The Long History of Anti-Haitianism in the Dominican Republic

Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2020. 

Author Sudhir Hazareesingh is a native of the Indian Ocean island and former French colony of Mauritius, once known as Ile de France. Drawing upon a lifetime of research in the French, British and U.S. archives, the Oxford scholar and expert on French history unearths until-recently untapped primary sources and correspondence, which provide a deeper look at the legendary anti-colonial Haitian figure Toussaint Louverture and his worldview.

Black Spartacus is a rigorous history of Louverture’s undying spirit and prodigious work for his people’s emancipation. A stranger to sleep and personal comfort, everyday the former slave-turned-general and leader of a burgeoning nation, dictated and wrote 200 letters to allies and enemies alike, covered 120 miles on horseback, and convened meetings with dozens of leaders and their communities (page 213). The first chapter examines his coming of age as a slave on the Breda plantation, from which he received his slave name, and the influence of Catholicism and Vodou. He later earned his name Louverture, meaning “The Opening,” on the battlefield inspired by “one of the most revered vodou deities, Papa Legba, the spirit of the crossroads”; a popular kreyol chant at the beginning of ritual ceremonies was “Papa Lega, open the gates for me” (43).

The middle chapters cover his time as a “general in the Spanish auxiliary army [where] he commanded a force of 4,000 men, as a French general who defeated the English invasion of San Domingue and his writing of the 1801 constitution, which outlawed slavery on the island for eternity” (58). A diplomat, he had to maneuver between warring empires with superior armies and navies hell-bent on re-enslaving “the pearl of the Antilles.” Hazareesingh evaluates Louverture’s role in the June 1799 “War of Knives” against André Rigaud and the Generals of Color (the “mulattos”). Supported by the British through their colonial administration in Jamaica, this intermediary class sought to wipe out the white planters and re-enslave Black people. Thoroughly opposed to “the relentless ethnic cleansing,” Louverture dreamed of and fought for a San Domingue for all classes. While protecting the lives of the white propertied class, he returned to rally his base on the plantations with his rallying cry: “I took up arms so that you may be free… and like you I was once a slave.” The battered, oppressed masses of former slaves were always his true source of power.

All books on the Haitian revolution must be held up to C.L.R. James’ The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. The 1938 classic of the historical materialist method continues to be the magisterial account of how the masses of Haitian slaves mobilized themselves into a people’s army and blow by blow, setback after setback, treachery after treachery and massacre after massacre, defeated Napoleon’s sanguinary French empire. 

Hazareesingh’s main critique is James gives too much credit to French Republicanism’s influence on Louverture. Yet, throughout the 427-page book the author himself constantly reminds the reader of Louverture’s loyalty to France. Both James and Hazareesingh agree on the essential components of Louverture’s personality: He never forgot his roots, he was a devout Catholic, a stickler for military and social etiquette and order, and was “incorruptible” (193). 

An admirer of French culture, language and history, Louverture felt San Domingue—the former name of the island now inhabited by Haiti and the Dominican Republic—could never make it on his own. Louverture had a type of neocolonial view that the Mauritian author interrogates. Without returning the former slaves to a bondage they so violently feared, the reader may be surprised to know their very liberator bound them to the plantations in order to continue producing the enormous wealth of the past decades and centuries. The workers in return received one-fourth of their harvest. Aware of the brutal, dehumanizing effects of the slave system, he saw the plantation economy as a necessary evil until the formerly enslaved people could build up their own sense of economy and culture. He saw France as the indispensable mother country that would instill a “Republican” spirit in “her children.” 

Surrounded by assasination plots and having been deceived from all sides, Louverture “was extremely reluctant to communicate his intentions even to his leading military officers, or to share power with them in any meaningful way” (291). Again, the Haitian general did not have the insights of future revolutionary cadre. Amilcar Cabral’s maxum, “Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories…” was all too relevant. The cultivateurs (former slaves) must have wondered why their shining prince disciplined them while giving free reign to the colons (the white planters and former slave owners). It was as if Louverture thought he could win over the antagonistic classes and wish away a class conflict based on the enslavement of millions of abducted Africans. 

