Speaker 1: What's a dead man? Donald Rumsfeld? Let Go the Bastards,
Speaker 1: the podcast where Donald Rumsfeld is a corpse. Um, it's
Speaker 1: he died surrounded by his family, as opposed to surrounded
Speaker 1: by the families of his victims beating him with sticks.
Speaker 1: But whatever, that's he's dead. That's as good as you get.
Speaker 1: I guess um. There's an amazing, amazing ap article out
Speaker 1: about him that like describes him as a cunning leader
Speaker 1: who was undermined by the Iraq War. Undermine you know how,
Speaker 1: You're just going through life and the Iraq War comes
Speaker 1: and blindsides you after you spend years working to make
Speaker 1: it happen by lying to the international community in the
Speaker 1: United States. Come on, its fucking rules. It's so good,
Speaker 1: just having the best time here. Pro prop props guys.
Speaker 1: Jason Petty, host of the Hood Politics podcast now on
Speaker 1: the Heart Radio Network, because we are slowly consuming all
Speaker 1: media and and and folding it into our overmind of
Speaker 1: content um overmind and just bringing you the best of
Speaker 1: the best. Yeah you know what I'm saying, Like like,
Speaker 1: you know, real recognized real, you feel me. It's magnetic.
Speaker 1: But I wish, I wish listeners could have seen one
Speaker 1: Prop and I met in person the first time and
Speaker 1: we were just yea, yeah, yeah. It was so crazy.
Speaker 1: That was right before the motherfucking like yeah, I was like,
Speaker 1: you're the real one. It was really like, I think
Speaker 1: she's a real one. I'm I'm pretty sure she's a
Speaker 1: real one. And I was like, yeah, yeah, she's a
Speaker 1: real one. This is crazy prop. You know what else
Speaker 1: is a real one? Rumps veil. Well yeah, he actually,
Speaker 1: I mean yes, actually he pulled triggers that do not have.
Speaker 1: But another thing that's real is the island nation of Haiti. Jason, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a natural. This is a real reaction. We've
Speaker 1: been to talk about Haiti. We're fixing to talk about Haiti. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: I wanted to do an episode because it's been required.
Speaker 1: You know, there's two famous dictators of Haiti, the two
Speaker 1: longest serving modern leaders of the country, Papa Doc and
Speaker 1: Baby Doc. If you're going to like talk about Haitian dictators,
Speaker 1: you have to start with the actual bastard of Haiti,
Speaker 1: which is the entirety of Western civilization. Yes, yeah, the
Speaker 1: most the only effective slavery uprising. But for us to
Speaker 1: get to that moment, and there was a number of
Speaker 1: after so tear one of those things you can't like
Speaker 1: the end. These are some pretty pretty colorful dictators. But
Speaker 1: it would be I think, grossly irresponsible to not talk
Speaker 1: about the various nations by which I mean the United States, France,
Speaker 1: and most of Europe that were heavily responsible for allowing
Speaker 1: a situation in which these guys could could be in power. Um,
Speaker 1: because it required takes a whole village to make a
Speaker 1: situation as fucked up as the present political situation in
Speaker 1: Haiti Um, which is the poorest nation in this hemisphere, yes,
Speaker 1: and which engineered to be that way yes, which interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: was part of Trump's shiphole country statements because he was like, well,
Speaker 1: look at Haiti, it's ran by black people. Why are
Speaker 1: you Okay, let's dig into that, analyst, let's ask let's
Speaker 1: ask about that. Let's be okay, you just throwing ship out.
Speaker 1: Let's okay, let's think about it. Yeah. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: island that both Haiti and the Dominican Republic share is
Speaker 1: called Hispaniola Um, and it's the largest island in the
Speaker 1: Antilles chain next to Cuba. So Cuba's Cuba's the bigger,
Speaker 1: is bigger, but Hispaniola is kind of right number two.
Speaker 1: So Hispaniola first entered the annals of European history in
Speaker 1: four nine two when some asshole with the same name
Speaker 1: as the director of Home Alone sailed three boats from
Speaker 1: Spain and landed on their southern shore. He named the
Speaker 1: island Hispaniola, in honor of the Spanish crown. So he
Speaker 1: was like, this is Spain's basically, that's what Hispaniola means.
Speaker 1: This is Spain's island. Um is mine Spain's yeah, um,
Speaker 1: because he was as all bad people are Italian. Um.
Speaker 1: Now we just recorded with someone else an episode on
Speaker 1: Ethiopia and Italy's history, and we really got to throw
Speaker 1: out some some some anti Italian hate. Man, good for
Speaker 1: the soul, shout out the birthplace, shout out the birthplace
Speaker 1: of coffee. Oh yeah yeah um so yeah the the
Speaker 1: So he he names the island Hispaniola. He leaves the
Speaker 1: crew of the wrecked Santa Maria on Hispaniola when he
Speaker 1: goes back to Europe, and Columbus's men form a settlement
Speaker 1: called La Navidad, which became patient zero for the European
Speaker 1: infestation of the New World. The indigenous people of the
Speaker 1: island where the Arawak and the Tino Uh. They were
Speaker 1: pretty much immediately enslaved and forced to work themselves to
Speaker 1: near extinction mining for gold. Uh. They were all but
Speaker 1: wiped out within a century. Um. Meanwhile, European settlement on
Speaker 1: the island expanded rapidly. The occupation quickly turned into a
Speaker 1: plantation economy, and Spanish domination was replaced by French domination.
Speaker 1: Once the gold mines were exhausted, coffee, cotton, indigo and
Speaker 1: other cash crops made Hispaniola a hub of the burgeoning
Speaker 1: global economy. Now, of course, if you know anything about
Speaker 1: in that period of time, farming cotton, coffee, indigo and
Speaker 1: other cashpots, it was a fucking nightmare um, super deadly,
Speaker 1: super pleasant, grueling, backbreaking work. And white people were not
Speaker 1: about to do that themsel, not at all in a
Speaker 1: in a tropical paradise too. Yeah, no, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: do that, No, no no. By the fifteen hundred, slaves
Speaker 1: were being imported onto the island in huge numbers. Over
Speaker 1: several hundred years, African slaves grew to be the majority
Speaker 1: population of Haiti. By the late seventeenth century, only about
Speaker 1: five thousand African slaves had been brought to the island,
Speaker 1: but by seventeen eighty nine, a century or so later,
Speaker 1: the island had half a million slaves, thirty two thousand
Speaker 1: Europeans and about twenty four thousand of what we're called
Speaker 1: a Francis, which were free mulatto's or people of mixed
Speaker 1: African and European heritage. And that's really key here because
Speaker 1: since it's French dominated, it's a different spin on racism
Speaker 1: than you got in the US South. UM. So you
Speaker 1: you actually have not I mean, you have some free blacks,
Speaker 1: but you have a lot of free mixed race people, UM.
