17352: (Chamberlain) Haiti-Napoleonic Battle (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By PAISLEY DODDS

   CAP-HAITIEN, Nov 18 (AP) -- 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.
   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, 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, 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.