1915-2015: One hundred years of US occupation in Haiti
July 28, 2015 marked the 100th anniversary of the United States occupation of Haiti. Haiti has been crucified by the West because Haiti did what the USA could not accomplish. Haiti is the mother of liberty in the Western Hemisphere after the European’s New World began.
It’s the first free country in the whole world created from formerly enslaved people. Haiti is what the founding fathers of the United States wanted to create having declared war on Britain. But their small minds didn’t know how. They still don’t know how and must impose their will and profit over people consumer culture on the whole world while screeching about bravery, one person one vote and liberty for all. The rest of the world pays for the lies and schizophrenic deficit, especially U.S. Blacks, especially Haiti, the Mother of Liberty and the pioneer in the human rights struggle on planet earth in the modern era.
Haiti’s free existence make the white nations insane. The challenge and shame white supremacy carries because of Haiti’s accomplishment explains why the white settlers and their motherlands in Eurasia, especially Western Eurasia and their settler nations, continually destroy, discredit, erase, gaslight Black Haiti.
The Afrikan warriors of Haiti beat, in combat, the French, the Spanish and the English to abolish colonialism, forced assimilation, institutionalized rape of Black people’s bodies, the Triangular Trade and chattel slavery in 1804.
After the captured Africans rose up and took over with the creation of the Republic of Haiti, Janjak Desalin (General Jean-Jacques Dessalines), Haiti’s founding father, published a decree announcing his intention to devote part of the nation’s meager post-war budget to secure the freedom of all enslaved human beings. Ship captains collected the $40 payments that Desalin gave for the release of each enslaved person who set foot on Haitian soil.
Desalin also enshrined within the first Haiti Constitution in 1805, the most powerful, humane, and politically advanced provisions. Accordingly, any enslaved person of African descent who arrived on the shores of Haiti was automatically free and a citizen of Haiti. But all peoples of whatever race who sought asylum from tyranny from anywhere in the world would also find asylum and safety in Haiti. All Haitians are known by the appellation “Black.” That includes the few hundred whites who fought on the side of the Africans during the Revolution to abolish slavery, forced assimilation and colonialism. They too would also be known by the appellation “Black” and be citizens of Haiti.
Imagine, after 300 years of European enslavement, the African warriors in Haiti did not make whites 3/5ths human. But said that the whites who fought for liberty alongside the African warriors are to receive full citizenship and the reward of being “Black,” or wholesomely melanated, meaning part of the ancient, pre-historic peoples whose actions show they walk with honor, are lovers of liberty.
Haiti’s cultural and revolutionary export cannot be understated
Shortly after it fought for its independence, Haiti sent soldiers, weapons, monies and printing supplies to help Simone Bolivar South America from slavery. Its revolution has inspired and sparked countless freedom movements down the annals of history.
Vodun culture and spirituality is the light and beauty of Haiti
.
Haiti has a language and culture based on the actual and symbolic psycho-spiritual unification of the amalgamated African tribes, the original Blacks already in the Americas and other Ameridian peoples.
Haitians are the people known for the Vodun drums, songs, dance, rhythms and colors. The first Haiti Diaspora brought to New Orleans by French plantation owners fleeing the Haiti revolution in the late 1700s would gather together, as the most populous groups of Africans, in Congo Square New Orleans, selling goods in the manner of the current Haiti marketplaces, trading, drumming, dancing the Djouba work songs, including contributing to the famous New Orleans Bamboula, Calinda and Congo dances. Around 1809, half of New Orleans’ inhabitants were from Haiti. Eventually the Haitian-Africans helped give birth to New Orleans Jazz and Rhythm and Blues, Madi Gras, the Second Line, modern dance, part of the Katherine Dunham method and the liberated beats that called forth U.S. Rock ‘n Roll.
“The Haitian struggle is the greatest David vs. Goliath battle being
played out on this planet.”
Haiti is not the poorest country. It still has vast mineral riches protected by the Ayisyen-Africans for 200 years from the grasp of the hoarders. It still has a most unique and beautifully humane culture, a glorious history and its relentless resistance to enslavement. But, it is the most exploited nation in the Americas.
