16767: This Week in Haiti 21-27 9/17/2003 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
newsweekly. For the complete edition with other news in French
and Creole, please contact the paper at (tel) 718-434-8100,
(fax) 718-434-5551 or e-mail at <editor@haitiprogres.com>.
Also visit our website at <www.haitiprogres.com>.

                           HAITI PROGRES
              "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

                      * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                      Sept. 17 - 23, 2003
                         Vol. 21, No. 27

HAITIAN HISTORY:
WHAT U.S. TEXTBOOKS DON'T TELL
by Greg Dunkel

(First of two articles)

Looking at how Haiti's history is presented in high-school textbooks in
the United States gives
an insight into why many North Americans know so little about Haiti and
how this limited
knowledge has been distorted, muffled, and hidden behind a veil of
silence.

The successful revolution in Haiti against the French slave owners is a
singular event in world
history. It is the only time that slaves managed to rise up, smash their
oppressors, and set up a
new state and social order that reflected some of their hopes and
aspirations.

In 1790, Saint Domingue was a French colony where 10,000 people made
fabulous profits from
owning almost all the land and from brutally oppressing 500,000 slaves,
entirely African or of
African descent, with some 40,000 people in intermediate positions.
Fifteen years later, in 1805,
the slave-owning colony was gone, replaced by the Republic of Haiti,
whose citizens were mostly
subsistence farmers who had their own weapons.

It was the first successful national liberation struggle in modern
times. When Haiti declared its
independence in 1804, it was the only state in the world to have a
leader of African descent. In
fact, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the governor-in-general in 1804, was an
ex-slave who had
survived a cruel master.

One widely used U.S. high school textbook, World History: Perspective on
the Past, published
by  Houghton Mifflin Co., presents this struggle in just a few
sentences: "Toussaint drove the
French forces from the island. Then, in 1802, he attended a peace
meeting where he was
treacherously taken prisoner. He was then sent to France, where he died
in prison.  However,
the French could not retake the island." (p 536)  About 30 pages later,
when the subject of the
Louisiana Purchase comes up, a little more is said about Haiti:
"Toussaint's fighters and yellow
fever all but wiped out a French army of 10,000 soldiers.  Discouraged,
Napoleon gave up the
idea of an American empire and decided to sell the Louisiana Territory."
(p 562). (Actually, the
10,000 soldier figure is an error according to C.L.R. James, The Black
Jacobins, p 355).

Another common high school textbook  World History: Connections to
Today, published by
Prentis-Hall, devotes almost a page to Haiti, but sums up the struggle
against the French attempt
to re-enslave Haiti in 1802 in just a few words: "In 1804, Haitian
leaders declared independence.
With yellow fever destroying his army, Napoleon abandoned Haiti."

On Feb. 3, 1802, Gen. Victor-Emmanuel Leclerc, Napoleon's
brother-in-law, arrived at Cap
Français (currently Cap Haïtien) with five thousand men and demanded
entrance. Toussaint's
commander, Henri Christophe, was out-numbered and out-gunned. Rather
than surrender,
Christophe burned down the city (starting with his own house), destroyed
the gunpowder plant,
and retreated into the mountains. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, under orders
from Toussaint
Louverture, seized the French fort called Crête-à-Pierrot in the center
of the country with 1,500
troops, held off the 12,000 French troops that besieged it through two
attacks, and then cut his
way through the French forces to escape.

By the end of April, Louverture had been seized and sent to France, and
all his lieutenants had
either been deported or incorporated into the French army. But the
popular resistance continued
and intensified. The French continued losing large numbers of soldiers
to yellow fever as well as
small-scale but persistent attacks. Cultivators, fearing the
reintroduction of slavery, continued to
flee to the mountains as maroons and to form small armed bands.

By the end of July 1802, when news spread that the French had
re-instituted slavery on
Guadeloupe,  reopened the slave trade, and forbade any person of color
from claiming the title of
citizen, resistance turned to insurrection.

French reprisals were terrible but only seemed to strengthen the
conviction of the masses that
they would rather die fighting than be re-enslaved. And they insisted on
dying with dignity, no
matter how cruel the French were. In one instance, when three captured
Haitian soldiers were
being burned to death, one started crying. Another said "Watch me. I
will show you how to die."
He turned around to face the pole, slid down, and burned to death
without a whimper. A French
general watching the execution wrote to Leclerc: "These are the men we
have to fight!"

In another case, a mother consoled her weeping daughters as they were
marched to their
execution: "Rejoice that your wombs will not have to bear slave
children." (Carolyn F. Frick, The
Making of Haiti, p 221)

In September, shortly before he died of yellow fever, Leclerc wrote to
Napoleon that the only
way France could win was to destroy all the blacks in the mountains --
men, women, and
children over 12 -- and half the blacks in the plains. "We must not
leave a single colored person
who has worn an épaulette." (Officers wore épaulettes.) This means that
the commander of the
French expedition  saw no way to win other than genocide.

By the end of October 1802, the insurrection was so strong that
Toussaint's officers who had
disingenuously joined the French, deserted and began a counter-attack.
The struggle took a more
organized military character, while the popular insurrection
intensified.

By mid 1803, the French were being mopped up in the south. Jérémie was
evacuated in August,
and Cayes fell on October 17. Then Dessalines decided to move on the
French in Cap Français.

Since he didn't have enough artillery or the logistics to support a long
siege, Dessalines decided
to take le Cap by storm. He assigned a half-brigade, commanded by Capois
La Mort, to storm the
walls covered by the mutually supported positions, Butte de la Charrier
and Vertières.
Meanwhile, two other brigades maneuvered to seize batteries protecting
the city from an attack
from the sea. Although grape-shot cut swaths through the brigade led by
Capois, the soldiers kept
pressing forward, clambering over their dead and shouting to each other
"To the attack, soldiers."
On Nov. 18, their combined assault took Charrier, which opened the city
to Haitian artillery.  The
French general agreed to leave immediately and was captured 10 hours
later by the British. On
Nov. 19, 1803, the French army left Haiti for good.

Those are the reasons why "the French could not retake the island" and
why "Napoleon
abandoned Haiti" -- the French were decisively defeated. The masses
refused to return to slavery
and their leaders organized a people's army that crushed the French.

(To be continued)

NEW YORK:
DEMONSTRATION FOR RESTITUTION OF HAITI'S "INDEPENDENCE DEBT"

In 1838, Haiti was forced to pay a ransom of 150 million gold francs to
its former French
colonial masters to break the economic and diplomatic embargo that
France had placed on the
new republic. Today, on the eve of its bicentennial, Haiti has formally
demanded that France
restitute, with interest, this sum, which comes to about $21.7 billion.
France has rejected the call.

On Friday, September 19 from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., the New York Haitian
community and its
supporters will demand this restitution from France in a demonstration
in front of the Permanent
Mission of France to the United Nations on 2nd Avenue between 47th &
48th Streets. For more
information, call: 718-469-2078, 203-847-5487, or 917-337-6702.

All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Progres.

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