PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Nicolas Sarkozy promised $400 million in aid for quake-stricken Haiti today as he made the first visit ever by a French president to what was once his nation’s richest colony.
Sarkozy, who was greeted by Haitian President Rene Preval as a brass band played the Marseillaise, toured a French field hospital and viewed the earthquake-ravaged capital through the door of a helicopter.
“I want only to say to the Haitian people, ‘You are not alone,’” Sarkozy said at a news conference on the grounds of Haiti’s National Palace, one of many government buildings shattered by the Jan. 12 earthquake.
Many were glad for the aid in a nation that was desperately poor even before the Jan. 12 catastrophe that killed more than 200,000 people and caused billions of dollars in damage.
“It is a pleasure to welcome the president because we want France to help us,” said Ovulienne Fortis, 38, sitting in front of a squalid camp where hundreds of earthquake survivors now live outside.
Some Haitians also see France’s renewed interest in their nation as a counterbalance to the United States, which has sent troops there three times in the past 16 years. But Sarkozy’s visit also is reviving bitter memories of the crippling costs of Haiti’s 1804 independence.
A third of the population was killed in an uprising against exceptionally brutal slavery, an international embargo was imposed to deter slave revolts elsewhere and 90 million pieces of gold were demanded by Paris from the world’s first black republic.
The debt hobbled Haiti for much of its history.
Some people handed out fliers in the streets protesting Sarkozy’s visit and blaming France for enslaving Haiti.
Sarkozy acknowledged the “wounds of colonization” during comments at the undamaged French Embassy, and later said, “I know well the story of our countries on the question of debt.”
With an eye on that old grievance, France has already said it was canceling all of Haiti’s $77 million debt to Paris. The aid package also will include reconstruction money, emergency aid and $40 million in support for the Haitian government’s budget.
Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said the budgetary support was crucial: “It means we are going to use it the way we want,” he told The Associated Press.
Sarkozy said Haiti needs a reconstruction plan that bolsters the outlying provinces to help shift people away from Port-au-Prince, the Caribbean’s most densely populated capital. He said one reason the death toll was so high was that the city was not built to sustain such a large population.
The idea is similar to proposals from Haitian, U.S. and U.N. officials to move power away from the devastated capital and boost agriculture and tourism.
Haiti has been plagued by natural disasters and poor management even before a magnitude-7 earthquake smashed the capital, Port-au-Prince, leaving more than a million homeless.
Haitian politicians this week diplomatically skirted a demand that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide raised in 2004: French reparations for past damages.
In 1825, crippled by the U.S.-led international embargo that was enforced by French warships, Haiti agreed to pay France 150 million francs in compensation for the lost “property” — including slaves — of French plantation owners.
By comparison, France sold the United States its immensely larger Louisiana Territory in 1803 for just 60 million francs. The amount for Haiti was later lowered to 90 million gold francs.
Haiti did not finish paying the debilitating debt — which was swollen by massive interest payments to French and American banks — until 1947.
But Haiti’s wealth already was destroyed. It had been the world’s richest colony, providing half the globe’s sugar and other exports including coffee, cotton, hardwood and indigo that exceeded the value of everything produced in the United States in 1788.
By the early 1780s, half of Haiti’s forests were gone, leading to the devastating erosion and extreme poverty that bedevils the country today.
France’s other former colonies in the region — Guadeloupe, Martinique, St. Martin, St. Barts and Guiana (in South America) — all have voted to remain part of France and send legislators to the French parliament.
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