Michelle Loubon

With a sense of pride, his­to­ri­ans note the is­land of His­pan­io­la (Haiti) was the first black re­pub­lic in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. Lib­er­a­tor Jacques Dessalines de­clared Haiti a re­pub­lic in 1804, there­by rid­ding it from the most op­pres­sive man­i­fes­ta­tions of slav­ery. On the flip side, they not­ed the grave his­tor­i­cal in­jus­tice–Haiti was the on­ly coun­try to pay its con­querors com­pen­sa­tion. France de­mand­ed 90 mil­lion gold francs, more than US$20 bil­lion for Haitians' free­dom. In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, em­i­nent UWI his­to­ri­an Prof Brid­get Br­ere­ton lent her voice to the cho­rus call­ing for repa­ra­tions from France and the US. Br­ere­ton said, "I agree with the var­i­ous voic­es, in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos' Sir Hi­lary Beck­les say­ing France has a huge moral oblig­a­tion to Haiti be­cause of the ter­ri­bly un­just re­quire­ments which France im­posed on Haiti.

France de­mand­ed huge repa­ra­tions for the suc­cess­ful rev­o­lu­tion and the de­c­la­ra­tioin of In­de­pen­dence in 1804," added Br­ere­ton. To­day, Haiti is syn­ony­mous with pover­ty and mil­lions of her peo­ple have lit­er­al­ly eked an ex­is­tence. The late his­to­ri­an Dr Er­ic Williams would have de­scribed them as hew­ers of wood and draw­ers of wa­ter. Last Tues­day, an earth­quake de­stroyed the al­ready shod­dy in­fra­struc­ture in the cap­i­tal city of Port-au-Prince. Sta­tis­tics stat­ed col­laps­ing build­ings killed an es­ti­mat­ed 200,000 peo­ple in Haiti, left 250,000 in­jured and ren­dered 1.5 mil­lion home­less. Wails of ter­rors arose in a city that has mas­tered the grotesque.

A mas­sive in­ter­na­tion­al aid ef­fort was launched to com­bat the pover­ty which was in­ten­sifed, but Haiti is strug­gling with over­whelm­ing lo­gis­ti­cal prob­lems. Br­ere­ton blamed the crush­ing pover­ty on France's de­mands. She feels this in an op­por­tu­ni­ty for France to right the wrongs. "It would be most fit­ting for France, an act of moral resti­tu­tion to pay Haiti back for that huge sum of mon­ey which was ex­ctract­ed from the coun­try and which Haiti didn't fin­ish pay­ing off un­til the mid 20th cen­tu­ry," said Br­ere­ton.

US should right wrongs

Br­ere­ton said the Unit­ed States should al­so right the wrongs met­ed out to Haiti. Since Haiti's most re­cent calami­ty, the Unit­ed States has poured $130 mil­lion in aid, ac­cord­ing to US­AID. In a con­cert­ed ef­fort to al­le­vi­ate the apoc­a­lyp­tic sit­u­a­tion, it has sent more than 11,200 mil­i­tary per­son­nel, 265 gov­ern­ment med­ical per­son­nel, five Navy ships, five Coast Guard cut­ters and sev­en car­go planes. Led by US pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, the US has de­liv­ered more than 90,000 pounds of aid and sup­plies and is man­ag­ing op­er­a­tions at the Port-au-Prince air­port. Br­ere­ton feels both France and the US have a moral oblig­a­tion to in­vest huge sums in­to the re­build­ing of the coun­try.

She de­scribed the US good Samar­i­tan im­age as an irony of his­to­ry.

Al­though Br­ere­ton nev­er vis­it­ed Haiti, she said a con­fer­ence had been planned there in cel­e­bra­tion of its bi­cen­ten­ni­al in 2004. Br­ere­ton said she was fa­mil­iar with sev­er­al Hait­ian schol­ars based in the US. There is a bit of anx­i­ety among the his­to­ry fra­ter­ni­ty since Dr Jacques Casimir, a so­ci­ol­o­gist and his­to­ri­an, has not been ac­count­ed for. "He had been liv­ing here for a while. I would imag­ine he lived around Port-au-Prince. I don't know what his sit­u­a­tion is," said Br­ere­ton. Haiti ex­pe­ri­enced a pyrrhic vic­to­ry–it won the war–but at a tremen­dous cost. Fol­low­ing the Hait­ian war of In­de­pen­dence (1775-83) and the Ja­cobins in­spired French Rev­o­lu­tion (1789-99) Hait­ian slaves led by Tou­s­saint L'Ou­ver­ture waged a suc­cess­ful cam­paign.

Be­tween 1791 and 1803, Haiti de­feat­ed Napolean Bonarparte's armies. By 1803, when Jacques Dessalines de­clared Haiti an In­de­pen­dent Re­pub­lic the vic­to­ry was con­sid­ered a Pyrrhic vic­to­ry–an in­jus­tice that con­signed the vic­tors to pover­ty ad in­fini­tum. The is­sue of repa­ra­tions sur­faced in Haiti when Jean Bertrand Aris­tide was elect­ed. Haiti was most un­for­tu­nate since new­ly in­de­pen­dent US paid Britain noth­ing. The vic­to­ri­ous French de­posed the French monar­chy but paid not one franc dur­ing the French Rev­o­lu­tion.