Haiti and the struggle for African Liberation

Africa’s Resources in African Hands!© Burning Spear Publications

Africa belongs to African people worldwide!

Chairman Omali Yeshitela’s theory of African Internationalism is the basis for this

presentation

African and Indigenous

peoples were free,

independent self-determining

The people and environment were one

Agriculture, culture, economy: self-sustaining prosperity

Europe was poor, oppressed in middle ages: feudalism, plague

In the 1400s Europe launched an assault on the rest of the world

In the late 1400s Cristobal Colon asked Queen Isabella of Spain for

money to sail to India

Queen Isabella had to hock her jewels to pay for Columbus’ voyage

1492: Columbus landed on a Caribbean island inhabited the Taino people

The Taino called their home Ayiti, “Land of Mountains”

When Columbus arrived the Tainos welcomed him and helped his men survive

Columbus immediately began genocide: raping, torturing, slaughtering the Taino

people

According to the Spanish colonial priest Bernardo de Las Casas:

“The Spaniards entered the large house nearby…and with cuts and stabs began to kill as many as they found there, so that a stream of blood was running, as if a great number of cows had perished…To see the wounds which covered the bodies of the dead and dying was a spectacle of horror and dread.”

Within 40 years the entire Taino population was wiped out

Columbus re-named Ayiti “Hispaniola”

“Little Spain”

In 1695 Spain ceded the Western third of the island to France

France renamed it Saint-Dominque and grew cotton, indigo, tobacco and cocoa on huge plantations

In the 1780s Haiti grew •40% of all sugar•60% of all coffee

consumed in Europe

Haiti was called the “Pearl of the Antilles”

Producing the most wealth of all French colonies

France achieved this colonial wealth by enslaving millions of African people who

were worked to death within 7 years!

This stolen wealth transformed France from poverty to a wealthy

imperial power

By the late 1700s more than 50,000 Africans were brought to Haiti every year

Under the most brutal conditions imaginable!

At the end of the 18th century there were up to 800,000 enslaved Africans in Haiti

And only 32,000 French

A description of French torture of Africans in Haiti

"Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars?

“…forced them to eat excrement?

“…thrown them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup?

“…put men and women inside barrels studded with spikes and rolled them down mountainsides?

“…consigned them to man-eating dogs?”

This same process of slavery and genocide took place in the U.S., throughout the Caribbean

and South America

Same process of genocide against Indigenous people: Wounded Knee

African people became Europe’s most lucrative commodity

Slavery, genocide built capitalism:The dollar sign was a symbol for

slave shackles

The “founding fathers” were slave owners, agents of genocide

Africans auctioned throughout U.S. created billions of dollars of wealth

And spawned thousands of spin off businesses for white America

Slave economy, land theft gave opportunities for millions

European immigrants

White workers sided with own ruling class waging terror against African people

In Haiti Rebellions of African people grew against brutal conditions

Africans organized and armed

themselves for freedom

Thousands of Maroons liberated territory in Haiti’s mountains and made raids on

plantations

Inspired by the demands of the French Revolution, Africans

launched the first rebellion of the Haitian Revolution in 1791

Liberté

Egalité

Fraternité

In 1798 formerly enslaved Toussaint

L’ouverture led an African

army that defeated the British invasion

Toussaint L’ouverture became the ruler of the entire island and abolished slavery… but he did not declare

independence from France

In 1802 Napoleon sent 30,000 of his best troops to try to reclaim Haiti

Napoleon then sent in his brutal generals Rochambeau and Leclerc

Rochambeau wrote to Napoleon that to reclaim Haiti, France must “declare the negroes slaves and destroy at least 30,000” African men and women.

He burned alive, hanged, drowned and tortured black prisoners, reviving such practices as burying Africans in piles of insects and boiling them in cauldrons of molasses.

Napoleon ordered slavery reinstated in Haiti

The people rose up: determined never to be re-enslaved

Toussaint and his people’s army fought

brilliantly—but he surrendered to the French!

The French brutally arrested Toussaint and kidnapped him

to France

L’ouverture died of pneumonia, in brutal, freezing conditions in a French mountain prison

Jean Jacques Dessalines, Louverture’s chief lieutenant, then led the Africans

against the French

Dessalines always believed in nothing short of total independence

for Africans in Haiti

Under Dessalines, Africans waged a brilliant people’s war against the French

Haiti became Napoleon’s “Vietnam”

26,000 French troops were killed by the African

revolutionaries or died of yellow fever

Dessalines ordered each act of French terror to be repaid in kind

After one battle Rochambeau buried 500 Africans alive.

Dessalines responded by hanging 500 French prisoners.