While in retrospect we can call Louverture idealistic it is important to remember he did not have the advantage of drawing on the lessons of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Revolution of 1949, the Vietnamese’s popular resistance to the French and later to U.S. imperialism, or the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Unlike Haitian revolutionaries François Makandal, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Kapwa Lamò, Moyse—an adopted nephew Louverture ultimately executed—as well as other Haitian generals of the people’s war, Louverture was not willing to go all the way. Hazareesingh contrasts the Makandalist vs Louverturian vision for Haiti. Ultimately, Dessaline was the man for the historical job carrying the Makandalist project to its ultimate “No Sellout, No Compromise” conclusion. The scorched earth strategy of “Koupe tèt Boule kay” (Cut off [the masters’] heads Burn down their mansions) was all the invading troops could understand. As 20,000 of French General Charles Leclerc’s soldiers occupied Cap Haïtien in the north, Dessalines and his generals burned down the entire city and retreated to the mountains, so the invaders would have no base to call home.   

While “his capacity to straddle divides across the ideological spectrum” within the anti-colonial camp was a great asset, it was also his hamartia, or flaw fatale (357). Like James, Hazareesingh shows how Louverture, even as he died away in the infamous French dungeon at Fort de Joux in 1803, never lost hope that colonial France would live up to the 1789 creed of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.” Louverture remained a true Jacobin as France devolved again into a slave-holding empire. While revolutionary leadership through the ages will continue to debate whether his “non-racialist” view of humanity and progress was correct, they surely agree that his faith in his class and colonial enemies was his downfall. (39)

In a polemic against apologists for colonialism, Guyanese revolutionary Walter Rodney states what Louverture’s humanism, non-racialism and unbounding faith in human nature never allowed him to reach:

“They [defenders of colonialism] would then urge that another issue to be resolved is how much Europeans did for Africans, and that it is necessary to draw up a ‘balance sheet of colonialism’. On that balance sheet, they place both the ‘credits’ and the ‘debits’, and quite often conclude that the good outweighed the bad… It is our contention that this is completely false. Colonialism had only one hand—it was a one-armed bandit.” (205)

Louverture’s tragic fate re-confirmed two classes, with entirely antagonistic class interests, could not co-exist. Napoleon’s deception, kidnapping, torture, imprisonment and murder of Louverture was a most undignified ending for the most upright of men.  

Hazareesingh’s final chapter, “A Universal Hero,” examines the vast array of future revolutions’ tributes dedicated to the Haitian people’s general through art, film, literature and theater. Facing death in a prison cell in 1954, Fidel Castro wrote the Cuban revolutionaries were inspired to “revolutionize Cuba from top to bottom by the insurrection of Black slaves in Haiti, at a time when Napoleon was imitating Caesar, the France resembled Rome, the soul of Spatacus was reborn in Toussaint Louverture.” 

Black Spartacus is a motivating read and its examination of letters and documents from the Haitian revolution compliments the foundational work of C.L.R. James. 

A slightly different version of this review appeared in Haiti Liberté.

Danny Shaw is a professor of Caribbean and Latin American Studies at the City University of New York. He frequently travels to Haiti to stay with the mass anti-imperialist movement. A Senior Research Fellow at the Center on Hemispheric Affairs, Danny is fluent in Haitian Kreyol, Spanish, Portuguese and Cape Verdean Kriolu.

The world is shocked by the image of an 11-story residential building in Gaza collapsing because of a bomb dropped by the Israeli Defense Force, one of the most advanced armies in the world thanks to U.S. support. But in the United States, Andrew Yang, former presidential candidate and now candidate for mayor of New York City, proudly proclaims he stands with the “heroic people of Israel” who are under attack from the vicious, occupied Palestinians, who have no army, no rights and no state.

