Two Films about Haiti

The documentary Poteau Mitan depicts the lives of five Haitian women living in abject poverty in urban Haiti. Each woman tells her own story.

Remember, this film was made before the earthquake. The situation now is even worse.

In traditional Haitian religion, Poto Mitan is a pole around which all activity centers. The film makes the point that in Haitian society, everything rests on the women.

The women work in factories where they are exploited. Paid a pittance for the work they do, they struggle to pay for basic items such as food and housing. In addition, the Haitian government does not provide free education or healthcare.

The film describes how the policy of neo-liberalism has allowed cheap goods to come into the country. For example, rice imported from the United States is sold at a lower price than the locally-produced Haitian rice. The poor have no choice but to buy the cheaper imported rice in order to feed their families.

The IMF's policies have meant that the government has had to spend the majority of its money servicing the debt. So subsidies that had been paid to farmers are no longer paid.

Because of this, many people have left the rural areas and crowded into Port Au Prince, where they live in squalour.

A recurring theme in the film is a mother braiding of her young daughter's hair. This doesn't really work in the context of the film, but it is a way of weaving together the various women's stories.

Often, parents have to take their children out of school as they cannot afford the fees. If a family cannot pay for all of the children to be educated, the tendency is to educate the sons. The girl children have to go to work to pay for their brothers' school fees.

Without education, the girls are condemned to a life of poverty. Of course, this also happens in many other places in the world, including rural Africa.

In Haiti, the majority of families are single-parent families with female heads of households. So when women are struggling, the whole of the family and thus the whole of the society struggles.

These women are very strong, resilient and resourceful. They organise and they continue to fight for their rights.

See below for videos about how the U.S. government conspired to keep Haitian wages low.

19,000 U.S. troops have been deployed in Haiti. They have not brought with them equipment, such as diggers, which would help to bring bodies out of the rubble. Nearly nine months after the earthquake, bodies are still being recovered.

The American people, in our generosity, have donated millions of dollars for Haitian aid. All over the world, people have contributed amounts totalling nearly a billion pounds to aid the people of Haiti. Yet only 3% of this has been spent.

We need to ask where our money is. Where has it gone? And why has it not been used to help the Haitian people?

A recent documentary on the BBC, "Surviving Haiti", stated that 50,000 people are housed in official camps, where they are given free food and medical care. The rest of the people, living in makeshift accommodation, are given nothing. From time to time, the authorities come along and force them to move on but don't offer them alternative accommodation. Why are these people's needs not being addressed?

We need to have better sources of information. For some reliable sources, see the Resources section, below.

It is said that various countries are not prepared to send the money to the Haitian government because it is feared that the government is too corrupt and the money will not get to the people who need it. Many Haitian people agree with this analysis. But there must be a way to get the money to the people who are desperate for supplies and assistance.

"Surviving Haiti" focused on children, many of whom were awaiting adoption by white French parents before the earthquake. As many of the records were destroyed, some adoptions have not been able to go through.

In any case, although the French adopters will obviously love and care for their Haitian children, surely it would be better for the children to be adopted by Black parents, who can help to reinforce their culture.

The people of Haiti often seen white people as their saviours from the crisis. Surely this is going to perpetuate what is already a dangerous and pernicious relationship.

I would also like to know, what is President Obama doing about the crisis? What is he doing to respond to the needs of the people of Haiti?

This film told the story of Jean Leopold Dominique, the owner of Radio Haiti. This film told the story of modern-day Haiti to the year 2000.

Dominique spent his life criticising successive military regimes which exploited the peasantry, the majority of whom were poor and Black.

Fluent in English and French, Dominique ensured that Radio Haiti broadcast in Kreyol (Creole), the language spoken by the majority of Haitians. By employing Kreyol-speaking journalists, Radio Haiti was able to give ordinary Haitian people a voice and inform them of world events.

Notorious dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, alias Baby Doc, has recently returned to Haiti and been arrested. He was charged with corruption and enbezzlement and is waiting to see whether his case will go to trial.

In the film, The Agronomist, Dominique speaks about how, under the rule of Baby Doc, when farmers were harvesting their crops, members of Baby Doc's militia would turn up and demand half the harvest - declaring magnanimously, "You can keep the rest".

Baby Doc and his militia, the Ton Ton Macoute, were notorious for their violence, beating imprisoning and torturing any who opposed them.

Radio Haiti came under fire - literally. The film included clips showing bullet-holes where the station had been fired upon by troops.

The U.S. military later intervened and overthrew Baby Doc. They, in partnership with the UN, instituted a democratically-elected government under President Aristide. This government was subsequently overthrown by another military coup.

All in all, Radio Haiti was attacked three times over a period of years. Dominique and his wife describe hearing the soldiers shooting at the mixers and destroying the turntables with their rifle butts. Journalists from the station were arrested and torutured. Dominique and his wife were twice forced to go into exile to the U.S.

