Dessalines Is Rising!!
Ayisyen: You Are Not Alone!

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Ezili Dantò's Vodun Jazzoetry CD - So Much Like Here
CLICK TO STOP POEM

Ezili Dantò performs the banda dance as a Gede for Breaking Sea Chain (See also Intro to Breaking Sea Chains and PhotoGallery)

FreeHaitiMovement
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Dessalines' Law
Jean Jacques Dessalines

The Haitian struggle - the greatest David vs. Goliath battle being played out on this planet
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Vertiere 1803, final battle that ended slavery and colonialism in Haiti
by Ezili Dantò/HLLN, Nov. 22, 2008, Haitian Perspectives

Hello William Mandel,

You write, Mr. Mandel, that the "greatest battles ever fought on this planet," by any measure you wish to use, were those by the Russians in defense against Hitler in World War II. The Russians lost 27,000,000 lives. That is beyond all comparison with those of any other country in any war ever fought."

This is Ezili Dantò of HLLN and I write you here to respectfully disagree. Vertieres was the greatest battle ever fought because it created a different paradigm to rival that of the Euro/US tribes on this planet. But if we are simply looking at it from the viewpoint of lives lost, I’ll go there with you also. For, how many Africans lost their lives to the European Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade - Estimates range up to 100million lives.

It's the greatest battle, William Mandel, because in the annals of HUMAN HISTORY, no humans, no sentient beings, SO TERRORIZED, for so long - 300 unendurable years, had ever defeated their tormentors.

Even Spartacus didn't accomplish what the Africans were able to do at Vertieres. The Haitian Revolution is the only successful revolution of an enslaved population in recorded WORLD HISTORY.

The example you gave in terms of Russian lives lost is horrendous. And this African woman would never minimize any lost of human life or compete for a prize in terms of suffering. Suffering is suffering and untenable. But if you’re going there, I’ll take the ride, in memory of all the African Ancestors and say let’s look at the reality, William Mandel…

How long had the Northern tribes been slaughtering each other in Europe before they took it global - over 2000 years at a minimum!!!

How many of each other do you think they murdered before Hitler came along? How many during their 100-year war, during the Middle Ages, during the European witch hunts where they slaughtered their own wives, women, daughters and girl children in the Church’s many anti-superstition campaigns based on getting rid of women power at that time in Europe? How many of each other did the European tribes slaughter during the Spanish Inquisition? What was learnt from these wars for domination and economic power? Anything? How many of each other did the French, British, Spaniards, Dutch, et al, terminate before they reached Ayiti and annihilated the Tainos, brought in enslaved Africans to do work they wouldn’t deign to do and 300 years later, those enslaved beat, IN COMBAT, the French, the English, the Spanish and then the French at Vertieres to end the unspeakable torture?

Yes, Vertieres was the greatest battle for human dignity ever fought. But of course, as the descendants of those brave African men and women who first put liberty into application for all of humanity, you could say, William Mandel, we can't see this any other way. Would slavery of Africans and direct colonization have ended but for Vertieres? Uhmmm?

We won our independence IN COMBAT against the French, the English, the Spaniards, a US embargo, and then crushed the French at Vertieres once and for all. That crushing defeat led also to the rise of the United States as a world power in contrast to those we defeated so directly and doubling its size with the Louisiana Purchase. Haiti though, now would face centuries of the European tribes with their US derivatives coming together as "white" to keep it contained in poverty and for European cultural supremacy to dominate. And so, the five Latin American countries that tiny Haiti helped liberate in the Americas from Euro enslavement and colonialization, pressured by the US/Euro "white" alliance, would not invite Haiti to sit at the equivalent of the first OAS region meeting. The US would prevent, for over 60 years, with an embargo similar to the one they have on Cuba right now, any trade with Haiti. France would not stop trying to re-enslave the Africans who had crushed them, until they had ushered in ecclesiastic colonialism and forced on Haiti an Independence Debt that forced Haitians to close all rural schools – and go back to something like sharecropping as was done to Black Americans after the Civil War in the US - an Independence debt which the US took over, adding on more usury interests rates onto the back of a non-allied Black Haiti and Haiti was compelled to keep paying and did not finish paying off until 1947. Thomas Jefferson paid $15million dollars for the Louisiana Purchase, an area that made up 13 new US States. Haiti was forced, at gun-point, by the Euro\US tribes to pay $150 million - ten times the amount paid for the Louisiana Purchase - for an independence it had won IN COMBAT after giving 300 years of free labor to the French/Spanish combined and for an area smaller or equal to the State of Rhode Island...not to mention that amount kept being re-negotiated at their Northern predator bankers’ and Robber Barrons’ whims, whenever these folks needed to finance something in the North or elsewhere...

We won’t mention the gunboat diplomacy of the Germans, French, Spaniards, et al … over the centuries, or the pillage and plunder of Haiti’s gold reserves, which the US Marines flew out of Haiti during the 19-year US occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934. Or, the virtual re-enslavement of Haitians, deforestation, environmental degradation, stealing peasant lands for big business, et al… that went on during this reign. Or, Mr. Mandel how many Haitians were slaughtered by the Americans?

I mean whose counting, right? But understand, Mr. Mandel, the US/Euros still cannot stomach the significance of the Battle of Vertieres…

But, to quote Michel Sanon great poem on the matter:

********
Who is to tell me when
To celebrate my history?
Who is to tell me
When to dress my wounds
And to reminisce
My trials, my sorrow
When to shed tears
Over my brave children
And to glorify their names?
They suffered and died
Every bloody month
Of the bloody year.
I was born
Of abject inhumanity
With the noble destiny
Of carrying the sword
Of precious humanity
In a New World
Cursed by the West Storm
And raped by the powers
Of greed, wickedness, and death.
I am the mother of martyrs
Of survivors and overcomers.
Alone, I faced the wrath
Of this world's powers...

So, Dessalines’ descendants continue to fight the US/Euro powers to make stick the victory at Vertieres...that battle goes on today, William Mandel. How many Haitians do you think have been slaughtered in the intervening years????

