as Hispanic migrants are typically portrayed by the media and politicians. But if we take The Times at its word, these people would have been just “fine” had they stayed in their supposedly stable lives in Brazil and Chile and applied for legal immigration status from there.
Of course if The Times is lying about that, the question then is why would they do so if it would make Haitian migrants more “sympathetic” if they are having a difficult time in their new environments. The reason, naturally, is because the media outlets that have “diverse” opinions—meaning to include white women and blacks, but no Hispanics—and must portray Haitians in a more positive and sympathetic light so as not to appear to be racist. On the other hand, with no one to defend the humanity of Hispanics or be offended by racist media coverage, there is no “need” to concern one’s self there.
Sure, you can’t help but feel for these people. The Times continues: “Many of the migrants said they spent their life’s savings on the arduous trip, on foot and by bus, to the United States. Some described the long march across a stretch of jungle along the border between Panama and Colombia called the Darien Gap, saying they stumbled past the cadavers of fellow travelers. ‘I saw this guy lying down. I thought he was sleeping. But when I touched him, I found him dead,’ said Claire Bazille, who left the life she’d built over six years in Chile’s capital, Santiago, and traveled for two months carrying her son to reach the United States.” Of course you don’t encounter much interest in stories like that in the mainstream media when it comes to Hispanic migrants, do you?
Unlike Central American countries, Haiti has received “billions of dollars” in foreign aid assistance from all over the world to help “reconstruct” the country. Despite that, The Times tells us that Haiti remains “a dangerous and politically turbulent country. Armed gangs control many areas. Poverty and hunger are rising (that has always been a problem in Haiti). The country’s few institutions are so underfunded as to seem meaningless.” The recent assassination of its president and an earthquake that killed 2,000 has also lent additional credence as to why Haitians should be treated more sympathetically than Hispanic migrants.
If the media has any way with it, we need not discuss the fact that Haiti has had a self-destructive existence, while Central America has seen 200 years of political, social and economic exploitation by the U.S. When the Monroe Doctrine—which defined the Western Hemisphere as the U.S.’ “special” sphere of influence—was instituted in 1823, it was regarded as mostly empty words. But after the Civil War its scope broadened considerable, and the “Roosevelt Corollary” in 1904 extended Theodore Roosevelt’s imperialist pretensions into Latin America. The “corollary” merely served as a “justification” for the U.S. to intervene, usually militarily, in the affairs of Latin America—and in Central America in particularly—when it saw these countries were pursuing policies that were not in the “interests” of the U.S.
These “interventions” were often used as a prelude to economic exploitation—the creation of the so-called “banana republics,” whose governments were simply U.S. puppets in which American businesses were the real “government.” The abuses of this policy made many enemies in Latin America, until the FDR administration instituted the “Good Neighbor Policy,” which lasted only until the beginning of the Cold War, when U.S. interference into Latin American affairs resumed; this usually involved propping up right-wing authoritarians and undermining popular “socialist” political movements meant to improve the condition of the people.
Haiti, on the other hand, has been in a constant state of turmoil since the former slaves gained independence from France in 1824. Efforts by President Howard Taft to pay off Haiti’s massive international debt in 1910 failed to bring about stability. The only period of relative “stability” in the country was between 1915 and 1934, when Woodrow Wilson sent in the Marines after a four-year period in which seven presidents were either assassinated or overthrown in Haiti. While U.S. attempts to force a new constitution on the country failed, and the importation of American racial social “values” among other things caused unrest initially, from 1921-29 Haiti saw relative “prosperity” with the U.S. in control of its financial and economic policy.
But with unrest generated by the Great Depression, the U.S. decided to pull out of the country by 1934 and leave it to its own devices, upon which Haiti basically reverted to its previous form, with a “respite” in the political instability during the repressive 30-year period of dictatorship under “Papa” and “Baby” Doc Duvalier.
The Biden administration has now “suspended” repatriations to Haiti, and the media is providing the cover for it, the kind it would never deign to give Hispanic migrants because there is no one in media to speak for them or be outraged by racist media coverage. Yes, Haiti is a “mess”—but it always has been one of largely its own creation. It is “ironic” that media is all of sudden waiving the hankies when it is Haitians flooding the border, when it knows nothing ever changes in Haiti.
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