Haiti: enslaved by its dark history
or 200 years the Caribbean nation has suffered from natural disasters and violent rulersBy any standards, Haiti represents a very great concentration of misery and dashed hopes. In January 1804 – a key date in the history of a bedevilled country – the African slaves overthrew their French masters and declared the world’s first black republic. Haiti became an emblem of slavery’s longed-for abolition. And the slave leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture, was hailed by William Wordsworth, among other Romantics, as a “morning star” of the Americas.
Since independence, however, emperors, kings and presidents-for-life have misruled the Caribbean nation through violence and theft of public funds. The constitution is made of paper, they say, but the bayonet is made of steel.
In January 2004, I returned to Haiti for the first time in 13 years. Preparations were under way for the independence bicentenary, but no one felt much like celebrating. The capital, Port-au-Prince, looked even more dilapidated and the streets round Toussaint L’Ouverture airport appeared to have degenerated into a slum.
Familiar smells of drainage and burning rubbish hit me as I made my way to the Hotel Oloffson, a gingerbread mansion disguised as the “Hotel Trianon” in Graham Greene’s novel The Comedians. Laughably, a room had been named after me as the author of a book on Haiti, but I was unable to stay in it as the ceiling had warped dangerously.
By some fluke, the Hotel Oloffson survived Tuesday’s earthquake, but the National Palace nearby collapsed. A more graphic image of municipal chaos would be hard to imagine: the heart of Haiti’s national and civic life has been reduced to rubble.
Now more than ever, the motto of the Haitian republic, “L’Union Fait la Force” (Strength Through Union) seems a grim joke. For two centuries since
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk …
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