Viewing this film, one gets the sense of how much Haitian politics were influenced by the U.S. Under Jimmy Carter's Presidency, relations thawed between the two countries. When there was a change of regime upon Reagan's election, things changed dramatically in Haiti.

In 2000, Dominique was assassinated in Haiti.

This film, directed by Jonathan Demme, gives us a portrait of a man passionately committed to the liberation of the Haitian people. It boasts a score by Wyclef Jean.

The previous film explored the life and work of poet and novelist Jacques Roumain. Born into a wealthy family and classed as a "mulatto", Roumain turned his back on his privileged class background and devoted his life to fighting for the Haitian Black majority in the early 20th century.

The film does not mention the fact that Roumain befriended the author and poet Langston Hughes.

Unlike Dominique, Roumain explored issues around skin colour and its relationship to privilege in Haiti. Like Dominique, he was imprisoned and exiled several times. His imprisonment involved what could be descried as torture. He was kept in a cell with no windows, and nothing to sleep on but the floor, in the tropical heat for months at a time, under a corrugated iron roof.

In exile, he studied and taught in the U.S. and Mexico. He drew strong parallels between the situations in Haiti and Cuba.

In poor health, Roumain was reunited with his beloved wife in Haiti, where he died a few months later. His best-known work was the novel "Masters of the Dew", which was translated into English by Langston Hughes.

I confess I had never heard of Jacques Roumain or Jean Leopold Dominque, so my life and my knowledge of history have been enriched by these two films.

In the context of the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution can be seen as a natural progression.

In the context of world history, Haiti is the first and only nation ever to be founded by people who had been enslaved.

In 1791, enslaved African people in the French Caribbean colony of St. Domingue rose up against their masters.

Slavery in St. Domingue was particularly brutal. The life expectancy of enslaved Africans working in the sugar cane fields was three years.

Although the ideas of the French Revolution travelled to the island, the white planters hated the revolutionary government. The white people, along with the mixed-race population, many of whom were also planters and slave-owners, strongly resisted the prospect of freeing African slaves. The mixed-race people, however, petitioned for equal rights with the whites - for themselves.

Having freed themselves by defeating the French army, the African former slaves went on to defeat the armies of Britain and Spain.

The rebels were mostly an untrained fighting force using only very basic weapons, which makes their victories all the more remarkable. They were led by able generals including Jean Jacques Dessalines and the brilliant Toussaint L'Ouverture.

A delegation travelled to Paris to address the new government there, and slavery was abolished in all French Caribbean colonies. This was celebrated in Paris and all over France as a victory for the ideals of the French Revolution.

Toussaint L'Ouverture had been tricked into attending a meeting, where he was arrested like a common criminal and transported to France. He died in a French prison of pneumonia and starvation.

Once Napoleon came to power, he tried to turn back the clock. Sending his brutal general Rochambeau to the new island republic of Haiti, whose weapons included man-eating dogs, Napoleon planned to kill every Black person over the age of 10 and re-establish slavery.

The Haitian forces then overcame Napoleon's army of between 10,000 and 20,000 troops.

Many thanks to Black History Studies for this information.

See also: The Haitian Revolution and Practical Spirituality, below.

This was taken from a newsletter by London Black History Walks.

Immediate After-Effects of the Revolution

- African people all over the world were inspired to fight harder and longer than they are already doing.

- Haiti supplied fighting revolutionaries to other Caribbean islands.Haitians use captured European ships to liberate Africans from passing slave ships

- The fear of having too many Africans fresh from Africa contributedA to the British abolition of the slave trade in 1807... and more.

The aftermath of the Revolution had other impacts on Haiti, including..

Although Toussaint L'Ouverture's army was never defeated by the French, the Spanish or the British, Haiti was in forced to pay a total of 150 million Francs to France for fighting against slavery. The USA endorsed this position,

This was later reduced to 70 million Francs in the 1830s, but this was still an enormous burden for the Haitian population.

The last payment was made in 1947. (President Aristide actually asked for it back in 2003.) The equivalent in today's money is $21.7 billion, source Dr Francis St Hubert, Haiti Restitution Commission. This is based on 5% annual interest; if the normal 7.5% interest were applied, Haiti could be entitled to $4 trillion . The situation is comparable to the Germans demanding compensation from the British for fighting back in World War 2. If that had happened, how underdeveloped would Britain be and how overdeveloped would Germany have become ?

Haiti was forced to borrow from French banks at high interest rates to pay the money to the French, forcing Haiti further into poverty.

The US Marines invadde and brutally occupied Haiti in 1915- 1934, because Haitians refuse to allow foreigners to own their land. US corporations are later brought in to establish plantations and jeans factories that use slave-type labour.... and more.

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