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<b>Sent:</b> Monday, May 31, 2004 5:42 PM<br>
<b>Subject:</b> adam hochschild article-A response<br><br>
Letter to SF Chronicle's Sunday Magazine in reference to their cover
story <br>
(5/30/04) on Haiti by Adam Hochschild entitled: " Birth of a Nation
- Has the <br>
bloody 200-year history of Haiti doomed it to more violence?"
<br><br>
<a href="http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/05/30/CMGKG6F3UV1.D">http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/05/30/CMGKG6F3UV1.D<br>
</a>TL<br>
******<br>
Response to Adam Hochschild article in SF Chronicle<br>
May 30, 2004,<br><br>
May 30, 2004,<br><br>
In a story published, May 30, 2004, in the SF Chronicle's Sunday
Magazine, <br>
Adam Hochschild regales us with tales of luxury in colonial
Haiti and <br>
conveys, in various cumulative ways, how particularly horrific and savage
the Haitian <br>
Revolutionary war was (more than, I would suppose the French and American
<br>
ones were perhaps) and how Haiti used to be "the most lucrative
European colony <br>
in the world" but that today "most Americans think of Haiti as
a wasteland of <br>
repeated coups and dire poverty, which hundreds of thousands of desperate
<br>
refugees are willing to risk their lives in small boats to escape."
<br><br>
As soon as I read the title, much less the opening lines, I knew what was
<br>
coming: that old self-serving and warped story about how violent Haitians
are, <br>
how they won, in combat, against the then most powerful nations on earth
<br>
(French, British, Spain) because disease and pestilence killed-off the
Europeans and <br>
how their 200-year history so far ONLY shows that Blacks simply can't
govern <br>
themselves without white guidance and "civilization."
<br><br>
Adam Hochschild doesn't say this typical dribble outright, but that, in
<br>
essence, is the gist of his article entitled: "Birth of a Nation -
Has the bloody <br>
200-year history of Haiti doomed it to more violence?" <br><br>
Someone sent me the article thinking it reflected Haiti's history in a
<br>
balance way! <br><br>
If you put on racists-colored glasses, ignore the fact Haitians live in a
<br>
hostile American Mediterranean, hike-up the Tarzan complex and let the
"regime <br>
change" mantras role. Then absolutely, the partisan view that
"Haiti is violent <br>
and was doomed at birth" is the typical point of view sold as
TRUTH for <br>
generations - for no less than 200 years and 5 months to be exact, to an
already <br>
well-conditioned-to believe-Black-is-innately-violent U.S. public. First
off, <br>
according to white supremacy doctrines, Haiti wasn't even supposed to
exist much <br>
less still be barely surviving and today meriting the attention of not
one, <br>
but three of the most powerful Western troops on earth to be on its soil
to <br>
de-mobilize and disenfranchise its people once again. <br><br>
What this Haitian woman wants to know is how many blood thirsty,
savage <br>
Haitian peasants, farmers, factory-workers, literacy workers, herbal
healers and <br>
slum dwellers has Mr. Hochschild ran into lately? Does he actually
believe <br>
those death squad units like FRAPH and the bloody Haitian military were
created, <br>
funded and armed by Haitian peasants, factory-workers and farmers? Gran
Met, <br>
please, how many more offenses must the Haitian people suffer at the
hands of <br>
such pseudo-scholars, purporting to know about Haiti but just
regurgitating the <br>
same old racist bull that comforts the greedy exploiters of Haitian
labor? <br><br>
In 1994, at the height of the last U.S. sponsored Coup D'etat, Disney
made a <br>
profit in Haiti of 1.1 billion dollars; Wal Mart made a profit of 2.8
billion.<br><br>
There are MORE millionaires living in Haiti than in the ENTIRE Caribbean.
<br>
Yet, those millionaires, these tiny Haitian economic elites, have done
NOTHING <br>
but exploit the masses, on their own behalf but primarily as agents of
U.S./Euro <br>
multinational companies and their geopolitical and hegemonic interests.