Is it more than 27million since the first Euro/US battle vying for the soul of the people of the South began? You write, Mr. Mandel, that the "greatest battles ever fought on this planet," by

Hitler merely applied to Europe colonialist procedures
"It would be useful to study clinically, in detail, the behavior of Hitler, and of Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, the very humanist, very Christian twentieth century bourgeois that he has a silent Hitler in him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon, that if he vituperates, it is by lack of logic, and, in sum, what he does not forgive Hitler is not the crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of the man in himself, but the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, of having applied to Europe colonialist procedures which till now were reserved to Arabs in Algeria, coolies in India, and Negroes of Africa" --Aime Cesaire, Discours sur le colonialisme, 1955 (Excerpted from V.Y. Mudimbe's The Idea of Africa, page 212).

any measure you wish to use, were those by the Russians in defense against Hitler in World War II. The Russians lost 27,000,000 lives. That is beyond all comparison with those of any other country in any war ever fought."

I, sir as Dessalines’ descendant, respond that you can tell your story, but this one is our history and we say what is “the greatest battles ever fought on this planet." And the Haitians who stood on the hill of Vertieres, watching French general, Rochambeau leave with his dogs come to re-enslave them with their tails between their legs in DEFEAT, knew that after 300-years of European enslavement, that that was the greatest battle ever fought. Sorry, we’re telling our story, now. This voice you don’t know, because it’s been minimized, vilified and discounted. But not today. This moment has been fought for over 500 centuries...

And in today, at this moment, we, Dessalines’ descendants, respond, Nou La! (We're still here!) and that “the greatest battles ever fought on this planet” by any measure you wish to use, are those by today and yesterday's Haitian men, children and women who took up and take up arms against the US/Euros in the so-called New World to live as independent, African, Vodun and free Black peoples without interference. It's a David and Goliath struggle and the greatest story never told.

We Haitians have paid and paid and paid the price for our sovereignty and for peaceful co-existence with the white tribes and their surrounding colonies, client states and territories. Here's how Sanon, describes it:

"Alone, with my hurting hands
I broke the first link
Of the mighty chain
Of human curse
Called slavery.
Alone on the traitorous hill
Of the New World
I carried the cross of a race
Into this century
Of furious revolution
And industrialization
Refusing to get crucified.
I've been chained
I've been robbed
I've been raped and stabbed
And I have fought back
Fearlessly, continuously. .
Alone I have paid and paid.
I have paid the senseless price
I have paid the endless price..."

But, the wrath of Euro/US empire lands in Haiti, again and again and again, the latest in 2004 to undo Vertieres. But it is and will always be a vain task.

We have no standard war weapons or media machinery or any diplomatic or military powers to unleash – the tools of combat crawls from OUR BODIES. And the spirit that runs in our veins that is as old, if not more ancient, than the sacred land Haiti defends. For, over 50-million years ago, when the US land mass was still under water, the Island of Ayiti existed and Africans who recognize this space, have always recognized it as home. The miracle is that despite the Northern tribes’ barbarity, intransigence, greed, inhumanity and impoverishment of Haiti since they got there in 1503, the seemingly meek peoples of Haiti and the South, be they African-Haitians or the Taino-Haitians before them, remain known, to one and all as being pure of heart and loving human beings. Still rising, as Maya Angelou, would say, even amidst the bitter twisted lies, even within the endless slaughtering to wipe them off the planet.

Why is that? Because death means nothing to the Africans who've lived in harmony with nature on this planet for so long. And besides, we know, as HLLN has written - Vertieres cannot be undone..... We’ll take being pure at heart and extending Vodun energies -sacred energies, before all else…

Although, as Michel Sanon, writes that means each Haitian still connected to Africa's womb must struggle "Every bloody month of every bloody year," constantly:

The Divine Mother symbol (vèvè) for Haiti's Ezili Dantò
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With a burning spear
Stuck in my chest.
Sometimes it weakens me
But I always rise
High above the pain
And the wickedness
Of powerful forces
From near and far
To claim my dignity.
I have friends
Who suck up my blood...
From my wounded heart.
Though today I choose to stand
And stand in pride and love
With my dear family
To celebrate in harmony
Our common history
In the month of February
I was alone when in Vertières
I rose to face the Devil
When hell broke loose
Unleashing its fire storm
With waves of flame rushing
To engulf me whole...
Alone in the vast universe
I froze hell over
And walked on its ashes
To create my own history.
Nobody stood by my side.
I alone remember.
It was the eighteenth day
Of a month called
November.

But, this, this greatest story never told, this Haitian David vs. Goliath struggle we are living with, its ultimate lesson – the ruling metaphor of Haitian history will be that we burnt the port cities and retreated inland, for when the time arrives for the world to understand what was held in sacred trust for all of humanity to reclaim, after the vampires and parasites are marginalized, their energies balanced and redeemed. Kreyòl pale, kreyòl konprann. You have your colonies, we have ours. One day at the Great Crossroads, this Battle will end, and we'll all meet then and included there will even be the irreducible essences of those 27,000,000 lives the Russians thought lost.

Ezili Dantò
Li lèd li la
Founder and President, Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN)
November 22, 2008
(See Michel Sanon's Poem on Vertieres - Haiti, The Rebel; Bwa Kayiman, 2008: Reclaiming the Haitian People's Vodun Narrative at Bwa Kayiman; Haiti Epistemology ; Bwa Kayiman Links; Bio of Ezili Dantò, 1791; Ezili, Aset, Isis (Photos); Dessalines' Three Ideals; Vodun Konbit and Vodun Lakou ;The Pivotal Point; Haiti's First Declaration of Independence, Nov. 29, 1803 ; I Pay this Price for You: Open For Business ; and, US False Benevolence in Haiti; We are not all the same: All Non-Africans Are Part Neanderthal)

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LETTER FROM WILLIAM MANDEL

Re: [ezilidanto] Selected comments on recent HLLN posts | Victims of food crisis - Haitian mothers forced to choose which children will live or die
Saturday, November 22, 2008 12:05 AM
From: William Mandel | To: erzilidanto@yahoo.com | Cc: ezilidanto@lists.riseup.net

The "greatest battles every fought on this planet," by any measure you wish to use, were those by the Russians in defense against Hitler in World War II. The Russians lost 27,000,000 lives. That is beyond all comparison with those of any other country in any war ever fought.

