I heard Maxine Waters (on Democracy Now) and others mention this as a factor leading to the recent crisis in Haiti, but not a mention in the mainstream media reports I have heard.
I found this:
http://www.pih.org/inthenews/021230farmersmithoped.htmUnjust embargo deepens Haiti's health crisis
op-ed by Dr. Paul Farmer and Mary C. Smith Fawzi
Boston Globe , December 30, 2002
ON HAITI'S central plateau, lack of resources and medical personnel combined with a growing burden of disease are responsible for increasingly desperate social conditions. The causes of worsening conditions are many, but the connection between unnecessary suffering and an aid embargo led by the United States is undeniable.
US-sponsored embargoes against Haiti have a long history. From 1804-62, the United States, a major slave-owning economy, simply refused to recognize the existence of Haiti. According to a US senator from South Carolina speaking on the Senate floor in 1824, ''the peace and safety of a large portion of our union forbids us even to discuss'' it. The United States occupied Haiti militarily from 1915-34, and since that time has supported a number of undemocratic governments. Under the Duvalier dictatorships, generous aid, primarily from the United States, flowed steadily, as it did during the military juntas later convicted of war crimes after the violent overthrow of Haiti's first democratically elected president, the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
During the early 1990s, the UN imposed a trade embargo in order to push forward the restoration of Aristide. When in 1994 he returned to office and a devastated country, $500 million in development aid was promised by the United States and multilateral organizations. This aid might have helped resuscitate the hemisphere's poorest country, but it has been withheld.
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After the presidential election of November 2000 (widely recognized as free and fair), the funds were to be released, but the Bush administration used its veto power to continue to block release of funds on the grounds that Haiti has not demonstrated an adequate commitment to governing the country in a democratic manner - objections not heard during the long years of dictatorship.
...more..