<br><br>
The U.S. is in Haiti right now guiding its new imported dictator, Gerald
<br>
Latortue, to adopt more anti-Haitianist policies benefiting only the
Washington <br>
Consensus economists and neoliberalist adherents, while standing by as
their <br>
former Haitian soldiers and death squad units destroy every advancement
made, <br>
these last ten years, by the people's governments. It is alleged, by the
<br>
habitants in the area, that the U.S. is also busy building itself an
unauthorized <br>
military base on Haitian soil at Mount St Nicolas across from Cuba's
Guantannamo <br>
Bay. Yet, from reading Adam Hochschild's article you would not get a
glimmer of <br>
the real situation of U.S. plunder and naked conquest in Haiti, nor the
story <br>
of debt, dependency and foreign domination which has ushered in all the
33 <br>
Coup D'etats in Haiti's history. No. You would come away thinking Haiti
is <br>
doomed because it fought off white "civilization" at
birth.<br><br>
Here's how Hochschild puts it: "Haiti's almost unparalleled legacy
of <br>
violence has crippled the land to this day. And neither colonialism, nor
slavery, nor <br>
the African monarchies many of its citizens had been born in provided
much <br>
fertile soil for the democratic ideas circulating elsewhere in the North
<br>
Atlantic world at the time of Haiti's birth. "<br><br>
What unparalleled legacy of violence? Fighting to live and be free from
<br>
European and American chains? Is that Haiti's great sin? If so, that
proud Haitian <br>
sin continues.<br><br>
For, more Haitians have died, fighting for liberty and the right to have
<br>
their vote for President Aristide be counted and respected since the
U.S., France, <br>
and Canada unlawfully invaded Haiti on February 29, 2004 than since the
last <br>
U.S.-sponsored Coup D'etat in 1991-1994. Yes that legacy as pioneers in
the <br>
human rights struggle against U.S.-supported despotism, dictatorship,
death <br>
squads and underdevelopment continues in Haiti today. No people in this
Western <br>
Hemisphere have fought as long and as hard as Haitians have against
Euro/U.S. <br>
slavery, financial colonialism, despotism, dictatorship, globalization
and now <br>
regime change, again.<br><br>
What has no parallel is the indomitable Haitian spirit of struggle and
<br>
refusal to lose their independence even after 200 years of
containment-in-poverty <br>
and de facto colonialism re-established by France in 1825 when,
under the <br>
threat of re-enslavement, and with 12 French warships armed with
500 canons, <br>
France blackmailed Haiti into agreeing to pay it for the lost of our
African <br>
grandparents as property. <br><br>
This unparalleled and grievous injustice is what crippled Haiti,
its <br>
sovereignty, its development - not, as Mr. Hochschild would have us
believe, Haiti's <br>
separation from those "democratic ideas circulating elsewhere
in the North <br>
Atlantic world at the time of Haiti's birth. "<br><br>
More than half-a-century of a U.S. embargo, the legacy of slavery, <br>
ecclesiastic colonialism combined with servicing the French debt -
which was <br>
"renegotiated" in 1915 by the U.S. - that is what has crippled
and doomed Haiti. That <br>
150 million francs (later lowered to 90 million francs), estimated at 22
<br>
billion today, extorted from Haiti by France, which tiny, tiny Haiti had
to pay <br>
while France sold off, for only 15 million francs, a parcel of land to
the U.S. <br>
that virtually doubled it size, that vengeful weight put upon the
shoulders of <br>
Africans digging themselves out of 300-years of white imposed slavery,
forced i<br>
lliteracy and other inhumane physical and psychological trauma, virtually
<br>
began the colonial model of debt dependency that was then used throughout
the <br>
Africa continent after their "independence." <br><br>
It was the first 'structural adjustment' plan as Haiti had no money left
for <br>
social spending on health care, roads, public services and infrastructure
<br>
development. In fact, Haiti had to close its rural schools, adopt the
Rural Code <br>
which further systematized the class divisions in Haiti (between rural
and <br>
city/elite folks) and bound the majority to work the land to pay off this
