17545: Lemieux: BBC: Haiti's 200 years of wasted hopes (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>


Haiti's 200 years of wasted hopes
By John Pickford
BBC correspondent, Haiti

It is 200 years since Haiti won independence from France.
What happened to the rich promises of the tropical island?

"The trees laden with fruit, the plants tall and in flower,
and the air as sweet as April in Spain."

December 1492 and Columbus has made his first landfall in
the north-eastern tip of what is now Haiti. He is deeply
impressed.

Here, he writes in his journal, is "everything a man could
want in this world."

The site of that first landfall still carries the name
Columbus gave it: San Nicholas.

But today, San Nicholas is the poorest of Haiti's nine
administrative districts. This makes it the poorest
province in the poorest country in the western hemisphere.

In 2003 nothing can quite prepare you for your first visit
to this beleaguered country.


I watched barefoot pedestrians picking their way through
puddles of sewer water

I arrived in the capital, Port-au-Prince, on a Sunday after
a thunderstorm.

In a region swirling with tourists, just two other people
got off the plane.

Twenty minutes later on the edge of the city centre, I
watched barefoot pedestrians picking their way through
puddles of sewer water, while gaping holes in the streets
disgorged the contents of the drains.

But Haiti can spring surprises, good and bad.

Celebration

That night I watched a spectacular firework display from
the balcony of my hotel and met, by chance, the Frenchman
who had staged it.

He told me he'd been flown in specially from Paris to
organise this show for the hero of the 1803 Haitian
revolution, Toussaint L'Ouverture.

In this special year for Haiti, the commemorations have
come thick and fast, for Toussaint's death and the final
defeat of the French.


The French were defeated by an army of ex-slaves at the
battle of Vertieres, resulting in the triumphant
proclamation of Haitian independence on 1 January 1804.

Haitians will never tire of telling you that this is the
second oldest independent country in the New World and the
first plantation colony to stage a successful slave revolt.


They claim with pride and insistence that theirs was the
first completely free country in the Americas.

They point out it was another 60 years before slavery was
abolished in the United States.

Hard times

The rhetoric rings hollow today when you find yourself
talking, as I did, to a peasant woman bent double planting
vegetables on a steeply sloping hillside some two hours
drive out of Port-au-Prince.

She told me she earns less than a dollar a day for this
work and doesn't even own the primitive tool she is using,
which is a sort of machete.

She had to borrow it from the person she is working for.

Tomorrow she will have to try to find a different job to
help her family survive.


Something has gone horribly wrong in Haiti since Columbus
was so intoxicated by the place.

When you probe a bit into the country's past, you sense it
all started a long time ago.

The delinquent dictatorships that failed the people of
Haiti in the 20th century were symptoms of a deep-seated
malaise rather than the start of the country's problems.

The honour of being the first black republic in the New
World wasn't an easy beginning.

Haiti found itself ostracised and isolated by the
surrounding colonies, fearful of its example, while the
French insisted on reparations (as the price of
independence) that were so onerous they took 40 years to
pay off.

Talking with one of Haiti's most gifted - and opinionated -
historians, Georges Michel, another telling phrase came up:
"predatory government".

Origins of greed

This was a tradition that began 500 years ago with Columbus
and his lust for gold.

It continued under French colonial rule in the 18th
century, when Haiti's plantation economy became the most
lucrative in the Caribbean.

Tragically it began all over again in the 19th and 20th
centuries. The African slaves, who had fought so
courageously for their freedom, reverted to those same
predatory instincts when they began to rule themselves.

The result has been a long succession of governments more
interested in holding on to power and what they can get
from the country, rather than running an efficient
administration.

Today in Haiti the cupboard is bare.

It has been said that Haitians lack everything but
imagination.

So when you ask people about their current president, many
will shrug their shoulders fatalistically.

They say that Mr Aristide, the ascetic former priest who
won power on such high hopes, is now richer, fatter, and
married. According to them, this is all you can expect from
a Haitian president.

The day I left the country, the airport was even emptier
than when I arrived.

In the departure lounge I got into conversation with a
young woman promoting free samples of a local fruit juice,
though it looked more like coloured water.

"Not many passengers," I said.

"No," she replied in excellent French, "it's because of the
political situation."

You sense they have been saying that in Haiti for at least
200 years.




>From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 6
December, 2003, at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check
the programme schedules for World Service transmission
times.



Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3292465.stm

Published: 2003/12/06 12:28:52 GMT

© BBC MMIII


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