23666: (reply) Esser: Re: 23661: (reply) Simidor Re: 23618: Esser on Dessalines and land reform (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser <torx@joimail.com>

Your last sentence: 'Interestingly, Dessalines, Salomon, Aristide and
the Duvaliers are all dark-skinned oligarchs who married light, and
fathered mulatto children.' defies all logic and exposes your
argumentation, since oligarchy is defined as being a form of
government where most political power effectively rests with a small
segment of society. Aristide, while having arguably had some of that
necessary political power to rule, was never part of that segment of
oligarchs that does control Haiti. Power in Haiti is concentrated in
the hands of the grandons, or big landowners, who are somewhat past
the zenith of their influence within society and therefore do not
have the same U.S. backing that the other group enjoys.
This second group is comprised of factory owners and large merchants,
recently represented in their bidding by one Mr. Apaid. If you refer
to Apaid as an oligarch you are correct... If you know of overtures
of the oligarchs of Haiti to have  Jean-Bertrand Aristide join their
ranks, please share. The terror running rampant in Haiti right know
would be very puzzling indeed if Aristide and Fanmi Lavalas would
have been part of Haiti's ruling class.

In your long worded response you you try to refute the notion that
Jean-Jacques Dessalines was genuinely interested in land reform. I
won't reinvent the wheel since many writers have covered the subject
so when you André Elysée disagree, it's one thing, but that does
nothing to prove your point.

In her book 'Haiti, History And The Gods' Joan Dayan makes exactly
that argument which you dispute: Dessalines attempt at land reform
was his downfall because he really sought to redistribute assets.

Ben Dupuy, in a speech given in Canada in August of 2004 stated:
"Dessalines said that all those who had fought deserved to have a
plot of land... ...So they plotted to assassinate Dessalines and
there emerged our grandon class, which up until today exploits the
peasantry."

Haiti Info in it's March 11th issue of 1995, in an article titled
'The Land Issue, Justice and Elections', gives the following outlook
on Dessalines and land-reform: "One of the most endemic problems
facing Haiti is the land problem. To realize the importance and
cruciality of this sensitive question in Haitian history, one need
only know that all 24 constitutions since independence in 1804 have
mentioned land reform, and that practically every time a chief of
state tried to put it into action, he was ejected or assassinated.
Even Jean-Jacques Dessalines, founder of the Republic and hero of the
independence struggle, did not escape this tragic reality."

Patrick Bellegarde-Smith writes in a piece on Haiti appearing in the
Microsoft Encarta: "Pétion implemented Latin America's first agrarian
reform between 1809 and 1814, giving individuals small parcels of the
land that had become state-owned under Dessalines. This land reform
established the system of small holdings that provided Haiti with a
strong peasantry, creating the condition for the evolution of a
Creole, or Afro-Haitian, culture." Note: It was Dessalines that
started the nationalizing redistribution of of land formerly
belonging to affranchis and, by then, absentee or dead, slave owners.

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark writes in 'Haiti - A Slave
Revolution', ("Haiti's Agonies and Exaltations') "Dessalines'
nationalization and democratic distribution of land led to his
assassination in 1806 by jealous elements of a new ruling class, both
black and mulatto, emerging from the ranks of the Haitian generals.
The alliance between the formerly freed – the freedmen or affranchis
– and the newly freed – the former slaves – was dissolved with
Dessalines' murder."

And last not least Dessalines, when speaking about opposition by the
affranchis to his land redistribution efforts said: "How does it come
to pass that since we have chased away the colonists, their children
are claiming their property? The Blacks whose fathers are in Africa
will then have nothing? Be careful of yourselves, Negroes and
Mulattoes ... the property we have conquered in spilling our blood
belongs to all of us; I insist that it be shared with equity." (In
one translation/account of many with slightly different wordings, but
with the same tenet.)

All this talk of noirism and the like is an attempt to take the
discussion backwards and is not effective. Great writers, such as
Nicholls, mentioned by you, and the great C.L.R James have done some
really good work proving, that the truism that in the end all
antagonisms in society are about class and whatever obfuscating
ramblings about skin color may persist, it is the ownership over
means of production (and that would include the land at issue here)
that determine the outcome of politics. Haiti is no exception.

While I have no interest to dig deeper into books, I have David
Nicholls -- a writer which you give credence to -- book: 'From
Dessalines to Duvalier' on my desk. He writes: "What was clear to his
hearers [referring to the  above mentioned speech by Dessalines] was
the emperor's intention of confiscating some of the recently acquired
land from the ancient libres, and this is certainly one of the
reasons for his assassination in October 1806."

This limited survey of articles indicates that there is a consensus,
among progressive and by and large non-landholding observers if I may
add, that Dessalines did:

a) intend to redistribute land owned by wealthy Haitians
b) nationalize plantations

and that

c) that all land reform, inherently in it's definition, distributes
land from those that own, what is considered at the time more than
their fair share of it, to those who do not own real-estate or only
small parcels and alternatively put the landownership in the hands of
the state, so society as a whole can benefit from it. (One reference
defines land reform as Land reform as a "government-initiated or
government-backed transfer of ownership of (or tenure in)
agricultural land. The term most often refers to transfer from
ownership by a relatively small number of wealthy  owners with
extensive land holdings  to individual or collective ownership by
those who work the land.")

d) Jean-Jacques Dessalines was murdered with all probability for
reasons which chiefly include among them, his desire to stop the
spiritual and actual ancestors of those that still terrorize Haiti, by
financing coups and death squads, in their tracks.

e) that rhetorical devices such as making class issues into those of
skin color are most often used by those that are intend to rewrite
history, do intend to stir up antagonisms, believe in the same
outdated and deadly devices used by the colonizers to subjugate
Africans and can be dismissed  because they are not grounded in
anything backed by logic.

That Dessalines did rule in ways that are unconscionably cruel to the
modern observer, stems from the fact that he was the product of a
very violent society and that he and his compatriots did not
understand the natural progression from a feudal system towards
capitalism and therefore were blind to the fact that a logical next
step would have been to immediately overthrow all vestiges of the
French political system. This change was also hampered by the fact
that, similar to the problems the Soviet Union and other countries
faced, it is not easily possible to bypass stages in the economic
development of nations. All this wouldn't make one argue that
Dessalines leadership would be worth emulating today, but it does put
it into a historical context.

Sometimes it is a puzzling and intriguing question as for who
political figures or writers are working for, with Dessalines it's
clear: he died for the emancipation of his people.
.