Speaker 1: And they form kind of a buffer, like chunk of
Speaker 1: society between white people and enslaved black people. It's like
Speaker 1: a thing in Haiti, and you have to really talk
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah. Yeah, It's so interesting how every place
Speaker 1: that UM imported African slaves had to deal with their
Speaker 1: categories of race and how they decided to like work
Speaker 1: it out, you know, with us, with like America having
Speaker 1: like Plessy versus Ferguson and like the one drop, you know,
Speaker 1: the one drop, you know what I'm saying, and like
Speaker 1: whereas like that don't exist nowhere else, you know, and
Speaker 1: like everyone else going well, what do you mean, you know,
Speaker 1: and how colorism sort of like ruled in Central and
Speaker 1: in South and Latin America. Uh. But and and then
Speaker 1: and then places like this that figured out like well
Speaker 1: there there's something else, you know, it's something else. You know,
Speaker 1: there's still a lot of racism against totally these people,
Speaker 1: but it is and they have a lot more rights,
Speaker 1: and like yeah, we'll talk, We're about to talk. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So French transported more enslaved people to send them aang
Speaker 1: their colony than to any other part of the French Caribbean. Now, again,
Speaker 1: as we were talking about enslave owning regions of the US,
Speaker 1: the racial cast system was very simple. You've got the
Speaker 1: one drop rule for a big chunk of that time,
Speaker 1: you're either white or you're black. Uh. And in many
Speaker 1: slave states, even if a black person was freed, it
Speaker 1: was illegal for them to continue to live in that state.
Speaker 1: I think that was the case in Virginia, number of
Speaker 1: other places. French Haiti was different. While the right status
Speaker 1: of of black people changed over time, from an early point,
Speaker 1: free mulattos were able to accrue significant wealth and power.
Speaker 1: And we don't use the term mulatto here anymore, but
Speaker 1: it is you can't really talk about Haiti without using
Speaker 1: it because it's a huge chunk of the history and
Speaker 1: the and the um um and the culture there. So
Speaker 1: at the top of the hierarchy, you would have the
Speaker 1: big whites, which are your standard white plantation rich white
Speaker 1: plantation owners, and that is the same kind of dude.
Speaker 1: So we've got all throughout the US South, right, the
Speaker 1: guys who make a confederacy happen. Then you have the
Speaker 1: little whites, which we'd we'd call like working class white people.
Speaker 1: They don't own plantations, and most maybe they have a
Speaker 1: small farm, they probably don't own slaves. If they do,
Speaker 1: it's a small number um. And they kind of vied
Speaker 1: with the mixed race people for second billing in the
Speaker 1: power hierarchy, which is obviously great for the big whites, right,
Speaker 1: because if you're the big whites, you're worried about the
Speaker 1: little whites because they want your ship um. And you've
Speaker 1: also got this other group of people who have accrued power.
Speaker 1: So if you can have those two groups who are
Speaker 1: kind of both broadly speaking, we wouldn't call it middle
Speaker 1: class in the modern sense, but kind of within that
Speaker 1: like are kind of like the middle middle cast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: noddle cast. If you've got them at each other's throats,
Speaker 1: you the big whites don't think you have to worry
Speaker 1: about as much. Now, that doesn't work out in the
Speaker 1: long run for the big whites because as they all
Speaker 1: get murdered. Um, which is rad It's one of the
Speaker 1: fun parts of the story. So there's so much about
Speaker 1: history where you're just like, yeah, yeah, that happened. But
Speaker 1: that is the idea, right, You've got these two groups
Speaker 1: to keep met eas others throats, And I'm simplif ying
Speaker 1: all this significantly. Um. There's a great podcast series called
Speaker 1: Revolutions by Mike Duncan, and he gives like a thirty
Speaker 1: episodes history of the Haitian revolutions because there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of goes into tremendous detail, um and does a much
Speaker 1: better job. Obviously, we are like criminally simplifying things here,
Speaker 1: but like that's that's the broad I think that's pretty
Speaker 1: accurate to the broad strokes of it. Um. So the
Speaker 1: gist of how this story goes is that over the decades,
Speaker 1: the fact that the majority of the island's population were
Speaker 1: enslaved under brutal conditions led to a series of revolutions.
Speaker 1: The enslaved blacks killed an awful lot of the big
Speaker 1: whites and the little whites, but they also went after
Speaker 1: mulatto property owners too, because they rightly saw these people
Speaker 1: as oppressors to um. And there's other like they're like
Speaker 1: the kind of mixed race community has their own sort
Speaker 1: of movements and their own militia. Like there's this. It's
Speaker 1: a whole process, and it it occurs over a long
Speaker 1: period of time. It started. The kind of series of
Speaker 1: revolutions started when small numbers of slaves began escape into
Speaker 1: the Mountainous Island interior, where they became known as maroons.
Speaker 1: Like the term maroon, you know, that's I think that's
Speaker 1: where it comes from. I mean also has a side note.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you got if you if this
Speaker 1: came up or it's going to come up later, but
Speaker 1: the concept of a zombie is from Haitian slaves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going to get into that a lot. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we do have to talk about voodoo a bit because
Speaker 1: it's a really significant chunk of yeah. Yeah. Um, Now,
Speaker 1: the Maroons, these escaped slaves in the Mountainous interior, developed
Speaker 1: their own self sufficient society and they wage a slow
Speaker 1: guerilla war against colonial militias. There's a couple of big
Speaker 1: kind of outbursts of this. From seventeen fifty one to
Speaker 1: seventeen fifty seven France, Swim Makandal, who was the most
Speaker 1: famous Maroon leader, let his six year long insurgent war
Speaker 1: to try to overthrow the white slavers. Alongside Maroon guerrillas,
Speaker 1: the most prominent form of black resistance in Haiti became voodoo,
Speaker 1: which was a slave religion whose practice was forbidden by law.
