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“From the First of the Blacks to the First of the Whites”
(Reflections on the Haitian Revolution & present
condition)
....
Since the recent tragedy that has befallen the proud and
persevering nation of Haiti, there has been an outpouring of support followed by
a few disturbing falsities being spread about the history of the island and its
people. I wrote the following to shed some light on events during and around
the Haitian Revolution. Please remember memorizing and reiterating should never
pass for learning. Deciphering the significance of individuals and events is
what truly teaches us not just about history, but also about ourselves.
....
There is a wide spectrum of beliefs behind what has caused
Haiti to suffer ceaselessly over the years. Some see the problem as being
mostly political, bad governance, modern day colonialism, or the perceived
necessity to make an example to the world of what a successful slave revolution
will get you. There are even those on the fringe who cling to an ancient
superstition that the island was freed by a mythological pact with Satan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5TE99sAbwM
In order to shed light on the issue I am forced to go back in time. Obviously
not to the beginning of occupational history, but far enough to give a
realistic perspective on Haiti and it’s struggle.
....
We join a story centuries in the making. It is the year 1794
and the scent of musket powder blows over all of Europe. The French Revolution
may have changed the face of the world, but its unintended consequences that
influenced its colonies would come to overshadow France’s own glory. It was
during this year, on the 4th of February, that France’s First Republic
Convention (under pressure from massive slave revolts) decided it had to
transcend the stumbling efforts of the ‘enlightened monarchs’ of Europe and
abolish slavery. Yet in the customary fashion of our own Declaration of
Independence's "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created
equal," the gesture, much like these words, became a glaring example of
self-righteous insincerity. Equality, the fraternal twin brother of
Independence, was aborted at the fetal stage of development and the Revolution
came to betray itself.
....
Known then as “Saint Domingue” (French for Santo Domingo), the colony that we now call
Haiti, yielded great fortune to those who possessed her. It was rich with
sugar, cotton, tobacco, cocoa and other valued resources. So much so that the
European Superpowers of that day fought bitterly against each other to control
the island and her inhabitants. After all, the African slaves living on Saint
Domingue were the proverbial engines that ran the machine. From among them
appeared a man who was born a slave but who would become free and lead all his
countrymen toward that same destiny. He was a glitch in the matrix, an act of
nature, and a mistake to be corrected in the eyes of the island’s autocratic
semi-feudal society. His name was Francois-Dominique Toussaint soon to be
heralded, “L'Overture.”
....
As a former servant and carriage driver, he had abstained
from participating directly in previous uprisings stemming from the refusal of
slave masters to honor “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen.” He had waited patiently and then allied himself with other rebel
leaders who had risen to the task of overthrowing colonial rule. His ideas were
innovative and his guerrilla tactics highly disciplined. No wonder then that he
rose through the ranks of the rebellious forces so quickly.
....
Before fighting alongside the French against other colonial
powers, Toussaint had been in league with the Spanish, who along with Great
Britain were at war with France. The Spanish were used as a support system for
his designs when white colonials refused to endorse the full rights of
citizenship to free blacks given by the French edict of 1792. In other words,
for Toussaint they were there to serve his vision rather than him serving
theirs. Having so many different nations vying for a piece of the pie proved a
difficult task to navigate. To his credit, Toussaint had managed to
out-maneuver them all, cleverly using their own tactics of pitting one against
another. But when Spain and England did not follow through with their promises
to free slaves, he discarded his allegiance to them.
....
After grueling and hard-fought campaigns against the Spanish
and British, he took control of the French Colony. Toussaint promoted
reconciliation among the races, which wasn’t any easier then than it would be
now. He also engaged and renegotiated better terms of trade with Britain and
the new American Republic alike. Catholicism was adopted as the national
religion and slavery was abolished. The news traveled around the world like
lightning- the African Slaves were undergoing the course of reversing 300 years
of domination.
....
