Until she spoke

Inspired by the high price paid by Haiti’s revolutionaries for the sake of freedom, Frederick Douglass, who was appointed consul general to Haiti in 1889 and lived there for two years, left a lasting appreciation of his love and respect for Haiti in his poem:

Haiti: 200 years after
By Chido Onumah

ON January 1, 2004 Haiti will celebrate its bicentennial anniversary. Almost 200 years ago, Haitian revolutionaries declared independence from France after more than 100 years of slavery. Thus, Haiti became the first independent Black nation in the world and second country in the Western hemisphere, after the United States, to gain independence.

Toussaint L'Ouverture, a charismatic ex-slave, instigated the Haitian Revolution in 1791. Unfortunately, he did not live to see an independent Haiti. He was taken prisoner by Napoleon's forces and sent to France where he died in 1803. Today, when the word revolution is mentioned in reference to the 18th century, the discussion is usually about the American or French Revolution. Little, if anything, is said about the Haitian Revolution. The Haitian Revolution was different and significant in many ways. It defeated the mighty armies of Napoleon, one of the greatest generals in the history of the world, and changed the course of political history. It gave new meaning to the concept of freedom.

Haitian revolutionaries established rules for human existence that are unparalleled in history. Article 3 of the Haitian constitution of 1801 states: "There cannot exist slavery on this territory; servitude has been abolished forever; all people here are born, live and die in freedom. Article 4: "Every person whatever his colour is here admissible to all forms of labour; and Article 5: "There does not exist any other distinction than those of virtue and talent".

I have just returned from a one-month trip to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The Panos Institute, Haiti, had invited me to explore areas f co-operation between journalists in the Caribbean and West Africa in the fight against HIV/AIDS. For a country 200 years old, Haiti has very little to sow. It is ironic when one takes into account that on the eve of independence, Haiti was the richest colony in the world, accounting for almost 60 per cent of France's foreign trade. Historians have laboured on the reasons the Haitian Revolution gave Haitians independence but could not give them the material benefits that accompany independence. In the words of Rayford Logan, " the spectre of a free Negro republic that owed its independence to a successful slave revolt frightened slaveholding countries as much as the shadow of Bolshevist Russia alarmed capitalist countries in 1917".

The United States which had declared independence from Britain in 1776 and proclaimed "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," was one of the slaveholding countries that were troubled by Haiti's independence. It not only refused to recognise Haiti; it denied the newly independent country any trading partnership.

According to Chomsky, "The U.S exceeded all others in the harshness of its reaction, refusing to recognise Haiti until 1862, in the context of the American Civil War. At that moment, Haiti's strategic location was important for Lincoln's armies and the Black country gained a new attractiveness as a place to dump freed slaves so that the American Republic could be free of 'blot or mixture' in Thomas Jefferson's picturesque phrase, the Red Indians eliminated or removed and the Blacks expelled to the Caribbean or Africa; Liberia was recognised in the same year in part for the same reason".

The history of Haiti, we are told, began on December 5, 1492 when Christopher Columbus who had set sail from Spain a few months earlier on August 3, 1492, "discovered" the island. Columbus' so-called discovery opened up the region for the trade in humans. He named the island Ysla Espanola (Spanish Island) later latinised Hispaniola and placed it under Spanish control. After many attempts by the French to seize the island, there was a peace treaty (Ryswick Treaty) in 1697. Spain ceded the eastern one-third (Haiti) to France and took control of the western two-third which today is the Dominican Republic.

The French named their portion of the spoils Saint Domingue and ruled with such brutality that they succeeded only in emboldening the Black slaves. This is how Baron de Vastey, an ex-slave, described France's barbaric rule: "Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars? Have they not forced them to eat sh*t? And, after having flayed them with the lash, have they not cast them alive to be devoured by worms, or onto anthills, or lashed them to stakes in the swamp to be devoured by mosquitoes? Have they not thrown them into boiling cauldron of cane syrup?"

Haiti can rightly be said to be a fragment of Black Africa. Blacks make up 95 per cent of the population while the remaining five per cent are mulattos and whites. The first Blacks arrived aboard slave ships around the end of the 15th Century. They were brought to replace the native Arawak Amerindians who had been systematically annihilated by Spanish settlers. Blacks were considered better suited for slavery. It was Catholic Bishop, Bartolome de las Casas, who, allegedly, to spare the Indians, pleaded with King Caros V of Spain to bring Black Africans to Haiti and other Caribbean islands.

Haiti, perhaps more than any other country in the world, has experienced the most brutal effect of imperialism. First, there was the Spanish, then the French and much later the Americans. During the 1850s, American companies began the exploitation of the natural resources in Haiti and like their French counterparts there was no let or hindrance. Then, under U.S. laws, American companies could go to any place and take control as long as the U.S. did not recognise the country as a sovereign state.

