24 October 2010

The Heartbeat:

a word from the publisher

Soon after discovery, an untouched island became enslaved as vast, numerous, profitable plantations. Their people suffered lynchings and many other forms of systematic atrocities used to preserve the profits of tyranny.

The people's brave and strategically ingenious rebellion frustrated and eventually overcame the era's greatest military forces. But when rebels become leaders, hard won freedom can turn into anarchy or return to oppression.

It isn't a completely unique story. There are far too many lands and peoples who have been ravaged, yet have survived. With a few details altered, it could be the history of Amazon tribesmen, Liberians, Lats or Koreans.

But this is the story of Haiti.

Inhumanity is the reality of Haiti's history of colonization. Blood diamonds' parallel for the colonial era was Haitian sugar. Haitian sugar money was made by bloodshed to be spent for bloodshed. So it was hardly surprising when violent uprisings halted production in the island's plantations.

Yet, freedom means everything and nothing to a slave. Should that be the epitaph for the nation of Haiti? Or will a new story be written?

A Sinister Pact

More than 200 years ago, the Haitian slaves' rebellion was just beginning against French, Spanish and British armies. 50,000 desperate former slaves called "the Maroons" made a pact together with a spiritist witchdoctor named mambo Cecile. They were promised victory in exchange for 200 years of allegiance to the spirits she served.

After the Haitian rebellion, Spain and Britain pulled out. France's pride and profit loss drove Napoleon to sell off the Louisiana purchase, one third of the territory of the modern United States. He sold it all to keep fighting Haitian leader, Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haitian people.

France finally gained a truce in 1802, but with the caveat that slavery would remain abolished. L'Ouverture was later captured, but the slaves' emancipation would not be reversed.

L'Ouverture warned his French captors, "In overthrowing me you have cut down...only the trunk of the tree of liberty; it will spring up again from the roots, for they are many and they are deep."

The truce and later French proclamations declared that the people were free. Did Spain, England and France's failures to subdue Haiti mean the devilish deal had secured the people's liberty? They did have freedom on paper.

But instead of a new era of freedom, their exchange of white slave masters for spiritual slave masters brought two centuries of chaos and oppression. Dictatorships, corrupt regimes and foreign military occupation dominated this span of time.

Cutting Down Haiti

Another Haitian national tragedy resulted from these centuries of turmoil and extreme poverty. By 2004 the use of trees for cheap charcoal caused a 98.6% deforestation in Haiti. The bare forest lands have multiplied the danger of seasonal hurricanes and tropical storms. Modern records alone show tens of thousands of deaths during Haitian flood-related disasters.

Meteorologist and Ph.D., Jeffrey Masters, wrote of Haiti asking, "Why does Haiti suffer a seemingly disproportionate number of natural disasters? The answer in that in large part, these are not natural disasters--they are human-caused disasters." Masters also notes that, "it doesn't even take a tropical storm to devastate Haiti--in May of 2004, three days of heavy rains from a tropical disturbance dumped more than 18 inches of rain in the mountains, triggering floods that killed over 2600 people."

Life and Liberty with Pact Anulled

Were he alive today, would Toussaint L'Ouverture warn Haitians themselves to stop cutting down the trunk of the tree of survival? How much could freedom mean to a people that lack the basic elements needed for survival? Life and liberty are both precious.

Before the spiritist pact expired in 2004, hurricane Jeanne killed 3000 in the Haitian city of Gonaives. That same year, the people of Haiti gathered in the thousands to officially change their spiritist pact for a new allegiance to Jesus Christ.

These survivors believed that freedom could not come from UN forces, from US aid or even from their own leadership of Haiti.  They believed that allegiance to Jesus will free Haiti.

How would they ever be genuinely freed by this new spiritual covenant? How long could it take to reverse the effects of centuries of spiritual, natural and mortal devastation?

The current residents of tent cities across Port Au Prince are probably also wondering "how will we live?" and "how long will the destruction continue?" Their hearts and minds could not be ruled by tyrants or colonial powers. For all the help the world has attempted in recent weeks, the Haitians are the only ones who can actually plant a future of life and liberty.

---