Tag Archives: haiti

Alt-history: British Haiti

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What if Toussaint Louverture had switched his allegiance from the French to the British during the Haitian Revolution?

My (optimistic) idea is that, after he joined forces with the British against both the French and Spanish, Toussaint would have helped secure a British foothold on the island. He would have won a guarantee for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade from the British, and maybe the British would have kept their word, extending abolition of both throughout the British Empire over the next two-three decades. In all likelihood, however, political enfranchisement of the majority-black populace would have taken much longer.

The furthest that people of color got in enfranchisement at any point in the 19th century was Dominica’s legislative assembly from 1835, when the first three men of African descent were elected, to 1896, when the by-this-time-half-elected-half-appointed assembly was abolished in favor of directly-controlled crown colony status. Throughout the British Caribbean, even after slavery was abolished, the British maintained a racial caste system which favored a minority of white planters against the black and mixed-race majority.

I fear that a Haiti which was autonomous from Britain would not have been too different from these other British colonies, beyond the most crucial gains of the colony’s violent separation from French rule. Questions remain:

  • Would Toussaint and his generals have helped lead this autonomous polity as viceroys?
  • What would Britain have brought to Haiti which 1) was common in other colonies like Jamaica and 2) was not endemic to former French colonies like Haiti?
  • What about Westminster-style parliamentary government? Would Haiti have adopted this instead of the big-man presidential system of the United States? And who would have been allowed to participate at the time, or would they have also been allowed to participate by the 20th century?
  • Whither Spanish Saint-Domingue? Would the Spanish side have been taken over by the forces of Toussaint et al? And if so, how would that have unified the island?
  • Would the Westminster system and other British mores, unified by the abolition of slavery, have helped the citizens of this island and their political system up to the present?
  • How would a British Haiti have impacted Simon Bolivar and his independence movement?
  • What impact would this have on African-Americans? Or on Afro-Caribbeans?
  • What impact would this have on the Louisiana Purchase?

I think this is worth looking into.

Ebony on Religion in Haiti

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In my travels around Haiti, I have come across many villages where there is no police presence and nor is there a clinic nearby for basic care, often leaving the Vodou priest or priestess( hougans and manbos) to serve every role from midwife to judge and jury. Yet Langlois and the Catholic Church he represents remain silent on the deeply imbedded inequality in Haiti and a Haitian government more interested in attracting foreign tourists by any means than providing basic social services to its people. He also fails to critique the international community who have little to show for $9 billion funneled through international contractors and NGOs in Haiti with little accountability since the 2010 earthquake.

Contrary to the Cardinal’s statement, Vodou is not Haiti’s problem; Christianity is. No push to spread Vodou ever wiped out entire “savage” indigenous peoples. Vodou has caused no wars due to a desire to convert as many people as possible. Vodou doesn’t tell “saved souls” that they must be complacent, accepting their lot on Earth for the potential of future salvation in heaven. Vodou never told Black people they were a curse or 3/5ths of a person.

via Haiti Doesn’t Have a Vodou Problem, It Has a Christianity Problem – EBONY

René Préval

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René Préval, who served as President of Haiti from 1996-2001 and 2006-2011, is perhaps the greatest democratic survivor of Haitian politics. He managed to both receive and turn over presidential powers peacefully and democratically, twice over.

He weathered food riots, a dysfunctional government, frequent turnover of prime ministers, and the Haitian earthquake of 2010 where his own presidential residence was destroyed and left his family homeless. Yet, he never led or encountered a coup, unlike his democratic predecessor Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who suffered two coups. He did not have his own death squad, did not exceed his own presidential mandate.

Since independence in 1804, Préval is only the first elected Haitian president to serve his full term and voluntarily retire (and only the second overall after Nissage Saget, who had taken power by coup in 1867 but left office voluntarily after five years), and the first to be elected in non-consecutive terms. No other head of state in Haiti’s history can claim to have had a similar experience as René Préval.

On Paul Shirley

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Seriously…telling a dirt-poor nominally-Catholic-majority country’s population to practice birth control?

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LOL logic.
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I mean….fuck. I’ll just quote a right-wing blog’s post to sum up what just happened:

He had a point, but Paul Shirley’s Haiti comment, “Use a condom once in a while” assured that his audience left him. And the credibility of his argument left as well.

…and he has been dropped as a freelance writer from ESPN. And he continues to be beat with a thousand cluesticks over the Internet.

But to those who do defend him, its just because – and ONLY BECAUSE – he’s not identifying with the "Liberal" "PC" "do-gooders", even when those conservatives who *have* thought through the whole Haiti aftermath crisis have noticed a small amount of "whoa nelly!"-grade bullshit in the guy’s post.

Now, if ESPN doesn’t value his opinions enough to keep him, does that make ABC Disney a socialist conglomerate which doesn’t believe in its employees’ freedom of speech?

Imagine: a socialist business that’s not owned by the government…

A day without an American gun

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Originally posted here.

Latin America, which consists of all of the former American colonies of Spain, France (sans Quebec and the Mississippi Basin), and Portugal, is a region which is steeped in history and tradition, alot of which extends beyond the reach of Columbus and his “discovery” of the Americas.

