How one country exemplifies global inequality
Mar 17, 2010, Vol: 17, No: 12
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By Eduardo Galeano, Street News Service The Haitian democracy was born just a moment ago. In its short lifetime, this famished and sick creature received nothing but slaps on its face. It was a newborn when, in the festive days of 1991, it was murdered by General Raoul Cedras’ coup d’état. Three years later, it was resurrected. After having established and overthrown many military dictators, the United States overthrew and then re-established President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was the first governor in the history of Haiti to be elected by popular vote and had the crazy idea of wanting a less unfair country.
Aristide returned in chains. They gave him permission to re-assume office, but didn’t give him any access to power. His successor, René Préval, got nearly 90 percent of the votes, but any second-rate World Bank chieftain, to whom the Haitians haven’t given even one vote, has more power than him.
But more than the vote, power lies with the veto. The veto of reforms: every time Préval or any of his ministers ask for international credit to give bread to the hungry, education to the illiterate or land to the peasants, there is no answer, or the answer is an order: “Learn your lesson.” And since the Haitian government refuses to learn to dismantle the few remaining public services, the final meager relief of one of the most destitute peoples in the world, it flunks the test.
At the end of last year, four German members of parliament visited Haiti. As soon as they arrived, the people’s misery hurt their eyes. So the German ambassador of Port au Prince explained the problem to them:
“This is an overpopulated country,” he said. “Haitian women always want it and Haitian men always can.”
And he laughed. The members of parliament were silent. That night, one of them, Winfried Wolf, checked the numbers. And he found out that Haiti is, jointly with El Salvador, the most overcrowded country in the Americas, but it’s just as crowded as Germany: there are almost the same number of inhabitants per square kilometer.
During his days in Haiti, Mr. Wolf was not only struck by poverty but also dazzled by the capacity for the beauty from its street painters. He came to the conclusion that Haiti is overpopulated – with artists.
In fact, the demographic alibi is more or less recent. Until a few years ago, Western powers spoke more clearly.
The United States invaded Haiti in 1915 and ruled the country until 1934. They withdrew when they achieved their two goals: collecting the bankers’ debts and abolishing the constitutional clause that prohibited selling plantations to foreigners. Then Secretary of State Robert Lansing justified the long and vicious military occupation by explaining that blacks are incapable of governing themselves, because they have “an inherent tendency to wildlife and a physical inability to civilization.” One of those responsible for the invasion, William Philips, had some time before incubating a clever idea: “This is an inferior people who were unable to preserve the civilization that the French left.”
Haiti was the pearl of the crown, the richest French colony: a large sugar plantation with slave labor. In “The Spirit of Laws,” Montesquieu forthrightly explained it: “Sugar would be too expensive if slaves weren’t used in its production. These slaves are black from head to toe and their noses are so flat that it is almost impossible to feel sorry for them. It is unthinkable that God, who is very wise, could have put a soul, and especially a good soul, in an entirely black body.”
On the other hand, God did put a whip in the foreman’s hands. Slaves were not distinguished by their willingness to work. Blacks were slaves by nature and also too vague by nature, and nature, an accomplice of the social order, was the work of God: the slave should serve his master and the master should punish the slave, who didn’t show the least bit of enthusiasm about fulfilling that divine purpose. Karl von Linneo, a contemporary of Montesquieu, portrayed the blacks with scientific accuracy: “Lazy, sluggish, negligent, indolent and with dissolute habits.” More generously, another contemporary, David Hume, verified that blacks “can develop certain human abilities, as much as parrots can speak a few words.”
The unforgivable humiliation
In 1803 the black people from Haiti gave Napoleon’s troops a sound thrashing, and Europe never forgave this humiliation inflicted on the white race. Haiti was the first free country of the Americas. The United States had won its independence before Haiti, but there were half a million slaves working in cotton and tobacco fields. US President Thomas Jefferson, who owned slaves, said that all men are equal, but also said that blacks were, are and will always be inferior.
The flag of free men was raised above the ruins. The Haitian land had been devastated by the sugar monoculture and torn by the calamities of the war against France, and one third of the population had fallen in combat. Then began the blockade. The newborn nation was condemned to isolation. No one bought from them, no one sold to them, no one recognized them.
Not even Simón Bolívar, who knew how to be brave, had the courage to give the black country diplomatic recognition. Bolívar was able to resume his struggle for American independence, when Spain had already defeated him, thanks to Haiti’s support. The Haitian government had given him seven ships and many weapons and soldiers, with the only condition that Bolívar freed slaves, an idea that had not occurred to the Liberator. Bolivar fulfilled this commitment, but after his victory, when he was ruling Gran Colombia, he turned his back on the country that saved him. And when he invited the American nations for a meeting in Panama, he did not invite Haiti, but he invited England.
The United States recognized Haiti only 60 years after the end of the independence war, at the same time when Etienne Serres, a French anatomy genius, discovered in Paris that blacks are primitive because the distance between their belly button and their penis is small. By that time, Haiti was already in the hands of brutal military dictatorships, which allocated the starving country’s resources to pay the debt to France. Europe had imposed on Haiti the obligation of paying France a huge compensation, as a way to ask for forgiveness for having committed the offense of dignity.
The history of harassment against Haiti, which nowadays reaches tragic dimensions, is also a history of racism in Western civilization.
Esteemed Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist Eduardo Galeano’s words are reprinted courtesy of Resumen Latinoamericano, via Resistir.info. ©Street News Service: http://www.street-papers.org.
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