There was a land called Ayiti (land of high mountains) by its people, who were called the Taino. They were of the Arawakan peoples, and they also called the land Bohio, or Kiskeya.
Kiskeya was the name for the entire island. Yes, this land was upon an island. Ayiti was the name for the western and mountainous part of the island.
This island was also divided into five caciques, Jaragua, Marien, Magua, Maguana and Higuey.
Jaragua, or Xaragua, and Marien, most of these two caciques now form the nation called Haiti.
There was also a leader, Anacaona, also called the Golden Flower, whom some would consider a queen, of Jaraqua, married to Caonabo, also a leader of a cacique, probably Maguana.
Credit must be given to various articles in Wikipedia for all the info I've cribbed.
Things were probably not so bad on this island called Kiskeya and its various parts for most of the 15th century and all of time before.
But, in the last decade of that century, on December 5, 1492, as time was measured then, a fellow named Christopher Columbus arrived, landing on the north, the Atlantic side of Kiskeya. Captain Columbus named the place where he landed Mole St. Nicholas. Shades of St. Nick and the festive season and all that crap! He claimed the island for his benefactress and benefactor, Isabela and Philippe of Spain, renaming the island La Isla Española (the Spanish Island).
Nineteen days later (wouldn't that be Christmas Eve?), Columbus' ship the Santa María ran aground near the present site of Cap-Haïtien, also on the north and Atlantic side of Kiskeya. There the good captain was forced to leave behind 39 men, founding the settlement of La Navidad. Ahah! Santa Maria arrives on Christmas Eve to give birth, La Navidad! What a wonderful Christmas present for the peoples then settled there!
Obviously, the already settled people of Kiskeya were not pleased with the Spanish Christmas present and they destroyed the encroachment of the strange and grasping new people. Master Columbus was obliged to move to the eastern side of the island where he established an encroachment christened La Isabela in honor of his benefactress.
But another royal lady, let her be called Queen Anacaona, a princess of Xaragua, did not like the situation and she and Caonabo, the cacique of Maguana, resisted Spanish rule.
Very cruelly, the Spanish were very cruel after all, Queen Anacaona was captured by the Spanish and executed in front of her people.
There was, unfortunately, gold to be gotten from the island. The original peoples of the island were forced to mine this wealth under the direction of the Spanish occupiers. Well, it was forced work, or slavery. After all, if you were not Spanish and you refused to work the mines you would be killed or sold into slavery.
If the mine slavery, no recipe for long life in and of itself, or the slaughter of non-Spanish humans or sending off to slavery into God knows where, these foreign
Europeans also brought with them chronic infectious diseases that were new to the Caribbean, to which the indigenous population lacked immunity. These new diseases were the chief cause of the dying off of the Taíno, but ill treatment, malnutrition, and a drastic drop in the birthrate as a result of societal disruption also contributed. The first recorded smallpox outbreak in the Americas occurred on Hispaniola in 1507.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
You know, finding out this wonderful Christmas history of the island of Kiskeya, I shall never be able to celebrate Christmas in the same spirit as I formerly did.
Things went from bad to worse in the following centuries.
The 16th century was marked by the introduction of African slaves (courtesy of the Spanish, of course) in 1517. Bitterly unhappy people dumped upon a land already filled with unhappy people.
In the 17th century the island became a haven for, mas certainement! buccaneers and pirates, primarily of the French persuasion.
Growing tobacco yielded in the 18th century to plantation growth of sugar cane, coffee and indigo and the western part was overtaken by the French:
By about 1790, Saint-Domingue had greatly overshadowed its eastern counterpart in terms of wealth and population. It quickly became the richest French colony in the New World due to the immense profits from the sugar, coffee and indigo industries. This outcome was made possible by the labor and knowledge of thousands of enslaved Africans who brought to the island skills and technology for indigo production. The French-enacted Code Noir (Black Code), prepared by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and ratified by Louis XIV, established rigid rules on slave treatment and permissible freedom. Saint-Domingue has been described as one of the most brutally efficient slave colonies; one-third of newly imported Africans died within a few years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Ayeiii! Colbert and his Code Noir! A curse upon him!
But, in the latter days of the 18th century a man named François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture arrived upon the scene and:
Toussaint l'Ouverture, a former slave and leader in the slave revolt –a man who rose in importance as a military commander because of his many skills – achieved peace in Saint-Domingue after years of war against both external invaders and internal dissension. Having established a disciplined, flexible army, l'Ouverture drove out not only the Spaniards but also the British invaders who threatened the colony. He restored stability and prosperity by daring measures which included inviting the return of planters and insisting that freed men work on plantations to renew revenues for the island. He also renewed trading ties with Great Britain and the United States. In the uncertain years of revolution, the United States played both sides, with traders supplying both the French and the rebels....
After Toussaint l'Ouverture created a separatist constitution, Napoleon Bonaparte sent an expedition of 20,000 men under the command of his brother-in-law, General Charles Leclerc, to retake the island. Leclerc's mission was to oust l'Ouverture and restore slavery. The French achieved some victories, but within a few months, yellow fever had killed most of the French soldiers. Leclerc invited Toussaint l'Ouverture to a parley, kidnapped him and sent him to France, where he was imprisoned at Fort de Joux. He died there in 1803 of exposure and tuberculosis or malnutrition and pneumonia. In its attempt to retake the colony, France had lost more than 50,000 soldiers, including 18 generals.
Again, Wikipedia.
As has been noted by the Haitian ambassador to the U.S. Raymond Joseph:
Pat Robertson's comment that Haiti has been "cursed" by a "pact to the devil" has inspired several reactions since he made the remark Wednesday afternoon.
Wednesday evening on MSNBC, Haiti's ambassador to the US, Raymond Joseph, slammed the televangelist for the comment, explaining that the Haitian slave revolt Robertson claimed was a "pact to the devil" enabled the United States and Latin America to prosper.
Joseph argued that the Haitian slave revolt allowed the United States to make the Louisiana Purchase for just $15 million, and that it allowed Simon Bolivar to "deliver Gran Colombia and the rest of South America."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
All to the good, our good and South American good. But 19th century Haiti fared most cruelly. They were forced by the French to pay huge reparations:
France formally recognized the independence of the nation in exchange for a payment of 150 million francs (the sum was reduced in 1838 to 90 million francs) – an indemnity for profits lost from the slave trade. French abolitionist Victor Schoelcher wrote, "Imposing an indemnity on the victorious slaves was equivalent to making them pay with money that which they had already paid with their blood."
Wikipedia
Bled of their wealth by France, further exploited by American corporations, the IMF and other agencies of exploitation, Haiti has suffered numberless coups, constant instability and the gradual destruction of its agronomy. Its people have been herded into the capital city Port au Prince for factory exploitation, where the most immediate blight upon Haiti, the January 12, 2009 earthquake arrived, which focused on the crowded city of Port au Prince.
In recent time, Haiti was ridiculed by the white colonial/capitalist world for demanding reparation from France for that nation's 19th century predations upon Haiti.
Damnation to all those who ridiculed Haiti for wanting reparations. I will never respect France and its colonialist allies again.
And damnation to Pat Robertson and all his kind.
Haiti is an abject lesson on the venality of free market corporate capitalism.
I pray to all the mages of the Four Directions and the Four Elements:
Restore Ayiti to what it should be! So Mote It Be!
And read some stuff by Edwidge Danticat.