William (Bill) Mandel

*

France, Vertieres and Ayisyen Ginen:

HLLN Campaign Seven
Please sign our on-line petition demanding France pay Haiti back the $22 billion for the Independence Debt

On-line Petition - in English
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/restitution4haiti/
On-line Petition - In French
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/restitutionpourhaiti/
On-line Petition - In Kreyol
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Restitisyonpouayiti/

At the battle of Vertieres, the African-Haitian warriors in Haiti beat Napoleon's armies and General Jean Jacques Dessalines, Haiti's founding father, would then set down the law of the land - that no Frenchmen shall ever set foot again on African-Haitian soil as proprietor and owner. "I want the assets of the country to be equitably divided" - said Jean Jacques Dessalines and for that noble desire, two years later, in 1806, the Mulatto sons of France left in Haiti assassinated Jean Jacques Dessalines and his name was forbidden to be spoken for almost 42-years of their reign in early Haitian history. (Haiti's First Declaration of Independence, Nov. 29, 1803.)

Financial and ecclesiastical neocolonialism, buttress by the French embezzlement of an endless Independence Debt (1825 to 1947) had begun in Haiti with the assassination of Haiti's founding father, the first foreign-influence coup d'etat. The struggle for the masses to bring Dessalines' equitable society into application continued... and in 1990, the people of Haiti finally succeeded in electing their own President and lessening the grip of the Euro/US Protestant and Catholic oppressors to make room for the Kreyol language, Vodun spiritual and healing system. But these same old forces would unseat the Haitian people's choice and reinstate themselves and their Christian missionaries, perverted Catholic pedophile priests, pastors and so-called educators and NGOs back in place in Haiti. All, with the intention of destroying Haiti's Vodun/Africanist culture, independence and peoples. There was a respite in 1994 with the Clinton Administration's return of President Jean Bertrand Aristide to office for just one year. But the Clinton mission was changed in mid air and ended up not being about returning Constitutional rule, democracy and human rights to Haiti, but about returning the old status quo and defending corporate business interests. (See, Hideous Dream by By Stan Goff). The forces of evil, greed, debt and intolerance did not go away. The return of an unwillingly co-opted President Aristide to office, stopped the flow of fleeing regufees, stopped the daily killings of innocent Haitians in Haiti who were leading the popular resistance against the US-assisted-Cedras/FRAPH-military hunta and anti-democratic economic elite, but it also brought untenable non-Haitianist compromises.

The return of President Aristide by the US in 1994 ultimately was about maintaining the old cold-war Duvalierist neocolonial and business status-quo but under the mask of "democracy." And, in 2004, 200-years after Haiti's independence, for the first time, in the annals of Haitian history, French soldiers with the military help of Canada and the US, landed again in Haiti to disenfranchise Haiti's masses once again with another coup d'etat against President Aristide to stop the popular resistance and Haitian revolution taking place in Haiti. Bush-the-son had returned in 2004 to finish off what Bush-the-father had started with the 1991 coup d'etat against the Haitian people's popular choice which was somewhat foiled when he lost re-election for a second term to Bill Clinton.

The first thing the French soldiers did, upon landing in Haiti in full military gear in 2004, was go up to the mountain top at Vertieres, where the African-Haitian ancestors had beaten them more than 200-years before in combat, and stand there, proclaiming to the starve-through-endless-IMF-free-trade-imposition-Haitians, that they were RECLAIMING their colony and a new VICTORY.

Reportedly, some of these French soldiers that came with Bush Regime change, even went to a few old plantation sites in the North of Haiti, pushed the Haitian peasants off the land, at gun
point, and re-claimed the area for their heretofore beaten slave-owning French foreparents. This happened in 2004 behind the mask of Bush Regime change, ousting President Aristide in order to bring human rights and good governance to Haiti! And also, in 2004, Haitians died alone, fighting the return of Rochambeau's dogs through Bush Regime change, UN occupation and World Bank neoliberal privatization and endless debt policies that are the causes of the food crisis, and weak state of governance, right now in Haiti. AND, Between 2004 and 2006, these forces murdered some 14,000 to 20,000 Haitians.... None of these perishing Haitians will die in vain, just as no matter France's current illusions because of the support it gets from the Franco-phony Haitian rich, Vertieres shall never be undone. Ayisyen Ginen, we've metastasized back
on August 14, 1791. There's no cure for France, or any other tyrant in Haiti looking to undo African-Haitian existence and Vodun culture. Nou lèd, nou la.

Our mobilization has always been stronger than military arms, than the U.S. low intensity war against Haiti and NGO or missionary tyranny. (I Pay this Price for You: Open For Business ; US False Benevolence in Haiti.)

Honoring the Revolutionary war veterans of Haiti, honoring our Ginen Ancestors, honoring the loses and denying the obliteration from the history books of the indigenous Blacks in the Americas who arrived in the Americas earlier than 100,000 years before Christ, honoring the Taino-Haitians and remembering those Haitians who lost their lives fighting against this current Euro/US occupation of Haiti, in 2004 HLLN stepped up and committed never to forget these injustices, to keep them alive and to NEVER stop demanding that France pay back the $22 billion dollar Independence Debt it forced an isolated Haiti, with no military allies, to pay before it would formally stop trying to put its people back into slavery and recognize their independence. President Jean Bertrand Aristide was the first and only Haitian president to ever demand repayment of this money. This is one of the prime reason for France's participation in the 2004 coup d'etat. The Franco-phony Haitian, Gerald Latortue, whom Bush appointed as Prime Minister in Haiti after their schock and awe coup-kidnapping, assured France that the debt was VOID.

We wrote then as now, NOT SO. Latortue was not legally competent to denounce the $22 billion debt owed by France to Haiti.

The African warrior, General Jean Jacques Dessalines, Haiti's founding father, wanted an equitable distribution of the countries asset with the African masses sharing in the wealth they had fought for. The Eurocentric mulattos, with support from the Euro/US tribes, refused this new paradigm of economic distribution and the assassination of Haiti's founding father began the first of Haiti's 33 foreign-influenced coup d'etats to date in Haiti. The most recent subversion of the Black masses in Haiti, would occur, on February 29, 2004 by George W. Bush's Haiti regime change, conducted by the US Special Forces in ousting and exiling President Jean Bertrand Aristide via an unmarked rendition plane headed to the Central African Republic and ushering in a UN proxy occupation for the US/France /Canada.