Finally, to protect its investment, the U.S. invaded Haiti in July 1915, seizing 500,000 dollars from the Bank of the Republic of Haiti. The management of the country went into American hands. They set up the army, ran the treasury and controlled customs. According to reports, when American Marines left in 1934 they had murdered some 10,000 Haitians. In 1957, the notorious "Papa Doc" Francois Duvalier arrived on the scene. While Duvalier killed Haitians, the U.S. paid no heed because he was seen as an ally against the Soviet Union. He let the U.S. open a military base in 1961 and oulawed communism in 1969. Duvalier died in 1971 and was replace by his son, "Baby Doc" Jean-Clude Devalier who received as much support from the U.S. as his father.

In a twist of irony, 60 years after U.S Marines left Haiti, American troops landed in the country on September 14, 1994 to restore democracy. Today, Haiti is a basket case economically. The majority of Haitians have been reduced to a lifetime of poverty. The country survives on the benevolence of the donor community. But Haiti's current state can not vitiate the fact that the country has a glorious history. It has the distinction of being the only successful slave revolt in the world. As Haiti celebrates 200 years of independence, all lovers of freedom everywhere should join Haitians in celebrating one of the greatest political testaments in human history. The South African government plans to participate in Haiti's bicentennial celebrations. Both countries have a lot in common. Their struggles are linked in many ways. Next year will mark the tenth anniversary of multiracial democracy in South Africa and the end of the ignoble Apartheid system.

Regrettably, 200 years after African slaves in Haiti defeated their oppressors, the African continent and masses are confronted with the same problem Haiti and Haitians faced at independence. We are at the receiving end of unconscionable economic principles and lopsided trading partnerships that seek to break the remaining barriers in the economic exploitation of the African continent. How do we combat the new imperialist and its free trade agenda? That is the lesson of the Haitian Revolution.

As President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa noted during a speech at the University of West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica, June 30, 2003, "the telling of the story of the Haitian Revolution should communicate the message to all our people, that the African people, both in Africa and the African Diaspora, are capable of scoring major victories, whatever the odds. We should use the occasion of the bicentenary of the Haitian Revolution to inspire especially our youth to understand the capacity of the African masses in Africa and the Diaspora to change their social conditions".

 Onumah is Director, Africa Programme at the The Panos Institute in Washington, D.C United States

UNESCO's regional office in Jamaica will spearhead a 12-month list of activities that will next year mark the 200th anniversary of the Haitian revolution.

The move is part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation's observance of 2004 as the international year for the commemoration of the struggle against slavery and the bicentenary of the Haitian Revolution.

A task force, comprised of a cross-section of persons from various facets of Jamaican society, including the performing arts, visual arts, academia and the Maroons, last week unveiled UNESCO's plans.

Alwin Bully, task force chairman, explained that UNESCO purposely chose 2004 as the year for the commemoration of the transatlantic slave trade as it also coincided with Haiti being declared a Republic 200 years before, in January of 1804.

Another reason which influenced UNESCO's dual celebration, he said, was the recognition of "the concept of the Haitian revolution and what it stood for - equality, fraternity and liberty".

As part of its commemoration of slavery and its, abolishment, UNESCO has formed the Associated Schools Network (ASPnet) project in 100 schools in 23 countries spanning Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe. The school-based campaign has been titled "Breaking The Silence: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project" and seeks to increase the awareness of the transatlantic slave trade, its causes and consequences. The ASPnet project also examines modern forms of slavery, racism, and discrimination and promotes mutual respect and intercultural dialogue.

Six schools from Portland, St Mary, and St Thomas are participants in the ASPnet programme and UNESCO is planning to involve other schools as well.

The activities scheduled to take place throughout next year include:

. the opening of the Saffu Yard Museum in Charles Town, Portland, on January 6;

. an exhibition titled the "Jamaica Haiti Connection" at the National Library of Jamaica on February 12; and

. a panel discussion titled "Haitian Women and Their Contributions To The Americas" to be led by University of the West Indies professor, Verene Shepherd, at Spelman College in Atlanta, USA.

San Francisco Bay View
by J. Damu
31 Dec 03

Reassessing the Haitian Revolution and its meaning today.

anuary 1, 2004, marks exactly 200 years since the culmination of one of history's most titanic, earth-shaking events. Hundreds of thousands of casualties were sustained, national economies were either wrecked or displaced, the history of the Western Hemisphere was forever altered and the wars of national liberation of Africa, Asia and Latin America that characterized much of the 20th century were pre-figured. What single event caused so much altering of history and empowerment of Blacks and other colonized peoples? The Haitian Revolution.

When current Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, rises to speak to what will surely be tens of thousands of Haitians to welcome the new year and commemorate one of history's greatest achievements, he will speak to the worthy successors of those enslaved Blacks and downtrodden masses who rose up so long ago, and he will speak to those in Haiti who continue today to fight for dignity, peace, improved living conditions for all, reparations and even life itself.

Not surprisingly, most academicians sweep the Haitian Revolution under the world's carpet of history. They do this simply by dismissing the revolution, when they refer to it at all, as an event that created the second oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere. It accomplished this of course, but it did much, much more.