Speaker 1: Uh and there was a bunch of different like suicide
Speaker 1: and fantasy, i'd arson, poison. These are all aspects of
Speaker 1: the faith and I think in some cases like denying
Speaker 1: your body to being exploded by slavers, and they also
Speaker 1: become elements of resistance to the regime. And again there's
Speaker 1: a lot of history there that we're not going to
Speaker 1: be giving a proper do but it is fascinating. But
Speaker 1: but voodoo has this, it's it's rooted in resistance to
Speaker 1: this this in human regime and a and a throwback
Speaker 1: to your African history and animus of like I'm just
Speaker 1: yeah that the act of resistance. I think it's super
Speaker 1: interesting and it's funny how uh even among sort of
Speaker 1: the black diaspora, like your your your American slave descendant
Speaker 1: versus your Caribbean whether they're Jamaican or Haitian or be
Speaker 1: easy and like even this like you know, I'm doing
Speaker 1: this injustice too, but like they they feel as though,
Speaker 1: like in a lot of ways they're tied to that,
Speaker 1: to to their to their animous faith and they're not
Speaker 1: willingness to and they're no, we need to overthrow their
Speaker 1: oppressors in some ways, like you know, and and the
Speaker 1: lowest debased versions of us made made that community feel
Speaker 1: as though they were stronger than like American black people,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, because they threw their oppressors
Speaker 1: off and they didn't lose hold of their their animous
Speaker 1: traditions like they rebelled. We didn't, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And um and and in the reverse, it's like black
Speaker 1: people from America American descent, it's looked at them, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: y'all are something else, like y'all, well, yeah, y'all or
Speaker 1: something else you're you're we're not the same, rather than
Speaker 1: being like now you just got off the boat earlier
Speaker 1: than us. And you know what I'm saying, it's really
Speaker 1: interesting is some of those like sort of like in
Speaker 1: house sort of issues that like, hey, we gotta be
Speaker 1: better and really understand the diaspora much better to be
Speaker 1: like they're just as black as we are. They just
Speaker 1: like I said, you just got off the boat earlier,
Speaker 1: you know, And it's it's it's you know, another area
Speaker 1: where this becomes specifically, voodoo becomes kind of an issue
Speaker 1: as these dictators who have to talk about today um
Speaker 1: really use there's kind of I think debate over how
Speaker 1: actually into the practice of it they are, but they
Speaker 1: use it um and it becomes kind of this it's
Speaker 1: used as fuel in like the media covering them is like, oh,
Speaker 1: look at these these dangerous third world lunatics and there
Speaker 1: and there, and they're creepy you know, witchcraft and stuff.
Speaker 1: And the reality is that these dictators are co opting
Speaker 1: voodoo because it has this powerful tradition as a as
Speaker 1: a resistance religion, like you have to, you have to.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's not wildly different from like, well, I
Speaker 1: mean there are aspects of it that are similar from
Speaker 1: like politicians in the US South kind of co opting
Speaker 1: aspects of like revolutionary history totally um and trying to
Speaker 1: turn it towards their own political ends and getting a
Speaker 1: lot of it wrong. But it's because it has this
Speaker 1: powerful hold on people's um consciousness. UM. So voodoo is
Speaker 1: a huge aspect of religion or of resistance as well. UM.
Speaker 1: And Yeah, at the same time time this is all
Speaker 1: going on, You've got again, you've got this mixed race
Speaker 1: community who actually has some political power and who has
Speaker 1: some wealth. And they're not they they are these the
Speaker 1: black slaves are not really connected to the rest of
Speaker 1: of the French Empire because they're stuck on this island.
Speaker 1: They have no rights. But these mixed race people are
Speaker 1: a part of the larger empire and they get to
Speaker 1: go back to France. Um, they get to do a
Speaker 1: number of things that are they are participating in this
Speaker 1: broader empire. Several hundred of them joined the Royal French
Speaker 1: Army In seventeen seventy nine, Haitian mixed race people travel
Speaker 1: to North America and fight in the American Revolutionary War.
Speaker 1: They take part in the Siege of Savannah, Georgia. UM.
Speaker 1: And these guys, a lot of them are very inspired
Speaker 1: by the American Revolution and these ideas of what democracy
Speaker 1: could be. UM. At the same time as they're inspired
Speaker 1: by some of like the promise of the American Revolution,
Speaker 1: they're deeply frustrated by the racism they experience in the
Speaker 1: new United States and from their their white French officers. UM.
Speaker 1: And this kind of leads to after the French Revolution,
Speaker 1: because right, the French help us out with our revolution,
Speaker 1: then they have their own revolution. Suddenly they've got these
Speaker 1: people's assemblies and a democracy, the guillotine stuff, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: After this point, after that point, um, mixed race. You know,
Speaker 1: people from Haiti start increasingly coming over to France and
Speaker 1: agitating for equal rights within the Parisian Citizens Assembly, because
Speaker 1: this part of the revolution was this idea that all
Speaker 1: men have equal rights. And so these people who are
Speaker 1: not white from French possessions start coming to Paris and
Speaker 1: being like, well, all right, right, that's pretty cool with
Speaker 1: you guys, said remember you guys said that. And the
Speaker 1: history of this is complex because a number of these,
Speaker 1: you know, these mulatto guys also were like, well, but
Speaker 1: obviously these black slaves don't get rights because I own
Speaker 1: some of them. In some cases, some of them are
Speaker 1: very much for completely like it's it's again. This is like,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of really complex history here. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from a rite up by the University
Speaker 1: of Texas. The impact of the revolution reached San Domag,
Speaker 1: escalating tensions between grounds blancs, big whites, the elites, plantation
Speaker 1: owners and the like petit blancs, the little whites and
Speaker 1: the free people of color. Uh. Big whites wanted local
Speaker 1: autonomy from France, Mulatto saw their chance for citizenship and equality,
Speaker 1: and little whites were eager to protect their position in
Speaker 1: the color based class system. All of these groups were
Speaker 1: against freeing the slaves. Amid all this in fighting, the slaves,
Speaker 1: who outnumbered the free population more than ten to one,
Speaker 1: began to organize why was liberty and equality not meant
Speaker 1: for them as well? In August, the rebellion began with
Speaker 1: a voodoo priest predicting that a revolt would free the
Speaker 1: slaves of San domg. The slaves set about burning plantations
Speaker 1: and killing all of the whites they encountered. Sant Doman
Speaker 1: was an inferno for months the revolution had begun. During
Speaker 1: the following two years, the attacks continued and eventually France
Speaker 1: sent agents to try to quell the uprising. In see
Speaker 1: the remarkable Toissant Levature, a former slave rose to power.
