Happy 216th Independence Anniversary to Haiti

January 1 was 216 years since Jacques Dessalines declared Haiti a French Republic. The Haitians celebrated the occasion with the traditional pumpkin soup. During the period of Slavery, the French law banned the slaves from having soup.That was reserved for the French. The eating of pumpkin soup on the Independence anniversary has thus become a tradition, a testimony to their independence.

The embattled President Jovenei Moise opted for security reasons to have the official celebration in the capital Port Au Prince rather than in the northern town of Gonaives where the country’s Independence was declared. Protests calling for his resignation have since September brought economic life to a standstill and led to the closing of schools. One of the issues was about corruption involving 2 billion dollars arising from the Petrocaribe funds. By early December the protests had abated, and things had been returning to some level of normalcy, if one can determine what is normal in Haiti.

Haiti was the only country where the slaves successfully overturned slavery. It started in 1791 with Boukman, a High Priest, and was taken over later by the 45-year-old Toussaint L’Ouverture, who was in 1802 captured by the French and deported to France where he died in 1803. It was Dessalines who emerged and declared the country a Republic on January 1, 1804. The Haitian Revolution impacted on the emancipation of slaves in the West Indies, in that it placed firmly in the minds of the planters, the fear that if they did not emancipate the slaves, the slaves would do it for themselves as they had done in Haiti. It was also probably responsible for the French decision to sell Louisiana to the United States.

Haiti suffered from being the first Black Republic especially one created by former slaves. It was first of all treated like a pariah. In fact, in 1825 with a fleet of warships off the Haitian coast France demanded reparations from the government amounting to 150 million gold francs, later reduced to 90 million, which the country had still not fully paid back by the late 1940s. This of course placed a heavy burden on the newly created state. President Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2003 demanded that France repay Haiti US$21 billion which he considered the equivalent in currency at that time. It is believed that Aristide’s overthrow had something to do with that. In fact, when CARICOM in 2004 made an appeal for international peacekeeping forces in in Haiti, it was not adhered to until after Aristide’s mysterious resignation.

France has thus set the precedent for reparations for slavery, but at this time, the ones making the claims are descendants of the slaves. In the English Caribbean countries, the British parliament gave £20 million compensation to the planters for being deprived of their slaves, their property, as defined in their law. In Haiti by threat of armed invasion the demand was forced on the young nation which had for years after to struggle to pay the country that had conquered and enslaved it.  Someone suggested that if that money had been invested it would by now have yielded over 70 trillion US$.

Haiti had over the years been encountering serious problems. It was occupied by the US from 1915-1934 and faced the dictatorship of ‘Papa’ and ‘Baby’ Doc that lasted with US support from 1956-1986 when Baby Doc, following demonstrations, was forced to flee to France. A devastating earthquake in 2010 seriously setback that country even further. A number of pledges were made by different countries which were never delivered. The Haitian people have however been standing up and making demands, despite the hardships that follow. Where and when it will all end is the big question!

Dr Adrian Fraser is a social commentator and historian