1942–1944: (SHADA: The $12 Million Flop, Kon Kabrit, a Million Fruit Trees Bulldozed, and Five Tons of Rubber): One shortfall of the occupation had been Amer…

1942–1944: (SHADA: The $12 Million Flop, Kon Kabrit, a Million Fruit Trees Bulldozed, and Five Tons of Rubber): One shortfall of the occupation had been American failure to live up to the 1916 treaty commitment to help Haiti develop its agricultural resources. In 1941, as Japan rampaged into Southeast Asia, it appeared Haiti’s time had arrived to provide America with sisal as a substitute for hemp and to become a prime source of rubber from kon kabrit — Cryptostegia — a weed with high latex content. The vehicle for these developments was SHADA, the Société Haïtienne-Américaine de Développement Agricole, set up in late 1941 on a first $5 million Export-Import Bank loan guaranteed by Haiti and later fortified in November 1942 by a direct U.S. credit of $7 million. Twelve million dollars — exponentially more than the Service Technique had to work with over the life of the occupation — could and ought to have done a great deal for agriculture. Unfortunately SHADA was a flop. Overruling the advice of competent Haitian agronomists such as Georges Héraux, Thomas Fennell and SHADA ran roughshod over peasant proprietors, condemning choice agricultural plots, bulldozing huts, even sacred ounfò, standing crops, coffee bushes, cashew, avocado, and banana trees — an estimated million fruit-bearing trees and shrubs in all — paying pittances to and rehiring as day laborers expropriated peasants who had been subsistence farmers. By 1943 the main effort had gobbled up over 100,000 acres, more than five percent of Haiti’s best land, temporarily employing 92,000 peasants. By 1944 the worst was known: only five tons of rubber ever resulted, work was abandoned in May, nearly 40,000 families had been shoveled off land that was now ruined for years to come, SHADA employment had dropped to 16,000, and in many cases returning peasants could no longer even identify old holdings whose landmarks had been obliterated. Fennell left for Puerto Rico — ironically, like Dr. Freeman before him. The Haitian government found itself with $5 million in added debt. In November 1942, surpassing himself, Lescot told a visiting delegation of U.S. officers: for the duration of this war I would like your government to think of Haiti as another state of the Union of which I am governor.