Speaker 1: Lovature battle French, Spanish and British forces and by eighteen
Speaker 1: o one head control of Santo Domingo, the current day
Speaker 1: Dominican Republic, where he eradicated slavery. Um Man, could you imagine,
Speaker 1: I mean, thank god the phrase big whites didn't make
Speaker 1: it into America. Yeah, could you imagine if that was
Speaker 1: in our lexicon? Just how just just think about the
Speaker 1: last twenty Just think about the last year in your
Speaker 1: time in Portland's fighting. When I you know, when I
Speaker 1: hear the phrase big whites associated with the United States,
Speaker 1: one guy's picture pops into my fucking head and it's
Speaker 1: Mark McCloskey, the guy with the a R fifteen and
Speaker 1: his mansion, And immediate like, yeah, that's exactly that guy.
Speaker 1: A version of that guy got burnt to death by
Speaker 1: Haitian revolutionists. You see that, See that dude's rally with
Speaker 1: teen people showed up. He is cut out, he's waving
Speaker 1: his gun, which by the way, didn't have sights. So
Speaker 1: if you don't put modern a rs usually don't come
Speaker 1: with sights on them, because you can install a variety
Speaker 1: of optics, and sites might get in the way of
Speaker 1: some more advanced optics. You don't necessarily have iron sights,
Speaker 1: but you need some sort of sights otherwise you can't
Speaker 1: aim the gun, which means he essentially had like a blunderbuss,
Speaker 1: like he had a weapon. He could not have aimed
Speaker 1: a damn toy. You're playing around throngs of fans. Yeah
Speaker 1: you could. You couldn't shoot someone attacking you, but you
Speaker 1: could fire bullets in their broad direction and hit a
Speaker 1: variety of other things. Um, yeah, it's yeah, big whites,
Speaker 1: that big whites, that guy. Yea. So the Haitian revolution
Speaker 1: there were you know, some of the inspiration was the
Speaker 1: ideas of liberty and equality proposed by revolutionaries in North
Speaker 1: American in France. But a lot of these same revolutionaries,
Speaker 1: these white evolutionaries, are horrified by what happened in Haiti
Speaker 1: because they're all galloping racists, right. The Haitian revolutionaries massacred
Speaker 1: a ton of white people, particularly plantation owners and their families,
Speaker 1: which good for them. Uh. This bloodshed was often horrifying,
Speaker 1: But obviously, if you're enslaving people and making them heritable property.
Speaker 1: You can't be surprised if they murder you and your
Speaker 1: kids when they get the chance. I mean, Thomas Jefferson
Speaker 1: expressed that he's like, uh, if they ever get guns, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are not going to treat us. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to treat us kindly. Yeah. It's the same attitude like
Speaker 1: you have about the morality if I don't know the
Speaker 1: execution of the czars and their family and revolutionary Russer
Speaker 1: where it's like, on one hand, no, of course, children
Speaker 1: are always innocent and can't be held accountable for the
Speaker 1: crimes of their parents, even if their parents is the regent.
Speaker 1: At the same time, if you grew up property of
Speaker 1: this family, and you can say that in a way
Speaker 1: like all of the citizens of the Csars were just
Speaker 1: I can't lame you for being like, well, we just
Speaker 1: gotta get rid of all this out like you can.
Speaker 1: It's a cancer. It's not a good thing to do,
Speaker 1: but it's an understandable to make given the situation these
Speaker 1: people were put in, which is impot The situation they
Speaker 1: were put in made a reasonable response of any kind impossible.
Speaker 1: They had to do what they had to do. Um, Now,
Speaker 1: the reason why to Sauant fought basically every major European
Speaker 1: power and this guy we may we may talk about
Speaker 1: him for fucking a Christmas even even amazing. Man. Again, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, like his solutions. This motherfucker is illiterate,
Speaker 1: like he's aborted, like he doesn't know how to read.
Speaker 1: And he creates an army from nothing out of people
Speaker 1: who also had no formal education in many cases and
Speaker 1: who are basically just stealing weapons that they that they
Speaker 1: find and learning on the go how to be an army.
Speaker 1: And he beats all of the major world powers. Now
Speaker 1: he has helped by the fact that it is really
Speaker 1: hard for white armies to function in Haiti because they
Speaker 1: don't have immunity to like malaria and ship Obviously that helps.
Speaker 1: He's an impressive dude. Yeah. Yeah. And the reason why
Speaker 1: all of these European powers get involved, because kind of
Speaker 1: everybody winds up rolling into Haiti during this period, is
Speaker 1: because in part because they see the Haitian revolution as
Speaker 1: a threat to white domination tale man. Yeah yeah. And
Speaker 1: it's very complicated because like the British are actually fighting
Speaker 1: France at this same time, um, and they get involved
Speaker 1: in Haiti because they back the independence desires of the
Speaker 1: big whites. Because the big whites are like, I don't
Speaker 1: like this whole idea about the declaration of the rights
Speaker 1: a man. That seems like it could lead to an
Speaker 1: into slavery at some point, which is why I have money.
Speaker 1: So the British, who will not much after this enslavery
Speaker 1: in their own empire officially are like, we will support
Speaker 1: you guys because it will hurt the French government. Um
Speaker 1: and we'll let you keep your racial dominance over Haiti
Speaker 1: if we win this war. Um. So, England basically sends
Speaker 1: an army into Hispaniola in the hope that it would
Speaker 1: defray the cost of losing their North American colin these
Speaker 1: by giving them access to the products that are being
Speaker 1: made in Haiti. And of course Toussant massacres English soldiers
Speaker 1: as he had French and Spanish soldiers in sight. The
Speaker 1: English commander in chief signed a treaty with General Tossant
Speaker 1: and evacuated his soldiers in disgrace. Four years later, Napoleon
Speaker 1: played at negotiating with Tossant and the new Haitian government.
Speaker 1: He kidnapped the revolutionary leader and sent him to a
Speaker 1: prison in this French Alps, where Toussant died. On the
Speaker 1: eve of his death, he was said to have stated,
Speaker 1: in overthrowing me, you have cut down and sandoming only
Speaker 1: the trunk of the tree of liberty. It will spring
Speaker 1: up again from the roots, for they are many and
Speaker 1: they are deep um. And he was not wrong about that.