But as politically and morally contradictory as Yang’s sentiments might appear for many, the alternative world of Western liberalism has a different standard. In that world, liberals claim that all are equal with inalienable rights. But in practice, some lives are more equal and more valuable than others. 

In the liberal world, Trump is condemned for attempting to reject the results of the election and indicating he might not leave office at the end of his term. But as soon as Biden occupied the White House, one of his first foreign policy decisions was to give the U.S.-imposed Haitian president, Jovenel Moïse, a green light to ignore the demands of the Haitian people and the end of his term in February. He remains in office.  

In the liberal world, the United States that has backed every vicious right-wing dictator in the world since the Second World War, orchestrates coups, murders foreign leaders, attacks nations fighting for independence in places like Vietnam, trains torturers, brandishes nuclear bombs, has the longest-held political prisoners on the planet, is number one in global arms sales, imprisons more people than any other nation in the world, has supported apartheid South Africa and is supporting apartheid Israel—while championing human rights! 

In the liberal world, the United States can openly train, fund, and back opposition parties and even determine who the leader of a nation should be, but react with moral outrage when supposedly Russian-connected entities buy $100,000 worth of Facebook ads commenting on “internal” political subjects related to the 2016 election. 

In the liberal world, Democrats build on racist anti-China sentiments and the identification of China as a national threat, and then pretend they had nothing to do with the wave of anti-Asian racism and violence. 

In the liberal world, liberals are morally superior and defend Black life as long as those lives are not in Haiti, Libya, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, all of Africa, and in the jails and prisons of the United States.

In the liberal world, you can—with a straight face—condemn the retaliatory rockets from Gaza, the burning of a police station in Minneapolis, attacks on property owned by corporations in oppressed and exploited communities, attacks on school children fighting back against police in Baltimore, and attacks on North Koreans arming themselves against a crazed, violent state that has already demonstrated—as it did with Libya—what it would do to a state that disarmed in the face of U.S. and European aggression. 

And in the liberal world, Netanyahu is a democrat, the Palestinians are aggressors and Black workers did not die unnecessarily because the United States dismantled its already underdeveloped public health system. 

What all of this is teaching the colonized world, together with the death and violence in Colombia, Haiti, Palestine and the rest of the colonized world, is that even though we know the Pan-European project is moribund, the colonial-capitalist West is prepared to sacrifice everything and everyone in order to maintain its global dominance, even if it means destroying the planet and everyone on it. 

That is why Biden labels himself an “Atlanticist”—shorthand for a white supremacist. His task is to convince the European allies it is far better to work together than to allow themselves to be divided against the “barbarians” inside and at the doors of Europe and the United States.

The managers of the colonial-capitalist world understand the terms of struggle, and so should we. It must be clear to us that for the survival of collective humanity and the planet, we cannot allow uncontested power to remain in the hands of the global 1 percent. The painful truth for some is if global humanity is to live, the Pan-European white supremacist colonial-capitalist project must die.  

This article was originally published in Black Agenda Report.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was awarded the U.S. Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.  

RECIFE, Brazil—On election night, the city of Recife erupted in cheers of joy.

In the capital of the Workers’ Party presidential candidate Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva’s home state of Pernambuco, thousands roared as the vote count showed Lula overtaking his rival, right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro. While supporters set off fireworks over the Atlantic Ocean, others made the “L” sign with their fingers and thumbs to indicate support for Lula. When buses couldn’t get through the crowd of revelers, drivers gave up with beaming smiles, making the L as well.

Brazilians had just voted in their most consequential election since democratization.

But, just as after the first-round election, cheers soon turned into murmurs as people lowered their eyes to their phones to see if Lula would retain his lead. This was far from certain, given events earlier that day. The Federal Highway Police (PRF) had conducted over 500 operations by pulling over buses and cars. The miles of traffic jams that ensued impeded people from reaching voting booths, especially in northeastern states like Pernambuco. Then news broke that these operations were part of a plan the Bolsonarista-led PRF had hatched in the presidential palace.

