Dawn Ritch, Contributor
BFORE THE Haitian Revolution began, and it took a dozen years, "... most of the land and almost all the 500,000 Negro slaves had been owned by 30,000 Frenchmen. By 1804 most of the French had fled or been killed, ... and the Negroes and the mulattoes had inherited the land... There were about 30,000 gens de couleur, the mulattoes who had been freed under French rule, including some who could read and write. There were half a million Negroes, almost entirely illiterate..." (A History of Latin America From the Beginnings to the Present by Hubert Herring; Knopf, 1957).
Readers should note that the historian was writing in 1957, long before political correctness was even thought of, and when language sought for clarity rather than obfuscation.
He continues, "A constitution was drafted, abolishing slavery forever, forbidding ownership of Haitian soil by any white man, and making the word 'Negro' synonymous with 'Haitian'..."
LOST SUPERIORITY
The first 40 years of the world's first black republic saw Negro and mulatto presidents ruling almost in turn. After one of the latter was driven into exile, the mulattoes were presidents for only eight of the succeeding 72 years. Twenty-two dictators rose and fell, none of them any good. As late as 1915, more than 90 per cent of the Haitian people were illiterate.
At the end of the 1800s, France lost her cultural dominance of the world. At the start of that century the Haitian General Jean Jacques Dessalines had defeated the soldiers of the French Emperor Napoleon in the island. In previous centuries France had been envied, even by Britain, and everybody including the Haitian elite was adopting the culture of France.
Then French was the language of international diplomacy, literature, and music. Even today that country is still recognised as the First World country most in command of all the elements of high culture.
Herring writes, "The Haitian elite, never more than two per cent of the people, are the legatees of the gens de colour, the freedmen of colonial days..." The mulattoes had taken over much of the wealth of the former white owners after they fled or were killed. They lost political control of the island to the Negro leaders, whose followers outnumbered the elite by 50 to one.
"The elite were then forced," the historian continued, "to comfort themselves with the sense of social superiority... The elite are usually mulattoes, although some pure Negroes win status in their ranks. They pride themselves upon the purity of their French and upon their prowess in music, poetry and painting. They regard physical labour as demeaning and seek positions in government, or careers in law, medicine, or business... their indubitable grace is matched by bland arrogance..."
Readers should note that for most of the 20th century, and from a point of view of cultural sophistication, if you lined up Cuba, Jamaica and Haiti behind each other, Jamaica would come third. In days gone by, the attractiveness of a Haitian woman belonging to the elite was well-known. The French exposure, the grace and charm and money.
The historian jeers at the Haitian mulattoes, however, with "Creole is the Haitian language, no matter how fondly the elite cling to their Parisian French". Then he adds this footnote: "There are grateful exceptions. A few elite intellectuals have denounced the failure of their class to recognise the worth of their African inheritance, their proneness to worship French culture, and their refusal to take responsibility for national redemption."
Nevertheless Herring had earlier noted that Haitian mulattoes were kept out of political office by Haitian Negroes, and had to comfort themselves with a sense of social superiority. If they were kept out of office, and systematically butchered under Haitian Emperor Faustin I, as the historian himself notes elsewhere, how could they be responsible for "national redemption" either then, or at any other time?
These are the burdens faced by mulattoes in the Third World. Nobody wants them in office because they're not black. But in addition to paying for their own education they're asked to pay for everybody else's.
DIVIDED RULE
This historian is clearly a white man, whose nose is more than a little out-of-joint because a tiny pocket of the Haitian people speak Parisian French. I also suspect that their level of cultivation may have greatly exceeded his own, and this is what vexes him the most. If Voodoo had been their religion, instead of Catholicism and if they were illiterate too, I think he would have found them more Haitian.
From the very beginning, the Haitians have put too fine a point on race. Whites weren't to own land, mulattoes weren't to have political power, and only Negroes were to be presidents.
After the whites left Haiti, a succession of Haitian emperors used power badly. The mulatto emperors were not much better, and made no difference anyway. No president, whether Negro or mulatto, ran the country well, except ironically in modern times Papa Doc Duvalier who made himself "President for Life." His rule was not only long, but relatively calm when compared with all the others.
Jean-Bertrande Aristide is the first democratic elected president in 200 years, and was swiftly removed in a coup in the early 1990s. Returned by the Americans, his rule continues to divide the people.
NAGGING QUESTION
It is hard to see any other future for Haiti but its past. As soon as a leader rises to the top, it goes to his head, and an abused people can find no relief except rebellion, and the whole cycle starts again.
History shows that the Haitians, despite being the first black republic in the world, are unfit to govern themselves.
Herring ends the chapter on Haiti saying "But the nagging question on Haiti remains: how can more than three million people, about 300 to the square mile in a land the size of Maryland, get enough to eat from the exhausted soil of its valleys and mountain slopes?"
Today there are over seven million people on the same square miles, and the Haitian soil is even more exhausted. Some 50 years later, the same nagging question still remains.
