Contributed
The Citadelle Laferriere, declared a UN World Heritage Site, is sometimes described as the world's eighth wonder.

Myrtha Désulmé, Contributor

Last year, as I started to focus on the integration of Haiti into CARICOM, I decided that this was a momentous event, which was fraught with a great number of challenges, and that I, as a Haitian-Jamaican with a legacy in business and politics, had a duty to play my part in facilitating the process of integration, by attempting to introduce Haitians and Jamaicans to each other's cultures, and fostering links between my two homelands.

To this end, I founded, along with John Maxwell, Cecil Gutzmore, and some other friends and scholars, who have an abiding love for, and interest in, Haiti, an association called the Haiti-Jamaica Society.

Mindful of the fact that the first battle in any war has to be waged for the hearts and minds of the people involved, and conscious that it would take a tremendous uphill battle to counter the centuries of disinformation, vilification, denigration, malignment and consequent prejudice, which existed against Haiti, I decided to write an article, which would marshal and highlight every positive fact and notion, in prose or in verse, about Haiti and its integration into CARICOM, intent as I was on convincing the readership of the wonderful new world of possibilities, which this integration afforded all parties.

Fast forward to a few weeks later, as I sat on my balcony, enjoying a bright and sunny Sunday morning, with a cup of coffee and my Sunday papers. Upon opening The Gleaner, I very nearly fell out of my lounge chair, when I came across my own article ('CARICOM and Haiti: The Raising of the Caribbean's Iron Curtain', October 8, 2006).

Depressing photograph

I was floored to find my 'feel good'article drowned by the most depressing photograph dominating the entire page. The photo depicted a Haitian orphanage, wherein sat a miserable woman, in the most squalid of surroundings, holding an infant on her lap, and flanked by two naked babies, while a hungry and forlorn-looking toddler stood in the forefront - the very image of destitution and abject poverty itself.

I was appalled, owing to my conviction that the picture, being worth a thousand words, had single-handedly torpedoed every word of hope and optimism, which I had so laboriously garnered, by eliciting in the readership the self-same visceral prejudices, which the article sought to counter. When I inquired from the relevant party, what could possibly have inspired the choice of such a disheartening photograph, I was told that searching for a recent picture of Haiti, they had come up with the photo in question, freshly received from Reuters.

Squalor and violence

As I hung up the phone, I reflected on the incident. I realised at that moment, that the problem was much bigger and ran much deeper than I thought. This went far beyond the selection of the particular individual who had actually chosen the picture. It was clear to me that a copy editor in any given news room, searching for a picture of Haiti, would probably be very hard put to find a pleasant one, because news photographers only go to Haiti to record images of disaster, chaos, squalor and violence.

I also realised, then and there, that more important than the cultural, linguistic, judicial, economic, social and political obstacles to be overcome, in order to achieve a successful integration of Haiti into CARICOM, was the deconstruction and reversal of the centuries of systematic vilification.

Let us examine what has brought on this irrational state of affairs. The methodical denigration of Haiti by the media is a 200 year-old tradition, which stems from the campaign of ostracism led by the U.S. and the European powers, appalled and terrified by the success of the Haitian revolution. In Haiti's Impact on the United States Greg Dunkel writes:

"The U.S. bourgeoisie, which was in large part a slavocracy, was completely shocked that the enslaved Africans of Haiti could organise themselves, rise up, smash the old order, kill their masters, and set up a new state, that was able to maintain its independence."

Major threat

This rebellion, which was inconceivable in a political framework totally saturated with racism and the denigration of people of African ancestry, was also a major threat to the existence of the slavocracy. 'The slaves of Haiti had embarked upon an irreversible revolutionary course' Petrified slave owners fled to Cuba, Jamaica, New Orleans, and the United States, the closest havens.

The U.S. press was filled with lurid stories about the 'chaos' that gripped the island, the satanic rites that drove slaves into a rampaging frenzy of destruction, about white slave owners fighting for their lives.

The shadow of St. Domingue haunted the southern press. As early as 1794, the Columbia Herald of South Carolina ran a series of articles drawing the lessons of the slave insurrection. The southern states followed the lead of the Spanish colonies in banning the importation of slaves from St. Domingue, to prevent their enslaved people from learning about Black emancipation and Jacobin ideas of republican government. So terrified were slave owners that some states briefly barred the importation of slaves from anywhere.

Whether the major U.S. slave insurrections led by Gabriel Prosser in 1800, Denmark Vessey in 1822, Nat Turner in 1831, and John Brown in 1859, were inspired by the Haitian Revolution is an open question, but both the abolitionists in the North and the slave-owners' press in the South analysed them in that context.

Profitable institution

"For over 70 years, Haiti was the example that Southern slave owners raised to defend their peculiar and profitable institution against abolition, even to the last days of the Civil War. The image of slaves breaking their chains was burned into their consciousness. (After John Brown's bold attempt in 1859, to seize the arsenal and armoury at Harpers Ferry in Virginia), the Southern press resurrected the themes of the Haitian revolution in lurid, emotionally charged articles, as if these were fresh events, not 60 to 70 years in the past. Even during the Civil War, Confederate propaganda used Haiti as an example of how the Confederacy was needed to protect white families from the evils of Jacobinism and abolition."

This is what the great Black leader, orator, author, and escaped slave, Frederick Douglass had to say about Haiti, in a speech in 1893:

"While slavery existed amongst us, her example was a sharp thorn in our side and a source of alarm and terror. She came into the sisterhood of nations through blood. She was described at the time of her advent, as a very hell of horrors. Her very name was pronounced with a shudder. She was a startling and frightful surprise, and a threat to all slave-holders throughout the world, and the slave-holding world has had its questioning eye upon her career ever since."

We have witnessed in our times the many U.S. efforts to overthrow the Cuban revolution through economic sabotage, blockades, sanctions, encirclement, and military aid for invasions. All of these same tactics were used against the Haitian revolution in an age when Haiti had no allies, and survived in extreme isolation. Even after the American Civil War, which resulted in the Emancipation Proclamation, it remained crucial for the international media to maintain that a black state could not govern itself. Hence, the ongoing propaganda and demonisation.

The name of Haiti is seldom called without the auditor being duly informed that it is indeed "the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere", so infallibly in fact, that one would almost think that that was part of its name.

I have always been disturbed by the fact that the Caribbean media, which one would have expected to be more discerning on the subject than the international media, has not only swallowed the prejudice lock, stock and barrel, but has also created its own tradition of denigration.

I want to hold the media morally accountable, and ask it to subject itself to a critical appraisal of its motives. The actions which we undertake in order to carry out our grander purposes should be based upon the most critical moral reflection. We need to ensure that the unrestricted freedom of expression, which is the prerogative and foundation of an effective media, is not misused to create a parallel universe, which segregates those of us who benefit from this freedom of expression, from those of us who are victimised by it. More often than not, we find that the truth is precisely in what is not said.

Myrtha Désulmé is the President of the Haiti-Jamaica Society.