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17774: This Week in Haiti 21:43 01/07/2004 (fwd)
"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
newsweekly. For the complete edition with other news in French
and Creole, please contact the paper at (tel) 718-434-8100,
(fax) 718-434-5551 or e-mail at <editor@haitiprogres.com>.
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HAITI PROGRES
"Le journal qui offre une alternative"
* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *
January 7 - 13, 2004
Vol. 21, No. 43
DESPITE OPPOSITION BOYCOTT AND TERROR CAMPAIGN
HAITIANS JOYOUSLY CELEBRATE THEIR BICENTENNIAL
Many tens of thousands of Haitians filled the streets around the
National Palace in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 1, 2004 to celebrate
the 200th anniversary of Haiti's independence.
A smaller celebration of about 7,000 took place later the same
day in Gonaïves, the city where Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Haiti's
first head of state, declared independence for the world's first
black republic.
Despite threats of violence from the Washington-backed opposition
and back-room pressure to dissuade them, many foreign delegations
attended the bicentennial ceremonies. South African President
Thabo Mbeki and his wife along with Bahamian Prime Minister Perry
Christie shared center stage with President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, First Lady Mildred Trouillot Aristide, Prime Minister
Yvon Neptune, and his wife.
The vice president of Surinam, and the foreign ministers of the
Dominican Republic and of Benin, among others, also headed high-
level delegations.
France and the United States only dispatched their local
ambassadors, although Washington's Luigi Einaudi and Ottawa's
David Lee attended representing the Organization of American
States, of which they are respectively Assistant Secretary
General and Special Representative to Haiti.
Festivities began the evening of December 31, when tens of
thousands filled the streets in all corners of the capital to
watch fireworks, listen to bands, and gather in large jubilant
crowds. Thousands milled in the capital's central square, the
Champ de Mars, to admire the normally white National Palace and
the trees around it which were illuminated blue and red, the
Haitian flag's colors.
Thousands more danced to rara street bands in the suburb of
Tabarre, not far from Aristide's home. Another street party
rocked the Caridad quarter of the capital, which, like many other
neighborhoods, was festooned with tiny flags and had newly
painted murals of Haiti's revolutionary war heroes lining the
avenue.
In Bon Repos, just north of the capital, several hundred people
gathered around a makeshift roadside stage to listen to speeches
by local leaders and music by local bands. As midnight struck,
the mountainsides around capital erupted in dozens of firework
displays.
Stores and restaurants throughout he city were open practically
all night.
Ceremonies in front of the Palace began the next morning at about
8 a.m. when the presidential couple hoisted the Haitian bicolor.
In their excitement, crowds collapsed the fence surrounding the
Palace grounds as well as a wooden viewing platform constructed
for the occasion.
"May the determination of these former slaves to forge a nation
in a world hostile to their very existence inspire us to always
continue to struggle for human dignity that is the sacred right
of all people," Aristide declared in his speech, which outlined
21 accomplishments as well as projects "waiting for the 21
billion." He was referring to the $21.7 billion in restitution
which Haiti has formally demanded from former colonizer France.
The ceremony featured marching bands, flag displays, the sounding
of conch shells (used by Haitian maroons), and the release of
doves of peace.
Later that afternoon, Aristide flew to Gonaïves where he
delivered a similar address underscoring that he intends to serve
out his full five year term, which ends in 2006. The opposition
wants him to step down to be replaced by a 27-member "Council of
Wise Men," which would be completely unconstitutional.
Haitians overwhelmingly reject the opposition and their proposal.
Like those in the capital and Gonaïves, crowds along the highway
between the two cities greeted passing vehicles with an open
hand, to symbolize that Aristide should serve out his full term.
In an attempt to disrupt the celebrations, the opposition held a
march of several hundred in the capital on Thursday afternoon
which deliberately veered off the agreed march route. When the
police blocked their advance with tear-gas, the opposition
demonstrators threw up barricades and went on a rampage through
commercial and residential districts, smashing car windshields
and storefronts, burning vehicles, throwing rocks and firing
shots. The home of a pro-government student leader, Marjorie
Michel, was also attacked.
A similar terror assault was carried out in Gonaïves after
ceremonies were successfully concluded. In the Dekawo
neighborhood, opposition hooligans hid behind the houses lining
the southern exit route from the city to pelt the departing buses
of celebrants with rocks. One car had its back windows shot out.
That evening at the National Palace, government officials,
diplomats and invited guests viewed a musical and theatrical
extravaganza, featuring a host of artists including U.S. actor
Danny Glover, the Cuban-Haitian vocal group Desandan, and Haitian
singers Joe Trouillot, Carole Demesmin and Erna Letemps.
Afterwards, Aristide awarded Mbeki with the "Award of Pétion and
Bolivar."
REBEL IS JUSTIFIED
CUBA, HAITI AND JOHN BROWN
(Second of two articles)
by Sara Flounders
In last week's installment from the new book Haiti: A Slave
Revolution, Flounders traced how revolutionary Haiti was isolated
by the world's powers just as revolutionary Cuba is today.
Nonetheless, Haiti's example inspired millions of enslaved people
as well as abolitionists in the United States, including John
Brown.
The debates that swirled through the abolitionist movement, in
its meetings, in its many tabloids and in the entire literature
of the day, revolved around how could the Southern slavocracy be
defeated. Would moral persuasion or political maneuvers in
Congress even restrain its expansion westward? Could laws and
treaties restricting the international trade in human beings end
slavery? Would condemnation, outrage and religious resolutions be
successful?