Speaker 1: I do not retake hatie. And I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: now for a book titled Haiti The de Voliers and
Speaker 1: their Legacy by Elizabeth Abbott. Toussant's faith and the Haitian
Speaker 1: people's determination was justified when Napoleon sent his brother in law,
Speaker 1: General le Clerk, to fight a war of extermination. His
Speaker 1: words against the Haitians follow your instructions exactly, Napoleon wrote,
Speaker 1: and yourself of Toussaint Christophe de Selens and the principal brigands.
Speaker 1: Napoleon instructed rid us of these gilded Africans, and we
Speaker 1: have nothing more to wish. They're gilded, because they're they're
Speaker 1: putting themselves up as equal to to white. Right, that's
Speaker 1: what he means by gilded um. Against Aussant's generals, including
Speaker 1: Desslines and Christophe le Clerk, fought a hopeless campaign which
Speaker 1: lasted until November eighth, eighteen oh three, and cost the
Speaker 1: French fifty thousand soldiers lives, with countless more wounded. We
Speaker 1: have concluded le clerk glumly a false idea of the
Speaker 1: Negro grossly underestimated. Yeah, we we didn't think these people
Speaker 1: were as smart as us. Turns out they are. Turns
Speaker 1: out they're just humans. Yeah, who knew they might be
Speaker 1: better at war than us? Yes, um, at least war
Speaker 1: in this place. They know very well, you know, French
Speaker 1: are like, I think we discovered something that will later
Speaker 1: be called home court advantage. Yeah, don't worry. Napoleon's government
Speaker 1: would never again make the mistake of invading someone else
Speaker 1: on their home tariff and getting read this is the
Speaker 1: last time that happens to Yes, Napoleon learned is Oh
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I'm just I'm checking the record here,
Speaker 1: and maybe maybe we're wrong. Funny, you know, who else
Speaker 1: never invades people's home countries. That's that's that's quite a
Speaker 1: You don't know that, I mean, do not know that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, you're right. I'm fairly certain none of our
Speaker 1: sponsors have invaded Russia. Yes, yeah, that seems fair. That
Speaker 1: seems fair to say because we are not currently sponsored
Speaker 1: by Mercedes, right, this is true because if Mercedes throws
Speaker 1: and ads, then yes, they have absolutely invaded Russia. I'm
Speaker 1: aware of. But yeah, well we'll put a pin on that.
Speaker 1: SOB too. I think I don't know whatever BMW for sure,
Speaker 1: UH probably can't get any UM can't get any Hugo
Speaker 1: boss ads either if we're really probably not if we're
Speaker 1: going for hasn't invaded Russia? UM in a sponsor anyway,
Speaker 1: We'll we'll figure it out. Okay, we're back. Okay. So
Speaker 1: January one, eighteen o four, Sandoman proclaims its independence from France. Uh.
Speaker 1: They adopt as the name of their new country an
Speaker 1: ancient Uh indigenous Arawak name Haiti, which is where Haiti
Speaker 1: comes from. So there's some acknowledgement there that like this
Speaker 1: belonged to some other people before. Yeah. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, they're not colonizers. They got forced there, right,
Speaker 1: it wasn't um. Yeah, So they adopt this, and they
Speaker 1: adopted as their flag the revolutionary tricolor, so the flag
Speaker 1: that France had had, but they take the white out
Speaker 1: of the French flag. Basically because as they represents them
Speaker 1: the white man, right, they don't want that, and they're
Speaker 1: fucking flag um. So a guy who had been one
Speaker 1: of Toissaint's generals and who had helped beat the clerk,
Speaker 1: general John Jacques Dessalines Um had himself declared emperor just
Speaker 1: as Napoleon had uh. And the history of Haiti, which
Speaker 1: was the world's first black republic, starts at this point
Speaker 1: as like a government. So up to this point not
Speaker 1: a bad direction, right, rough start with the slavery and
Speaker 1: the genocide, but in the end, the better guys beat
Speaker 1: the worst guys. They liberate themselves, and it's one of
Speaker 1: the great stories in global revolutionary history. This is the
Speaker 1: only time, um in modern history where a slave population
Speaker 1: successfully rebels against their masters. They even are we going
Speaker 1: to get into like some of the economic developments to
Speaker 1: like how they put out how to okay cool, how
Speaker 1: they figured out how to like subsidize income and like
Speaker 1: all this good stuff. Oh no, no, no, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about how French the French. No. I don't
Speaker 1: know much about the actual I mean, I I know
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of people will argue that like
Speaker 1: kind of the destruction of the plantations cost some some
Speaker 1: economic issues. There's a lot of complications here we talk about. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there were some moves like I'm getting some of
Speaker 1: the names and dates wrong because I haven't. I'd have
Speaker 1: to brush up on it. But some of the moves
Speaker 1: that they made was like, okay, um, first of all,
Speaker 1: we already showed you that we could wipe you out,
Speaker 1: but we do now since we burnt all our cash crops,
Speaker 1: we need to figure out if y'all gonna stay, how
Speaker 1: we're gonna subsidize our income here. So there was a
Speaker 1: couple of economic incentives that after they overthrow them, after
Speaker 1: they overthrew their owners, they were like, okay, so but
Speaker 1: we still need income and jobs. So here's y'all's role. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's our role. Usually don't get his own us and
Speaker 1: m so that yeah, like I said, I'm getting some
Speaker 1: of the information wrong, but uh, there was there was
Speaker 1: a few shrewd moves that this emperor does to like
Speaker 1: stabilize their income for or stabilize their economy for a while.
Speaker 1: That it goes to ship but yeah, yeah, and we're
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about like kind of what goes
Speaker 1: awry there. But Yeah, it's a promising start, right, some
Speaker 1: some good moves, some good luck. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously today things are not great in Haiti, uh poor,
Speaker 1: one of the poorest nations on the planet. The infrastructure
Speaker 1: is pretty much in a constant state of free fall.
Speaker 1: Their numerous endemic diseases and almost unimaginable corruption. And it
Speaker 1: didn't just get that way by the naturally. This was
Speaker 1: not the natural course of events. It was. It was
Speaker 1: heavily manipulated. So let's start about talking by talking about
Speaker 1: the USA's role and how we got here. So, as
Speaker 1: a republic built on slavery, our founding fathers were very
Speaker 1: frightened of Haiti, particularly the massacres of big whites in
Speaker 1: eighteen o one and eighteen o two UM. Now, at
Speaker 1: this point in time in the United States, the idea
Speaker 1: that a black slave might want to be free was
Speaker 1: seen as a mental illness. There was even a diagnosis
Speaker 1: for drapetomania UM and they treated Haitian independence thus lee.
