“There, frankly, it was the Haitians who killed Haiti. By leaving drug trafficking… and there what they did… The Prime Minister was great, I defended him, they fired him. It's terrible, it's terrible. I can't replace it. They are completely stupid. They should never have released it, the Prime Minister was great. »
As soon as Emmanuel Macron takes off his jacket and rolls up his shirt, disaster strikes. Because you really have to be “completely stupid”when you are French, French president, to say these words about Haiti. We really have to live unconsciously of our history, and of the formidable history, the exceptional history of “Saint-Domingue”.
I was ten years old, in 1986, when “Baby Doc” was chased out of Haiti, taking refuge in France, on the Côte d'Azur (from memory). I remember, it scandalized me, child (and naive) that I was, that our country of human rights granted a golden asylum to this dictator. Who had sowed terror on his distant island, with his “Tontons Macoutes”, his death squads. He who had looted hundreds of millions of dollars for his personal fortune. A debt that the creditors, the rich of the north, would make Haitians, the poor of the south, pay down to the last cent.
As an early recruit that I was, sensitive to the misfortunes of the world, I sought information from the CDI.
I'll make it brief for you:
The French Revolution in 1794 abolished slavery in the colonies. But Bonaparte decides on his recovery. The inhabitants, and the governor for life Toussaint Louverture at the head, refuse, revolt. France sends thirty thousand soldiers, an expedition co-financed by the Americans, who fear that the rebellion will spread to their plantations. But against that, the insurrection wins! Against everyone! It is the only island, the only colony, where the former slaves held out. This is the first of the decolonizations.
But France is not giving up everything. Twenty years later, in 1825, King Charles “full and complete independence” to the former colony. On the condition that they pay 150 million gold francs, or 18 billion current dollars (I read on Wikipedia). A “debt” which will be paid in full, repaid in 1972. For a century and a half, France is therefore enriched for having simply accepted its defeat, conceding the right to self-determination of a people.
I skip episodes of American occupation, peasant guerrilla warfare, Father Aristide Préval and company, not to mention earthquakes, hurricanes, cataclysms. With, it's true, endemic corruption, a political mess, generalized chaos.
But how can we not see that, for these critics, France is the least well placed? That history imposes humility? And that it is the ex-colonist who stands out among Macron?