As news of the Independence of Haiti was circulating, the
reaction was mixed. Toussaint’s actions openly received the approval of
Alexander Hamilton, who saw Europe’s weakening in the West as an opening for
America’s bid for commercial supremacy. He even aided in the drafting of the
precursor to the island’s first constitution in 1801. However, when Thomas
Jefferson came to power, American support was reined in. Jefferson openly owned
slaves and had even fathered children with the now famous girl, Sally Hemmings.
But much more than his personal stake in legitimized servitude, it was the
perceived international threat that most likely shaped his opinion. The
surrounding colonies and his new Republic being destabilized by the idea of a
successful slave revolt obviously frightened him. His assertion being that
their freedom would suddenly cripple the economy built around them. He is
quoted as saying that it was necessary at all costs to “confine the plague to
the island.” I guess “My emancipation / don’t fit your equation.”
....
By 1801, Toussaint was in full control of Saint Domingue. In
a moment of perhaps self-preserving foresight and/or genuine altruism, he
advanced onto the Spanish side of the island. His army defeated the remaining
white colonial powers and freed all the slaves, showing the people of color the
first glimpses of freedom they’d known practically since the time of Columbus. He
rejected the ancient custom that dated back to the Middle Ages, of sending his
children as hostages to his 'Suzerain' as a symbol of fidelity. He further
declared his intentions in a famous letter addressing Napoleon himself. It was
titled: "From the First of Blacks to the First of the Whites." In it
he pledged his loyalty to France. He stated firmly that slavery would be
utterly annihilated; that he (Toussaint) would remain governor indefinitely (a
suggestion from Hamilton and then Sec. of State Pickering). Furthermore Saint
Domingue would be a free and independent state. The correspondence must have
come as a shock to then Consul Napoleon. It was probably the sheer audacity of
a former slave proposing terms of independence, albeit in the most polite and
articulate manner, that struck him. This man was obviously more dangerous than
he could have ever imagined. Toussaint and his people represented something
that had to be proved false no matter the cost.
....
See the very existence of their independence showed the
entire human race a side of history that we are only now truly rediscovering.
European society had relied mainly on creating divisions and the spread of
epidemics, not simply superior military prowess, to overcome the indigenous
populations of Africa and the Americas. The Haitian Revolution exposed the façade
of European invincibility, and it tore away at their justification for invasion
on the grounds of Christianization. The mythology of racial superiority began
to take the shape of an ancient death mask from classical antiquity.
....
Napoleon would hear no more and dispatched his
brother-in-law Gen. Charles LeClerc, to the island with a huge force of
infantry troops and warships. His stated intention was to secure the new state.
At first confrontation ensued, but they arrived at a truce once Toussaint had been
promised that the French would not attempt to reinstate slavery. However, the
moment he let his guard down he was almost immediately betrayed. Toussaint and
his entire family were arrested. Restoring the island to France's control,
LeClerc had Toussaint sent to prison in France. But this was just the
beginning. He quietly moved to begin the process of re-enslavement. "Since
terror is the sole resource left me, I employ it…destroy all the mountain
negroes, men and women, sparing only children under twelve years of age,” read
his report to Napoleon.....
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The French now shifted their focus to using the former
so-called "Mulatto" people who Toussaint had defeated in previous
military campaigns to maintain control of the island. They, the “Mulattos,” had
been at odds with elements of the Revolution earlier, although they had
suffered almost equally from the torments of slavery. The very concept of the
“Mulatto”, that still to this day plagues the African, Latin American,
Caribbean, and so Called West Indian world, merits an explanation all to
itself.
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The Latin ‘mulus,’ became the Old Spanish or Old Castillian
‘mula,’ finally evolving into the Spanish and Portuguese “Mulatto,” that
symbolized the reverse anthropomorphic semblance of a human being. A mule is
the physical combination of a horse and a donkey. This part is simple enough.
But the symbolic nature of this has a racial connotation that tears apart our
society even today. The horse symbolizes the White European, elegant, regal and
highly valued. And the donkey embodies what they thought the purpose of an
African/Indigenous slave should be; a beast of burden to be worked until the
day that ‘it’ dies.
....
