In the Beginning
Haiti is not incomprehensible.
Once one examines the infamously
disastrous island’s rich history the country’s current chaos is quite
understandable. The definition of a “failed state,” Haiti is not simply a
failure unto herself but also the victim of our failure as well-intentioned
outsiders lending aid over the decades instead of tackling the cracked
foundations of the nation.
Foundations formed by concrete
mixed in a puddle stirred by a shovel at the workman’s feet, quickly thickened
with white lime. This cement hastily poured into hand-dug trenches carved from constantly
sliding eroding mountainsides. Questionable foundations built with haste to meet
the immediate need of shelter and safe placement. Foundations destined for
failure for lack of building inspection, education, or regulation. These unstable
cement and cinderblock slabs on unstable ground loosed by deforestation and
typical tropical precipitation were doomed to crack, snap, and collapse with
the perfect storm of flood, mud, or earthquake.
In the same tragic catastrophic
vein of 2010 when hundreds of homes collapsed like dominoes, sliding down shaking
hillsides, combining heavy concrete slabs, unforgiving cinderblocks, and
piercing iron rebar into higher piles of dusty white rubble, so has Haiti
through the centuries compounded disaster upon misfortune over and over. Like
the deadly cyclones that swirl through the Caribbean every season, so
circumstances in Haiti repeat and repeat with eerie parallels of mis-leaders
and ill-treatment.
Despite years of relatively
successful tourism and U.S.-aided infrastructure construction or tenuous peace,
Haiti has never known true ease from the dreadful drama of third-world economy nor
the satisfaction of functional autonomy. Instead, she is yet plagued by the
series of unfortunate events which follow the conjoined twins of developing
nations: Poverty and Ignorance.
Ageless and insatiable, these two
are as needy and repugnant as they were many years past as they peered from
beneath the cloak of the Ghost of Christmas Present, holding him with greedy
paws that made even miserly Ebenezer pause. Together these terminal twins, who
the Ghost called Ignorance and Want, constantly slaughter with weapons of
contamination, malnutrition, and corruption.
From the time of their arrival on
the peaceful island the local Taíno people called “Hayti,” Want plied
the European explorers with greed, the need for gold and riches, fortune and
lasting fame, courtly acclaim for their names. Ignorance assured them of their
rights as lordly white men, superiors to which the simple natives owed
allegiance. Together, Ignorance and Want (also known as the deadly fear of
Poverty) dipped their bloody bayonet pen in the inkwell-skull of a Taíno Indian
and began to record Haiti’s salacious, audacious, miraculous, record-setting
history…
In fourteen-hundred ninety-two when
Columbus sailed the ocean blue and in his pride ignored the guides and stumbled
upon a surprising island paradise, original life in the “New World” began to
die. The Taíno tribe of Arawak native islanders welcomed the confused
conquistadors so sure they had succeeded in the short-cut to India that the
Italian captain and his crew called their new neighbors “Indians.” Despite
learning the locational truth of his incredible miscalculation, Colon
maintained the “Indian” name and laid plans for exploiting this fresh new land
and population. Blissfully ignorant of continental tyranny, the Taíno people
shared their lovely island willingly. Hungry for funding and the foundation of accoladed
legacy, heroic Columbus claimed and renamed the land called “Hayti” in the name
of Isabella and Ferdinand, their Spanish Majesties across the sea.
Christopher Columbus https://www.britannica.com/biography/Christopher-Columbus
Now by Crown rights in control and
command of this Spanish colony Hispañola, the immigrants took
charge of the Indians. Betrayed by Columbus and his European brigade, the
native Arawaks were chained, maimed, and enslaved, until disease and abuse
utterly used them up.
Genocide: define it as the
fate of the first Islanders, reduced to the verge of extinction in the
civilized European pursuit of gold and the righteous conversion of pagan
nations. Better their bodies die in torment than their souls suffer the
eternal Inferno, confirmed enough High Church officials to keep the Spanish
Crown backing the conquistadors beating the backs of the natives.
A few Church fathers found fault
with this ideology and condemned the slavery. Nineteen years after Christopher Columbus
claimed the New Land for Spain, Brother Antonio de Montesinos preached against
the maltreatment of the Arawak people. The fiery frier claimed these savages
were men with rational souls, meant to be loved as Christ commanded.
Montesinos’ sermon persuaded one young dueño of a Hispanolian encomienda
that he and his plantation were wicked and the whole colony in desperate need
of redemption. Bartolomé de las Casas renounced his title and his lands and recommitted
his life to Christ.
Father las Casas became a priest modelled
after Montesinos who fought on behalf of the least of these: native people made
slaves on their own invaded island. Through the skill of his quill and
pestering presence at Spanish court, las Casas at last secured the preservation
of the native Haitian population, the few who remained after decades of
European immigration.
Sketchy estimations of Columbus’ legacy lay the deaths of some hundreds of thousands of Arawak Indians at his feet. An exact tally of the obliteration of the Taíno and tribal nations does not exist for colonial scribes neglected notation of names and ages of disposable natives. All we know for sure is the death toll was enormous so we wish muchas gracías a las Casas for his assistance with “la destrucción de las Indias” in 1542, fundamental in the passage of the Leyes Nuevas New Laws laying restraint to Arawak enslavement, and in establishing the Middle Passage laying way for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
For in all good conscience the
priest had to offer an alternative source for the forced labor labor force able
to fulfill the precious gold and cotton quotas. Padre de las Casas proposed
to spare the long-suffering Indians and import instead a dark-skinned mando
de obra from the Dark Continent.
Chained, maimed, and enslaved, hundreds
of thousands of Africans were captured and caged in the grave-like bowels of
slave ships. These men, women, and children of Guinea were naught but imported
property considered expendable and unworthy of considerable expense for their
maintenance.
The first shipload’s shipment arrived
on the golden shores of Hispañola in 1577 and were set to work in the
torrid heat of plantations. They cut sugarcane, harvested coffee and cacao
beans, picked fruit and cotton, chopped ebony and mahogany trees, built
palatial homes and entertained the white owners who despised them. Hispañola
flourished from south to north: her beautiful seaports were centers for the
Arts where the cultured and sophisticated might be enchanted by theater and
cuisine and an abundance of beautiful colorful women were to be had and seen.
Theodore de Bry, Reisen in Occidentialischen Indien (Frankfurt, c. 1590-1630). Engraving
https://ournativeamericans.blogspot.com/2018/06/1492-christopher-columbus-carried-ideas.html
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