Just a couple days after the first African American was elected president of the United States, a great tragedy took place in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. A school building collapsed in Petionville, a suburb outside Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital. At least 88 children were killed. Up until Saturday, rescue workers were still searching for bodies and survivors, four survivors being found on Saturday.
The wreck that is Haiti underlines the great challenges which will face Barack Obama as president of the richest country in the Western Hemisphere. White Americans expect him to restore their prosperity and power, while black people all over the world will be disappointed if Obama’s policies do not benefit us more than his white predecessors’ did.
The United States has different immigration policies for Cuba and Haiti. Cubans who reach America are given political asylum, because the Castro government is considered repressive, it being communist. Cubans are considered political refugees. Haitians who manage to reach Florida by boat are shipped back to Haiti on the grounds that there are no political reasons for them to be given asylum. In other words, the various Haitian governments, which have included personal and military dictatorships in the post-World War II era, are officially considered democratic, hence friendly, by Washington.
The collapse of a supposedly reinforced concrete school building is no doubt the result of corruption in Haiti. My immediate opinion was that some crony or the other was awarded a contract. He “kicked back” money, and then to pay for this and his own piece of the pie, he built the structure without enough steel. (As John Avery has detailed, we saw the same thing happen in Belize when certain sections of the Western Highway were “repaired.” Contractors cheated, and people ended up dying.) My “immediate opinion” was wrong. For sure the steel was missing. But the owner of the building was a “preacher. He has been arrested.
The question of color must be addressed when you consider Cuban and Haitian refugees. The vast majority of the Cuban refugees look white. The vast majority of the Haitian refugees are decidedly black. Does this have anything to do with American immigration policy, or is it just coincidence? You tell me.
The people who rule the world are white. That much is obvious when you look at photographs of these G-7 and G-8 summits. They’ve been running “nigger” jokes among themselves for centuries. Now there’s a black man in their midst, and in their mix. Barack is unique, and his burdens will be unique.
When we grew up in British Honduras/Belize, we were taught absolutely nothing about Haiti. And yet, the history of Haiti is so important to our region. In fact, when the French Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, sold the Louisiana territory to the United States, it was around the time that he realized that he had been beaten in Haiti, and he concluded that he could not hold on to the Louisiana territory, an area which is more than two fifths of the area of today’s continental United States. U.S. president Thomas Jefferson acquired the Louisiana territory on April 30, 1803. It was 828,000 square miles west of the Mississippi river.
Just 22 days before the purchase, Toussaint L’Ouverture had died in prison in France. Before Barack Obama, there was Toussaint. He was definitely the most powerful man in the Caribbean during the 1790’s. Toussaint led the only successful slave rebellion in history. The slaveowners in the American South were terrified of him. Toussaint defeated French, British and Spanish armies. And remember, the Europeans considered themselves the greatest soldiers and military tacticians in the world.
Because of his European hubris, Napoleon refused to accept the reality of Toussaint’s multi-racial rule in Haiti. Bonaparte sent his brother-in-law, General Charles Leclerc, to crush Toussaint in 2002. Toussaint seriously admired France, and he loved Haiti, which had been the richest colony in the world when the slave revolution broke out in 1791. Toussaint tried to make peace with Leclerc, not because he was afraid of the French, but because he feared the destruction which Haiti would suffer. L’Ouverture, however, was betrayed, shackled and shipped to prison in France by Leclerc.
Dessalines then led the Haitian black masses in a “scorched earth” campaign which defeated Leclerc, but devastated the Haitian landscape. This was what Toussaint had tried to avoid. Haiti became an independent black republic in 1804, but has never recovered from the terrible war between Leclerc and Dessalines.
In the Caribbean, we know little of Haiti, and we spend little time thinking or talking about the Haitian people. You can’t make real progress if you worry about those who are worse off than you. So, we dismiss our brethren and sistren in Haiti. We will all now try to get a piece of Barack. That’s how you get ahead – mingling with those who have some, in the hope that crumbs will drop off their table.
A century and a half ago after the Haitian Revolution, the Cuban people felt the same way the Haitians did in 1791 – liberty or death. We have seen the Cuban people suffer for their freedom, as the Haitians have done. In the case of Cuba, it is because they are communists. In the case of Haiti, it was because they were black.
Barack’s victory will have given rise to optimistic expectations among the Cuban people, half of whom are black, and amongst the Haitian people, almost all of whom are black. We have to sympathize with Barack. The white power structure remains firmly in place in the United States of America. There may be things Barack would like to do for those people who share his father’s ancestry, but he will never be able to do all that is just and fair and humanitarian. It’s real. Barrack can’t free us. We have to free ourselves.
Power to the people.