The combination of a horse and a donkey creates a species
that rarely if ever is capable of reproducing. The male is always born sterile,
and the female is exceptionally similar in this way. Hence the idea that
nothing good can come from them. This concept then became permeated in the
portrayal of the “tragic mulatto” in 19th century American
literature, leading into classic Hollywood cinema. It is a theme symbolized by
the downfall of a “Mulatto” or “Quadroon”/”Octoroon” attempting to pass for
white. It also focused on the conflict of those trapped between two races.
Those who despised and pitied their darker half and their own skin color, while
needing the approval of whites to validate themselves. In most of the stories
peace is only found for the said main character in death. The very definition
of its existence solidified the role of White and Black in the American caste
system, whose remnants we all still presently reside in. It also laid out the
role of Blacks to themselves, without many of them even to this day
understanding the loaded straw man argument about race posed within the
terminology.
....
It was the Haitian Revolution that challenged the very idea
of slavery and the existence of a lesser man. It put the “enlightenment” of
Europeans on trial, and forced America to confront what she was becoming as
opposed to what she was supposed to be. The usage of concepts like the
“Mulatto” were necessary for late 18th century white society to put
institutionalized racism on life support for another 150 years, and create a
violent split in the psychology of Mother Earth’s first children.
....
They had used a traditional stratagem inherited from the
Romans/Byzantines of understanding an empire's limited capacity for
multi-dimensional warfare on a global scale, and employed the service of a
smaller state to outflank its opponents in conflict. Only this time it was not
using the Visigoths to fight the Huns (Battle of Chalon, 451 A.D.) or the
Cumans to fight the Pechenegs (Levonium, 1091 A.D.). Napoleon and those that
served his court were innovators of the worst kind. They perfected what other
colonial powers beforehand had only begun. They created virtual new age
“foederati” for their designs by ripping a subsection out of the very people
they sought to subjugate. In return for cooperation, the French promised the
desperate “Mulattos” more rights and more privileges in what they painted as a
new Saint Domingue. Effectively this action created a safe haven for racism
that is even now nestled like a neonate Viper storing the poison of generation
after generation. The idea built itself within the conscious and subconscious
mind of an enslaved people, to keep them in bondage psychologically even if
they found themselves physically free. This is evident not only in the
continued degeneration of Black and “Mulatto” relations well into the mid
1800’s under Jean Pierre Boyer, but in present Black & Latino society’s
obsession with skin color.
....
In other words, the French colonization efforts efficiently
solidified adding dimensions to racism and the notion of racial superiority by
creating a different “race” in our own minds. It was wicked and brilliant in
its service to the cause of reducing man to property as it was to being
duplicitous to the so-called ‘Mulatto’ himself. For in the end he was closer to
his Master in his eyes only. To the French he was still little more than an
animal, subject to an active and de-facto ‘Code Noir’.
....
(The cruel logic of the seemingly schizophrenic reflections
in King Louis XIV’s Code Noir of 1641, is regarded as a predecessor to the U.S.
Black Codes, which shaped the legal standing of former African slaves in the
post civil war Era. It covers everything from the immediate persecution and
expulsion of Jews, to laws concerning a slave’s position, methods of torture
and capital punishment that could be implemented.)
....
Click to read the Code Noir http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/335/....
....
Tricknowledge, is a late 20th century Harlem
terminology for an old cosmopolitan strategy. It is used to describe an
imperial power not having the physical force to conquer a people, and therefore
resorting to the art of deception to achieve victory. Calculating lies are used
to manipulate the target into compromising positions before it is attacked. Yet
even with all of her elegantly worded deception, sweet-accented mandates, and
counter-mandates, France would only hold the beautiful island prisoner for a
few more fleeting moments of history. Once the Revolution was set into motion
there was no opposing inertia capable of stopping it. Toussaint may have been
taken under arms to France, where he lived incarcerated in a frozen fortress
near Bensancon (eventually succumbing to pneumonia although some suspected
poison), but the Revolution rolled on. In fact, right before Toussaint’s death,
a perhaps karmic parting gift of yellow fever swept Saint Domingue weakening
the French garrison and even claiming the life of Charles LeClerc.
