BS. Their "perpetual" poverty is not due to the lack of growing coffee or racism. It began with a corrupt gov't established after the revolution by "Papa Doc" duvalier in 1957 that bankrupted the country and continues today. Foreign capital avoids investing in Haiti specifically because of its corrupt government.
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Brazil was a Portuguese colony, and it has often been condemned for its history of slavery. Portugal, oddly enough because it was the center for ransoming European captives in the Mediterranean from their Muslim captors in North Africa, was supposedly how chattel slavery - nearly dead since the time of the Romans - returned to Europe.
Some of the intermediaries in the ransoms would keep 20% (a quinta) of whatever price they had negotiated with the Muslims. And then one day it occurred to them that they could get involved in the biz themselves....
Chattel slavery is where the slave is just a possession with no human rights and was practiced by the Muslims. The British got in on it too and also ended up practicing chattel slavery.
For a little extra:
Carlos Sanchez, the actor who played the original Juan Valdez from Columbia, died December, 2018. He was 83 and he had been working for the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia since 1958 and was replaced in 2006. It is not said what he died from and his mule’s name was Conchita. No information was listed for the mule.
rwood