Haiti: 500 Years of Terror

The history of Haiti began on December 5th 1492 when Christopher Columbus and his party arrived at Môle Saint Nicolas on the northwestern part of Hayti, the appellation by which the island was known to the native Taino Indians. Stunned by the beauty of the island and topographical similarity to Spain, Columbus named the land La Espanola. Possessing military superiority over the natives, the Spaniards swiftly enslaved the Indians who perished by the thousands from forced labor and diseases brought on by the Europeans.
In 1514, a Spaniard priest, Bartolome de Las Casas, who would later be remembered and celebrated as “Defender of the oppressed” in nearby Cuba, started a campaign to outlaw the practice. By 1542, Las Casas succeeded when the Spanish throne adopted a series of laws prohibiting Indian slavery in its colonies. Soon thereafter, the first African slaves began arriving in Hispaniola as replacement labor. His advocacy on behalf of the Indians, who were dying in large numbers, no doubt started the enslavement of Africans in the Americas, which ended in 1888 when Brazil became the last country in the western hemisphere to abolish slavery.
In the competition among European powers vying for supremacy, the riches of Hayti or La Espanola naturally attracted the attention of French and English pirates who began harassing and capturing Spanish ships returning to Spain with their cargoes of gold. Many French pirates (buccaneers) eventually settled in Tortuga Island (Ile de la Tortue) and refused to submit to the authority of the Spaniards. After decades of conflicts between French buccaneers and Spaniard colonists, France and Spain agreed to divide the island under The Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. The French renamed the western part that fell under their control: Saint Domingue which, by the 18th century, was France’s richest colony, home to vast plantations of coffee, sugarcane and indigo produced with the forced labor of more than 500.000 African slaves supervised by 40.000 French citizens.
In 1791, however, the slaves rebelled. Toussaint Breda, a house slave, took over the insurrection and guided it through many victories over England, Spain, and France. In 1801, Toussaint, then known by the name Louverture, abolished slavery and proclaimed himself Governor General of Saint Domingue. This infuriated Napoleon Bonaparte who sent 20.000 French soldiers to retake the island under the leadership of his brother-in-law General Charles Leclerc. After many inconclusive battles, Leclerc and Toussaint signed a treaty on May 7, 1802 on the condition that slavery would not be reestablished at Saint Domingue. The French however never intended to keep their part of the bargain.
Toussaint retired to his farm at Ennery only to be arrested by the duplicitous French and sent to France where he died of pneumonia (the version put forward by his captors) on April 3rd 1803 at a prison in Fort-du-Joux in the French Alps. On his way to France, Toussaint prophesized: "In overthrowing me you have cut down at Saint Domingue only the trunk of the tree of liberty, it will spring up again from the roots, for they are deep and numerous." Indeed, on November 18th 1803, a little more than two years after Toussaint’s arrest and deportation to France, the slaves under the leadership of his chief lieutenant, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, finally defeated the French at Vertières.
On January 1st 1804, Saint Domingue was remained Haiti, an independent and sovereign country which was to serve as a refuge to all free Negroes desiring to live in peace. To slave-owning nations such as Britain, France, Spain, Holland and the U.S, this was indeed an unpardonable offense and, for that reason, Haiti has been subjected to an endless indignities ranging from economic embargoes, extortion and military invasions that not only impoverished its people but prevented the proud little nation from fulfilling its destiny. The most egregious of them all was the imposition by Charles X of France of an indemnity as condition to recognizing Haiti’s independence in 1825. The extortion, backed by threats of invasion of Haiti by France and its allies to restore slavery, remains “the supreme act of arrogance and piracy in the history of the world”, akin to Germany blockading the State of Israel and demanding a ransom for the Holocaust. It took little and defenseless Haiti 122 years (1825-1947) to service the debt, leaving successive governments with little or nothing to build the infrastructure of a modern state.
Today Haiti is derisively known as the poorest country in the Americas and is the recipient of thoughtless and unqualified comments by detractors who refuse to acknowledge the role played by the slave-owning nations which ironically consider themselves “paragon of virtues” as it relates to human rights and dignity. Consistent with the politic of subjugation of Haiti, a nascent albeit imperfect move toward democracy and social justice was summarily brought to an end on February 29, 2004 when French and U.S forces invaded the country and exiled its president to faraway Africa.
Having lost two percent of its population as a result of the January 12th earthquake, Haiti now needs a helping hand not charity, which usually comes with condescension, undue interference and other dehumanizing conditions. Our resolve is being tested but we will endure as we have done throughout our troubled existence. The land of Dessalines, Toussaint, Biassou, Jean Francois and Capois La Mort will not be abandoned to predators masquerading as saviors, Mediterranean transplants acting as plenipotentiary representatives of absentee colonizers or impenitent collaborators seeking favors from the powers-that-be.