They also apparently made a pact with with Satan to kick out the French.
It is their inability or unwillingness to invest in themselves. Even though the French too all the trees, they could have replanted them.
Israel made the desert bloom, planted forests, desalinated water and redirected it where it would do the most good. This despite pogroms, terror, a feckless British colonial power that did all it could to block refugees from Europe. But we had lots of practice thriving under adversity, and a culture and religion that honors and encourages study and thought.
The Haitians were forcibly imported from a prehistoric environment to enslavement and oppression. They had none of that. But somehow, despite the crushing debt and cultural backwardness, they invaded DR and occupied it for forty years. Destructiveness, driving off the French, conquering DR, doesn’t take much smarts. Building and cultivating, however, does.