#1 Poor Haiti! stepchild of the western hemisphere.
When Toussaint l'Overture threw out the French in 1804, the various world powers would neither recognize nor assist the new country, because the slave owning powers didn't want to recognize a slave revolt as legitimate. Haiti slipped almost immediately into anarchy, ignorance, and voodoo for two centuries. I'm not sure whether it's ignorance or desperation, maybe both, that causes people who could earn $7 from a tree's fruit, to cut the tree down before it fruits for $3 in charcoal. |