On The Wing

Editor’s note: Hazar Worth is a learned man. An angry man. A man with a conscious. A man with much on his mind. He tells a tale here you may not have learned in history class. Perhaps you were sick that day.

Ironically our own US history is inextricably tied to Haiti in a very significant way.  When Napolean met his earlier Waterloo at the hands of Toussaint L’Oveture, a self-educated Haitian and leader of the slave revolt in 1803, Nappy  gave up not only  interest in Haiti, but the entire New World to boot .

Mais Non? Sacred Chat!

OUI. The Louisiana Purchase itself was the idea of the little General. He wanted out of the New World in a big way and was only to glad to jettison out of the Carib and out of what would become almost 1/3 of the good old US of A. Maybe he saw Katrina and the earthquake coming???

Sex, Voudon, Death: How Capitalism WANTS YOU (Part One)

By Hazar Worth

‘Raindrops keep falling on my head / But that doesn’t mean my eyes will soon be turning red / Crying’s not for me…..cause / I’m never going to stop the rain by complaining / Because I’m free……/ Nothing’s worrying…..me….’

-BJ Thomas, ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head’

Haiti.

The images are blurred into our immediate synapses like a hungry nympho feasting before the fucking.

Many people have been moved, and shaken, down to their cores by the stories and images and emotional overspill of a small nation struck down by an earthquake that reminds all of us of a most basic and simple equation:

Like Death, Capitalism lurks around almost every corner.

‘Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French … and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French.’ True story. And the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal’. Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another.’ - Pat Robertson

On 5 December 1492, the European navigator (and original terrorist) Christopher Columbus landed on a large island in the region of the western Atlantic Ocean that would later be referred to as the Caribbean Sea. This island was inhabited by the Taino, an Arawaken people who referred to their island as Ayiti, Bohio, or Kiskeya. In the name of the Spanish Crown, who was backing Columbus epic sojourn, the island claimed and renamed by Columbus as La Isla Hispaniola (‘The Spanish Island), ergo Hispaniola. This became the birth of Haiti and the suffering of Haiti.

Establishing a small settlement, Columbus left Hispaniola but when he returned a year later, the settlers who numbered almost 40, were no where to be found and presumed murdered by the indigenous people of Hispanola. This prompted Columbus to leave brother Bartolomeo to create a new settlement as Christopher himself laid claim to the entire island.

This opened the door for the arrival of Europeans into Hispaniola. This also opened the door to the indigenous population of Hispaniola to suffer near extinction as the influx of Europeans to occupy the settelment overseen by brother Bartolomeno (and bankrolled by the Spanish Crown) exposed the indigenous population to diseases.

Only by setting up villages elsewhere were the Tainos able to survive and gradually rebuild their population size.

During this time, from 1493 to 1520, the Spaniards exploited the island for the gold and for the silver, mined chiefly by local Amerindians directed by Spanish occupiers. Those individuals refusing to work in the mines were murdered or sold into slavery. And while attempts to protect the indigenous people of Hispaniola were set into motion by the Laws of Burgos, passed 1512-1513, which also endorsed the ‘conversion’ of the indigenous people to Catholicism, the national government of the Spanish Crown found great difficulty in enforcing these laws from afar.

Since labor forces were destroyed by the infectious disease and malnutrition that were inflicted by the European occupiers, the Spanish governors to the Crown began the import of enslaved Africans to continuing the mining of gold and silver in 1517, as authorized by Charles V.

While this remained the status qua for almost nine decades, British, Dutch, and French pirates began to exert their influences on the abandoned norther and western coasts of Hispaniola as colonists were ordered by the King of Spain in 1606 to move closer to the capital city of Santo Domingo. By this time, the Spanish interest in Hispaniola had wanted tremendously in favor the gold and silver deposits being uncovered in Mexico and South America.

By 1697, under the Treaty of Ryswick, Spain would officially cede the western third of Hispaniola to France, who had established the colony Saint-Domingue under King Louis XIV and the newly established French West India Company. By this time, and under the encouragement of Louis XIV, planters would outnumber pirates and strong crops such as tobacco, indigo, cotton, and cacao became the new silver and gold grown and harvest on the fertile norther plain of Saint-Domingue. This prompted France to import still more enslaved Africans into the region.

During this time that saw frequent slave insurrections, the last generations of the Taino natives would die out ending the full-blooded Awarakan population in a little over 200 years since the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

Prior to the epic Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), sugar and later coffee became important export crops to the gradually expanding economy of Saint-Domingue. After the war, rapid expansion occurred as 72 million pounds of raw sugar, 51 million pounds of refined sugar, one million pounds of indigo, and two million pounds of cotton were exported by 1767.

By 1787 then, Saint-Domingue produced approximately 40 percet of all sugar and 60 percent of all coffee consumed in Europe. This single colony had become the richest colony in the French Empire. To continue meeting the demands by Europe for sugar and coffee, an estimated 800,000 slaves (which accounted for a third of the entire Atlantic slave trade) were imported into Saint-Domingue. Poor and brutal conditions, as sanctioned in 1685 by Louis XIV ( under the Code Noir), created a situation where the natural population increased was hampered by French slave owners, which created a strong identification of slaves to their African culture.

A key leader in the Haitian Revolution , which won independence from France i n 1804 and elected as Haiti’s first true President, the personal secretary’s of Henri Christophe who had lived more than half his life as a slave described the crime perpetrated against the slaves of Saint-Domingue by their French masters:

‘Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars? Have they not forced them to eat excrement? And, having flayed them with the lash, have they not cast them alive to be devoured by worms, or onto anthills, or lashed them to stakes in the swamp to be devoured by mosquitoes? Have they not thrown them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup? Have they not put men and women inside of barrels studded with spikes and rolled them down mountainsides into the abyss? Have they not consigned these miserable blacks to man-eating dogs until the latter, sated by human flesh, left the mangled victims to be finished off with bayonet and poniard?’

