838.51/2–2147
The Acting Secretary of State to the Members of the Haitian Special Mission
Excellencies: I have the honor to refer to Your Excellencies’ notes dated December 23, 1946 and February 11 and 21, 1947,11 as well as to your conversations with representatives of the Department of State in which statements have been made concerning damages alleged to have been sustained by the economy of Haiti as a result of the Cryptostegia project. It will be recalled that this was a wartime project undertaken in Haiti from 1942 to 1944 through agreement between our two governments.12 Your Excellencies’ note of February 21 estimates this damage at twenty million dollars.
Although representatives of this Government have, of course, been willing during the visit of the Mission to discuss this matter in the spirit of frankness and friendship which has traditionally animated our two governments, I wish to point out that an exhaustive examination of the project and its effects was made with the Government of Haiti at the time of the conclusion of the Cryptostegia program in 1944, as a result of which examination definitive termination arrangements were made and plans for restoration of the affected lands to productive food crops were agreed upon. It was for this reason that in its note of February 13 this Government expressed its full accord with the statement on this subject contained in the Memorandum of January 27 presented to Your Excellencies by the Export-Import Bank, to the effect that settlement with respect to the Cryptostegia program was reached in 1944. In this connection, I wish also to call Your Excellencies’ particular attention to a Memorandum delivered by the Government of Haiti to the American Embassy at Port-au-Prince on May 29, 1944, a copy of which is enclosed in translation.13 This Memorandum recorded the intention of the Haitian Government to make no further claim with respect to alleged damages to landholders arising out of the Cryptostegia program.
Despite the fact that this Government is unable to consider reopening the settlement arrangements made in 1944, it wishes to take this opportunity to point out certain facts in connection with the Mission’s allegations regarding damage to the Haitian economy from the [Page 724] Cryptostegia program. All information available to this Government indicates that in the years since 1944, when the Cryptostegia program was abandoned, the Haitian economy has reached an almost unprecedented high level, with increased production, export, and government revenue figures demonstrating that Haiti’s economic condition is, in fact, considerably better than in pre-war years. Included among those exports enjoying a favorable or improved position are several agricultural commodities the production of which the Mission has asserted suffered as a result of the Cryptostegia program.
As for the years during which the Cryptostegia program was in operation in Haiti, it is this Government’s view that funds expended by it in Haiti in connection with the program played a significant role in maintaining the Haitian economy at a time when that economy was suffering because of adverse world shipping and market conditions caused by the war. Moreover, at the time of termination of the program, a large amount of valuable United States Government-owned property which had been used in the program was made available to SHADA, a Haitian Government Corporation, at drastic reduction in price, for use in continuing SHADA’s activities in developing long run aspects of the Haitian economy.
With respect to the Mission’s oral statements that losses to individual landholders in Haiti from the Cryptostegia program amounted to twenty million dollars beyond the cash remuneration received for rental of their lands, and damages to their crops and other property, this Government regrets it is forced to express its complete disagreement. The particular attention of the Mission is called in this connection to the informal memorandum of December 6, 194615 delivered to His Excellency the Foreign Minister of Haiti by this Government’s Embassy at Port-au-Prince, following the Embassy’s receipt of the former’s note of October 9, 1946,15 the fourth paragraph of which was concerned with the Cryptostegia program. A copy of the Embassy’s memorandum is attached for ready reference.
In addition to the foregoing memorandum, the Government of the United States wishes to make certain other observations with respect to the Cryptostegia program. One of the principal assertions of the Mission alleges the indiscriminate and widespread destruction of fruit trees. This Government feels that this statement is refuted by the evidence. It is known that more than half the approximately 70,000 acres of land actually prepared for Cryptostegia plantings had originally been almost devoid of trees. In the case of large trees, it was found more economical to top them back than to remove them.
It is understandable that in the prompt execution of a program [Page 725] which, by Haitian Government decree, requisitioned some 111,000 acres of land involving somewhat less than 40,000 families, a few of the property holders may have felt inadequately compensated for the payments received for rental of lands and crop damages.
However, when it is considered that the $328,242 paid as rents and damages to landowners were those considered as just and equitable by the Haitian Government; when it is considered that the $3,162,759 paid to peasants as wages during the twenty-two months of program operation were the wages specified by the Haitian Government, and were fifty per cent higher than the labor scale previously in effect; when it is considered that for twenty-two months the average number of peasants employed on the program per month was 31,000; when it is considered that the peasant families themselves were urged to work at the high local wage rate for the program and were given preference in such employment; when it is considered that at the conclusion of the program there was full provision for clearing lands of Cryptostegia at the expense of the Government of the United States; and when it is further considered that following the termination of the Cryptostegia project, the major part of the first year’s work of the Institute of Inter-American Affairs’ agricultural assistance program was directed not only to restoring former Cryptostegia lands to production of food crops by distributing seeds and tools to the returning landowners and by growing and distributing some one million fruit trees and plants, but also to planting in food crops a not inconsiderable amount of previously uncultivated land cleared at the expense of the United States Government as part of the Cryptostegia program, when all of the above facts are considered, it appears that this Government has not only fulfilled its legal obligations, but has also made a substantial contribution to the improvement of the Haitian economy.
It is believed that the foregoing shows the fairness and generosity of the United States Government (1) in paying for the loss to individual landholders resulting from the temporary use of not more than five per cent of the tillable land of Haiti in an emergency war project on behalf of the United Nations, including Haiti, and (2) in assuming the major share of the cost of restoring this land to peacetime use when the Cryptostegia project was terminated. The Government of the United States further feels that these facts are of particular cogency when it is recalled that the attempt to produce Cryptostegia rubber in Haiti was declared at that time to be the major contribution of the Haitian Government and people to the joint war effort which was rendered in a true spirit of cooperation in a cause for which the United Nations expended so much in blood and treasure.
Accept [etc.]
- None printed.↩
- For data on the program’s initiation in 1942 and termination in 1944, see Foreign Relations, 1942, vol. vi, p. 460, and ibid., 1944, vol. vii, 1169 ff., respectively.↩
- Not printed, but see telegram 162, May 30, 1944, 3 p.m., from Port-au-Prince, ibid., 1944, vol. vii, p. 1172.↩
- Not printed.↩
- Not printed.↩