Although Haiti had gained its own independence just a few decades earlier and its economy suffered terribly from a worldwide US-European embargo after the revolutionary war to abolish European enslavement, Haiti was the first to formally recognize Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire. Haiti sent 25 tons of Haitian coffee to the Greek revolutionaries to sell and buy weapons and 100 Black soldiers from Haiti to help in the fight for Greek independence in 1822.
In 1896, Haiti financed the army of King Menelik II of Ethiopia to defeat Italy in the Battle of Adwa to keep Ethiopia as the only surviving sovereign African nation. This defeat of a colonial power in Africa made Ethiopia a revolutionary example and rallying point for the other African territories that were in the clutches of European colonialism.
Before this, Haitians fought to help free the United States from Britain at Savannah Georgia, helped free five South American countries, sent arms and men to fight for Greek independence. Bled for their liberty, and asked for nothing in return, no imperialism, no special favors.
For this, white supremacy, constantly deceived about the shallow structural depth of its own “revolutions,” – conflicted for what, at its core, it stands for – that is, for the corporate welfare to the super-rich its institution of the nation state is a hollow shell and piggy bank for, doesn’t miss an opportunity to keep Haiti contained-in-poverty, oppressed, sick, suffering misery. Haiti was created by the enslaved, it has a liberation core. The USA was created by slavemasters. Because of its core mindset, the rulers in the USA feels free to steal the resources, lands and labor of every place it touches.
Haiti is the most exploited nation on planet earth, continually attacked by the Western powers promoting white supremacy/racism, projecting and imaging Haiti as the one that’s corrupt, backwards, violent, barbaric, greedy and anti-human.
The unintended consequence of Haiti’s 1804 victory abolishing slavery and against white supremacy was that this compelled Napoleon to sell the Louisiana Territory which doubled the size of US. 15 US states were created in whole or in part from the Louisiana Purchase. Unfortunately, the sad irony is that the Haiti victory allowed the US to add more slavery states to its empire. Today, Haitians face a power partly of its own creation. Is being re-enslaved by the super European-settler power its victory helped create. Here’s how one historian puts it:
“And here is another irony. Haitians had opened 1804 by announcing their grand experiment of a society whose basis for citizenship was literally the renunciation of white privilege, but their revolution’s success had at the same time delivered the Mississippi Valley to a new empire of slavery. The great continent would incubate a second slavery exponentially greater in economic power than the first.”
The longer view though is that because of the Haiti revolution, US slavery lasted only 60 more years instead of centuries more. Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, all inspired by the Haiti Revolution. The end of white supremacy will come, because of Haiti.”-Èzili Dantò, 1915 to 2015: A Hundred Years of US Occupation in Haiti is Enough
July 28, 2015 marks the one hundred anniversary of US white supremacist occupation in Haiti. Nowadays the USA disguises its imperialism by keeping in corrupt rulers who rule by decree, just like the Duvaliers and the current president of Haiti, Michel Martelly. They’re kept in office by US-Euro might against the wishes of the Haiti masses so the US may manipulate, project and accuse the defenseless Haiti masses of their own corruption, historic brutality, rape, greed, genocide, terror and world tyranny. Haiti resist. Desalin taught us how to say NO to tyranny. The Haitian struggle is the greatest David vs Goliath battle being played on planet earth. When the USA, the white settler nations and Eurasian continent brings into global application what Haiti stood for in the world at its founding, our revolution is done.
Jete Dlo, Sonnen Lanbi, Trase Vévé, Frape Tanbou, Rele Lwa Rasin yo.
Lovinsky Pierre Antoine Speaks
Péralte Speaks,
Makandal, Desalin,Goman, Acaau Speak,
Grann Guitonn and all the Ancestral Mothers Speak
Sonnen Lanbi, Rele Ogou Feray, Rele Dantò!
Èzili Dantò of the Free Haiti Movement Speaks on Haitian Political History
Lovinsky Pierre Antoine Speaks
Lovinsky Pierre Antoine disappeared in US occupied Haiti on August 12, 2007. No one knows what happened to our human rights icon Lovinsky Pierre Antoine.