Speaker 1: They consider a desire for freedom from an enslaved person
Speaker 1: to be a mental illness. They consider Haitian independence to
Speaker 1: be a kind of viral infection. So they want to
Speaker 1: stop any contage any They want to stop any possibility
Speaker 1: of it's spreading, right, that's what they see. What they
Speaker 1: don't they don't see, oh hey, another people has overthrown
Speaker 1: the chains of of of their colonial you know, owners
Speaker 1: and become a republic. They see, oh, this is a threat. Um.
Speaker 1: So when one Haitian veteran who had fought to liberate
Speaker 1: the United States from Great Britain at the Battle of Savannah,
Speaker 1: attempted to return to the country he had helped fought
Speaker 1: to find and tried to land in Charleston, he was
Speaker 1: denied the right to set foot on the soil he's
Speaker 1: fought for. That's just one kind of example of how yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you're dangerous. Yes, And of course he was obviously like,
Speaker 1: this is a danger to them because it's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's a country built on the human bondage um.
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson, the great philosopher of liberty, slash rapist, child
Speaker 1: rapist um, proposed that slaves convicted of crimes and remember,
Speaker 1: wanting to be free was a crime, should be exiled
Speaker 1: to haiti Um. And again his goal here is he
Speaker 1: wants to quarantine the black desire for liberty. That's kind
Speaker 1: of how Jefferson sees this. The most positive moment in
Speaker 1: US Haitian relations came after Haiti's independence, but before Toussant's capture,
Speaker 1: when Toussant found his new government locked in a civil
Speaker 1: war with a Mulatto general named uh Regald Uh and
Speaker 1: Regald was a mulatto supremacist who wanted to massacre all
Speaker 1: the white people on the island and also re enslave
Speaker 1: the black population. That's at least how to Sant framed
Speaker 1: the problem this guy posed. In a letter he sent
Speaker 1: to US President Adams requesting military aid, he wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: Regard has has assassinated many whites, and this is but
Speaker 1: the beginning of his hainous crimes. His criminal and atrocious
Speaker 1: misdoings have left no alternative to the government agent but
Speaker 1: to brand him as a lawless rebel and to muster
Speaker 1: an army to punish his outrages. Now, the massacre of
Speaker 1: white people justified the first U. S military intervention on
Speaker 1: the island. We sent over some ships ammunition in two
Speaker 1: thousand muskets. The aid played a meaningful role in allowing
Speaker 1: Tossants government to smash Regard's rebellion. This would be the
Speaker 1: only broadly positive move the US made towards Haiti um
Speaker 1: after eighteen hundred when the US and France reconciled, because
Speaker 1: we're having a bit of a tiff when we send
Speaker 1: those rifles over, the official government policy towards Haiti grows
Speaker 1: more hostile, and after the massacres of eighteen o one
Speaker 1: eighteen to uh, the United States refuses to recognize the
Speaker 1: Haitian government as independent. This was justified by the United
Speaker 1: States and by everyone else because this is broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: how most of the West handles Haitian independence, and it's
Speaker 1: justified by them because the French had refused to acknowledge
Speaker 1: Haitian independence. Now, France was like one of the big
Speaker 1: world powers right then, and they're like the military power.
Speaker 1: So acknowledging Haiti as its own thing is a dicey
Speaker 1: thing diplomatically, right. You see versions of the same thing
Speaker 1: today with fucking Taiwan and stuff. There's a constant like
Speaker 1: do we recognize this country? Yeah, you can't acknowledge the
Speaker 1: L Like, hey man, you know you took it. L's
Speaker 1: like no, we didn't. No, that was different. Now we
Speaker 1: don't count. Yeah, the US refuses to acknowledge like China,
Speaker 1: the Chinese government for for years as the legit like
Speaker 1: after the Civil War. Like we do this all the time,
Speaker 1: is what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love the
Speaker 1: like yeah, like even just America being like we've never
Speaker 1: lost a war, Like what about Vietnam. That was different,
Speaker 1: That wasn't our war. That wasn't a war, because you
Speaker 1: have to declare it, you know, you gotta go declare.
Speaker 1: It's only if it comes from the from different. It's
Speaker 1: just a sparkling conflict. Yeah that's different. Yeah. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it'd be like, nah, I don't know, I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think eight's a country, Like yeah, fam, yes
Speaker 1: they are, okay. Yeah. So the US fights another war
Speaker 1: against Great Britain in eighteen twelve, and we rely heavily
Speaker 1: on trade and aid from the French. So obviously there's
Speaker 1: a there's a lot of vested interest in not recognizing
Speaker 1: Haiti because we don't want to piss off France. As
Speaker 1: a result from independence. From its independence up to about
Speaker 1: eighteen five, Haiti is a pariah state. Uh. This enables
Speaker 1: the first emperor of Haiti, de Selenes, to justify an
Speaker 1: increasingly repressive regime. Haiti had nothing but enemies, and the
Speaker 1: entire effort of the state was devoted towards maintaining a
Speaker 1: huge army and a massive system of protective fortresses. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Desoleines becomes basically a military dictator. And this is
Speaker 1: again she she's got a point, right, Like they want
Speaker 1: to they want to funk us up. They want to
Speaker 1: take like us, they want to take our liberty back.
Speaker 1: They want to take this island back. Like we have
Speaker 1: to always be ready to fight. Um. The problem is
Speaker 1: that when you base your whole society around that, it's
Speaker 1: not the healthiest way under society. Yeah you can't, you can't.
Speaker 1: That's not that's not sustainable. Yeah. Now, Desolines again, like
Speaker 1: all of these kind of founding fathers, was illiterate and
Speaker 1: was a like yeah, he comes from, you know, a
Speaker 1: background where that was not education of much any formal
Speaker 1: kind was not really an option. And as a result
Speaker 1: of his influence, the military becomes dominated by black officers
Speaker 1: who were like him, gen really illiterate former slaves. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the civil administration of the Haitian government becomes dominated by Mulatto's,
Speaker 1: most of whom had benefited from a better education, and
Speaker 1: this contributes to the You've already got this really bloody
Speaker 1: racial divide and this long history of fighting. And it
Speaker 1: just after independence that divide doesn't get erased, um and
Speaker 1: and Desolines leans into this divide. He massacred tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of French civilians after independence. Uh and at the
Speaker 1: same time he had massacred a lot of Mulatto saying
Speaker 1: he couldn't tell the difference between them. In eighteen o four,
Speaker 1: he declared, I will go to my grave happy we
Speaker 1: have avenged our brothers. Haiti has become a blood red
Speaker 1: spot on the face of the globe. Um. Now, of
Speaker 1: course it was born in blood, right had he starts
Speaker 1: as an act of labor genocide and is depopulated by
Speaker 1: violent force. Desolines is not starting a process here, it's
Speaker 1: just the natural continuation of that kind of violence. Um. Now.