The Haitian people's struggle continues...This Haitian struggle is the greatest David vs. Goliath battle being played out on this planet. The people's demand for Haiti's $22 Billion STANDS.

HLLN's Campaign Seven pursues this debt by using our reach to constantly remind one in all of that the Haitian people's demand for payment of the independent debt continues and was not voided by Bush regime change. Haiti has been an international crime scene since February 2004. All our newly incurred injustices metered out on the masses of Dessalines descendants by France are symbolically addressed in Campaign Seven. So, please if you have not already done so, consider signing HLLN's on-petition demanding France return Haiti's $22 billion for the Independence Debt and posting a letter of this demand to your nearest French embassy. (See also, Sarkozy's visit to Haiti: A Buzzard Looking For a Free Meal? But Haitians Demand Back The Independence Debt and Claim Haiti's Sovereignty, February 17, 2010.)

...France must pay back Haiti's ($22billion) independence debt obtained through gunboat diplomacy and intimidation:

On-line Petition - in English
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/restitution4haiti/
On-line Petition - In French
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/restitutionpourhaiti/
On-line Petition - In Kreyol
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Restitisyonpouayiti/

HLLN
November 22, 2008
Sarkozy's visit to Haiti: A Buzzard Looking For a Free Meal? But Haitians Demand Back The Independence Debt and Claim Haiti's Sovereignty, February 17, 2010

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Forwarded by Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
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For November 18th, HLLN brings you, "Haiti the Rebel", by Michel Sanon to recall the Battle of Vertières, the defining battle of the Haitian revolution.

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Haiti the Rebel By Michel Sanon
********

Who is to tell me when
To celebrate my history?
Who is to tell me
When to dress my wounds
And to reminisce
My trials, my sorrow
When to shed tears
Over my brave children
And to glorify their names?
They suffered and died
Every bloody month
Of the bloody year.
I was born
Of abject inhumanity
With the noble destiny
Of carrying the sword
Of precious humanity
In a New World
Cursed by the West Storm
And raped by the powers
Of greed, wickedness, and death.
I am the mother of martyrs
Of survivors and overcomers.
Alone, I faced the wrath
Of this world's powers
In March of 1802.
Their mighty venom
Could not cripple me.
I stepped on the snakes head
In May of 1803
And created for ever
The symbol of my pride.
How many now really know
My history?
How many care?
Alone, with my hurting hands
I broke the first link
Of the mighty chain
Of human curse
Called slavery.
Alone on the traitorous hill
Of the New World
I carried the cross of a race
Into this century
Of furious revolution
And industrialization
Refusing to get crucified.
I've been chained
I've been robbed
I've been raped and stabbed
And I have fought back
Fearlessly, continuously.
Alone I have paid and paid.
I have paid the senseless price
I have paid the endless price
For my vital exploits.
Humanity at large
Enjoys the benefits
Gratelessly, pompously.
Every bloody month
Of every bloody year
I have fought constantly
With a burning spear
Stuck in my chest.
Sometimes it weakens me
But I always rise
High above the pain
And the wickedness
Of powerful forces
From near and far
To claim my dignity.
I have friends
Who suck up my blood
When tired I fall asleep.
They set my house ablaze
To scare my children away
From my wounded heart.
Though today I choose to stand
And stand in pride and love
With my dear family
To celebrate in harmony
Our common history
In the month of February
I was alone when in Vertières
I rose to face the Devil
When hell broke loose
Unleashing its fire storm
With waves of flame rushing
To engulf me whole...
Alone in the vast universe
I froze hell over
And walked on its ashes
To create my own history.
Nobody stood by my side.
I alone remember.
It was the eighteenth day
Of a month called
November.
*******************

On this November 18, Haitians, currently under Euro-US-led UN occupation, remember the heroes of the Haitian revolution. Remember Kapwa Lamò, Jean Jacques Dessalines, all the Maroons, Mari Jann at Crete-a-Pierrot and how the Haitian identity and indomitable courage was forged out of the fiery crucible of war against white terror, tyranny and enslavement.

****
Jafrikayiti's LAFIMEN: Listwa Pèp Ayisyen Depi nan Ginen!

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Forwarded by Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
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1808-2008: Bicentennial of Ignace Nau, one of the founding fathers of Haitian literature By Letitiah Sept, Haitian Perspective, December 27, 2008 (Go to:French original)

1808-2008: 200 YEARS AGO, IGNACE NAU, ONE OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS OF HAITIAN LITERATURE, WAS BORN:

The year 2008 marks the bicentennial of the birth of one the first Haitian poets: Ignace Nau. Ignace Nau is indeed the first known Haitian-born poet after the declaration of independence of the young country in 1804. He was born in Port-au-Prince in the year 1808 under the presidency of Alexandre Pétion. Ignace was the first Haitian writer to receive his primary and secondary education in Haiti.

Ignace Nau was born only four years after the declaration of Independence of Haiti. As a child, he attended Jonathas Granville School, then located in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. This educational establishment received only boarders because of the rigorous type of education offered there. This school for boys offered, as a package, an academic education and a military education to its young pupils. Once admitted to attend the school, the young boys were the responsibility of their instructors who would make out of them, scholars and soldiers. The school fixed the terms of enrollment to the needs of the parents and students, impressing upon them the understanding that the future of their country will be in their hands and they will have the duty to consolidate Haiti’s independence by defending its sovereignty against all, and by using art, science, philosophy and all kinds of knowledge to make it powerful, proud and prosperous.

The list of traditional supplies provided by the parents included: the rifle, bulk, the ammunition box, boots, insignia, the scarf, the hat, the bayonet, etc.; in addition to the feathers, pencils, books and scribble block. During the school year, for at least two days each week, the pupils were required to take part in physical exercises in military style.

