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

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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)