Speaker 1: That said later on in his reign, Desolines takes an
Speaker 1: extra step to words. I think he saw it as
Speaker 1: kind of an attempt to destroy these racial barriers. He
Speaker 1: declared a policy of bronze ification um, which was his
Speaker 1: goal was to destroy all distinctions of color on the
Speaker 1: island by forced intermarriage of blacks and mulatto's. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: to start this process, he ordered a mulatto general, Alexandra Petition,
Speaker 1: to marry his daughter sal Amine, who was, unbeknownst to him,
Speaker 1: already pregnant. When he found out, he murdered her lover
Speaker 1: and Pettian declined the marriage, and shortly thereafter Dessolens is
Speaker 1: assassinated by an unknown group of assailants. Um it's still
Speaker 1: why he was killed. Who exactly killed him is a
Speaker 1: mystery in Haiti today. There's theories that he was murdered
Speaker 1: by unpaid soldiers, that it was general Petition. What matters
Speaker 1: more than the specifics of like who did the did
Speaker 1: the deed, is that from the beginning, Haiti is burdened
Speaker 1: by a history of authoritarian leaders, which again starts with
Speaker 1: the white rulership of the colony and is burned by
Speaker 1: a history of violent changes of power. Right it's born
Speaker 1: in blood and that they don't break the cycle. Um
Speaker 1: power would swing wildly over the next years between mulatto
Speaker 1: and black generals, generally representing different geographic and racial chunks
Speaker 1: of the island. Um the term it's so funny, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: not funny, but the word bronze vocation. Just if you
Speaker 1: just say, you're like, actually sounds kind of rad, Like
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like if you just just
Speaker 1: just the idea of like let's just get this like
Speaker 1: that beautiful brown on people, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like it's kind of dope, you know. But then it's
Speaker 1: still like you're still addressing this like scourge of a
Speaker 1: racialized society that for multiple millennia we didn't have, you know,
Speaker 1: and like in in in terms of a social construct
Speaker 1: where it's like we just you dated regionally, you dated
Speaker 1: tribally because this was like who was around, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. But once you started putting these like
Speaker 1: rules around, you know, the phrenology and and the you know,
Speaker 1: the the eugenics of the ship that like created this
Speaker 1: like racial colorized cast that like has just become a scourge.
Speaker 1: You just see how many attempts we've had to try
Speaker 1: to undo this curse across across the cultures. And this
Speaker 1: was just one of his thought was well, well, if
Speaker 1: your kids is all, we'll look and we'll find you
Speaker 1: somebody that's hot, It's that's fine, you know, and make
Speaker 1: a baby with him. Like you can't be mad at
Speaker 1: this little brown baby, could the baby look good? You know?
Speaker 1: So you just I it's like you you're following the
Speaker 1: logic and it's just but it's like being able to
Speaker 1: step back and examine like damn, like just the racialization
Speaker 1: of our world. Like, man, we're still trying to solve
Speaker 1: this issue, you know. Yeah, yeah, and like it's it's
Speaker 1: it's super messy. Yeah, it's one of those things like
Speaker 1: you'd be you can talk about how it happened and
Speaker 1: like what the actual impact was. But it is kind
Speaker 1: of this like as much as many fucked up things
Speaker 1: as like different players in this period carry out as
Speaker 1: guys like Desolens do, it's like, also, well, I don't
Speaker 1: know what would have worked better? Right, Yeah, Like you're
Speaker 1: coming in in a messy as situation, hella messy, so
Speaker 1: you like I got to start somewhere. I can't like
Speaker 1: I can say, yeah, that didn't doesn't seem like it
Speaker 1: worked out great, But I can't be like, well, here's
Speaker 1: what would have worked better? Right? Right? Right? The guy
Speaker 1: and yeah, like trying to do the hardest thing ever, right,
Speaker 1: some suggestions in the year Yeah, I think word for
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, like, yeah, you guys got ideas, Oh, three,
Speaker 1: three centuries later, you still have figured it out and
Speaker 1: stopped looking back at me. Yeahs Haiti air conditioning probably
Speaker 1: would have solved some problems. Why don't you Why don't
Speaker 1: you guys condition could have some American conditioning also, antibiotics.
Speaker 1: Just throwing it out there, I'm just saying, how about automation.
Speaker 1: You have all these people, there's a machine. Hello, We
Speaker 1: eventually invented the Ford truck and that made a lot
Speaker 1: of money. Could you guys have tried that in eight
Speaker 1: Why don't you try not slavery? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, could
Speaker 1: you try not being taken from your homeland and forced
Speaker 1: onto an island to farm cotton? Maybe give that one
Speaker 1: a shot. Can't try it? And then they were like,
Speaker 1: you know what, here's the idea. We're gonna try not
Speaker 1: being dark. I mean yeah he does eventually kind of yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, there's no good. There's no good. No, there's
Speaker 1: no auctions for for any of these people in this period,
Speaker 1: which is not to like, also not to whitewash the
Speaker 1: fun up stuff that all of these different Haitian leaders do,
Speaker 1: but like, what are you gonna do? Um again? So
Speaker 1: Haiti is also and the thing that really makes this difficult, right,
Speaker 1: because every every new nation that's been born has different
Speaker 1: kinds of divisions and hurdles to overcome. Haiti is additionally
Speaker 1: hobbled by something that makes it kind of impossible for
Speaker 1: them to thrive economically, which is the fact that they
Speaker 1: are completely locked out of the global market, which contributes
Speaker 1: to rampant poverty and misery. In in order to gain
Speaker 1: diplomatic recognition and entrance into the world market to be
Speaker 1: able to trade with people, right, to be able to
Speaker 1: actually like make things and sell them and import goods,
Speaker 1: which you need to do in order to be a
Speaker 1: part of the modern world. Right, Like it's that's just
Speaker 1: the way it works. They're not allowed to. Um. So
Speaker 1: they start negotiating with France in order to gain diplomatic
Speaker 1: recognition and entrance into the world market. Um. Now, by
Speaker 1: this point, the French had accepted that they were not
Speaker 1: going to regain military control of the island, so they
Speaker 1: agreed to recognize Haiti as a sovereign nation if it
Speaker 1: paid reparations. Well, you stow yourselves from us, so you
Speaker 1: owe us so you kind of oh my god, real, real,
Speaker 1: real asshole move from France. There. Quote from a write
Speaker 1: up by the Origins Project at Oklahoma State University. The
Speaker 1: French government sent a team of accountants into Haiti in
Speaker 1: order to place a value on all lands and physical assets,
Speaker 1: including the five hundred thousand citizens were formerly enslaved, and
Speaker 1: declared the value at a hundred and fifty million gold francs,
Speaker 1: in which in contemporary terms would equate to well over
Speaker 1: twenty billion dollars. Payments began immediately, and although Haiti was
Speaker 1: able to officially by its economic freedom and diplomatic recognition,
Speaker 1: the debt of a hundred and fifty million francs was
Speaker 1: a massive burden from which Haitians have never been able
Speaker 1: to fully recover. Although the official debt was later reduced,
Speaker 1: France four Haiti to pay an annual fee for its
Speaker 1: national sovereignty for nearly a hundred years, from eighteen twenty
Speaker 1: five to nineteen twenty two. Good lord for almost a century.