Two weeks before he was taken by empire and their agents, Lovinsky Pierre Antoine personally sent to the Ezili Dantò Network/Free Haiti Movement his July 28, 2007 essay to mark the 92nd anniversary of the terrorizing US occupation of Haiti that lasted for 19 years from 1915 to 1934.
Lovinsky Pierre Antoine is amongst the few national treasures of Haiti. He used his life and professional skills to give voice and a space of validation to the victims, especially to Haitian women, of both the first (1991) and second (2004) Bush regime changes/foreign interventions against Haiti these last twenty-four years. (See, Ezili Dantò’s One Hundred Years of Haiti Resistance to US imperialism in all its faces.)
Today, July 28, 2015 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the US occupation in Haiti that aimed to re-enslaved Desalin’s children. We recall that to help finance US efforts in the first European World War, the U.S. by force-of-arms took complete control of Haiti’s finances and expropriated Haiti lands to grow sugar, coffee, banana, sisal and rubber for export.
“Libète ou lanmò, endepandans ou Lanmò, sa se pawòl sakre kidwe sonnen nan zorèy chak Ayisyen tankou se yon kout loray, tankou yon kout lanbi ki fè nou rasanble epi soude yonn ak lòt.“–Janjak Desalin, Deklarasyon Endepandans Ayiti Premye Janvye 1804 Gonayiv, Ayiti
First, the private City Bank of New York bankers (now Citigroup), along with French and German bankers, destabilized Haiti by refusing to pay Haiti workers for work done on the foreign-financed Haiti railroad. Then, these powerfully-connected City Bank of New York bankers, brought the US Marines to Haiti and used them, in the words of the US’s most decorated marine, as “high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers.” Major General Smedley D. Butler, wrote that he “was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism…I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.” (See,War is a Racket by Smedley Butler.)
"The UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti is an indispensable tool in realizing core USG policy interests in Haiti." --Janet A. Sanderson, U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, at Why We Need Continuing MINUSTAH Presence in Haiti, 2008.
Besides taking over Haiti banking, deep-water ports and collecting Haiti custom receipts, in on December 17, 1914, one year before the occupation officially started, the US marines carted out Haiti’s gold reserves and brought it to the National City Bank of New York’s vaults in Wall Street New York, never to be seen by Haitians, ever again. Then during the occupation, the money changers at National City Bank of New York (Citigroup) proceeded to tie the Haitian gourd, not to our gold reserves ($500,000 or more) which they straight up STOLE, but to the US dollar. These bankers, primarily the National City Bank of New York, unused to Black independence, arrogantly applied the US government’s gunboat diplomacy, the fist of debt to extort trade and other concessions, secure a foothold in Haiti, manipulate its credit and capital. These mafia banking techniques and US trade control of Haiti, continue to the present day.
The US Marines, from the segregated South, not only carted off Haiti gold reserves to the National City Bank’s New York offices, but they were the high class muscle men there to safeguard the gang of foreign banksters’ lives in a defiant Haiti. Just as today’s US global forces, identified as the UN mission to Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the attached US soldiers-private military security contractors (PMSC) are the high class muscle men protecting the same oppressive, racist and exploitative interests that one US Ambassador to Haiti has noted are indispensable in realizing core US government policy interests in Haiti. (See also, UN rape, pedophilia, sex slavery and enforced prostitution in Haiti and Video of the HuffPostLive Ezili Dantò Interview on UN/global soldier rape, sexual abuse of Haiti women and girls.)
The current US occupation of Haiti hidden behind UN guns and outsourced to US private military contractors, oftentimes put in UN uniforms, protect not only the foreign bankers but the NGOs, the corporatocracy’s mining, oil and gold interests; Paul Farmer/Bill Clinton’s charity industry and the same foreign bankers from 1915 still controlling and manipulating Haiti banking and credit.
