US Occupation of Haiti

Content Warning: This article contains discussion of disturbing subjects around murder and rape

The US Occupation of Haiti or the Rape of Haiti was an effort by the USA to defend their colonial ambitions in Latin America from the expanding German Empire from 1915 to 1934. Haiti became an occupied territory of an American Empire, and US soldiers killed, raped and tortured an unknown number of people.

Crimes Against Humanity

Sexual Violence

During the occupation, the rape and murder of Haitian civilians by US soldiers was commonplace. Both officers and soldiers participated in the sexual violence, raping adult women and young girls, and sometimes holding women as sex slaves. The marines, who administered a group of Haitian gendarmes acting as police, were accused of widespread rapes of women and girls and of trying to use the gendarmes to find them women to use as concubines. Evidence exists that some military higher-ups knew of the sexual violence but did little to punish it, condoning it by denying it, questioning the virtue of Haitian women, and suggesting that raped women had actually consented. A victim blaming mentality existed among the occupiers, who thought of Haitian women as being "of easy virtue"—a mentality which served to justify and even deny the existence of sexual violence.

Resentment grew on the part of Haitians and led to conflict with the occupiers. African-Americans also raised outcry about the marines' sexual violence; one reverend said, "in one night alone in … Port-au-Prince nine little girls from 8 to 12 years old died from the raping of American soldiers." In his 1920 campaign for presidency, Warren G. Harding criticized incumbent Woodrow Wilson, referring to the occupation as the "Rape of Haiti"; however after he won the election he continued the occupation in his own presidency (but remember you have to vote and cannot question our elected leaders!). America believes in the rule of law so strongly that they forgot to apply it here, and none of the soldiers, officers, commanders, politicians and businessmen who helped these digusting crimes against humanity were ever charged! Oopsies daisy!