While the Electoral Commission (TSE) condemned this, it did not take action to compensate for lost voting time. By contrast, in the first round, the TSE extended voting for the large Brazilian diaspora in Lisbon, Portugal, after someone wearing the green and yellow colors many Bolsonaristas adorn, broke into a voting booth to double vote, annulling dozens of votes.

“It’s as if,” Rômulo Cavalcante, a lawyer from the northeastern state of Alagoas, told Toward Freedom, ”[the TSE in the second round] was afraid of provoking some kind of conflict.” Due to the highway police’s unprecedented actions, Calvacante believes “democracy in Brazil remains more fragile than ever.”

Contrary to the TSE and PRF’s assurances, the operations stopped some people from voting. Yet, Lula retained his lead. He became the first candidate to beat an incumbent since Brazil emerged from a military dictatorship in the 1980s, but also won with the smallest margin since then (1.8 percent).

“[I] didn’t just defeat a candidate,” Lula proclaimed. “[I] defeated the entire machinery of the Brazilian state.”

Almost three weeks later, Bolsonaro still has not explicitly conceded. His supporters have staged roadblocks around the country, sometimes aided by the PRF. João, a tourist landlord in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte, told Toward Freedom that he believes “the election was stolen.” That echoes a false belief still held by much of the Bolsonaro camp, said Danny Shaw, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Professor at the City University of New York. “[That camp] lives in a parallel universe of half-truths, misinformation and propaganda.”

“But,” as Shaw said, “the fact that Washington recognized [the election results] so early on, put pressure on Bolsonaro and his supporters.” The chances Bolsonaro could stage a successful coup—which his camp was “constantly measuring”—have diminished rapidly.

Beyond Bolsonaro

Talk of a Bolsonaro coup has subsided. In the last few days, he and his sons visited the Italian embassy to apply for citizenship, and Bolsonaro has told allies he may leave Brazil on Lula’s inauguration, to be held on New Year’s Day. This may be because he will lose political immunity. “I think he is planning to ask for exile in another country, like Hungary, where [President Viktor] Orbán is his friend or even Italy because he is going to be charged in Brazil,” Cavalcante predicted. That is partly because Italy’s governing party (Brothers of Italy) is far-right, and an iteration of a fascist party.

It seems more likely that Bolsonaro will flee while signaling as little clarity as he can about the result, than stage a coup. He has shown with basic questions—such as whether he’s received a Covid vaccine—that he can maintain strategic obfuscation, and observers have predicted he is likely to do the same with the election’s legitimacy.

Depending on what happens to the charges of wrongdoing that are likely to be brought against him, that could be how he hopes to return to politics in future.

And whatever happens to Bolsonaro, the right will have decent prospects at the next election. It remains to be seen how united it will be. Some elements prefer the anti-institutionalism and inflammatory cultural rhetoric of Bolsonarismo. While others prefer the more rationalized “Third Way” discourse of candidates like surprise third-placed Simone Tebet, who in this campaign was promoted by a significant section of the right-wing media. Both approaches have close ties to agro-business and prioritize what Brazil’s most-read newspaper recently called “fiscal responsibility” over reducing the country’s hunger crisis, in a recent op-ed attacking Lula for prioritizing tackling hunger. The anti-redistributive right in Brazil has been resilient, even when it had to get behind a leader who oversaw hundreds of thousands of avoidable Covid deaths.

The media will have a significant impact on Brazilian discourse over the next four years. Cavalcante explained Brazilians like himself “were successfully manipulated by the media” when former President Dilma Rousseff was deposed in a 2016 procedural coup. And he told Toward Freedom that the media will need to hold accountable politicians who espouse violence, in order to return Brazil to a time when “political polarization [didn’t involve Brazilians] being threatened by their bosses, neighbors and strangers in the street.”

