Hispaniola, La Española, Island is located in the Caribbean island group, the Greater Antilles, is the 22nd-largest island in the world, the second largest island in the Caribbean after Cuba, the eleventh most populous island in the world.
The 76,192-square-kilometre (29,418 sq mi) island is divided between two sovereign nations; to the east, the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic, on 48,445 km2, (18,705 sq mi); to the west, the French-speaking Haiti, on 27,750 km2, (10,710 sq mi). The only other shared island in the Caribbean is Saint Martin, which is shared between France’s, Saint-Martin, and the Netherlands’, Sint Maarten.
In 1492, when Christopher Columbus was seeking “new worlds” he landed on the island and named it “La Isla Española,” meaning, ‘The Spanish Island’, thus the anglicized name.
The Dominican Republic
In 1966 the United States gave the Dominican Republic one hundred million ($100,000,000) in foreign aid, an amount gradually shaved down to stand by May 2017 at $10.5 million.
Although the Dominican Republic has the largest GDP in the Caribbean, many people there live in poverty, not hunger. The nation has thriving and productive farms of sugar, banana and coffee plantations. What were open air markets gave way to well-stocked supermarkets.
The literacy rate hovers around ninety percent and child mortality rates continue to fall.
For baseball lovers, the Dominican Republic export of baseball players is legendary.
Dominican Republic is a representative democracy with an elected president.
And the Dominican Republic is a lovely place to visit. It has lovely beaches and beautiful resorts, that attract tourism all year round, all contribute to the growing economy and employment opportunities.
This is the half full and filling up Hispaniola Island cup.
Haiti
Right next door to the Dominican Republic is Haiti.
On January 12, 2010, eight years ago, Haiti suffered a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that left 220,000 people dead, 300,000 injured and rubble was nearly everywhere. The entire country was distraught. Many nations and private charities delivered $13.5 billion dollars in aid to help Haiti and the suffering Haitians.
Considering the total huge amount of financial aid that was given to Haiti, one may as well ask, why has so little been done and gained? Why is the major city Port Au Prince still lacking a sewage system? Why are there still tent cities in Haiti?
Now the Cholera disease stalks the nation, with hundreds of thousands of cases and already 10,000 deaths. This is an epidemic attributed to U.N. Forces from Nepal who carried the disease into Haiti. And as it way too often does, the U.N. has avoided its responsibility for the epidemic.
Of the billions of dollars in aid to Haiti, only a meager fraction, under one percent, went to the needy, devastated population. Major projects, such as the Clinton Foundation’s garment factory, which were to have created jobs, fizzled due to construction corruption and lack of proper infrastructure, meaning roads, bridges and transportation that have not been rebuilt.
Less than half of the Haitian population is literate.
Haitians are the most downtrodden by the country’s corrupt politics and leaders from the Duvalier ‘dynasty’, through Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the 37th & 39th President of Haiti. Into this feckless and corrupt Haitian politicians one must adds the present government of Jovenel Moïse, the 42nd President of Haiti.
In Haiti, outright theft and bribes have enriched speculators and thwarted reconstruction.
Are the people of Haiti to blame? Absolutely Not! Haitians are nice people; they are victimized. They are ruled by tyrants and ‘S’***hole heads and are ignored by those harpies who call President Trump a racist, while they do not say a word about Haiti, or any nation in Africa with a victimized black-majority population, or elsewhere, that suffers famines, epidemics, and genocide.
This is the half empty and continuously getting emptier Hispaniola Island cup.
Writer’s note: The dictionary and the urban dictionary define the word ‘shithole’ as vulgar slang noun, an extremely dirty, shabby, or otherwise unpleasant place, a really bad place or building, especially somewhere undesirable to live or work.