The African liberation army of Haiti included women soldiers

Dessalines and the Africans defeated the French army, declaring independence on

Jan. 1, 1804

The Africans renamed the country Haiti in solidarity with the

Indigenous people

Principles of Independent Haiti’s constitution

• Africans and others escaping oppression anywhere in the world would be accepted in Haiti

• All citizens would be known as “black”• Freedom of religion• No white person could own land in

Haiti

The Haiti Revolution inspired Denmark Vesey and other

slave rebellions

Haiti’s revolution inspired Vicente Guerrero in Mexico, Simon Bolivar in Venezuela

In 1825, Haiti was forced by the US, Britain, France to pay

France 90 million gold francs for “stolen property.”

The “property” was African people themselves and land

stolen by genocide!

• That’s $90 billion in today’s gold prices!• Haiti was forced to continue these payments until

1947—122 years!

Haiti’s “reparations” supported France for more than a

hundred years, impoverishing Haiti

From 1824-1826 Independent Haiti accepted 13,000 Africans escaping

terror in the U.S.

From 1915-1934 the U.S. occupied Haiti very brutally in the face of

on-going people’s resistanceThe U.S.

• Occupied with marines

• Killed the people’s leaders

• Set up neocolonialism

• Looted Haiti’s treasury

• Rewrote Haiti’s constitution ending the prohibition on white landownership.

This is why Haiti is the most impoverished country in the western hemisphere!

Resistance of African people in Haiti against foreign domination has been constant

1950s: the U.S. set up and backed the murderous neocolonial leader, François

“Papa Doc” Duvalier, seen here with Nelson Rockefeller

Duvalier established the paramilitary death squads, the Tonton Macutes, hated by

the people

Despite the repression, on-going African

resistance ousted Baby Doc and the brutal

Duvalier regime in 1986

Papa Doc was succeeded by his son Jean-Claude “Baby Doc”

In 1990 popular leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide won 67% of the vote for

president

Aristide was overthrown by a U.S. backed coup in 1991

Again fierce resistance of the people rose up

IMF “Structural Adjustment Program” policies under Clinton deepened the poverty and destroyed Haiti’s

rice industry

Aristide was “allowed” to return to Haiti in 1994– accompanied by UN troops. Aristide was again elected in 2000—this time with

90% of vote.

US and IMF policies continue to deepen the poverty:

Africans in Haiti are forced to subsist on mud pies

The people of Haiti again rose up in early 2004

In February, 2004,

200 years after the victory of

Haiti’s independence,

Aristide was kidnapped by the U.S. and sent to

Africa!

UN troops were again sent in to brutally repress the people

and their resistance!

U.S. corporate sweat shops use slave-labor

in Haiti

Corporations such as:•Walt Disney: Mickey Mouse t-shirts, pajamas•Rawlings baseball equipment•Nikes, Levis and many more

This is the background for the earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010

For years Africans have been fleeing to the U.S. to escape terror and

poverty—at the risk of their lives!

Those who survive the trip are put into U.S. immigration detention camps!

The earthquake “relief” is an intensification of U.S. colonial occupation of Haiti—16,000 US Marines & 14,000 other military

forces

Here’s how each dollar of earthquake donations breaks down:

•42 cents for disaster assistance•33 cents for military•9 cents for food•5 cents for Haitian survivors recovery efforts•1 cent to the government of Haiti•½ cent to Dominican Republic

(Associated Press, Jan. 27, 2010)

U.S., Europe built on enslavement, genocide,

colonialism

African people live under colonialism inside U.S.

New Orleans - Haiti

African and colonized peoples imprisoned by the millions

Spawning a trillion dollar blood prison industry

African children in prison in the U.S. Largest child prison population in entire world.

Blood prisons: gold rush at expense of African people

Prison pay phones make $15,000/day

93% of paints and paintbrushes

92% of stove assembly

36% of home appliances

30% of headphones, microphones, speakers

21% of office furniture

MADE BY PRISON SLAVE LABOR

Today Indigenous people impoverished on reservations!

With life expectancy in 40s!

Indigenous people terrorized on their own stolen land

All white people sit on pedestal of slavery, genocide

On a pedestal of slavery, genocide:White America enjoys 50% of entire

world’s resources

This is why the only solution is the vision of the African People’s Socialist Party

One Africa! One Nation!

Wherever they are located around the world, Africans are one people!

The total liberation of Africa and African people everywhere under the leadership of the African working class!

Africans are one people worldwide

African & colonized people have a right to resist!

Uhuru Movement: power in the hands of African working people

One Indigenous people throughout the hemisphere

Africa’s resources must be in hands of African

people!

African People’s Socialist Party-Sierra Leone formed 2009

All-African People’s Development & Empowerment

Programs

Uhuru House: Embassy to African world

Uhuru Radio, Uhuru News

What can white people do?

Stand for Solidarity with African liberation: Not Charity!

Join the Uhuru Solidarity Movement

Support Africa’s Resources in African Hands: Reparations

Raising resources for Uhuru community kitchen, recording studio

A future of peace, justice lies in the liberation of African and

oppressed peoples

What you can do:Uhuru Pies

Yoga with a Purpose

What ever you do best can contribute

One Africa! One Nation

www.apscuhuru.org