17349: Holmstead: Haiti Marks Napoleon Battle Bicentennial (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: John Holmstead <cyberkismet@yahoo.com>

November 18, 2003

Haiti Marks Napoleon Battle Bicentennial
2 hours, 54 minutes ago


By PAISLEY DODDS, Associated Press Writer

CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti - President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
urged Haitians to overcome economic bondage as they
marked Tuesday's bicentennial of a decisive victory
over Napoleon's troops that led to the world's first
successful slave rebellion.


AP Photo

	 

Aristide, whose speech was peppered with Creole
proverbs and punctuated by shouts of "Freedom or
Death!," said Haitians need to fight again as they
once did to overcome "the conspiracy" of rich nations
over poor ones.


"After 200 years of economic violence, the traces of
slavery are still here," Aristide told more than
10,000 people waving flags and dancing to thumping
"racine," or roots music.


"Poverty today is the result of a 200-year plot.
Whether it be slavery or embargo, it's the same plot.
You are victims. I am a victim," he said on the 200th
anniversary of the Battle of Vertieres, which led to
the creation of the world's first black republic.


The crowd chanted, "We won't serve the masters
anymore, we'll serve the people!"


Absent were ambassadors from France, the United States
and the European Union (news - web sites), who stayed
away to protest the government's failure to stop
Aristide partisans from blocking a demonstration in
the capital on Friday by civic groups demanding
government reforms.


"The refusal of state authorities to let a peaceful
demonstration take place has cast a shadow on the
bicentennial celebrations," U.S. Ambassador James
Foley said Monday.


Diplomats from the Vatican (news - web sites), the
Organization of American States and Taiwan joined
Haitians from all over the country who crowded
Cap-Haitien to celebrate and hear from the embattled
Aristide, who's struggling to liberate the nation of 8
million from worsening poverty and despair while his
opponents call for his downfall.


More than half the work force among Haiti's 8 million
people is unemployed. At least half the population is
malnourished.


"I don't have any reason or money to celebrate," said
Richard Jean, a 34-year-old tailor who scrapes by on
$15 a month in Cap-Haitien, Haiti's northern port and
second-largest city.


Marlene Antoine, a 36-year-old street sweeper, is
grateful nevertheless.


"I'm thankful for Vertieres," she said, sweeping the
mud away from a walkway to the battle site outside
Cap-Haitien. Instead of being enslaved, "Now I'm able
to send my kids to school."


Hopes have waned that Aristide, Haiti's first freely
elected president in 1990, would bring new life to a
one-time paradise despoiled by decades of power-hungry
dictators.


Aristide's government has overseen flawed legislative
elections that have led to a two-year impasse with a
disparate opposition coalition. International aid has
dried up as donors demand reforms.


Now opponents say Aristide, who remains the country's
most popular leader, is becoming a dictator.


Haiti is a shell of what it was two centuries ago when
its rich alluvial plains and slave labor made it the
wealthiest colony in the New World.


That prosperity impelled Napoleon Bonaparte to order
15,000 troops to oust Toussaint Louverture, a former
slave who rallied blacks. The French eventually
captured Louverture and imprisoned him in a bleak
mountain cell on the French-Swiss border, where he
died.


Shortly afterward, however, French troops, weakened by
yellow fever, surrendered to Haitian forces.

Vertieres has since become a celebrated victory of
black over white, poor over privileged.

"Vertieres: A Battle for the Black Race" declared
banners that crisscrossed the narrow streets of
Cap-Haitien, a city of brightly painted colonial
houses with iron doors.

But the country is plagued by anti-government protests
that have intensified in the past two months, with at
least 15 killed and scores wounded in clashes between
Aristide supporters and opponents and in police raids.


"With or without Aristide, the country can't take much
more before it starts to collapse," said artist
Reginald Boissant, 39.

Aristide, a former slum priest, came to power urging
the poor to overthrow the U.S.-backed Duvalier family
dictatorship. Aristide was ousted in a coup within
months of being elected but returned to power by a
U.S. invasion in 1994.

It was the third invasion by the United States since
Haiti's independence, which Washington refused to
recognize for decades while slavery continued in the
South.

"We got out of the blockade then," Aristide said. "Now
there's another one," he said of the aid suspensions,
which he calls economic sanctions.

"It's the same conspiracy" to keep black and poor
people down, Aristide said. "We won that victory. We
can walk toward another victory."

The United States has cut all direct assistance to the
Haitian government but channels $70 million in
humanitarian aid to private organizations.

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