During those days of early independence, all Haitians - without social distinction of origin - had developed the distinct impression that they were living in a predatory world that saw no place for them except as a slave or a dead prey. This impression came from an extermination war that was fought against them by a coalition of European forces, led by imperial France, for the purpose of reestablishing slavery of the Black population or exterminate them just as the Spanish had done, two century earlier, with the first inhabitants of the island, the one million Tainos who were exterminated to the last in less than fifty years of Spanish rule. Surrounded by vast territories controlled by powers where Black slavery was the rule, the Haitians knew that they could count only on themselves to defend themselves, to survive or to die like human beings. They knew they could not count on what, today, is called by euphemism, nowadays, “Foreign aid” - this paralyzing intervention, atrophying, controlling, nefarious by its unhealthy intentions, disguised as Providence, be it military, financial, technical, religious, political, ideological…

A kind of: “I Will Help You, Especially If You Relinquish Your Sovereignty.” Intimidating by its capital letters - such as the IMF, SAP (Structural Adjustment Program), NGO, IDB, BMD, USAID, WB, and whose promoters will shout later:

”They cannot do anything for themselves, they rely on us for everything: Failed State! Failed State!”

Did Europeans have our welfare in mind in the first century of our independence, the 19th Century? Easily, we, today’s Haitians, we could have followed the same path to extermination as the Aboriginals of Ayiti in the 16th century: One-million Tainos completely obliterated in less than 50 years of contact with the very Catholic Spaniards!

Or aboriginals of Tasmania? Same history: The totality of the human population of an island close in size to Haiti was obliterated to the last Tasmanian wolf, by the very Protestant Englishmen!

What is there remaining to speculate as to the intentions of the Europeans, the "enlightened philosophers" of France, with regards to the Black population of Haiti?

Our Ancestors did not have the luxury to play the idiot game of speculating, that we-modern-Haitians, have chosen to play today. They knew full well they were perceived as well beyond acceptance except as slaves to the whites (the former slave owners knew better than any other this was not possible, for they had tasted the iron and fire of Haiti’s anti-slavery fighters). Our Ancestors thus knew full well they were marked by the whites for extinction as human beings on this earth!

For these reasons, during the post-independence period, Haitian schools, Haitian families, Haitian society in general chose the path which is today being denied to us by the international forces:
that is, before anything else, to make each Haitians a national defender, trained in Haitian national values, in Haitian schools and according to the Haitian historical traditions!Ignace Nau was born only four years after the Battle of Vertieres: the last link which saw the Black people of St Domingue crossing the floating bridges they had thrown over fire spitting abysses of inhumanity in order to herald in a new world order, displayed in stellar letters, so that it would be known - “All Men are Born and Remain Equal in Right, Whatever the Color of their Skin!”

Contemporaries of Ignace Nau lived the cruelties of slavery.
Ignace Nau sat at the table of the heroes of our Independence.
He spoke and listened to them.
They told him the tragedies of Maurepas,
Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines,
The heroism of Capois at the head of his strike team!
The secrets orders of Napoleon Buonaparte to Leclerc, his Captain-General, to eliminate all the Blacks in Haiti that were perceived as beyond re-enslavement.
A category which comprised all Black officers and their soldiers,
and to restore slavery for the remainder,
which would be defenseless older women, invalid men and small children! Tactics that were used only in tribal or ancient warfare!

Ignace was probably told how (the French General) Rochambeau had imported man-eating dogs from Cuba,
and launched them after captured Blacks to be devoured under the applauses of the French.
Prisons ships filled with enchained Blacks towed out to the open sea to be set on fire!
Witnesses to these horrors were still living,
and were surely telling the horrors they had seen.

Rumors were that the French would return with tigers and wolves
With the purpose of having them attack and devour live people living in the hills of Haiti.
The French who remained in the country after the war were circulating some of these rumors.
Perhaps there was even one instance of a wild exotic animal being let loose in the woods of Haiti, since the myth of a roaming tiger has, for a long time, dominated Haitian folklore.
Haiti has never had indigenous, big, wild animals.

Ignace and his contemporaries were surely exposed to this kind of testimony.Ignace Nau went to the United States to the Catholic University of New York (Known today under the name of New York University- NYU)
where he completed his higher education. He then returned to Haiti and became the private secretary to Haitian president, Boyer.

As the first of the Haitian intellectuals with an indigenous formation, the burden befell upon him to initiate the trajectory of the literature of a country only a few years old, and that had risen from abject slavery.
Ignace Nau proudly stepped to the plate for the task of equipping, with a literary tradition, a country whose birth preceded his own by only four years. With his brother, Emile Nau, and the brothers Ardouin (Beaubrun, Celigny and Coriolan), he created the Haitian Literary Movement known as ”l’Ecole of 1836”.

”L’Ecole of 1836” formed by the “Cenacle Romantique of 1836” created by Emile Nau, brother to Ignace, and of the literary circle organized around the review “La Republique” was, in fact, the first Literary Movement of the Haitian people. Among the historians, novelists and the theorists of this movement, Ignace was the essayist, writer of short stories, poet, the romanticist of our national history, pioneer of the introduction of Haitian country life and indigenous traditions in the official literary world.

As the first Haitian novelist along with his brother, Emile, Ignace Nau drew from local memory and Haitian popular philosophy in order to give substance to a specifically Haitian literary identity. One found this identity in the imaginary content and in the writing style of his books. In that sense, one can say that Ignace Nau is the precursor, not only of the subsequent Haitian literary movement known as l'"Ecole Indegeniste," but also the Indigenous Revolutionary Movement represented by Jacques Roumain.

Ignace Nau also paved the way for later Haitian theorists such as Anténor Firmin and Louis Joseph Janvier. In France, he collaborated in the “Revue des Colonie,” an anti-slavery publication which published certain of his writings.
One reproached addressed to him is to have followed too closely the model of French poet Alphonse de Lamartine!
Bien au contraire, it is all to his honor.
He, the young son of a newborn nation, chose to walk in the footsteps of the lone Frenchman who was illuminated enough to see the truth and write about Toussaint Louverture that: “This Man Is a Nation!” Ignace knew well how to choose his contemporary role models.

Ignace Nau was a nationalist Haitian.
He was a senior official of the Department of Finances of the young Republic.
For this reason, he must have noted personally the damage caused by the ransom that President Boyer agreed to pay to France only to ensure that Haiti’s descendants not be exterminated until the last from the face of the earth by the raging French. This injustice known under the infamous name of “Debt of Independence” was based on unrestrained greed by the very people who have been piling up profits of the back of enslaved Blacks.

