Professor Henry Louis
Gates film “Black in Latin America” could not have come at a more appropriate
time. This year, 2011, has been declared by the United Nations to be the
International year for people of African descent. It is welcome news in Haiti
where generations have celebrated their African ancestry. In part 1 of the documentary, Professor Gates
looks at the lives of African descendants in Haiti and in the Dominican
Republic. He recounts the history of the island mainly from a Dominican
perspective. He refers to the island as “Hispaniola” as named by Christopher
Columbus and not as the island of Haiti as it was named by its first
inhabitants. The Dominicans prefer the term “Hispaniola”, little Spain, so that
they can point to themselves as being of Spanish origin. Professor Gates’ film
is important because it opens the gate to an important discussion that is at
the root of the island’s division into two countries with differing racial
identities. The film itself is groundbreaking in its perspective on the history
of the two countries, but it misses important historical details that would
have buttressed it further. The objective of this review is to add those
details.
The people of Haiti are
the descendants of Africans taken to the Americas between 1502 to 1866 when the
world’s superpowers derived their workforce from the buying and selling and
kidnapping of people. Haiti was the first modern nation to abolish slavery and
to assert the sanctity of human life. So successful was Haiti’s Bwa Kayiman
Revolt of 1791, that it ignited a 13 year war which eventually led to the
withdrawal of all European slave trading powers from the island. Spain was the
first European nation forced to abandon the island. It ceded its part of the
island (present day Dominican Republic) to France in 1795 in the Treaty of
Basel. The Spaniards were in such haste to leave the warn-torn island that they
may have erroneously left the remains of Christopher Columbus in an old
Cathedral in Santo Domingo. The British left in 1798 after an unsuccessful
attempt to gain control of the island. The French were the last to leave in November
1803, after they were defeated at the Battle of Vertierres. Leaders of the Revolution proclaimed the
island’s independence from European domination on January 1st, 1804.
Haiti’s history is an
incredible David and Goliath tale of an island nation led by people of African
descent struggling to survive in a world dominated by European powers bent on
subjugating them. Isolated, demonized,
and crushed by extortion and embargoes, the new Haitian state was never really given
a chance to thrive by the nations that it defeated.
Internal feuds and
nature also took their toll on the developing nation. In 1844, less than 2
years after a devastating earthquake paralyzed the central government, leaders
of the eastern part of Haiti declared its independence as the Dominican
Republic. Remaining colonists on the eastern part of the island seized the
opportunity to secede from a country that had neither protected their social
privileges nor given them access to international markets. The extent of the
territory controlled by this new Dominican government remained unclear and the
economies and cultures of the two countries remained integrated until the US
invaded the island in 1915.
In 1936, under U.S.
influence, Haiti and the Dominican Republic reached an agreement over the borders
of the two countries. This treaty, signed in the 20th century and called
the Trujillo-Vincent agreement, partitioned the island to largely reflect its
borders nearly 150 years earlier when the territory was ruled by France and Spain.
It was as if the Haitian Revolution had
not occurred. Haiti was forced to abandon the notion of the entire island as
one country as defined in its original Constitution.
The creation of the two
countries from one island has a clear history but historians have distorted
that history to support their political agendas. Dominican historians have presented Haiti as
an aggressor nation that invaded the D.R. when in fact Haiti simply exercised
its sovereignty over territory that it had won from France ever since the 1804
declaration of the island’s independence.
Some Haitian historians support the invasion myth even though there was
no Dominican state at the time. These Haitian historians find it easier to
imagine Haiti as a conquering power rather than realize that it was a besieged
country fighting to hold onto its territory.
Fewer in number and
lighter in complexion than the Haitians, the Dominicans became largely a phenotypically
mulatto state. Dominican leaders used this skin tone difference to argue that
blacks are outsiders and that the people of the Dominican Republic are Indios, the
descendants of the native population who were wiped out by the Spaniards by the
early 1500s.
In the 1930’s, the
Dominican dictator, Trujillo took measures to further lighten the skin tone of
the Dominican population. Such measures
included facilitating the entry into the Dominican Republic of Europeans
fleeing Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. At the same time he accused dark skinned people
living in the Dominican Republic of being Haitians and slaughtered them.
Professor Gates reports that at least 15,000 people were killed. Influenced by Hitler’s arguments about the
supremacy of the Arian race, Trujillo commissioned historians to write a
history showing that the Dominican Republic was as white a state as possible.
Through schooling and
political repression, many Dominicans have learned to reject their African ancestry. Instead they embrace “Hispanicity’’. It is
only by speaking Spanish, practicing the Catholic faith, and valuing light skin,
do they consider themselves to be truly Dominican.
This year 2011, as the
world celebrates African ancestry, we know that many Dominicans and Haitians
will want to assert their African ancestry. Although Dominican denial of
African heritage is widespread, it is not universal. Professor Gates was able
to find an organization in the Dominican Republic calling itself the Kongo
Brotherhood. Likewise the assertion of African heritage in Haiti, although
widespread, is not universal. Like many Dominicans, there are Haitians who deny
their African heritage. Hopefully, by opening up the discussion about African heritage,
professor Gates will help people everywhere to recognize that we are all members
of the human family and we owe it to the memory of those whose genes we carry
to be true to ourselves.
Happy
International Year for People of African Descent!
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/black-in-latin-america/featured/haiti-the-dominican-republic-an-island-divided-watch-full-episode/165/?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4da5ab95c53a4547%2C0
A Bookmanlit Review by Jerry and Yvrose Gilles/April
18,2011
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