White supremacy’s muscle men and their economic hit men at USAID/US Embassy have even managed to use the current US occupation behind UN guns and NGO humanitarian imperialism to illegally tax the $2.8 billion in yearly Diaspora remittances (at $1.50 per transfer) to Haiti that’s the only real foreign aid to the people and to tax all Haiti phone calls to, from and within Haiti at an extra .05 cents a call. (Where Does Haiti Fit in Citigroup’s Corporate History?.)
Back during the first invasion, Haiti was forced to renegotiate the 1825 French Independence debt at more usury interests rates against Haiti, while the money vultures (banksters) arbitrarily tied five Haitian gourd to one US dollar ($5 US dollar to one Haiti gourd). This extortion gave, their bogus, uncollateralized US dollar, more value than the previously gold-backed Haiti indigenous money. This, underlines and still undermines Haiti’s containment-in-poverty. Not to mention the fact that their Breton Woods financial institutions, would later, put international enslavement conditions in loan and trade agreements to force the former colonized nations to cut tariffs, not regulate capital export, privatize state assets and basically hollow-up the nation state apparatus to service the artificial legal entities (private Euro-US corporations) that these plantation minds set up for their white supremacist world thievery.
One hundred years ago in 1915, the US marines carted Haitians off to Cuba and the Dominican Republic to go work, as virtual slaves, on the sugar and banana plantations of US corporations. One hundred years ago today, the US instituted the corvee in Haiti, a chain gain system of force labor for those Haitians left in Haiti to build infrastructure for US export economy interests. Nearly one hundred years ago in 1917, the US marines from the Southern parts of the US, surrounded the Haiti parliament and at the point of the gun, dissolved parliament in order to re-write Haiti’s constitution to eliminate Dessalines’ Law.
“Never again shall colonist or European set foot on this soil as master or landowner. This shall henceforward be the foundation of our constitution.”–Dessalines’ Law
Franklin Delano Roosevelt who served as the Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Navy rewrote the Haitian constitution and took out Dessalines” Article 12 which forbid the whites from owning Haiti lands or from ruling in Haiti. (Listen to, Drybones interview on the Voice of Haiti resistance, July 2015: o ye Drybones presents, Ezili Dantò Human rights lawyer, and see, The Quiet Genocide in Haiti from FDR to Obama: How it’s wielded.)
“The national colours shall be black and red” -Desalin’s Constitution, the First Haiti Constitution, 1805
Ayiti’s lands are sacred, a world heritage for freedom, paid for in Black blood after three hundred years of European barbaric forced labor, systemic white men raping Black people and enslaving them. We are the real land of the free and brave….. We-Haitians carry the scars metered out by all the white power countries, the French, the Spanish, the British, the German, the Dutch, the US and now, since 2004, even Canada. Haiti is the independence symbol for the Black world. Free Haitians carry on the global fight against the annihilation of the Black woman’s children on the island of Ayiti. We are a rallying point for success. The example white supremacy must ground out. Charlemagne Péralte paid our interminable price. ( See, Bandits or Patriots?: Documents from Charlemagne Péralte.)
Caracol, the burial place of Charlemagne Péralte, the most famous Haiti hero who led the Caco fighters against the Marine occupation was chosen by the new occupiers as the most convenient area to build their “flagship” edifice after the earthquake.
During the first (1915 to 1934) US occupation, 15,000 Haitians were slaughtered. Haitians still tell the horrific tales, the rapes, the US soldiers’ cruel hatred of Blacks owning anything which whites could not simply take. We can’t forget the US marines’ assassination and crucifixion of Charlemagne Péralte. The massacre at Les Cayes of demonstrators on December 6, 1929. The torture and slaughter of Haiti prisoners who were housed at a Marine prison in Haiti which is the current Caracol Industrial Park location. Bill and Hillary Clinton expropriated lands from Haiti peasants at Caracol, after the 2010 earthquake, to enrich themselves , while trading their tremendous political influence to import to this location a wealthy South Korean company that fronts for US domination.