Today, those who continue to support the legitimacy of such egregious spoliation, by failing to denounce it, either by apathy, by self-interest preservation, by convenient lapse of memory, by irresponsibility or by collaboration are retroactive supporters of the legitimacy of slavery.

Ignace recognized the damage that this agreement would cause to the future of Haiti. For this reason he opposed the policy of the government of President Jean Pierre Boyer.
In the tradition of the despotism of the period going from 1804 to February 1986, time when freedom of the press became nonnegotiable in Haiti, the, then Boyer government shut down the review, “La Republique.” Nau switch to another periodical, “L’Union” to continue expressing his opposition. Unfortunately, his work was cut short by his untimely death in 1845. He was thirty-six years old.

In this year of the bicentennial of the birth of the first authentically Haitian poet, Ignace Nau, we would like to reiterate the same observations that were made by Haitians living in 1836, at the time when Ignace Nau was actively fulfilling his patriotic and humanitarian duties, have not change much in 2008.

When the French were driven out of St Domingue,
They had left behind nothing which had a positive value for us-Haitian or, for humanity in general. We did not have to pay anything to the defeated French! They did not implant anything in the colony and burnt down whatever structure they had put in place to amass wealth for themselves.

They left behind:
Neither a Civil State nor a usable Administrative System,
Neither a school system of any shape or form,
Nor books or any teaching system, means or materials.

They did not leave a system of local governance,
But depended on the Metropole to enforce slavery.

The left neither money nor other resources in the coffers,
nor flourishing plantations,

As they left, everything was slashed and burnt.

They left behind
neither a philosophy,
Nor science,

Neither art,
nor technology,

Neither academia,
Nor culture,

Neither religion,
Nor humanism,

They did not leave behind any foreign or diplomatic relation,
Their purpose was to isolate and choke Haiti and its inhabitants.

Not even formal birth names to slaves,
No register for date of birth or death.

The history of the French in St. Domingue retains neither the name of a school, nor the name of any learning institution in the colony.

Even the children of the white men
With Black mothers could not inherit the name of their father!

Nor the name of a theater building,

neither the name of an orchestra,
Nor the title of a play,

Neither an official association,
Nor a family context!
But only of places of slavery called: Plantations!

They left us only the pain.
A burden of dehumanization,
Three hundred years of unpaid labor.
A paralyzing and ruinous debt.
Stigmatization
that held us apart from the concert of the nations.

Even after Haiti agreed to pay this infamous debt, not one French person returned to Haiti to create a school after the Independence!
We had to wait for the Concordat of 1860 with the Catholic Church,
which allowed us to exchange our hearts and souls for the entrapment of a Trojan horse education.
An education based on enriching France, the French-speaking Franco-phonies and that excluded and barred out the Haitian masses. Education which, today, makes for the happiness of Canada and America.

Please, name one positive thing the French left in Haiti when they left in 1803?
Nothing! Absolutely nothing!
As for the Pearl of the Antilles,
they killed the pearl-bearing oyster a long time ago, before leaving the country.

No matter what the French, who wrote the Debray Committee Report say, the question of the Haitian Debt of Independence will continue to haunt the spirit of Haitians. In this resolution of 25-points, the last two are most important for we-Haitians of today. Here is what was decided by this committee of French philosophers obviously bent on their own national interests, regardless of what side humanity is:
http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article1129

On the question of the restitution of the debt of Independence, the Committee revealed that this question was "outside of its mandate," and indicated they proposed to their interlocutors "the formation of a Joint Committee of historians to establish the facts and their exact circumstances," but “no follow-up was made by the Haitian side.”

Although it considered that "for any Haitian patriot, this old business gives rise to unquestionably a punch to the solar plexus," the patronizing Debray Committee asserted that its suggestions were in line with the "logic of solidarity and NOT of reimbursement." For this independent Committee of reflection and of suggestions on Haitian-French-relations, “[Haiti] is a zone of prioritized solidarity“!!!

Haitian intellectuals standing on behalf of Haiti like the French intellectuals are standing on behalf France? Why it is that nobody is surprised (that is not ever going to happen)?

”But no follow-up was made by the Haitian side (the Haitian intellectuals’ side?).” Isn’t that normal? For, we know what the so-called Haitian intellectuals did in 2003, on the eve of the celebration of the Bicentennial of Haitian Independence from the France!

Happy New Year 2009 to all!

*
By Letitiah Sept,
Haiti
December 27, 2008

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FRENCH ORIGINAL

1808-2008: Bicentenaire de la Naissance D'Ignace Nau, L'un Des Premier Ecrivain Nationaliste Haitien by Letitiah Sept, December 27, 2008

IGNACE NAU:
L'UN DES PERES DE LA LITTERATURE HAITIENNE

L’année 2008 a marqué le bicentenaire de la naissance de l’un des premiers poètes Data : Ignace Nau. Ignace Nau est en fait le premier poète haitiens né après la déclaration d’indépendance de la jeune nation. Il naquit à Port-au-Prince dans l’année de 1808 sous la présidence d’Alexandre Pétion. Il fut le premier écrivain haïtien à recevoir ses éducations primaires et secondaires en Haïti.

Ignace Nau naquit seulement quatre ans après la déclaration d’Indépendance du pays. Encore enfant, il fréquenta l’école Jonathas Granville de Port-au-Prince. Cette institution scolaire ne recevait que des pensionnaires, car le type d’éducation qu’elle offrait ne pouvait être dispensé qu’à des internes. Cette école offrait une éducation académique et une éducation militaire. Tout jeune écolier était enrôlé dans les deux programmes. Une fois admis à l’école, le jeune garçon était à la charge des professeurs pour une formation civile et un militaire. L’école fixait les conditions aux parents et à l’étudiant. La liste des fournitures classiques à être fournies par les parents incluait : la carabine, le vrac, la gibecière, les bottes, l’armoirie, le foulard, le chapeau, la baïonnette, etc. en plus des plumes, crayons, livres, cahiers, tablettes d’écriture. Au cours de l’année scolaire, l’écolier doit participer à des exercices physiques du style militaire pendant deux jours de la semaine.