However, ever since most of these countries gained their political independence back during the 1800’s, this region has also been steeped in a mire of political and military tradition and intrigue. Guns and armaments of all possible kinds have been in almost perpetually-abundant supply and distribution for almost 2 centuries in this geopolitical region. Battles, skirmishes, crackdowns, massacres, and bloodbaths all form an integral and permanent part of this region’s historical and political constitution.

Thus, it comes as no surprise to many of us when the United States becomes involved. American arms, American training, American funding, American support, American everything-that-has-anything-to-deal-with-the-military: its all too commonplace in this region. Sure, the degree of U.S. involvement in any Latin American conflict may vary, depending of the size of that nation’s (or, for that matter, that insurgency’s) military. And usually, the side that is taken by the U.S. and its agents in that particular nation is usually avowedly politically conservative, economically bourgeois, and socially elitist.

In the midst of this perennial conflict, of course, the lives of innocent men, women, and children are bloodily sacrificed. People who wish that their livelihoods, families, and communities had no part, or played no role, in this conflict are among the first ones who are maimed, scarred, robbed, or murdered….

All for the sake of politics, economics, and history, three things over which these people have no control, three things by which these people are taken over.

Haiti can serve as a prime example of this: the coup which toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his government was backed/operated/conducted by the Miami-based Group of 184, a coalition of archconservative bourgeoisie of Haitian ancestry which had explicitly strong ties to both the Duvalier dictatorship and the former Haitian Army, which had been abolished by Aristide. Furthermore, it was supported by former members of the Tonton Macoutes and attaches who had overthrown Aristide back in 1991, the leaders of which received their military training at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, near Columbus, GA.

In fact, let’s go further on Haiti: the leader of the Group of 184, Andre Apaid Jr., is a U.S.-born businessman who owns several sweatshops in Haiti; is a longtime opponent to Aristide; had ties to the Duvalier dictatorship and the former Haitian Army; and is known for stepping up his own personal vendetta against Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas Party after Aristide not only imposed a national income tax, but also raised the minimum wage to US$1.50.

“It all begins with HDP’s director James Morrell, who was asked to leave the Center for International Policy (CIP), a “liberal” think-tank founded by former US Ambassador to El Salvador Robert White. The rumor on the Hill was that Morrell was forced out because of his open flirtations with Haitian right-wingers. This seems to be supported by HDP’s partnering with the right-wing Boulos family and the most reactionary elements of Haiti’s Chamber of Commerce. The pedigree of this pack of interventionists can be gleaned from its guest list the night it was founded in Washington D.C.

There were notable Haitians in attendance at the Haiti Democracy Project’s grand opening held in the Brookings Institute on November 19, 2002. Among them was founding member Rudolph Boulos. Boulos is infamous for once being summoned for questioning in February 2002 concerning the assassination of one of Haiti’s most popular journalists, Jean Dominique. Dominique publicly lambasted Boulos for having sold poisoned children’s cough syrup through his company Pharval Pharmaceuticals. Over sixty children died from diethyl alcohol contamination of “Afrebril and Valodon” syrups, the deadly concoction brewed in Boulos private laboratories.”

(Quotation from The Bush Administration’s Endgame for Haiti: Part 3 of a Series by Kevin Pina, The Black Commentator, Dec. 4, 2003, Issue 67)

Thus, Haiti’s is, for lack of a better description, a case of jumping from a frying pan under Jean-Bertrand Aristide into the fire itself under the Group of 184.

Sadly, this has been the case throughout Latin America for over 100 years since the U.S. began to expand its military muscles in Latin America, particularly during the Spanish-American War.

So what, exactly, is to be done to ameliorate this utter contradiction of U.S. “values” in foreign policy?

Well, the beginning of such seems to be easy: just take the militaries of Latin America out of the picture.

The U.S., since the Civil War, has shown an inclination toward perpetually-bellicose tendencies and language (especially with the Bush administration’s rhetoric), something which has only exacerbated most political conflicts on an international scale. No wonder the U.S. had 9/11!

One of those tendencies of the U.S. foreign policy is to make the military the primary (and, too often, the predominant) factor in dealing with any country or anti-government movement whatsoever. This involved the U.S. in Afghanistan back in 1980 (with the deja vu in 2001-02); in Iraq back in the 1960’s and 1980’s (and again in the 1990’s and 2000’s); in Iran during the Iran-contra affair of the Reagan administration; in Cuba during the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Missile Crisis; in the Philippines during the Marcos dictatorship; in Vietnam, which is self-explanatory; in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic back in 1915; in China during the Boxer Rebellion (China, today, seems to still be pissed about that sting in its ass); in Uzbekistan in the midst of the developing opposition against the post-Soviet dictatorship there; in Angola during its civil war (which pulled in several characters, such as South Africa (apartheid-era), Cuba, the USSR, Zaire (now the DRC), and present-day Namibia); and various other, innumerable conflicts.

Its amazing, though, that the U.S. government, throughout all of that time, can still manage to talk through its teeth and still condone/support this behavior.

Now let’s see what happens to U.S. influence when these same countries abolish their own armies.

Let’s see what happens to the U.S. hand in Haitian affairs when the country has finally rid itself of its army and strong millitary tradition.

Let’s see what happens when we all realize that Lady Liberty is simply a gold digging broad who is out for the blood and money, and that the U.S. is only out for all the arms in the world.