The Haitian revolution, the earthquake, restructuring and resistance

Haiti is of enormous significance as the site of one of the world’s first republican revolutions and the first successful revolution against slavery that aimed at something beyond a return to an older order. The earthquake that has killed tens of thousands threatens to further enslave the descendants of those who fought for and won their freedom over 200 years ago.

Haiti is of enormous significance as the site of one of the world’s first republican revolutions and the first successful revolution against slavery that aimed at something beyond a return to an older order. The earthquake that has killed tens of thousands threatens to further enslave the descendants of those who fought for and won their freedom over 200 years ago. (The positive reactions to this blog post led me to spend the time to write the article Haiti – a history of intervention, occupation and resistance.)

Haiti is the western 1/3 of the island of Hispaniola. It’s native people the Taínos were enslaved after the island was occupied by the Spanish after it’s ‘discovery’ in 1492. Within 25 years so many of them had been worked to death in the gold mines or died of starvation or disease that the Spanish transported large numbers of enslaved Africans to replace them. This was the pattern across the Spanish occupied Carribean. The Tainos however were never completely wiped out, they set up free settlements with escaped Africans in the mountains.  Alongside these Hispaniola was also the home of various pirate refuges.

The division of the island took place in 1697 after France and Spain had fought an imperialist war over it. The French part was then called Saint-Domingue and attracted 30,000 French settlers in a few decades due to the vast fortunes to be made from sugar, coffee and indigo. The enslaved Africans who worked the plantations lived and died under the brutal Code Noir, its estimated that 1/3 died within the first couple of years of their transportation.

The first sustained organised rebellions were in the 1750’s under the leadership of François Mackandal but he was captured in 1858 and burned alive by the settlers. By 1789 there were around 40,000 white settlers and 500,000 enslaved Africans as well as a growing population of people of color whose origins were often in the rape of African women by white slave owners. There were some 26000 free people of color and a few were wealthy. In the aftermath of the 26 August 1789, publication of the Declaration of the Rights of Man during the French Revolution one of them, Vincent Oge demanded the right to vote and when this was refused led an insurgency. When captured he was executed through being broken on the wheel, a method of execution where the victim is tied to a cart wheel and then has their limbs smashed with hammers and is left to die. The roots of the violence that the people of Haiti suffer surely lie in the extreme brutality used to maintain slavery. Shortly after the execution of Oge the French Revolutionary government granted citizenship to wealthy, free people of color.

The large landowners who ran the island were called the grands blancs and they refused to implement this law. The largest plantations were on the northern part of the island and it was there that the enslave peopled rose on 22 August, taking over the northern province over the next 10 days. By 1792 1/3 of the island was in the hands of these black republicans and France for economic and then military reasons was forced to make concessions. These built up to the French commander freeing all the enslaved people by 1793 after negotiations with the black leaders of the rebellion which included Toussaint L’Ouverture, in return they then helped the French defeat the British and Spanish. In reality he was just giving legal recognition to the fact they had already liberated themselves, but they French assembly confirmed this in 1794. An invading British army was defeated in 1798 and in 1801 an army under Toussaint invaded Santo Domingo to aid with the abolition of slavery there. In 1802 Napoleon sent an army to the island to attempt to re-impose slavery but after a brutal war it too was defeated and an independent nation with the name Haiti (the name of the island in the original inhabitants language) was declared.

The Haitian revolution began some seven years before the first great republican rebellion in Ireland in 1798 and lasted through the Emmett rebellion of 1803 as well. Yet its existence is almost unknown. The self-liberation of hundreds of thousands of enslaved people is very much less know then the later and staggered abolition of slavery in Britain and France, an abolition that was driven in part by the rebellions of enslaved people elsewhere sparked off by the Haitian example. I only discovered it myself after finally getting around to read CLR James ‘The Black Jacobians’ a decade or so back.

It is clear why it was not in the interests of the slave holders elsewhere at the time to spread the news of the liberation of the people of Haiti by their own hands. Instead they sought to economically punish Haiti. This included the forced payment of a massive ‘debt’ of the value of the enslaved people, debt payments for which continued until 1947! The people of Haiti escaped slavery but they could not defeat the colonial system which has continued to punish them to this day.I write this on a holiday as the magnitude of the disaster in Haiti is just starting to sink in. As one of the Anarkismo editors I’ve had some exposure to radical politics in Haiti through our re-publishing of Batay Ouvriye material, material attacking them and articles about Haiti by other editors in particular José. You’ll find all these articles on Anarkismo.net in our section on the Caribbean  together they provide a useful introduction to the recent history of Haiti and some of the controversies around the left there. The comments under these articles represent some of the better online discussions around these due to some hard work on moderation by the Anarkismo editors.

While in Miami on my North American speaking tour I was staying in Little Haiti which is also where we had the public meeting. Miami has a large Haitian population which has grown as people have fled Haiti in recent years. Some time after I left a Miami group affiliated to Anarkismo called Miami Autonomy and Solidarity formed. They have been working on Haitian solidarity and in particular as part of the Batay Ouvriye Haiti Solidarity Network. Yesterday they released a statemen on the earthquake and an appreal for funds which can be read at http://www.anarkismo.net/article/15501

The context of this statement include the plans of the US Heritage Foundation to take advantage of the earthquake to impose neo liberal restructuring on the people of Haiti. Shortly after the earthquake the Heritage Foundation put a statement on their website which included that “the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy.” This was only up for a couple of hours before someone realised it was perhaps a little too honest and it was removed, however it had already been copied and has been put into widespread circulation by Naomi Klein among others.

Kleins book ‘the Shock Doctrine’ looks at how capitalism uses crisis to impose restructuring people that would otherwise resist (or so I hear, to be honest I’ve yet to get around to reading it!) In recent years the mass of the people of Haiti have suffered greatly under occupation imposed restructuring programs. Of course as usual there is also that narrow ruling layer that have done well out of acting as local agents for the occupation or which have been able to use the occupation forces to suppress protest at the poor pay and conditions they offer to those who work from them and rent from them. Historically as we have seen the interests of early capitalism saw the original inhabitants worked to death for the gold that fueled the expansion of European capitalism and then saw millions of African enslaved for the sugar plantations that enabled the young capitalist system to expand. It will be a tragedy if the huge social needs created by this earthquake are allowed to once more create the conditions under which future generations of Haitians are enslaved by poverty and desperation. These is little doubt that the massive death toll from the quake results in part from such enslavement and the ability to impose dangerous housing on the Haitian masses that was part and parcel of that death toll.

If you’d like to make a donation to the Miami Batay Ouvriye appeal you can do so online or by sending a cheque to Miami Workers Center for: MAS/BO 6127 Northwest 7th Avenue Miami, FL 33127-1111