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NEWS & LETTERS, March 2004Black/Red ViewHaiti 1804-2004by John Alan * * * HAITI AFTER ARISTIDE AND U.S. INTERVENTION Watch for a full analysis in the next N&L of the departure of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the introduction of U.S. Marines as well as what's next for the Haitian people. * * * January marked the 200th anniversary of the 1804 Haitian Revolution that created the first Black and independent nation in Latin America. The media has paid little attention to Haiti's history, focusing instead on the current upheaval in which President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced from power by an insurrection led by forces ranging from former army coup leaders and paramilitary thugs to disaffected groups of his own ex-followers. The real danger is that leaders of the military and paramilitary death squads which terrorized Haiti for decades before Aristide's election in 1994 will return to power. Though Aristide largely failed to deliver on his promises to reverse poverty and corruption, the politics of much of the forces arrayed against him are far worse. The overthrow of Aristide and the Feb. 29 decision of the U.S. to intervene have overshadowed this year’s celebration of the 200th anniversary of the great Haitian slave revolution, led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, that freed Haiti from French imperialism in 1804. HAITIANS' WAR AGAINST SLAVERY If one looks back into Haitian history, one finds that Haitian slaves were engaged in a permanent war against their enslavement. Fourteen years before Haiti became an independent nation, on the night of August 22, 1791, slaves built “a wall of fire” on the northern plains of Haiti. According to historian Martin Ros: “The voraciousness of the flames turned night into day. Further, the immense fire created enormous gusts of wind that, in turn, drove flames on, causing them to rage at incredible speed through the woods, over the plantations, into sheds filled with cotton, over the fields thick with sugar cane, straight through the coffee plantations and sugar mills, and into the gigantic warehouses of the masters of the island” (NIGHT OF FIRE, p. 1). The Haitian slaves were destroying objects of their oppression--the tremendous wealth their labor had created for their French masters. In other words, they were emancipating themselves by destroying the plantation system of slave labor. Toussaint L’Ouverture, the future Governor General of Haiti, was at the “Wall of Fire” not as burner, but as a coachman who saved his master’s life. Indeed, Toussaint’s spontaneous humanism during this bloody conflict between Black slaves and their white masters who had tortured them in slavery was very, very rare. "Santhonax, one of the French commissioners, wrote in his diary: ‘Toussaint is the real leader of the Negroes, and the white inhabitants, who have become reconciled, regard him as a friend...No personal vanity ever separates Toussaint from anyone else on the island. His whole mode of living is republican simplicity...’” (Mercer Cook, AN INTRODUCTION TO HAITI, p. 127). With poorly armed and untrained former slaves, Toussaint used guerrilla tactics to defeat the French and British troops in Haiti. The success of his tactics was appreciated even by enemy officers, one of whom said: "One never knows where his army is, what it subsists on, how he manages to recruit it, in what mountain fastness he has hidden his supplies and his treasury. He, on the other hand, seems perfectly informed concerning everything that goes on in the enemy camp." (Cook’s AN INTRODUCTION TO HAITI, p. 126). FREE HAITI'S DILEMMA When Napoleon took power in 1799, Haiti was a colony of France only in name. Toussaint had taken over all the functions of government from French authorities. He selected seven white planters and three mulattoes to write a new Constitution that abolished slavery and made him the Governor General for life, having the power to appoint his successor. In addition to the abolition of slavery, Haiti’s new constitution “ordered all males from 14 to 55 years old to enroll in the militia, recognized Catholicism as the state religion, attempted to rescue the plantations from economic collapse and permitted the importation of blacks to augment the decimated population” (Thomas O. Ott, THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION, 1789-1804). The new constitution turned out to be the beginning of a plan to rebuild Haiti’s previous plantation economy and bring it back into the world market after the slaves had destroyed it by fire. Toussaint encouraged hundreds of émigré white planters to return by assuring them they would regain net profits from their land. The former Black slaves didn’t agree or submit to this new enslavement. They ran away and were brought back by Toussaint’s military forces. To reveal a retrogressive dimension in Haiti's revolution may annoy some. But it did happen, and was bound to happen, when the social relations and purpose of the old society is still the goal of the new society. Haiti could not establish a new humanist society and yet still continue production of the same commodities for the world market that the master class did before the revolution. Toussaint L’Ouverture died in prison in Jura, on the French-Swiss border, of exposure and starvation in April 1803. The question that faced him, how to establish a new society in the face of the world market, is one we are still facing today. |
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