Such immense abuse and harsh maltreatment led many African slaves to embrace the very misunderstood tribal religion of Voudon, which arose from the synergy between aspects of Catholicism forced upon many African slaves, and the traditional spiritual beliefs practiced by African culture.Thousands of freedom seeking slaves took refuge in the practice of Voudon, and used Voudon as the basis for forming communities of maroons that were settlements created in the mountains and designed to exist independently from the white plantations and the white slave owners. As these maroons gained greater and greater strength, Voudon became a strong bond that united the free slaves into a powerful collective that sought to thrive against the harsh elements of raising foods and fighting against white attackers. One of the most famous of these free slaves was Mackandal, a one-armed slave originally from Guinea and a Voudon Houngan (priest) who escaped in 1751, he united many different maroons into an ongoing collective. Mackandal spent the next six years staging successful raids of plantation owner’s crops and homes while evading capture by the French. During this six year period, he reputedly killed over 6,000 white people while uniting the collective of maroons with a fierce Voudonic vision of the destruction of the white occupiers in Saint-Domingue.

In 1758, failing to poison the drinking water of the plantation owners, Mackandal was captured and burned alive at the public square in Cap-Francais. He was a sacrifice by white plantation owners to continue their strangleholds over the natural resources of the lands, and the natural resources of human labor who worked the lands to make profits for the white plantation owners. This would include the accepted practice of ‘placage’, where a white plantation owner could take an African woman as his concubine. As many French women were not predisposed to leaving France to make the travels to the colony of Saint-Domingue, many white plantation owners were apt to take their comforts and sexual pleasures with African women. This practice created a rather wealthy class of ‘gen de couleurs (‘People of color’) allowed to acquire and possess substantial amounts of land while being denied the same rights as denied to African slaves under the governing laws of the French rulers, such as taking up certain professions, marrying whites, wearing European clothing, carrying swords or firearms in public, and attending social functions where whites were present.

However, the tipping point to Haiti occurred during the year 1789 when the Mother country of France underwent the ten year period of the French Revolution. Like a high school biology petri dish experiment of growing bacteria, the upheaval to the absolute monarchy that extended feudal privileges to the Catholic clergy and the aristocracy created a strong ripple effect that was felt in Saint-Domingue.

On 22 August, 1791, slaves from the northern region of Saint-Domingue, the wealthiest colony to the Mother country of France, inspired to take up arms by the Voudon priest (Houngan) Dutty Boukman, had cast the plantations of the northern region into the consuming appetites of flames. Though Boukman was captured and executed, the rebellion he had incited spread throughout the colony. From 22 August to 1791 to 1 January 1804, the soon to be former island of Hispaniola would be awashed with the brutality and complexities of civil strife that would inevitably unite the freed slaves with the ‘gens de couleurs’ against the French’s waning hold over Saint-Domingue, under the reclaimed Taino name of ‘Haiti’ which meant ‘Lands of Mountains’. But the price for independence occurred with a steep price: France refused to recognize the independence of Haiti until 1825 in exhange for 150 million gold francs, reduced later to 90 million gold francs. This fee was considered as retribution to the Mother country of France for ‘lost property’ that belonged to the former while colonialists who had lost slaves, land, equipment, and their valueable crops that made them profits at the expense of the freed slaves. Haiti agreed to pay this retribution fee in lieu of a crippling embargo imposed and enforced by France, Britain, and the United States.

To meet the demand for retribution by Mother country France, the Haitian government had to take out high interest loans, which saw the debt remaining on the books until 1947. Between the year of 1804 to 1934, Haiti witnessed a consistent state of small periods of relative stability and prosperity overturned by deep periods of political and social unrest, upheaval, and turmoil that witnessed the inevitable occupation by the United States from 28 July 1915 to mid-August of 1934 during a very volatile period that afflicted Haiti as continuing debts initiated by former governmental economic policies marred any real long-term sustainability of economic growth and development.

This brings us to a subtle but substantial subtext. If we now return to Mr. Pat Robertson’s statement of ignorance once more, and we shake his statement down along the trimming lines, we can witness the workings of that invisible but powerful Houngan:

Capitalism.

Hidden in plain sight – the driving need of Capitalism remains creating a fabulous fat fantastic fathomless final gravy line. People have bankrolled their money and time into seeing that awesome exit strategy. To make dollars on mere dimes and nickels; to make a 60% return on the time of a 10% down payment; to the get the lowdown on the upside to the next Big thing…..

Many would like to play in the same shallow emotional end of the small puddles. Many would like to play down these constant reminders that the ’system’ only seeks to favor the cabal of willing fools who will nurture and grow ice water for blood in their veins if that means they can score and bag that Big game of wealth and comfort, and absolute convenience. The images thrown about callously by media outlets re:  the devastation done to Haiti by the earthquake serves another agenda.

‘Give what you can, ignore the innate problems that keeps Haiti poorest, and be thankful that you live in a country that cares about you..’

Throwing more money at any situation and ‘crisis’ becomes akin to tossing seeds into a stone quarry and expecting those seeds to bear fruit. But Houngan of Capitalism continues to cast a powerful spell that seeks to capture and enslave the willing minds on both sides -

Those who engineer the play, and those who want to invest their intent and will to keep the play going, and going, and going, and going….

And at the very end of this equation: What will Haiti really come to mean to you..?