En ce temps-là, les haitiens, sans distinction d ‘origines sociales, avaient la certitude qu’ils vivaient dans un monde de Prédateurs qui n’avaient de place pour eux que dans la servitude ou la mort. Ils savaient qu’ils ne pouvaient compter que sur eux-mêmes pour se défendre, survivre ou mourir comme des êtres humains. Ils savaient qu’ils ne pouvaient pas compter sur ce qui s’appelle par euphémisme, de nos jours, « Aide Etrangère » cette intervention paralysante, atrophiante, contrôleuse, gênante par ses intentions malsaines déguisées en providence, que cette « aide » fut militaire, financière, technique, religieuse, politique, idéologique…
Une sorte de : « je vais t’aider, surtout ne t’aide pas toi-même » intimidante par ses majuscules telles que les FMI, PAS, ONG, BID, BMD, USAID, ONG…

Et dont les promoteur crieront plus tard :
« Ils ne peuvent rien pour eux-mêmes, ils attendent tout de nous !»
« Faillite ! Faillite ! »

Les Européens, voulaient-ils travailler pour notre bien au premier siècle de notre indépendance, le 19ième Siècle ? Facilement, nous, Haïtiens d’aujourd’hui, nous aurions pu suivre le chemin des Aborigènes d’Haïti au 16ième siècle : 1 millions de Tainos totalement oblitérés en moins de 50 ans de contact avec les très Catholiques Espagnols!

Ou les aborigènes de l’Ile de Tasmanie ? Même histoire : La totalité de la population humaine et animale d’une île d’a peu près la superficie d’haiti oblitérée jusqu’au dernier loup tasmanien, en plein 19ieme siècle par les très protestants Anglais !

Que reste-t-il à spéculer sur les intentions des blancs « philosophes de lumières » de la France par rapports aux noirs d’Haïti ?

Nos ancêtres n’avaient pas le luxe de jouer la même partition idiote que nous choisissons d’exécuter aujourd’hui, Se sachant perçus comme au-delà de l’acceptation de l’esclavage par les blancs, (les esclavagistes le savaient mieux que tout autre pour avoir goûté de leur fer et de leur feu), Ils savaient bien qu’ils étaient marqués pour l’extinction en tant qu’humain sur cette terre !
Voilà pourquoi l’école haïtienne, les familles haïtiennes,
La société haïtienne en général de la période post-indépendance,
Avait choisi le chemin qui nous est refusé aujourd’hui par des forces internationales :
Avant tout autre chose, faire de chaque haitiens, un défenseur national formé aux valeurs haïtiennes, dans des écoles haïtiennes, suivant les valeurs historiques haïtiennes !

Ignace Nau est né quatre ans seulement après Vertières,
Le dernier pont qui a vu le peuple noir de St Domingue
Traverser les ponts flottants qu’ils ont jetés sur les gouffres
Crachant le feu de l’extermination de l’homme par l’homme
Pour porter la nouvelle a l’humanité entière,
Inscrite en lettres stellaires afin que chacun sache vraiment
Que Tous les Hommes naissent et demeurent égaux en Droit,
Quelque soit la couleur de leur peau !

Des contemporains d’Ignace Nau ont vécu les cruautés de l’esclave.
Ignace Nau s’est assis à la table des héros de l’indépendance.
Il leur a parlé et ils les ont écouté.
Ils lui ont raconté les péripéties de Maurepas,
Toussaint, Dessalines,
Le héroïsme de Capois à la tête de son équipe de feu !
L’ordre sécrète de Napoléon Buonaparte Leclerc,
Son Capitaine Général,
D’éliminer tous les noirs qui étaient perçus comme au-delà de l’esclavage,
Dont tous les généraux indigènes et leurs soldats,
Et de rétablir l’esclavage pour le reste,
Faits des vieilles femmes, les hommes invalides et les enfants sans défense !

On lui raconta probablement que Rochambeau avait fait venir des chiens mangeurs d’hommes de Cuba,
Et qu’il leur offrait des noirs en pâture sous l’applaudissement de ses hommes!
De pontons remplis de noirs enchaînés, conduits en haute mer pour être incendiés !
Les témoins de ces horreurs étaient encore vivants,
Et ils racontaient sûrement les horreurs qu’ils ont survécus !

Les bruits couraient à l’époque que les français reviendraient avec des tigres et des loups
Dans le but d’attaquer et de dévorer les gens vivants dans les mornes.
Peut-être qu’il a eu même un instance d’un animal sauvage relâche dans les bois haitiens,
Car le mythe du tigre à longtemps dominé le folklore haitiens.
Ignace et ses contemporains ont sûrement été exposés à ce genre de témoignage.

Ignace Nau se rendit aux Etats-Unis vers l’Université Catholique de New York
(Connu aujourd’hui sous le nom de New York University- NYU)
Où il reçut son éducation supérieure.
Ensuite il revint en Haïti ou il devint l’aide de Camp du président Boyer.

En tant que le premier des intellectuels haitiens à formation indigène,
Il lui revint la tache d’initier l’histoire de la Littérature Haïtienne.
Ignace Nau fut le premier haitiens qui entreprit la tache de doter d’une histoire littéraire, un peuple dont la naissance ne précédait la sienne que de quatre ans.
Avec son frère, Emile Nau, et les frères Ardouin, Beaubrun, Celigny et Coriolan, il créa le mouvement littéraire haïtien connu sous le nom de l’Ecole de 1836.
L’école de 1836 formé par le Cénacle Romantique de 1836 d’Emile Nau, frère d’Ignace, et du cercle littéraire organisée autour du revue «La République» fut, en fait, le premier mouvement littéraire du peuple haïtien. Parmi les historiens, les romanciers et les théoriciens de ce mouvement, Ignace était l’essayiste des petites histoires, le poètes, le romanticisme de notre histoire nationale, l’introduction de la vie paysanne haïtienne et de ses traditions autochtone dans le monde littéraire.