Neoliberalism’s Future in Brazil

The president-elect faces significant struggles, particularly in reducing the hunger crisis. He has proven credentials, but faces a hostile climate.

Lula’s “Bolsa Família” program of conditional cash transfers during his 2003-11 presidency was cited as a major factor in the 28 percent decline in poverty rates in his first term. Bolsonaro ended Bolsa Família and, despite enacting a different cash transfer scheme, has presided over a huge increase in hunger, from 19 million in late 2020 to 33 million now. This, despite being the fourth-largest food producer in the world.

“Brazil is now back on [the United Nations’] Hunger Map,” Ediane Maria, a newly-elected Socialist and Liberty Party state legislator in São Paulo, told Toward Freedom. “People who eat breakfast today are not sure they can have dinner. Lula started the Zero Hunger programme [including Bolsa Família], which got Brazil off the Hunger Map; but [under Bolsonaro], our country is in a worse state than during the biggest hunger crisis of recent memory in 1993.”

And unlike in the 2000s, Brazil is not benefitting from a commodity boom, increasing pressure from the large section of Brazilian media who advocate smaller state expenditure.

Lula will not have the resources, power, and potentially the will, to transition significantly away from neoliberalism in Brazil. Neoliberalism is the systematic movement of public resources under private control. As Jemima Pierre, the Haiti/Americas coordinator for the U.S.-based Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), told Toward Freedom, “Even though [recent Latin American election-winners have produced] leftist governments, they’re still following the lead of the U.S. in terrible neoliberal policies. So, I think it’s a good thing that Bolsonaro lost. But I also think people need to hold Lula’s feet to the fire.” Pierre worries that “the left is so relieved that Bolsonaro lost that they’re not going to push Lula, because the fear is that if you go against Lula, then you’re going to get this right-wing government back. So, the left is really stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

As long as Lula governs effectively enough to implement key progressive policies, despite his obstacles, he could continue to increase popularity of such politics in Brazil, paving the way for further progression after his term.

Lula’s Global Moves

Advocates of multilateralism and environmentalism view this election positively.

For instance, U.S. human- and labor-rights lawyer Dan Kovalik told Toward Freedom Lula’s victory “would help bring about the multipolar world that we need.”

Lula already has touted creating a cartel of rainforest-endowed countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia, to motivate conservation.

“Lula’s first foreign policy visit will be to Argentina to increase and expand the BRICS,” Shaw said, referring to the group of states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) that are trying to counter U.S. control over international finance. Lula also advocated the creation of a South America-wide currency—the Sur—during this campaign.

Like any leader, Lula will need to be held to account to meet his stated goals. As Pierre states, “We are happy that there’s a leftist president, but we also remember that it’s the same leftist president who was behind the snuffing out of Haiti sovereignty as it was trying to bring Brazil on the international stage,” referring to the 2004-17 Brazilian-led UN peacekeeping occupation of Haiti, where Brazilian troops abused their power and stayed for years after being asked to leave. Upon Washington’s re-intervention in Haiti this year, Pierre explains that the United States “has worked with leftist governments [like Mexico] to get its work done… What we’re worried about is that Lula will fall into this trap.”

Lula’s victory could probably be considered the crowning achievement of the leftist Pink Tide’s resurgence across Latin America. That’s something BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka believes “represents the continued shift of power away from the international colonial ruling classes”—as long as Lula has learned geopolitical lessons from the 2000s.

Inauguration is over a month away. Lula faces strong economic, political, international, environmental and societal pressures that can hinder progressive policymaking. But, just like on election night in Recife, if you’re a progressive or simply espouse democratic values, now is the time for cautious celebration.

Richard Matoušek is a journalist who covers sociopolitical issues in southern Europe and Latin America. He can be followed on Twitter at @RichMatousek and on Instagram at @richmatico.