** Visit AAM's new website! http://www.africanassociation.org **
---------------------- Forwarded Message: ---------------------
From: "Ossia, Felix" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Haiti Marks Napoleon Battle Bicentennial
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 15:10:09 -0600
Haiti Marks Napoleon Battle Bicentennial
By PAISLEY DODDS
Associated Press Writer
November 18, 2003, 2:51 PM EST
CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti -- President Jean-Bertrand Aristide urged Haitians to
overcome economic bondage as they marked Tuesday's bicentennial of a decisive
victory over Napoleon's troops that led to the world's first successful slave
rebellion.
Aristide, whose speech was flowery with Creole proverbs, said Haitians need to
fight again as they once did to overcome "the conspiracy" of rich nations over
poor ones.
"We won't serve the masters anymore, we'll serve the people!" a crowd of
thousands chanted on the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Vertieres, which led
to the creation of the world's first black republic.
Absent were ambassadors from France, the United States and the European Union,
who stayed away to protest the government's failure to stop Aristide partisans
from blocking a demonstration in the capital on Friday by civic groups demanding
government reforms.
"The refusal of state authorities to let a peaceful demonstration take place has
cast a shadow on the bicentennial celebrations," U.S. Ambassador James Foley
said Monday.
Diplomats from the Vatican, the Organization of American States and Taiwan
joined Haitians from all over the country who crowded Cap-Haitien to celebrate
and hear from the embattled Aristide, who's struggling to liberate the nation of
8 million from worsening poverty and despair while his opponents call for his
downfall.
More than half the work force among Haiti's 8 million people is unemployed. At
least half the population is malnourished.
"I don't have any reason or money to celebrate," said Richard Jean, a
34-year-old tailor who scrapes by on $15 a month in Cap-Haitien, Haiti's
northern port and second-largest city.
Marlene Antoine, a 36-year-old street sweeper, is grateful nevertheless.
"I'm thankful for Vertieres," she said, sweeping the mud away from a walkway to
the battle site outside Cap-Haitien. Instead of being enslaved, "Now I'm able to
send my kids to school."
Hopes have waned that Aristide, Haiti's first freely elected president in 1990,
would bring new life to a one-time paradise despoiled by decades of power-hungry
dictators.
Aristide's government has overseen flawed legislative elections that have led to
a two-year impasse with a disparate opposition coalition. International aid has
dried up as donors demand reforms.
Now opponents say Aristide, who remains the country's most popular leader, is
becoming a dictator.
Haiti is a shell of what it was two centuries ago when its rich alluvial plains
and slave labor made it the wealthiest colony in the New World.
That prosperity impelled Napoleon Bonaparte to order 15,000 troops to oust
Toussaint Louverture, a former slave who rallied blacks. The French eventually
captured Louverture and imprisoned him in a bleak mountain cell on the
French-Swiss border, where he died.
Shortly afterward, however, French troops, weakened by yellow fever, surrendered
to Haitian forces.
Vertieres has since become a celebrated victory of black over white, poor over
privileged.
"Vertieres: A Battle for the Black Race" declared banners that crisscrossed the
narrow streets of Cap-Haitien, a city of brightly painted colonial houses with
iron doors.
But the country is plagued by anti-government protests that have intensified in
the past two months, with at least 15 killed and scores wounded in clashes
between Aristide supporters and opponents and in police raids.
"With or without Aristide, the country can't take much more before it starts to
collapse," said artist Reginald Boissant, 39.
Aristide, a former slum priest, came to power urging the poor to overthrow the
U.S.-backed Duvalier family dictatorship. Aristide was ousted in a coup within
months of being elected but returned to power by a U.S. invasion in 1994.
It was the third invasion by the United States since Haiti's independence, which
Washington refused to recognize for decades while slavery continued in the
South.
"We got out of the blockade then," Aristide said. "Now there's another one," he
said of the aid suspensions, which he calls economic sanctions.
"It's the same conspiracy" to keep black and poor people down, Aristide said.
"We won that victory. We can walk toward another victory."
The United States has cut all direct assistance to the Haitian government but
channels $70 million in humanitarian aid to private organizations.
Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, visit:
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/aam.html
AAM Website: http://www.africanassociation.org
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