En tant que premier romancier haïtien, Ignace Nau commença a puisa dans la mémoire locale et la pensée populaire haïtienne afin de donner corps à une identité littéraire spécifiquement haïtienne. On retrouva cette identité dans le fond et la forme de l’œuvre de l’auteur. En se sens, on peut dire qu’Ignace Nau est le précurseur, non seulement de l’indigénisme haitiens, mais aussi de Jacques Roumain.

Ignace Nau pava également le chemin aux théoriciens haitiens tels que Antênor Firmin et Louis Joseph Janvier. En France, il collabora à la Revue des Colonie, une publication anti-esclavagiste ou fut publié certains de ses écrits.
On lui reprochait de suivre le modèle de Lamartine !
C’est tout à son honneur !
Lui, le nouveau-né, il a su choisir de marcher dans la foulée de l’homme qui a su dire de Toussaint Louverture : «Cet Homme Fut un Nation » !
Ignace a su bien choisir ses modèles contemporains !

Ignace Nau fut un nationaliste haitiens.
Il fut un haut fonctionnaire du Département des Finances de la jeune République.
A ce titre, il doit avoir constaté en personne,
Les dégâts causée par cette rançon
Que le président Boyer doit avoir consenti à payer à la France
Rien que pour assurer que ses descendants ne soient exterminés jusqu’au dernier de la face de la terre. Cette injustice connu sous le nom infâme de dette de l’indépendance
Etait motivé par l’appât du gain effréné de ceux qui voulaient tout amasser du travail des autres : les esclavagistes. Ceux qui continuent à supporter la légitimité d’une telle spoliation, soit par apathie, soit par oubli, par irresponsabilité , légitimité ou par pure complaisance ne sont et ne seront toujours que des esclavagistes en différé.

Ignace reconnut le dommage qu’un tel accord causerait à l’avenir d’Haïti.
Voilà pourquoi il s’opposa à la politique de Boyer.
Dans la tradition du despotisme de la période allant de 1804 à 1986,
Où la liberté de la presse devint non négociable en Haïti,
Le gouvernement fit fermer la revue « La République ».
Nau continua des activités dans une autre revue qui s’appelle l’union.

Malheureusement que son oeuvre fut coupé court par sa mort prématurée en 1845.
Il avait trente six ans.

A l’occasion du bicentenaire de la Naissance du premier poète authentiquement haïtien
Ignace Nau,
Nous voulons mentionner les mêmes remarques qu’il avait fait en 1836,
Au moment ou il militait activement au nom de l’humanisme haitiens,
Et qui n’a changé en rien aujourd’hui, en 2008 :

Lorsque les Français ont été bouté hors de St Domingue,
Ils n’ont laissé rien qui avait une valeur positive,
Pour nous, haitiens, ou pour l’humanité en général !
Nous n’avions rien à payer aux français :
Ils ne nous ont laissé,

Ni un Etat Civil,

Ni un système scolaire,

Ni de l’argent dans la caisse,

Ni des plantations,

Ni une philosophie,

Ni la Science,

Ni la technologie,

Ni la Culture,

Ni même des noms formels,

Et encore moins, une littérature.

Les français n’avaient établi
Ni l’art, ni la Littérature,
Ni la Science en Haïti.

L’histoire des Français à St Domingue ne retient
Ni le nom d’une école,

Ni le nom d’un théâtre,

Ni le nom d’un livre,

Mais rien que des places d’esclavages appelés
Habitations ou Plantations !

Ils ne nous ont laissé que la douleur,
Un passé lord d’esclavage et de déshumanisation,
Trois cents ans de labeur impayé
Une dette paralysante et ruineuse,
La stigmatisation
Qui nous a tenu en dehors du concert des nations.
Même après que Haïti ait consenti à payer cette dette infâme,
Pas un français ne revint en Haïti pour créer une école !
Il nous a fallu attendre le Concordat de 1860
Où nous devions échanger nos âmes
Contre une éducation piégée,
Une éducation basée sur une francophonie enrichissante pour la France,
Exclusiviste pour les haitiens !
Education qui fait aujourd’hui le bonheur des blancs canadiens et américains !
Quant à la « Perle des Antilles,
Ils ont tué l’huître perlière avant de partir » !

Quoi que dise les français qui ont rédigé le Rapport du Comité Debray, la question de la dette de l’indépendance continuera à hanter l’esprit des haitiens. Dans cette résolution de 25 points, les deux derniers sont les plus importants pour les haitiens d’aujourd’hui. Voilà ce qu’a décidé ce comité sous la houlette du philosophe français Régis Debray :

http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article1129
« Quand à la restitution de la dette de l’indépendance, le Comité, qui révèle que cette question était "en dehors de [son] mandat", indique avoir proposé à ses interlocuteurs "la formation d’une commission mixte d’historiens pour établir l’enchaînement des faits et leurs circonstances exactes", mais aucune suite n’a été donnée par la partie haïtienne.
Estimant que "pour n’importe quel patriote haïtien, cette vieille affaire suscite incontestablement un pincement au coeur", le Comité affirme que ses propositions sont inscrites dans une "logique de solidarité et non de remboursement" . Pour le Comité indépendant de réflexion et de propositions sur les relations franco-haïtiennes "[Haïti] est en zone de solidarité prioritaire" . »

Pourquoi cela n’étonne-t-il personne ?

Mais aucune suite n’a été donnée par la partie haïtienne (intellectuels haitiens, n’est-ce pas ?)

*
Bonne Année 2009 A Tous !
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Standing on truth, living without fear – Supporting Barack Obama’s vision of what can be…
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HLLN Campaign Seven - Demand France Pay back the $22Billion Independence Debt: France Vertieres and Ayisyen Ginen

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What Haitian Americans Ask of the New US President

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‘...Hayti (is) the glory of the blacks and terror of tyrants...I hope that she may be united, keeping a strict look-out for tyrants, for if they get the least chance to injure her, they will avail themselves of it...But one thing which gives me joy is, that they (the Haitians) are men (and women) who would be cut off to a man before they would yield to the combined forces of the whole world-----in fact, if the whole world was combined against them it could not do anything with them...’ ---David Walker
from: David Walker’s Appeal, 1829

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"When you make a choice, you mobilize vast human energies and resources which otherwise go untapped...........If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want and all that is left is a compromise." Robert Fritz