Sidney W. Mintz

The first U.S. occupation of Haiti lasted almost 20 years and, by creating a modern military, buttressed the forces that have historically polarized the nation. Now American soldiers are back. Will we repeat those mistakes? Or can Haiti-a nation born of a slave revolt, isolated by the discrimination of anxious European and American powers, and inflicted with a parasitic upper class-finally overcome its past? Real democracy will require economic transformation. America must pick a side in the class warfare that has immobilized Haiti for 200 years.