MIAMI, United States.- mize is the popular Haitian pronunciation of the word misere. mize it denotes more than misery: it denotes abject poverty, destitution, poverty, filth, helplessness, hardship. mize it is almost a synonym for Haiti coined by the Haitians themselves.
The newspaper New York Times just published a study (The Road of Haiti’s Misery: Reparations to Enslavers, 05/20/22) carried out by four of its researchers, which leaves the reader stupefied by the data and the story that it reveals about how France looted the Caribbean country for almost a century demanding – at the point of 500 cannons from the threatening war fleet before its ports–, the payment of 150 million francs in compensation, to its coffers and to its subjects, former owners of plantations and slaves, after the rebellion and revolution of 1791 led by Toussaint Louverture. That rebellion led Haiti to independence and the founding of the first free republic in the Americas in 1804.
The incendiary torch that makes us Cubans so proud when we study our wars of independence did not originate with our mambises in the 19th century in the cane fields of Cuba: it originated with the slaves in the 18th century in the coffee plantations of Saint-Domingueas Haiti was called at the time, during its belligerence against bloody French exploitation.
With the victory of the rebellion and the establishment of Jean-Jacques Dessalines at the helm of the new country (by the way, proclaimed Empire), France turned the cannons on its former colony and demanded compensation for the losses suffered. The country’s losses and the losses of the slavers and their heirs, all from wealthy families who did not remotely need the money, including, according to the report, the Empress of Brazil, the son-in-law of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia, and a Belgian prince whose ancestors they dated back to the circle of Catherine the Great.
Contrary to what usually happens, the victorious returned to being slaves. In the long run, the Haitians lost, not only by not being able to exist as free beings, but by not being able to manage progress due to lack of funds, since most of the resources – in cash – of the new country went through ship for decades in armored trunks to France, as blackmail imposed in punishment –“a revenge” – for the audacity to win freedom, according to the Swiss historian Frédérique Beauvois.
The judicious and conservative calculation of the researchers of the Timescorroborated by a team of 15 renowned economists, indicates that “Haitians paid (to France, its banks, and former European slave owners) the equivalent today of US$560 million […]. If that money had stayed and been invested in the Haitian economy to multiply over the years […] would have added between US$21 billion and US$115 billion to the development of the country”.
The report of Times adds data on the various loans imposed by French banks on Haiti so that the country could meet the compensation payments. According to the researchers, what Haiti paid to France between 1925 and 1957 ranged from 19% to 40% of the government’s income from various taxes. There is no doubt: Haiti could have been another country.
The report also recognizes the role played by the corruption of the country’s wealthy classes, who controlled politics, the public treasury and the economy, in the total collapse of Haiti towards the closest thing to Dante’s hell, a situation of which it has not been able to recover and that lasts to this day. This collapse is manifested in the low level of literacy, the lack of power lines, sewage systems and a drinking water system; It manifests itself in the absence of a garbage collection system and public works, of state schools –almost all those that exist are private and expensive–, of public health infrastructure or networks for the development of small businesses.
known Cap-Françaisits main city, like the “Paris of the Antilles” and could be today like Costa Rica, according to the experts consulted for the report of the TimesHaiti is still a pariah, as it was in 1804 when no power back then supported it or came to its rescue, because they were all slave powers – Spain, the United States, Portugal, England – that did not want their subjects – their own slaves – will be infected with the germ of freedom.
Simón Bolívar himself would advise the Cuban patricians to postpone the independence of Cuba until they had many more whites than blacks in the country, because “with one black country on this continent, enough.” He was referring, of course, with despicable racism, to Haiti.
For its part, France does not acknowledge that it owes Haiti billions of dollars or euros. As if it wasn’t the thing with her. In 2003, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, president of Haiti – whose administration was not transparent at all – demanded that France recognize this debt, calculated at $21,685,135,571, the product of extortion. Not only did France refuse to do so, but a month later it would collaborate with the US to depose Aristide, according to the report of the Times.
Consider the following: According to the report of Times, the misery of the Haitian people was generated in large part by a foreign power, France, which despised and hated Haitians. The misery of the Cuban people has been generated – and continues to be – by a domestic power of its own, by the ruthless dictatorship that has been imposed for 63 years, which despises and hates its people. Parallel tragedies, although different.
Although on a much smaller scale, the US replaced France in the outrage of Haiti between 1915 and 1947. The payments of loans issued by Wall Street banks meant the extraction of 25% of the income of the Haitian Treasury in just one 10 year period. And as if the existing corruption It would have been little, Washington propped up the Duvaliers and kept them at the head of the impoverished country between 1957 and 1986 – 29 years – despite official theft and violence.
All the colonial powers were atrocious. The trade and mistreatment of slaves, horrendous. All the slavers – the so-called slavers – were ruthless. The exploitation was general and inhumane. But the viciousness that motivated France to inflict the damage with which it punished little Haiti for a century, as the Timesis unparalleled, at least on our continent.
Suddenly, I have lost the desire to visit Paris again. The palaces, the monuments, the fountains, the facades, the beautiful architecture, its museums and its historical sites are, in part, the product of this armed robbery. The mize of our Haitian brothers floats invisible in the air. From this report of Times I won’t be able to enjoy French delicacies. The mizè haïtienne ne permet pas.
OPINION ARTICLE
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