....
Napoleon’s Saint Domingue police state barely lasted a year,
until it became blatantly evident that slavery was to be reinstated just as it
had been on Guadeloupe. In the end, after watching the brutal conflict and
horrific mistreatment of his own people, it was one of Toussaint’s young
Generals, Jean Jaques Dessalines (who had ironically allied himself with
LeClerc when Toussaint was captured), who decided to emerge as the leader that
would avenge his people. Truthfully though, and perhaps more important to his
own soulful vanity, he really sought to avenge himself. To hear him described
by the contemporary European authors of his time, he sounds like the very
manifestation of chaotic violence. But every scar has a story, and Dessalines
had many scars. In fact a large percentage of his body was covered in painful
grooves, partially healed lacerations and whip marks that made some of his skin
look like it had melted over itself. He had received some of these in very
visible places, and even the most sensitive areas of a man, for his perceived
‘insolence’ as a slave.
....
It is said General Dessalines would look upon his scars in
the mirror and cry out in rage before battles. Then crashing into his enemies
he fought with the valiant nature of a man seeking freedom, and persistent fury
of a heart that would only be quenched by vengeance. His aim became to ensure
the small Revolution’s continued success at any military cost. He was
determined to maintain it by implementing the same campaigns of terror that the
slave owners had recently utilized on him and his people. And this is what
terrified white Europeans to the core of their being. Provoking most landowners
and slave masters to flee. Some of them though, daring to look, must have
surely seen a piece of themselves in him and been rattled. This is thought to
be what initially led to the invention of stories about his pact with the devil
and deals with voodoo spirits, as these then served the impertinent need to
differentiate his actions from theirs.
....
To better understand how the slaves were treated and what
exactly he sought to repay his former masters for, I chose this famous quote
from Henri Christophe's personal secretary. He, who was once a slave, describes
in sick details the daily torture inflicted on the enslaved Africans of
Saint-Domingue by the French.
....
"Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned
them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in
mortars? Have they not forced them to eat shit? And, having flayed them with
the lash, have they not cast them alive to be devoured by worms, or onto
anthills, or lashed them to stakes in the swamp to be devoured by mosquitoes?
Have they not thrown them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup? Have they not
put men and women inside barrels studded with spikes and rolled them down
mountainsides into the abyss? Have they not consigned these miserable blacks to
man eating-dogs until the latter, sated by human flesh, left the mangled
victims to be finished off with bayonet and poniard?"
....
His preferred mechanism for punishing European colonials,
many of whom were former slave masters, was indeed ruthless. He implemented
“Black Rage” as both his foreign and domestic policy, which meant the absolute
destruction of the white colonists, soldiers, and civilians. Before him others
had angrily suggested this sort of retribution but none had the gall to carry
it out. After all, ideologues may design a Revolution and dismantle an empire
verbally, but ideas are powerless without the hand that wields them
mercilessly. In the end a combination of this, and allowing remaining whites to
live without owning any property and having little say in government, was the
result.
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I make no attempt here to justify the actions of Jean-Jaques
Dessalines, but a person cannot be made a slave unless they are terrorized and
de-humanized. Unless they are mentally, spiritually and in many cases
physically castrated, unless their women are raped before them and children are
sold and tore from the womb in front of their eyes. He did in essence what he
was taught to do by those that shaped his world.
....
His collective punishment & scorched earth policy
frightened the remaining white colonials to such a degree that most migrated en
masse to the other side of the island or to the mainland. General Dessalines
fought many battles and eventually claimed the independence of Haiti on January
1, 1804. During this time period he had ravaged the Eastern side of the island
and having swept away all opposition, made himself Emperor in 1804. His
absolute rule inspired anger and resentment, and only 2 years after his
coronation he was assassinated. The country divided itself between North and
South until power was consolidated again. The legend of Dessalines came to life
upon his death. Stories grew out of the resentment of the white exiles that had
once owned his people and now happily welcomed his demise. Even the “Mulatto”
section of Haiti that never received his trusting and felt shunned by him. His
immediate demonization followed in these circles, without a thought or a
backtracking moment in history to consider what circumstances caused him to be.