The spirit of the US-slained Charlemagne Péralte and the others, walk the halls at the Caracol Industrial Park sweatshop complex that is the US flagship Haiti earthquake reconstruction project. Turns out, Obama’s offered HOPE for Haiti was the same old sweatshop slavery of his predecessors. The Caracol Industrial Park initiative is but a thinly veiled, US eminent domain maneuver, passing off as earthquake relief. It hides their expropriation of Northern Haiti lands, where Haiti oil, gold, iridium and now deep water ports. Billionaire US subcontractors, like the Bigio family in Haiti and the Vicini family from the racist Dominican Republic are destroying and dredging up Haiti sea walls with ultra high-tech Panamax Ports. Instead of building safe, stable housing for the homeless quake victims, a Panamax port is inaugurated.
A Panamax port, when Haitians are dying for lack of clean water from UN-imported cholera epidemic, lack of food sovereignty destruction because of former president Clinton’s trade policies and from the consequences of the 2010 apocalyptic earthquake? As during the first occupation, the foreign troops today are not Haiti nation building but building infrastructure that services the foreigners’ interest in impoverished, UN cholera-ravaged (over 10,000 Haiti dead, 850,000 infected since 2010), Clorox-hungry, NGO-pillaged, earthquake-ravaged Haiti. (See also, The Clintons bring Hollywood to Celebrate the US’s flagship sweatshop at Caracol, Haiti ; US Corruption Unlimited in Haiti ; US False Benevolence in Haiti ; VICE on HBO Reports on White Savior Charitable Industrial Complex in Haiti and Red Cross Spent Half a Billion Dollars to Build Six Homes in Haiti.)
We aren’t as asleep as the mass media is. We are the Haitians who shall never forget the Haiti men, like the lone Emmanuel Drèd Wilmè, slaughtered by 1,440 U.N. Troops, in Site Solèy on July 6, 2005. We remember the ONE Haiti army soldier who, when he saw the Marine invaders on July 28, 1915 stood in his post and fired back. His name was Pierre Sully, our eternal hero showing the Haiti way: liberty or death, Libète ou lanmò – Endepandans oswa lanmò.
During the first US occupation, Haitian presidents where selected through rigged elections, just like Michel Martelly was selected by the Obama State Department, with Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton at the State Department and the US-run OAS, handing Haitians back the result they wanted regardless of the facts. Just like back from 1915 to 1934, today’s elections are shams, to put in US puppets who will serve the domestic and international interests of the US-Euros, not Haiti. (See, No to Sham Elections and US Occupation and Haiti Message to US Ambassador Pamela White and Former US Ambassador to Haiti lied, Martelly held a U.S. passport.)
Emmanuel Drèd Wilmè was also a lone Black warrior to take up arms to defend his community during the second direct US occupation behind UN uniforms that started in 2004 to present. We are the survivors left to tell this untold tale of American despotism, tyranny and imperialism in Haiti behind UN guns and uniforms and NGO fake white benevolence. To say the names of the 20,000 Haitians who were killed by US-supported forces in Haiti from 2004 to 2006. The one’s left behind to say the name Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, and share his essay on this day with all free Haitians. Lovinsky is not here to fight today, on this 100th anniversary of the US occupation. He was our colleague, one of Ezili Dantò’s grassroots collaborator, a fellow soldier facing this permanent war against the Black woman’s children. He left the rest to all of us. Tande byen Ayisyen. (English speakers may read the Darren Ell’s interviews with Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, entitled “Sovereignty and Justice in Haiti,” Part 1, dated Feb. 18, 2007 and Part 2, March 4, 2007.)
Haitians, this was written for you, by Lovinsky, before the US/UN killed him. Lovinsky was the founder of Fondasyon Trant Septanm, the then leading Haiti human rights organization to represent the victims of the 1991 Bush Sr. regime change and 2004 Bush Jr. Haiti regime change and take over. They killed him or have him floating in their rendition ships at sea somewhere on planet earth’s oceans. If he’s still alive, we share his grief, the injustice, terror and unending suffering constantly being metered out by sick white minds running the entire planet as a great big prison battleship. If the US and its Haiti agents killed him outright, today on the 100th anniversary of the US invasion to destroy the one Black republic in the Western Hemisphere, we make time from the battle against white supremacy/racism to lift up Lovinsky’s indomitable spirit and these, his words.
