[danboarder]

As someone who has visited Haiti multiple times and has read the history, the above comment is way off base. Read "The Uses of Haiti" by Paul Farmer to get an in-depth understanding of how Haiti went from being the first Republic in the Western Hemisphere that was thriving to one of the poorest. Some find the facts difficult to accept, including exploitation and externally orchestrated political coups, even when the facts are agreed upon by historians the world over. Yet we have misinformation lines like the above "Haiti may be a dump but the Haitians made it that way" still going around. It's shameful, really.