November to December 1914 · Haitianspan
The government prints its own money on newsprint
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The Banque Nationale held the exclusive right to issue Haitian currency. In November 1914 Davilmar Theodore's government ordered sixteen million gourdes printed anyway. Waiting for the shipment from New York proved impossible, so eight million gourdes were run off on newsprint at a job printer in Port-au-Prince. The street named them Bons Da, after the president. They were handed to unpaid Cacos, who presented them to merchants at the point of a machete or a musket. Theodore went through five finance ministers in five months. He also had a real grievance against the Banque, which the historian Joseph Chatelain set out. The Banque invoked the war in Europe as force majeure to excuse its own failure to meet its contracts, and in the same breath insisted that the Haitian government meet every obligation on time under the identical conditions. The war suspended the creditor's duties and left the debtor's intact. That asymmetry had governed Haitian public finance since the French indemnity of 1825.
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