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25291: Vedrine (article): Revolution In Haiti: Who Benefits from it? (fwd)




From: E Vedrine <evedrine@hotmail.com>


"Revolution In Haiti: Who Benefits from it?"
(by E. W.  VEDRINE)

Revolution is one of the complex themes to talk about in the case of Haiti and it's necessary to know the history of Haiti quite well.

To respond to an article by a countryman (Doumafis Lafontan. ‘Inyon ou lanmò’ (Union or death). May 2005) that touches the theme "revolution", one of the themes I would choose to debate this subject is: UNDERSTANDING HAITI.

Certainly, we would have to go back to the revolutionary periods (though we are still in the colonial times, but we are not yet in 1803) that is, the point I want to make here has to do with all the fights back and forth that were taking place (before the Battle of Vertieres on November 18, 1803) and the question we may ask is: how many of them were in the interest of the mass of people (also, notice that we were not a "nation" yet)? So, here we can enter the lowest classes (the untouchables), including all slaves in order to be able to suck at least a bone from the bowl of meat.

So after all of our analysis, we notice that most of the battles were based upon personal interests. Dessalines understood the complex game quite well and it wasn't an easy thing for him to try to unite the great indigenous chiefs (mulatoes, blacks, the “bossal” negroes) against France that had all the divide and conquer power in its hands at the time. Opportunists who are always present today were always present also in the past. They stood by Dessalines’ side (in the "union" business that he was talking about) because they already saw their great future advantage (the creation of a new feudal system or neocolonial one if they succeeded in destroying the French army that thought Haiti was a prairie upon which they would continue to gallop.

But what happened after the revolution? Some of these opportunists noticed that Dessalines would, in a way, change when the emperor would ask him to pay back the little barefoot soldiers wearing torn pants who had brought their own contribution to the bloody battle with all their soul and strength for a change. Gee! Some of these big guys got very mad and that was one of the causes of the death of the homeland founder soon thereafter. And right after (his death), we see how the new country became divided like a pig that is being cut up in pieces after killing it.

Many Haitians would like to appear at the same time to be "revolutionary". That does not astonish me because we are looking at the development of Haiti's history, but is it truly with the idea to help the masses who are in need? Is it with the idea to benefit their own class or their personal interests? So, that's where the CONFUSION lies because the history pages of Haiti are open naked before us like a leaf we like to look at.

Don't forget also that the theme "revolution" in our history would appear more as a STRUGGLE TO ASCEND TO POWER only (with this label - with the promise that "things will be changed", so hope makes one live, as the saying says). No problem ascending to power, but the question is: WHAT do these leaders do after (so that the majority of the people who are in need) ascending to power? Everyone always remains DIVIDED: each one always remains in his clan (e.g., those who are in power put their friends in key positions and the basic changes never occur); the intellectuals always remain in their clan philosophizing, sitting down doing nothing even when they appear to be more red than the color of the Russian communist flag but, truly, they are not going through the masses to do a series of basic works (such as, planting trees with them, using the hoe with them, coming up with strategies to irrigate the land, strategies to plant better, ideas to preserve harvests so that they can fight against the dry season, ideas to protect the land, make nurseries of all types, coming up with the idea not to destroy the land but rather protect it, etc…).

The 20th Century has just recently passed; it was a century of headaches, filled with currents of ideas of the “ISM”s that were born or grew up (for example: barbarism, existentialism, capitalism, communism, neofeudalism, neocolonialism, revolutionism, socialism… just to cite a few). Some petit intellectual bourgeois in Haiti (black or light skin) use them back and forth (their own way), they use them like kites people fly on a Holy Friday in Port-au-Prince, but they always remain within their own class speaking sophisticated French; they are not even going to write a Kreyòl manual trying to teach the masses who are completely illiterate how to read and write; so forget about rolling up their pants to go and plant with them, to hold a hoe / pickax / machete with them, weed the land with them (and many know that one of the secrets of Haiti’s development lies in agriculture), go and show them how to read and write free of charge so that they can be at least at the basic reading the level, go and form groups to give out books, get together (with those who have money) to help one way or another and then show them how to organize themselves, how to work together for success. The compilation of all these revolutionary ideas in the case of Haiti, but with no concrete action, appears to be a “lanmou makiye” (fake love).

So, two questions we may ask to conclude: 1) When will Haiti have a social revolution for sure? 2) What can we learn from the Cuban Revolution? These answers are open-ended in order to widen this debate. Finally, the term “REVOLUTION” in Haiti’s history also adopts semantics, focussing more on REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS than CONCRETE ACTIONS.

(E.W.Vedrine, 27 me 2005 - http://www.palli.ch/~kapeskreyol/bibliographie/vedrine.html
The author thanks to Marilyn Mason for her English review)