The first piece is the Fondasyon Trant Septanm statement (in Kreyòl) on the 92nd anniversary of the US occupation of Haiti (found on our website, here). The second, you may find on our website (in French, here). It’s about UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s visit to Haiti, written in July 31, 2007. Lovinsky Pierre Antoine was disappeared in US/UN occupied Haiti on August 12, 2007, just after writing these essays. Konen lambi a, sonnen lambi.
Jean Jacques Acaau and the Pikets are watching. Sonnen Lanbi.
Goman, the legendary leader of the Haiti maroons who fought and won in the revolutionary War of Independence against the French, the Spanish and the British and who fought on after the mulatto Petion/Boyer forces killed the Black generals, including Janjak Desalin, Bwaron Tonèr, Kapwa Lamò, Henry Christophe, et al.. All these Haiti warriors, along with, patriots like Charlemagne Péralte, Benoit Batraville, Makandal, Goman, Grann Toya, Grann Guitonn, Defile, Sergeant Major Sanit Bélé, Acaau’s Pikets, the Cacos have saved a space in the line of warriors going back to Lè Marasa, Lè Mò e lè Mistè for those conscious Haitians who reMEMBER our duty to the Ancestors, to ourselves and our legacy to live free or die. We reMEMBER, give our lifeforce to and understand we’re ONE body, ONE psyche, ONE people, ONE force calling up the irreducible essence of the Ancestral mothers and fathers of Ancient Afrika, the Afrikan souls – the first humans – original to planet earth that walk with Ayiti, our sacred highland, towards liberation from the UN criminals, US superpower terrorizers, their greedy NGO opportunists and all their Ndòki. Ginen poze. (See also, If I die in police custody, here. )
Ezili Dantò, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) and Free Haiti Movement, July 28, 2015
“The West has two faces. One evil.”
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28 Jiyè 2007
DEKLARASYON, travay Lovinsky Pierre Antoine
Nou sonje zak sasinay peyizan Machatè-yo
Nou sonje zak sasinay sou Charlemagne Péralte
Nou sonje Rosalvo Bobo
Nou sonje Pierre Sully
Nou sonje tout lòt-yo, ”¦
Nou sonje Kako-yo”¦
Nou sonje tout sa kite tonbe zam ale men”¦
Nan tan ayè, tankou nan tan jodi-a ”¦
Onè pou-yo ”¦
Rèspè pou-yo ”¦
Se yo ki te sakrifye lavi-yo
pou sove lonè nou, pou sove diyite drapo nou-an. (Ale lan lyen saa pou li l’ – http://goo.gl/rSjqCE)
***
Drybones interview on the Voice of Haiti resistance, July 2015
Ezili Dantò interviewed at Drybones Connections
o ye Drybones presents, Ezili Dantò Human rights lawyer
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” Even Spartacus didn’t accomplish what the Africans were able to do at Vertieres. The Haitian Revolution is the only successful revolution of an enslaved population in recorded WORLD HISTORY.” — Vertieres – The Greatest Battle Ever Fought
http://goo.gl/S7fgdL
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Desalin’s Law
Dessalines’ Law:
http://goo.gl/S7fgdL
“…Never again shall colonist or European set foot on this soil as master or landowner. This shall henceforward be the foundation of our constitution.”
Jamais aucun blanc ni Europeén ne mettra pied sur ce territoire à titre de maitre ou de propriétaire. Cette résolution sera désormais la base fondamentale de notre constitution. (Liberté ou La mort, Jean Jacques Dessalines, April 28, 1804)
“…No whiteman of whatever nation he may be, shall put his foot on this territory with the title of master or proprietor, neither shall he in future acquire any property therein…” (Jean Jacques Dessalines, 1805 Haitian Constituion, Art. 12.)