No context that showed the nature of the slow, functional genocide of his
people.
....
Just silence. And that silence without context continues
even today while people suffer one of the worst natural catastrophes that has
ever be known to mankind.
....
Not a word from proud France who defied the American War machine
over Iraq, but has kept silent over these two centuries when concerning the 150
million gold francs it extorted from Haiti in 1838. The number was later
lowered to 90 million gold francs but the factual story behind the extortion
goes as such. Under the guise of a cessation of hostilities (a promise to curb
re-invasion), repaying indemnities and for the loss of “property” (slaves)
during the Revolution, France demanded payment. And of course since Haiti had
no such sum in their treasury at the time, French bankers eagerly paid the
first 30 million gold francs at exorbitant almost mafia-inspired interest
rates. So high that it was not until 1947 that Haiti was actually able to repay
THAT particular “loan.” By the mid to late twentieth century the IMF’s policy
of changing it’s agricultural focus and conditional foreign aid had since
indebted the island nation beyond ruin. In the wake of this current tragedy, I
believe France should immediately repay the blood money it stole years ago no
matter its legal apprehensions of reparations. This isn’t about reparations for
slavery, it’s about the over 20 billion dollars in the modern equivalent paid
to a reinstated tyrannical king. It is not the pinnacle of restoring Haiti, but
the beginning of repair.
....
I would be remiss to not pause here and point out that this
was written as a moderately detailed historical account of events in and around
the Haitian Revolution. It is not the entire history of the island and does not
go in depth into the modern self-defeating racial and political schism between
Haiti and the Dominican Republican during the mid 20th century. I
purposely steered clear of recent events concerning Jean Bertrand Aristide
because it deserves an article on it’s own. I also cannot and will not lay the
blame solely on Europeans for the condition of Haiti. The French themselves
cannot be demonized anymore than the Spanish, English, Portuguese or Belgians,
etc. for their role in colonization. Although to rule out foreign intervention
for Haiti’s condition would be ignoring a huge amount of independent variables
that affect the equation. While military backed World Bank policy has always
kept the island as an economic vassal, the mismanagement of resources and
corrupt leaders also bled the nation dry.
....
At some point we have to accept the personal responsibility
for repairing the framework of society ourselves, and not relying on the people
that ruined our indigenous civilizations to fix them all the time. Brutally
repressive dictators, such as Duvalier, who were allowed to exist by the U.S.
because of their stance against Communism, must be put into their proper
context as well. They are not simply a Western invention, but rather the
natural order of bequeathing absolute power to an agent of “stability,” an experiment
that could easily be repeated in our own Republic. And so we as a nation cannot
claim ignorance in our understanding of this political formula anymore, whether
at home or abroad. The sad truth is that we as a public entity or a people may
understand this relationship and dissect it now, but our own government has
recognized it since the founding of the nation.
....
We may sometimes point to these historical figures and
attribute superstitious characteristics to them in order to either justify or
vilify their position. My main problem is when it starts becoming obvious that
our own government uses complete and utter falsities to promote a military
objective. The following is an account written by a Soldier who participated in
the ousting of then President Aristide, it sheds light on the deliberate
dissemination of such information:
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http://www.ibiblio.org/prism/May96/haiti.html....
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If he (Dessalines) really made a pact to deliver his nation
to absolute evil then why only the leader of the one successful slave revolt on
the hemisphere? Why just him and not every other military commander throughout
history that faced insurmountable odds? And when is that sort of such
vindictive and violent force ever justified? See, that my friends is at the
very core of what Haiti and it’s historic Revolution truly represent. That
undiluted tactic of delivering oneself from slavery and oppression through
physical force. The French Revolutionaries beheaded their King and did not pay
his family restitution. The American Revolution gave Britain no reparations and
in fact collected the land of it’s Indigenous allies after England ceded it
without so much as a word to the Native American’s still living there. Yet only
in modern history have enslaved people of color been trained to think suffering
through the worst of what an oppressor can punish them with is the only way to
gain legitimacy or victory.....
