What do Haiti the Philippines have in common?

Haiti suffered from both genocide and slavery; the Philippines, colonialism and near slavery.  The Philippine experience was bad, but not as brutal as Haiti's.

Later both countries suffered from U.S. colonialism or neocolonialism.  Even today there is an alliance between an U.S. elite and a Haitian and Spanish elite.  U.S. ethnocentrism and economic oppression has driven U.S. relations more than democracy.  When the U.S. conquered the Philippines, we killed directly or indirectly approximately 1,000,000 Filipinos.

By the way, the U.S. has received undue credit for driving the Spanish out of the Philippines; I would estimate that the Filipinos themselves did most of the fighting---probably 90 percent; all the U.S. did was win a last naval battle in Manila Bay; and the won the public relations battle, at least here in the United States and in the writing of history.

In a 1992 book, James Putzel examines the desperate need for land reform in the Philippines---A Captive Land: The Politics of Agrarian Reform in the Philippines.

"The vast majority of the archipelago's people live and work in rural barrios, or villages, trying to earn an income by cultivating the land."  An estimated 80 percent are poor, many are landless who work for a landlord, and often they are hungry.

"A tiny minority of the population live in palatial homes surrounded by servants, work in air conditioned high-rise office buildings in Makati---the capital's financial district---and travel to foreign cities to conduct business with partners or vacation with the more fortunate citizens of the North whose lifestyle they share."  The government is essentially controlled by this small elite; they own most of the good agricultural land.

Strangely "the U.S. supported [land] reform efforts in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea [as a part of the World War II peace treaty], while it never did so in the Philippines."

"Agrarian reform impacts issues such as poverty and inequality, low productivity of agriculture, concentration of property rights, landlessness . . . . "

The Spanish ruled for 350 years [an exploitive regime] followed by nearly 50 years of U.S. administration.  This period saw "the rise of a landed oligarchy composed of families which still are prominent in political and economic life."  Mark Twain once thought that the U.S. had good intentions, that it intended "to free the islands of the oppressive system of friar and landlord rule."  Later, he said, "I have read carefully the Treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but subjugate the people of the Philippines."

What could and should have been.  "The Japanese and Taiwan reforms abolished absentee ownership and set a low ceiling on land that could be retained by landlords.  The liberal approach to reform in Japan and Taiwan involved a real transfer of power and wealth in the countryside."  From a biblical perspective, they implemented Jubilee justice.

"When General MacArthur returned to the Philippines in 1944, he made no proposals for land reform.  Instead he reinforced the status quo, monopoly landownership."