“…Aucun blanc, quelle que soit sa nation, ne mettra le pied sur ce territoire à titre de maitre ou de propriétaire, et ne pourra à l’avenir acquérir aucune propriéte.” (Jean Jacques Dessalines, 1805 Haitian Constituion, Art. 12.)
Dessalines’ Law laid down for Haiti to survive in a hostile environment as translated by Moriso Lewa: “The only good white is the white that shoots the bad whites – Sèl blan ki bon blan se blan k met fizi sou move blan yo” (Moriso Lewa – from “Blan Mannan”)
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” Generals, Officers, Soldiers, somewhat unlike him who has preceded me, the Ex-General Toussaint L’Ouverture, I have been faithful to the promise I made to you, when I took up arms against tyranny, and whilst the last spark of life remains in me I will keep my oath. “Never again shall a colonist, or an European, set his foot upon this territory with the title of master or proprietor.” This resolution shall henceforward form the fundamental basis of our constitution. Should other chiefs, after me, by pursuing a conduct diametrically opposite to mine, dig their own graves, and those of their own species, you will have to accuse only the law of destiny, which shall have taken me away from the happiness and welfare of my fellow-citizens. May my successors follow the path I shall have traced for them!
It is the system best adapted for consolidating their power it is the highest homage they can render to my memory.
As it is derogatory to my character and my dignity to punish the innocent for the crimes of the guilty, a handful of whites commendable by the religion they have always professed and who have beside taken the oath to live with us in the woods have experienced my clemency.
I order that the sword respect them and that they be unmolested. I recommend anew and order to all the generals of departments to grant succours [help], encouragement and protection to all neutral and friendly nations who may wish to establish commercial relations in this Island.” –Jean Jacques Dessalines (Janjak Desalin) / Head-Quarters at the Cape, 28th April, 1804, first year of independence.”
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DEADLY DIPLOMACY: THE 100th ANNIVERSARY OF THE UNITED STATES OCCUPATION OF HAITI | Black Star News Patrick Delices \ July 28,2015
http://www.blackstarnews.com/global-politics/latin-america/deadly-diplomacy-the-100th-anniversary-of-the-united
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The Long Legacy of Occupation in Haiti By Edwidge Danticat
“With the recent application of a court ruling allowing for the expulsion of Haitian residents of the Dominican Republic and Dominicans of Haitian descent, there is now a different kind of flow. At a nearby school and church on the Haitian side of the border, I met dozens of people who say that they were picked up by police and soldiers in the Dominican Republic, put in the back of pickup trucks, and dropped at the border. Some are Haitian-born, but many are Dominican-born, especially the children. Many have cards saying that they had registered for a regularization program, which was supposed to guarantee them some protection until their cases were decided, on August 1st. ” —The Long Legacy of Occupation in Haiti By Edwidge Danticat
” On May 13, 1916, the United States invaded the Dominican Republic for the first time, annexing the two countries for eight years, between 1916 and 1924. During the 1929 U.S.-guided border negotiations, Haiti lost some land, and many Haitians suddenly found themselves on Dominican soil.” —The Long Legacy of Occupation in Haiti By Edwidge Danticat
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The Crucifixion of Charlemagne Péralte for Freedom
Today, July 28, 2015 marks the one hundred anniversary of the US occupation of Haiti. We remember how the US Marine assassinated and then crucified the body of Haiti hero, Charlemagne Péralte during the first occupation of Haiti. Nou leve non li jodi a. Nou di l mèsi. Mèsi Charlemagne Péralte e tout Caco yo pou tout sa nou te sibi e fè pou Ayiti.
“Charlermagne Péralte was a Haitian man who took up arms to defend the Haitian peasants being massacred by the U.S. Marines in Haiti during the U.S. occupation of 1915. He was hunted down, executed and then the U.S. Marines who killed him, nailed his dead body to a door in the public square in the North of Haiti at Cap Haitien. (Charlemagne Péralte, The Bandit King – http://bit.ly/1dUBgCf)
CHARLEMAGNE PERALTE AND THE FIRST AMERICAN OCCUPATION OF HAITI
“Dead at thirty three years of age, betrayed like Christ, Exposed nude under his flag, crucified;
As one day he had dared to promise it to us,
And for our Nation he sacrificed himself.
