220 years ago Haiti became the first independent nation in Latin America, the oldest black republic in the world, and the second oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere after the United States.
All this was achieved after the only slave revolt successful in human history.
Those are many reasons for pride for a nation that has long topped other, much more painful lists.
Haiti is the poorest country in America and one of the poorest in the world, according to any of the organizations that prepare these classifications, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
And right now he finds himself in the middle of a huge political and social crisiswithout a leader after the president Jovenel Moïse would be assassinated in 2021 and the Prime Minister Ariel Henry forced to resign this week due to pressure from the armed gangs that control the capital, Prince Port.
Haiti has been the scene of slavery, revolution, debt, deforestation, corruption, exploitation and violence. Without forgetting the colonization, the occupation by the USA, revolts, coups d'état and dictatorships until the arrival in 1957 of François “Papa Doc” Duvalierwho imposed one of the most corrupt and repressive regimes in modern history that lasted 28 years and caused many atrocities and embezzlements.
It is not surprising that neither infrastructure, nor education, nor health, nor any other public good has been a priority.
This in a country with the misfortune of being located on the main fault between the tectonic plates of North America and the Caribbean and on the main hurricane track of the region, which makes natural disasters even more disastrous.
In the midst of so many regrets, there is one that stands out as incongruous to contemporary eyes: for declaring its independence Haiti had to pay a large compensation to the colonial power from which he freed himself.
From Ayiti to Hispaniola to Saint-Domingue
Christopher Columbus arrived on the island that today houses the Republics of Haiti and the Dominican Republic in December 1492.
Assuming it as territory of the Spanish crown, Columbus baptized the island Hispaniola or Hispaniolahe met the natives, who were Taíno, he called them “Indians” and with them he spent his first Christmas in the New World.
Although initially the exploitation of gold deposits and sugar production excited the colonizers, the discovery of enormous wealth on the American continent caused interest in Hispaniola to wane, particularly interest in the western part of the island.
Thus, the English, Dutch and French buccaneers disputed what the native Taínos had known as Ayiti.
Those traveling under the flag of Louis XIV, the French “Sun King”, gradually assumed control of that corner of the island and in 1665 France formally claimed it and named it Saint-Domingue.
30 years later, Madrid formally ceded a third of Hispaniola to Paris.
The pearl of the Antilles
The French turned Saint-Domingue into one of the richest colonies in the world, and the most lucrative in the Caribbean.
By 1789, 75% of the production of sugar of the world came from Saint-Domingue, as did much of the wealth and glory of France.
The so-called pearl of the Antilles also produced coffee, tobacco, cocoa, cotton and indigoand led the world in the production of each of these crops at one time or another during the 18th century.
The enormous wealth produced by the fabulous colony was extracted thanks to the importation of tens of thousands of slaves a year and the implementation of a harsh system of slavery.
bitter sugar
This is where the numbers turn sour: at the end of that economically successful 18th century, the pearl of the Antilles was the destination of a third of the entire Atlantic slave trade.
The high demand was a result of the high mortality rate of slaves: Their average lifespan was 21 years, and many died just three months after arriving.
Illness, overwork, and the sadism of supervisors They were the cause of most of the deaths.
A writing by the Haitian author Pompée Valentin, often cited for its rarity and eloquence, illustrates the treatment of slaves on Haitian plantations:
Have they not hung men with their heads down, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on boards, buried them alive, crushed them with mortars?
Have they not been forced to consume the feces?
And, after having skinned them with the whip, have they not been thrown alive to be devoured by worms or on anthills, or tied to stakes in the swamp to be devoured by mosquitoes? Have they not been thrown into cauldrons of boiling cane syrup?
Have they not put men and women into barrels studded with spikes and rolled them down the mountainsides into the abyss?
Have these miserable blacks not consigned them to the dogs that eat man until the latter, satiated by human flesh, left the victims torn apart to be finished off with bayonet and dagger?
The Revolution of the color gens of Saint-Domingue
The echo of the French Revolution of 1789 reached the rich colony where the so-called genes of color and the slaves began to wonder how the Declaration of the Human Rights of Man applied to their situation.
In 1791, a man of Jamaican origin named Boukman became the leader of African slaves on a large plantation in Cap-Français.
Following the model of the revolution in FranciOn August 22 of that year, slaves destroyed the plantations and executed all the whites living in the region.
It was the first action of an uprising that became a civil war and then a frontal battle against the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte, and that It took 12 years to achieve its goal: expel the French.
On January 1, 1804, Haiti declared its independence and Jean-Jacques Dessalines became its first ruler, initially as governor general, and later as Emperor Jacques I of Haiti, a title he assigned to himself.
Dessalines gave the order that all white men be sentenced to death.
And so it was: from the beginning of February to mid-April of that year, the Haiti massacre took place, claiming the lives of 3,000 and 5,000 white men and women of all ages.
With no intention of hiding what happened, Dessalines made an official statement: “We have given these true cannibals war for war, crime for crime, indignation for indignation. Yes, I have saved my country, I have avenged America.”
The collection account
The long struggle for independence had given slaves autonomy, but it had also destroyed most of the country's plantations and infrastructure.
The human cost was also enormous: it is estimated that of the 425,000 slaves, only 170,000 were left able to work to rebuild the brand new country.
The brutal revenge against the whites taken after France surrendered brought the contempt of many nations.
And none recognized Haiti diplomatically.
Added to this, what had happened in Saint-Domingue was the worst nightmare of all the powers that had colonies in the vicinity, so they left Haiti in “quarantine” to prevent contagion.
That's how the hard to imagine happened.
On April 17, 1825, Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer signed the Royal Ordinance of Charles X.
Alley with only one exit
The ordinance promised Haiti French diplomatic recognition in exchange for a 50% tariff reduction on French imports and compensation of 150 million francs (about $21 billion today), payable in five installments.
Why a compensation?
Because the new country had to compensate the French planters for the property they had lost, not only land but also slaves.
And if the Haitian government did not sign the agreement, the country would not only remain diplomatically isolated but would be blocked by a flotilla of French warships that was already off the Haitian coast.
Those 150 million francs in gold were equivalent to the annual income of the Haitian government multiplied by 10so it was no surprise that when it came time to make the first payment, Haiti had to take out a loan.
France had no problem with him doing so, as long as he went to a French bank.
The Independence Debt
This is how what is known as the Independence debt formally began.
A French bank lent Haiti 30 million francs – the amount of the first installment it owed – and automatically deducted 6 million francs in commissions.
With what was left, 24 million francs, Haiti began to pay reparations to France, which means that this money went directly from the vaults of the French bank to those of the French treasury.
At that same moment, Haiti owed 30 million to the French bank and 6 million more of the total debt to France than it owed before making the first payment.
It was one endless spiral to pay an immense debt that even when it was halved in 1830 was too high for the Caribbean country.
He had to take out huge loans from American, French and German banks with exorbitant interest rates that forced him to spend most of the national budget on repayments.
Finally, in 1947 Haiti finished compensating the owners of the plantations of that French colony that was the pearl of the Antilles.
It took him 122 years to pay your Independence debt.
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