Within the national and the international movement to abolish
slavery, Haiti was seen and often referred to as a living example
of a successful armed rebellion of slaves.
The great Black leader, orator, author and escaped slave
Frederick Douglass, wrote of the debate on the role of the armed
struggle to end slavery in his description of his meeting with
John Brown in his autobiography. "Captain Brown denounced slavery
in look and language fierce and bitter, thought that slave
holders had forfeited their right to live, that the slaves had
the right to gain their liberty in any way they could, did not
believe that moral suasion would ever liberate the slave, or that
political action would abolish the system." This discussion had a
profound impact on Douglass. He wrote, "While I continue to write
and speak against slavery, I become all the same less hopeful of
its peaceful abolition."
This is what he had to say about Haiti, in a speech that is
included in this book: "While slavery existed amongst us, her
example was a sharp thorn in our side and a source of alarm and
terror. She came into the sisterhood of nations through blood.
She was described at the time of her advent, as a very hell of
horrors. Her very name was pronounced with a shudder. She was a
startling and frightful surprise and a threat to all slave-
holders throughout the world, and the slave-holding world has had
its questioning eye upon her career ever since."
Fifty years after the Haitian Revolution, slavery in the U.S. had
not only survived but it was growing and expanding.
Two legal decisions passed in the 1850s reinforced slavery
throughout the whole U.S.. The Fugitive Slave Act allowed gangs
and bounty hunters to pursue escaped slaves into the "free
states" of the North. The Dred Scott decision declared even in
the North freed Black people could not become U.S. citizens. The
decision held that even free black people had no rights that
white people were bound to respect.
In 1854, as slavery grew stronger and extended its reach, there
arose within the abolitionist movement the immediate issue of how
to stop the slave south from becoming the majority in congress
through the expansion of slavery west into new states. Thousands
of abolitionists uprooted their homes and moved to Kansas for the
express purpose of preventing Kansas from entering the Union as a
slave state. Powerful slave owners paid for hired guns to invade
Kansas to burn these small farmers out and open the region for
slave plantations. The whole anti-slavery effort seemed doomed.
John Brown organized an armed resistance to the invasion of slave
owners. Kansas erupted into civil war. It was called Bloody
Kansas. Kansas finally entered the Union a "free" state.
After the success of armed abolitionists in Kansas and the first
military defeat of slave holders in the United States, Brown
spent three years studying military tactics along with all that
he could find regarding past slave revolts. He made maps of
fugitive slave routes. He was especially interested in the
history and experiences of the Haitian Revolution.
The only Black survivor of the October 1859 raid at Harpers
Ferry, Osborne Anderson, a freeman and a printer, wrote a small
book about the reason for the failure of the military action.
Anderson wrote to encourage future armed actions and to rebut the
lies of the slavocracy that the action failed because slaves were
unwilling to take up arms against their masters. He explained
that the raid failed for tactical reason but that overwhelmingly
the slaves joined the attack at the first possibility.
For Haiti, the struggle convulsing the slave-owning super-power
next door was of enormous importance. The existence and the
continual expansion of chattel slavery just a few hundred miles
from isolated Haiti by the super-power of the region meant that
the survival of Haiti was a precarious gamble.
Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859 along with four co-
conspirators. Two of the conspirators, Shields Green and John
Copeland, were Black. Of great note was that Black and white
participants went to their deaths unrepentant and defiant just
as the great heroes of the Haitian Revolution had done.
The trial of John Brown was covered in enormous detail in the
newspapers of the day in the "free" states and in the slave
states, in Europe and Haiti. But only in Haiti were there days of
national mourning for John Brown's execution. Haitians collected
$20,000 for Brown's family. Twenty thousand dollars was an
enormous sum in 1859, especially in such a poor and blockaded
country.
After the execution of John Brown in December 1859 flags in Port-
au-Prince were flown at half mast. A solemn mass was held in the
cathedral where the President Fabre Nicholas Geffard attended and
spoke.
The main boulevard of Port-au-Prince was named John Brown
Boulevard. It survives to this day.
As Frederick Douglass said, "If John Brown did not end the war
that ended slavery, he did, at least, begin the war that ended
slavery... Until this blow was struck, the prospect for freedom
was dim, shadowy, and uncertain. The irrepressible conflict was
one of words, votes and compromises... The clash of arms was at
hand."
John Brown was a deeply religious man. He saw the struggle
against slavery in biblical terms. But as he was led to his
death, a minister offered to pray with him. Brown refused saying
that no justifier of slavery could pray for him. His last words
were: "It is easy to hang me, but this question this slave
question that remains to be settled."
It was settled in blood. It took four years of a wrenching civil
war and more than half a millions deaths. But centuries of
chattel slavery remain deeply imbedded in wage slavery. Racism
permeates every aspect of life in the U.S. today.
The same class North and South who built their fortunes and
accumulated vast capital through the slave trade remains in power
in the U.S. today. Their rage at the Haitian revolution continues
in the sanctions, military interventions and deportations of
Haitians today.
The Cuban revolution, although blockaded and under siege, has
shown the next step. It will take a second, more thoroughgoing
revolution that seeks to transform all capitalist property
relations, to begin to truly root out the heritage of slavery in
the United States.
To purchase Haiti: A Slave Revolution, call Haïti Progrès at 718-
434-8100 (Brooklyn) or 222-6513 (Haiti), Tap Tap Restaurant
(Miami) at 305-672-2898 or the International Action Center
(Manhattan) at 212-633-6646. Order on-line at www.leftbooks.com.
All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Progres.
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