16821L This Week in Haiti 21:28 9/24/2003 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
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                           HAITI PROGRES
              "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

                      * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                      Sept. 24 - 30, 2003
                         Vol. 21, No. 28

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

(Second of two articles)

Last week, Dunkel described how U.S. highschool textbooks
belittle the Haitian revolution. This week, he examines how 19th
and early 20th century Haitian history is presented.

World History: Perspective on the Past (Houghton Mifflin Co.) and
World History: Connections to Today (Prentis Hall) don't treat
Haiti's history from 1804 to 1860. That was before U.S.
capitalism had matured enough to aggressively expand into the
Caribbean, as it did a few decades later.

In 1825, France forced Haiti to begin paying reparations
amounting to 90 million gold francs (worth about $3.3 billion in
today's currency) for freeing the slaves. Those are the
reparations that Haiti is demanding France restitute today.

Although the U.S. did not recognize Haiti until 1862, Haiti still
did surprisingly substantial trade with both France and the U.S..

With the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865, the Caribbean soon
became a cockpit of imperialist interventions and maneuvering.
The two high school textbooks under examination mention Haiti
from time to time as part of a laundry list of countries where
the U.S. intervened.

But the U.S. was not the only imperialist power splashing around
the Caribbean. In the years leading up to the first U.S. military
occupation of Haiti in 1915, warships of  Spain, France, Germany,
and the U.S. invaded Haitian territorial waters more than 20
times. Even Sweden and Norway got into the act.

Germany, an imperialist latecomer, aggressively pursued its
interests in Haiti because it was restricted in other colonized
parts of the world. Columnist Fleurimond Kerns, in a recent
article in Haïti Progrès (Vol. 21, No. 10, 5/21/2003), described
one typical incident. "Let us recall the case of two German
businessmen established in Haiti in Miragoâne and Cap-Haïtien," he
wrote. "After going bankrupt during the period of instability
under the governments of Fabre Geffrard [1859-1867] and Sylvain
Salnave [1867-1869], these two Germans asked Berlin to demand
immediate payment from the government of Nissage Saget [1870-
1874] of an indemnity of US $15,000.  The Haitian government had
to give in faced with the inequality of forces posed by two
German warships, the Vineta and the Gazella, under the command of
Captain Batsch.  When the Germans left, they returned Haiti's
captured warships in a sorry state. For example, the national
bicolor was smeared with excrement. The date was June 11, 1872."

While historians and some textbooks do list imperialist
interventions in Haiti and the larger Caribbean, finding
descriptions of resistance is much harder. In her 294-page book
Haiti and the United States, Brenda Gayle Plummer has a paragraph
on what happened in Port-au-Prince on July 6, 1861. The Spanish
navy was threatening to bombard the city if Haiti did not offer a
21-gun salute and pay a big indemnity. The people of Port-au-
Prince were so upset when their government capitulated that they
came out into the streets. The government had to use martial law
to control the situation (p. 41).

The case of Haitian Admiral Hamilton Killick is another
outstanding example of Haitian resistance. At the start of the
last century, both the U.S. and Germany deployed Caribbean naval
squadrons. The United States was planning to build the Panama
Canal to tie its Pacific coast to the Eastern seaboard and
further penetrate into Latin America. Germany wanted to project
its military power to reinforce its commercial and financial push
into Haiti.

In 1902, Germany was meddling in a Haitian power struggle,
backing one leader while Admiral Killick backed another. Kerns
describes what happened on Sep. 6 of that year. "There was a
major political struggle going on at the time between Nord Alexis
and Anténor Firmin over taking power in Port-au-Prince, after the
precipitous departure of President Tirésis Simon Sam [1896-
1902]," Kerns wrote. "Admiral Killick, who commanded the patrol
ship La Crête-à-Pierrot, supported Firmin and consequently had
confiscated a German ship transporting arms and munitions to the
provisional Haitian government of  Alexis... [which] ordered
another German warship, the Panther, to seize the Crête-à-
Pierrot. But it didn't realize the determination and courage of
Admiral Killick. At Gonaïves, the Germans had the surprise of
their life. When the German ship appeared off the roadstead of
the city, Admiral Killick, who was then ashore, hurried on board
and ordered his whole crew to abandon the ship. The Germans did
not understand this maneuver. Once the [Haitian] sailors were out
of danger, Admiral Killick together with Dr. Coles, who also did
not want to leave the vessel, wrapped himself in the Haitian
flag, like Captain Laporte in 1803, and blew the Crête-à-Pierrot
up by firing at the munitions. The German sailors did not even
dream of an act so heroic."

Through his self-detonation, Killick not only denied the Germans
possession of a Haitian ship and the German munitions it had
seized, he also came close to blowing up the Panther, according
to one German crewman who wrote a postcard home (Postal History:
Germany -- Haiti -- United States at
http://home.earthlink.net/~rlcw).

German influence in Haiti waned after the U.S. Marines invaded
Port-au-Prince on Jul. 28, 1915 and began their 19-year
occupation of Haiti. At that time, the U.S. had not officially
entered World War One, but it wanted to stop any attempt by
Germany to set up a base in Haiti. It also wanted to protect the
Panama Canal, which had opened for business the year before. The
U.S. occupation also ended the close financial and commercial
ties between Haiti and France, though not the cultural ones.
(France was a U.S. ally at the time, but also an imperialist
competitor in the Caribbean.)

The U.S. occupation met with four years of fierce armed
resistance from guerillas known as cacos, who were led by
Charlemagne Péralte and, later, Benoît Batraville. The occupation
of Haiti caused great controversy in the U.S., and deep
resentment in Haiti.

But the only mention that Perspective and Connections make of the
U.S. Occupation is to say how President Franklin D. Roosevelt was
true to his word and to his "Good Neighbor Policy" when he
withdrew the U.S. Marines in 1934.

U.S. textbooks don't mention that Roosevelt's needed to wind down
Washington's expensive military interventions since the United
States was in the midst of the Great Depression. They also don't
mention that Haiti had an anti-occupation nationwide strike and a
series of demonstrations in 1929, one of which the Marines put
down with deadly force (Nicols, From Dessalines to Duvalier, p
151). Over the next five years, the U.S. pull-out was hastened by
growing agitation, outcry and popular bitterness.

These two textbooks, Perspective and Connections, ignore and
obscure the important role that the Haitian people played in
Haiti's history, and the important role Haiti played in the
hemisphere's history. They camouflage the imperialist interests
behind U.S. and European military interventions by giving only
brief and simplistic descriptions of major events. Even though
the word "imperialism" does appear in them, the textbooks give
U.S. students no real understanding of the racism, violence, and
greed that the U.S. used to repress and exploit the Haitian
people for almost two decades during the first US occupation.

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

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