17497: JHudicourt: re: racine san bout on reparations

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JHUDICOURTB@aol.com
----------------------------------------

>No one "forced" Haiti to pay that amount of money to France.
>
>France asked for it and Haiti was dumb enough to accept ! I am sure if
England
>would have asked the USA to pay a big amount of money, the americans
>would have
>just laughed in their face and told them :"F#ck off !!! We won the
>independence
>war, we won't pay a dime!!!"

There is a lot of misinformation on this list. President JP Boyer
negotiated
for many years with the French government.  He sent letters and
negotiators to
France.  When he finally signed an agreement to pay was when a French
mission
arrived with 10 war boats in Port-au-Prince Bay. I read that in the
history of
Haiti book by Thomas Madiou.  I don't have it with me in the US so I can't
give
exact references.   It took about 100 years for Haiti to  finish paying.
According to people who are in their 60's the Estime government may have
been
the one to finally close that account with contributions from Haitian
children.  The propaganda at the time was rather:  let's all put money
together
to get rid of the debt.
Maybe Americans can afford to laugh in everyone's face because they have
more
guns (gwo zam fann fwa) .  We just have slingshots, pipi, malaria,
manchete,
rocks, itchy plants, and vodoo.  I guess Boyer thought that Haiti could
not
afford another war even if we had minor weapons of mass distruction .