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Are we “tragically Mulatto?”
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Are we as Black and Indigenous people only noble and
righteous in an emasculated form of confrontation against such a fate? Are we
only correct in our undertaking of a non-violent approach to confronting
Imperialism or Fascism? More of white America praises Martin Luther King Jr. as
peacefully resistant and the preferable alternative to Malcolm X’s truth
without modesty. More would rather hear the scholarly Fredrick Douglass than
experiencing the fear-invoking Dessalines. I do not seek to discredit the
legacy of either Douglass or King. We are all indebted to the vital parts of
the struggle for freedom that they played historically. But why are Europe and
American spared the same constant criticism by present day historians. Would we
turn the other cheek to Hitler? What would a non-violent march and a hunger
strike against the Confederate South have accomplished? Without colonial
militias, Native American Warriors, and the French & Spanish Armadas,
wouldn’t the U.S. Constitution have ended up as British toilet paper? As a
matter of fact, if Gandhi’s tactics had been used in the American Revolution,
wouldn’t he have been lying in a ditch in Virginia some 234 years ago? Without
the purchased attention of a global media outlet, is shaming the world even
possible? And even if we managed to procure one, how could a profit margin be
replaced by a soul, when that’s the one thing that a multi-national news
corporation will never have?
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I believe a balance is always necessary, and that might
never makes right. It just makes right now. Having the power to take land,
force payment or enslave others doesn’t make your cause justified. In fact I
would argue that an oppressor who lies to his slaves about their ten thousand
year old history, and presents them as a fraction of a human being to all, is
in truth more savage than that which he has reduced his fellow man to. Strength
and power are the tools that can reinforce a document, a government, a people
and a nation. Without them there is only the word, and unfortunately we are not
as evolved as we would like to believe because we do not respect words, not
even the words of God when we write them in our own image. We are taught to
only respect fear and violence.
....
I am not arrogant enough to claim to have all the answers,
but I come rather humbly myself to pose these questions so that you may
discover the answer. May we repay the slave master by acting like the slave
master? Or have we already gone this route before? Perhaps in our forgotten
history we have already employed these strategies amongst ourselves. Can it be that
we treated each other this way when Rome was yet to be conceived and Greek
civilization was still an adolescent student of Egypt? Why is violent
Revolution coupled with diplomatic conflict settlement only the recourse of the
Super powers alone? Why is it presented to us as fruit from the tree of
knowledge in the Garden of Eden? Perhaps it was our oppressor’s pact with the
devil that made it so. These are question that are easy to answer only if a
personal bias already exists within us, they are harder to answer when they
speak to all of humanity, and what it reflects about the future of our species.
....
The earthquake itself did not discriminate by skin color
when deciding who would die in the collapsing buildings. It cared nothing for
their religion, family connections, or politics. Corrupt diplomats have
perished within the same epicenter as innocent hard-working families, and
dedicated public servants. The old and the young perish together subtracted
from both sides of the equation. Our evolution is the rediscovery of the past,
not an invention of a mythical future. Will we always be a small, petty people
as a complete and single human race that we do not look beyond what is obvious
in our faces as opposed to what is obvious in the actions that our hearts
strive us towards?....
....
As I look at the proud, resilient and suffering nation of
Haiti. I have heard every sort of theory for this tragedy, an act of God,
HAARP, and even superstition backed by the hands of social senility wielding
faith. In the end I am left to ponder what role did the world’s super powers
play in burying Haiti before the Earthquake, and what sort of role will we now
play in digging her, and our own collective human soul, out of the rubble?
Beyond this though, I think we should begin to seriously change the way that we
look at each other around the world. We are a global community, a single race
of people who might one day all become Haitians.
....
To all my brothers & sisters: Those that I know
personally, and those I do not, who have lost family and are suffering…
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My Condolences along with Revolutionary Love & Respect,
....
Immortal
Technique
....
Felipe Coronel
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http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti
http://hashaiti.org/....
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/
http://www.yele.org
awake