debt. <br><br>
Haitians paid for their liberty and independence in a river of
blood, earned <br>
it after 300 years (1503-1804) of a European-sponsored holocaust where
<br>
millions upon millions of Africans where tortured and murdered by the
French, <br>
English, Spanish, et. Yet, Mr. Hochschild's article appears to want us to
give more <br>
value to the white lives that were lost, and even perhaps to believe more
<br>
whites died during the thirteen-year (1791-1804) war of Haitian
independence than <br>
Blacks? <br><br>
According to Mr. Hoshchild's article, the manner of Haiti's birth, not
<br>
Euro/American inhumanity, systemic violence, greed, brutality, despotism
and regime <br>
change politics, would explain why the Haitian masses are today again
facing <br>
down the U.S/French and Canadian soldiers and dying off like flies while
these <br>
troops give firepower-cover to the guns of FRAPH and former
U.S.-supported and <br>
trained soldiers and mercenaries. Thus, if we follow Mr. Hoshchild's
thesis, <br>
it is the "bloody 200-year history of Haiti" that has doomed it
to more <br>
violence and herald back dictatorship and the economic elites' rule these
First <br>
Worlders' troops, have, in 2004, come to put back into power.<br><br>
This is total, absolute TRASH. The sort of slant that comforts the
ostrich <br>
mindset. Haiti was rich because of SUGAR, Mr. Hochschild blithely
maintains. <br>
Fact is, Mr. Hochschild, the European's "Pearl of the Antilles"
was never our <br>
African grandma's pearl. Haiti provided riches for France because of a
brutal, <br>
barbaric slavery system that breeded our Haitian grandmamas' like mares
and <br>
worked them until death, if the lash and whips didn't kill them off
first. The <br>
idea that because Haiti was born by spilling the blood of Europeans so
that means <br>
Haiti is doomed, that idea forwarded in Hochschild's article is racist to
the <br>
extreme, not to mentions disingenuous. <br><br>
In the annals of human history, no country, no settlers in the Americas,
<br>
killed more people, shed more BLOOD than the English, French, Spanish -
than the <br>
European tribes and their white settlers. Period, no comma. So, how does
Haiti <br>
get to be the one "doomed?" Why? Because the blood shed and
people eradicated <br>
out of Haiti where said whites, who had annihilated the Amerindians all
over <br>
the Americas and then kidnapped and enslaved Africans to come work the
land of <br>
the Tainos so that the European's coffee at home would be sweet?
Right? .... <br>
The kidnapping of Blacks, spreading of lies about black inferiority and
sav<br>
agery continue as we see with this article and the abduction out of Haiti
of <br>
President Aristide. If only I had the time, on behalf of the African
ancestors and <br>
those courageous Haitians dying right now fighting off, yet again,
another <br>
U.S.-sponsored Coup D'etat in Haiti, to fully and individually address
the <br>
racist propagandas of the Adam Hochschild's of this world? <br><br>
In any account about the plight of Haiti, what has no parallel and that
must <br>
be stressed Mr. Hochschild is the 200-year campaign, by the U.S./Euros to
<br>
disenfranchise - economically and politically - the Haitian people and
the blood <br>
letting, poverty and class divisions that that brings forth.<br><br>
Marguerite Laurent<br>
May 30, 2004<br><br>
*********<br>
Forwarded by the Haitian Lawyers Leadership<br>
******<br><br>
******<br><br>
"Men anpil chaj pa lou" is Kreyol for - "Many hands make
light a heavy load."<br><br>
See, The Haitian Leadership Networks' 7 "men anpil chaj pa<br><br>
lou" campaigns to help restore Haiti's independence, the will of the
mass <br>
electorate and the rule of law. See, <br>
<a href="http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/haitianlawyers.html">http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/haitianlawyers.html</a>
; <a href="http://www.margueritelaurent.com/campaigns/campaigns.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.margueritelaurent.com/campaigns/campaigns.html<br><br>
</a>and Haitiaction.net <br><br>
<br><br>
<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
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