Confronting the American, and alone to shout: ‘Halt’:
Let’s bare our head before Charlemagne Péralte!” – Engraved on Charlemagne Péralte’s marble gravestone at the Cap Haitien cemetery. Poem is by Christian Werleigh
“In a staged attack, on the night of Oct. 30 -31, 1919, a U.S. soldier named Hanneken, assassinated Charlemagne Péralte, a hero known to all Haitians living today. But that was not the case in 1919. Back then Péralte was a “chimeres,” a “bandit” to almost everyone in Haiti except the poor peasantry who where being slaughtered by the U.S. Marines and their then newly formed Haitian “gendarmerie.”
Back then, mostly the Haitian peasants protested the occupation and defended Haitian sovereignty. Not the leaders in the Haitian “intellectual” class – neither right wing nor progressive (except perhaps a tiny few such as Rosalvo Bobo). But in the main, the peasantry, not the bourgeoisie, not the university students, not the Haitian army, carried out the 19-year struggle against occupation in Haiti from 1915 to 1934. Only the poor and a handful from the middle class. These others came on board much later into the occupation. In fact, the university students in Haiti didn’t even start demonstrating against the occupation until perhaps 14-years later when the stipends, visas and other benefits they had been given by the U.S. were cut off. That is plain Haitian history.
Things haven’t changed much today. Promulgating Haitian division with visas, U.S. aid, passports, arms, policing jobs and other rewards…( The Crucifixion of Emmanuel “Dred” Wilmè by U.N. Troops: A historical perspective http://bit.ly/45W2J5)
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“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.” ” Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier
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One hundred years of American Occupation in Haiti by David Kroeker Maus, July 28, 2015
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Brazilian Troops Will Leave Haiti until the End of 2016, Says Defence Minister
GABRIELA GUERREIRO
FROM BRASÃLIA, May 22, 2015 Source: Folha.uol.com.br
Brazil’s government will remove the troops engaged in Minustah, the United Nations peace mission in Haiti by the end of 2016.
Defence Minister, Jaques Wagner, said on Thursday (21), in a Senate hearing, that the UN has decided to remove completely the military serving in the Caribbean country, including those from other nationalities.
“Next year, the prediction is the total withdrawal of forces; not only from Brazil, but also the United Nations”, said Wagner.
Brazil heads Minustah since its inception in 2004, after a popular revolt that brought down then-President Jean Bertrand Aristide. According to Wagner, there are currently 1,343 Brazilian military acting in the country.
The number will be reduced to 850 by the end of this year, before the total withdrawal. By June 2015, the Ministry of Defence expects to reduce to 970 the number of Brazilians in Haiti.
Soldiers from other countries, who work in other cities of Haiti, will leave before all Brazilian forces are removed in 2016.
Wagner said that Brazil’s mission in Haiti completed ten years in 2014 and it has spent US$750 million (R$ 2.3 billion). The United Nations has reimbursed US$ 320 million (R$ 1 billion).
Translated by JULIANA CALDERARI
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Haiti: The Second Occupation By The Public Archive | Published: August 4, 2015
“While the current occupation was initiated and continues to be largely funded by the U.S. and the United Nations, Haiti’s sovereignty has been extinguished by a multiracial coalition of Caribbean, Latin American and African countries. This may be the most sinister and least talked about aspect of the occupation, but it is perhaps the one that most requires our attention and contempt. ….One-hundred years after US Marines landed in Haiti, it seems like the entire world has colluded to undermine the sovereignty of the world’s first Black nation. Under these circumstances, we cannot memorialize Haiti’s first occupation without rebuking those responsible for the second.” –Jemima Pierre
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The Ironic, Tragic History of the Louisiana Purchase That Your Teacher Never Told You
The Bittersweet Victory at Saint-Domingue
The 1791 Haitian Revolution secured black independence in the former French colony and sounded the death knell for the European slave trade. It also ensured the expansion of U.S. slavery.
By Edward E. Baptist Source: Slate.com
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