Soberly considered, the Haitian Revolution, more than the American and French Revolutions, which were conducted, after all, by slave holders, was the first instance in the history of the planet where formerly enslaved men and women, workers from throughout society, unified to overthrow their oppressors and to establish their own republic.

[Also see To Rebel Is Justified: Cuba, Haiti and John Brown by Sara Flounders (Haiti Progres, 30 Dec 03) and Impoverished Haiti Pins Hope for Future on a Very Old Debt by Jose De Cordoba (The Wall Street Journal, 02 Jan 03).]

kreyolbro@aol.com

MARVELLING: Haiti, the lost 200 years - Sunday 04, January-2004
by ORLANDO MARVILLE

Mugabe of the Caribbean

Haiti's president may be turning into the sort of dictator he once resisted, but this change wasn't inevitable

Isabel Hilton
Monday January 12, 2004
face=Arial color=#0000ff The Guardian

In the closing days of the 29-year Duvalier family dictatorship in Haiti, Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide was the perfect popular hero. Physically tiny, soft-spoken and apparently modest, the priest displayed an extraordinary physical and moral courage. His parish church of St Jean Bosco, on the edge of one of Port-au-Prince's largest and most disgusting slum districts, was packed to overflowing on Sundays, despite the threats of the pro-Duvalier thugs who would circle the church and attack congregants. Aristide survived numerous attempts on his life but never gave in.

When Baby Doc Duvalier, Papa Doc's obese and incompetent son, was overthrown in 1987, Aristide seemed the perfect antidote; a celibate priest and an orphan, he saw Haiti's poor as his family. If he could only be president, perhaps there would be social justice at last in the western hemisphere's most miserable republic.

In 1990, the people briefly got their wish: Aristide was elected president by a huge majority. He was no longer a priest - he had been expelled for preaching politics from the pulpit - and silk suits had replaced his trademark white cassock. But the talk was the same, and at first he moved in the right direction: street drug trafficking dropped, and he brought the looting of the treasury under control, raised the minimum wage and cut bureaucracy by 20%. It was enough to provoke a coup after only seven months.

What was there to indicate that just over a decade later it would be Aristide's thugs who beat up pro-democracy demonstrators on the streets and Aristide's government that was accused of corruption - a man they now call the Mugabe of the Caribbean? There were certainly signs: he had a tendency, worrying at the time, to talk as though he was in direct communication both with God and with "his" people. Any leader who believes himself especially close to both is unlikely to be at heart a democrat.

When Bill Clinton restored Aristide to the presidency in 1994, the US appeared to be making a serious commitment to putting Haiti on the right track. Aristide completed the two years left of his term and duly gave way in Haiti's first peaceful handover, before being re-elected in 2000.

So what went wrong? One lesson is that the injustices of history are hard to right; take a slave society and punish it heavily for winning its freedom and you set up a cycle of poverty and violence that will always try to recur. The US and France, both self-styled beacons of liberty and pioneers of democracy, owe Haiti a major debt.

Nevertheless, President Clinton spent more than a billion dollars trying to build this nation of only 10 million souls. Haiti's people may regard their giant neighbour with suspicion, but they are not hostile to US values. Thousands of them have risked their lives - like the Cuban rafters - trying to reach the US on a variety of perilous homemade craft.

But despite the manifest enthusiasm of so many Haitians for the US lifestyle, US efforts at nation-building in Haiti have been a miserable failure. The country is being punished again for its political shortcomings, it is still the poorest in the western hemisphere, up to half its people are dependent on food aid, and the prospects for the half of the population that is under 18 are no better than a decade ago.

But was it inevitable that Aristide would grow into a dictator? He was not evil from the start. Certainly he believed in himself with a messianic fervour; had he not done so, he would never have become president. But he was elected with the overwhelming support of a much-abused people who had invested their hopes in him.

At the point that a dictator is widely reviled by his people, it is easy to imagine that he imposed his will by force from the beginning. It is rarely true. Many leaders who were subsequently vilified as dictators came to power with the support - or at least the negotiated consent - of many of their people, as often as not because they put an end to a situation that was worse. Aristide, in his time, was that hope. The challenge of nation-building is not that of finding the right leader but of ensuring that when such a man comes to power, the institutions of the state and government are powerful enough to keep his ambitions within bounds.

Constitutions, as one of Haiti's previous strong men once observed, are made of paper, but bayonets are made of iron. It is no great surprise that Haiti has almost no democratic institutions worth the name. The country has rarely enjoyed enough security to build them.

The bigger surprise of the last few years is how easily allegedly mature democracies can be cajoled into allowing their own institutions to be undermined by a strong or a charismatic leader. How would Jean-Bertrand Aristide have fared as president of the United States or as prime minister of Britain, where he would have been obliged to talk not only to God and to the people, but to Congress or to parliament? And how would Tony Blair or George Bush have come out as president of Haiti, with little to hold demagoguery in check?

isabel.hilton@guardian.co.uk