Haiti: Courage and Resilience of a Great Nation

By Jimmy Demosthenes

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 25, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456880149

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Copyright © 2011 by Jimmy Demosthenes.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2011903520

ISBN: Hardcover    978-1-4568-8013-2

ISBN: Softcover      978-1-4568-8012-5

ISBN: Ebook            978-1-4568-8014-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

PREFACE

RECOGNITION

GONAIVES, THE CITY OF EVENTS

THE TRAGIC DEATH OF METAYER

JANUARY 1, 2004: HAITI, A BICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION UNDER SPORADIC GUNFIRE

THE END OF THE LAVALAS REGIME

THE WATERS OF DEATH

TESTIMONIES OF SURVIVORS: OUF! THE CREATOR WAS THERE!

THE TRIBULATION AFTER THE FLOOD

HAITI, I CONFESS TO HAVING LIVED

LIST OF REFERENCES

Author’s Biography

image002.jpg

The cover picture is the unknown maroon in Port-Au-Prince, the symbol of resistance of the Haitian people, sculpted by Albert Mangonès. A maroon is a slave rebel, who fled the house (owned by the colon) and covers a string broken foot, but keep a cutlass from the cane cutter hand and blowing a conch to call to revolt. On the night of 22 to 23 August 1791, the slaves of Saint Domingue began the great revolt against their white masters, which eventually led to Haiti’s independence in January 1804. (Courtesy Google search)

To the memory of my grand-father Noël Cius Demosthenes and my grand-mother Filacile Pierre-Charles who always advised me to stay away from delinquency that they considered a social danger

"This book is dedicated to the courage of my grand-father Joseph Cadet (Papy Cadet) that makes him a powerful man."

PREFACE

Why this book? At first glance, I did not intend to write a book. But like my father did during the events of 1986, which caused the Duvalier regime to resign from power in Haiti, I wanted to record the history of the events experienced through the 2000s in order to relate them to those of future generations.

However, in response to the courage and the resilience of the Haitian people as they faced a series of humanitarian, political, and natural disasters, I found myself compelled to express my thoughts through a book.

It is a fact that the history of a nation or society is also articulated as a series of events that are most often related or connected to one another, and we can thus say that events or developments never occur singularly.

Moreover, we cannot claim to understand this without a deep analysis of the past. It is equally impossible to grasp the scope of the future without understanding the elements of the present. In this sense, we can agree with the brilliant French Caribbean writer Aime Cesaire, who said that people who do not care about their history are people without future.

Haiti, located in the Caribbean and occupying 27,750 square kilometers of the beautiful island of Hispaniola—which it shares with the Dominican Republic—is a country which, since its existence, has been blighted by poverty, troubled by incessant political struggles, and beaten by Mother Nature on several occasions.

Since its foundation on January 1, 1804, all efforts at conciliation amongst the country’s major antagonists have been unsuccessful. Solidarity led former slaves to manifest the dream, deeply cherished by Toussaint-Louverture, of ridding the territory of the colonizing countries, but was then torched in the incendiary battles that raged between the combatants in the class struggles and those for political power in the aftermath of 1804.

The death of the emperor Jacques I on October 17, 1806, and the Battle of Sibert on January 1, 1807, not far from Port-au-Prince, which had divided the country into two—the Republic of West, led by Alexandre Petion, and the northern Kingdom led by Henri Christophe—seemed to indicate that the fighters of 1804 had only one goal, to force the French settlers to withdraw from the country.

Yet the founder of the nation, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, had thought about putting a set of mechanisms in place to deal with the aftermath of the departure of the French. According to Professor Josué Agenor Pierre Cadet, a Haitian historian, in his text Government of Dessalines, published in 2005, After 1804, the first representative of the Haitian nation, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, was faced with problems of all kinds like: Lack of technical and administrative staff, establishment of commercial relations with other countries, defense of independence precarious and fragile. However, despite the weaknesses and failures of his administration, Dessalines has acted remarkably and brilliantly. These views which form the axis of his political action crystallize in what historians commonly called the ‘ideal of Dessalines’ or ‘nationalism Dessalinienne.[1]

The emperor Jacques I had opted for the national integrity of the territory in order to prevent the recapture of the land by the French. National sovereignty, secured with the publication of the imperial constitution on May 20, 1805, gave the Haitian nation enjoyment of this full right.

The emperor also opted for national unity that would pass through an alliance between blacks and mulattos; social justice, or according the same rights to all the inheritors of the young nation; and restoring the national economy and organizing trade, agriculture, and commerce. However, after the struggle for independence, the political and social situation of the country had become fragile.

Dantes Bellegarde, a Haitian historian, tells us in his book The Haitian Nation that, without educational policy, social frameworks, economic organization, wealth, moral and religious direction, and intellectual ideals, the young nation would immediately become the target of hostility from the slaveholding states in America.[2]

This means, according to Cadet, that after 1804, various social groups were not prepared to assume the task that awaited them. They lacked the training and preparation. The political mentality had not changed, and still bore the imprint of the colonial regime. The military leaders were divided by ambition, jealousy, and lust for supreme power. Christophe openly criticized the head of the young nation, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, to mock him. Mentor, former deputy in Paris, would push the emperor against Christophe, Petion, and Geffrard, and it can thus be seen to be a real conspiracy of the generals that led to the assassination of the founder of the country on October 17, 1806.[3]

After 1804, other political events happened in the country which sometimes gave rise to the intervention of the population who couldn’t hide their anger. These interventions were always spattered with stains of blood.

Of all these events, we can note just a few of the most cruel, such as those that caused the lynching of the president Guillaume Sam Vilbrun in July 1915, and which pushed the U.S. Army to intervene and occupy the country for over nineteen years; those of 1986, which caused the departure of the Duvalier regime amidst burning tires and blood; those of 1991 that raised the bloody military coup d’état against the former Catholic priest, the most popular in the slums who became president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide; and those of 2004, which drove President Aristide from power under intense pressure from the International Community, popular demands from students, and sporadic fire from armed rebels.

Even to this day, the Haitian political rivals have still not managed to find an agreement on the political crisis which has mired Haiti in disarray for over two hundred years.

Very often, I am filled with joy when I note and hear people talking about the prosperity of this country in terms of cultural, human, and material resources that remain untapped. Haiti has its own culture, and still retains the traditions that are the joy of its people. Unfortunately, squabbles for power and social struggles of