Speaker 1: Then Haiti endured French imposed pinury. By nineteen fifteen, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about what happens. In nineteen fifteen, Haiti still
Speaker 1: owed France a hundred and twenty one million francs. So
Speaker 1: for nearly a century they pay off their hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty million debt, and in nineteen fifteen they undred and
Speaker 1: twenty one million. Oh my god, oh my god. France
Speaker 1: is a nation of fucking payday loan. Yes, just such
Speaker 1: a such a bit of faccory right there. Uh man.
Speaker 1: So much of their resources as a nation went to
Speaker 1: paying off this debt. For instance, fifty one percent of
Speaker 1: haities revenues from coffee went to service the exterioror debt
Speaker 1: scent went to pay internal debts associated with building the
Speaker 1: nation's infrastructure, with only two percent available for all other expenses.
Speaker 1: Why doesn't Haiti have a functional state because they are
Speaker 1: forbidden by law from building one, otherwise they won't be
Speaker 1: able to pay off the debt that guarantees their their freedom. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Think about that for a second. Yeah, yeah, you're just
Speaker 1: it's on purpose. Yeah, This suffocating debt, more than any
Speaker 1: other single factor, is why and how hate becomes the
Speaker 1: poorest country in the Western hemisphere. That's it, right. We
Speaker 1: can talk about funded up things different leaders did. We
Speaker 1: can talk about mistakes made by and there's plenty of mistakes,
Speaker 1: of course, all leaders make mistakes. Haiti is not allowed
Speaker 1: to build a public sector. Yeah, they're not allowed to.
Speaker 1: They've got that money is why France is so nice.
Speaker 1: Part of it, right, for it steals from a lot
Speaker 1: of people. If you want to know why Haiti so
Speaker 1: fucked up, walk down the streets of Paris and look
Speaker 1: at the nice monuments, like, oh, some of this was
Speaker 1: paid for by the reason Haiti doesn't have functioning sewers. Damn,
Speaker 1: that's why it's fucked up now. Of course, the fact
Speaker 1: that Haiti agreed to bribe bribe France for access to
Speaker 1: the world did not mean that the world accepted Haiti.
Speaker 1: The United States continue to have a profoundly toxic opinion
Speaker 1: of the ailing republic, and most European powers were equally
Speaker 1: unwilling to do business with a nation who's founding with
Speaker 1: such a threat to their domestic and international order. Again,
Speaker 1: all these powers are based on slavery or based on
Speaker 1: colonialism that verges on slavery. So even if the Haitians
Speaker 1: themselves mostly just want hope and opportunity, right there, not
Speaker 1: saying like our goal is Haiti is to overthrow the
Speaker 1: global colonial system. They just want to have food and
Speaker 1: ship right most people, um, they're very existence though, is
Speaker 1: dangerous to the myth of white supremacy that the European
Speaker 1: world order is based on think about every time we
Speaker 1: talked about this in the Ethiopia episode, to think about
Speaker 1: like you know, you and I talked about this, and
Speaker 1: we talked about Spain in Algeria, Right, they get beaten
Speaker 1: by this, by this African army and then they go
Speaker 1: in with France with chemical weapons to massacre these people
Speaker 1: because they can't stand the thought that they were defeated
Speaker 1: to all the colonized people. Um, that's the very much
Speaker 1: all of the West's attitude towards Haiti. These people beat
Speaker 1: every Western army put against them. That can't be allowed
Speaker 1: it and it unravels all of your origin stories, your
Speaker 1: creation myths, your formation of identity. It unravels. You're looking
Speaker 1: at evidence that you're full of crap and that you
Speaker 1: can't let that that can't exist in your world. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of crazy. It's gonna feel like a jump,
Speaker 1: But like I mean it, like when I think of
Speaker 1: like that same sort of fear of of the unraveling
Speaker 1: of your reality, I think a lot of ways it's
Speaker 1: that same sort of like germ that's in this like
Speaker 1: aversion towards like trans rights and like LGBT Q stuff,
Speaker 1: because it's like, you have this universe that is ordered
Speaker 1: a certain way, and these the existence of these people
Speaker 1: means you've ordered the universe incompletely, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: So it has its genesis. There's something element of like
Speaker 1: that idea of fomo. Right, you hear about your friends
Speaker 1: going to a party that you're not going to and
Speaker 1: it makes you feel like you're missing out. It's it's
Speaker 1: this idea that like, if things elsewhere or if things
Speaker 1: for their people are fundamentally different than they are for me,
Speaker 1: then maybe I'm not doing things the best way possible.
Speaker 1: Maybe the way I live isn't the the absolute best
Speaker 1: way someone could live, And that makes me so angry
Speaker 1: that I will commit a genocide totally because it's not
Speaker 1: like because it's not about it's so true because it's
Speaker 1: not about. When you start listening to like people's arguments
Speaker 1: about rights, it's like, oh, you're not talking about rights.
Speaker 1: You think they shouldn't exist. Like the reality of their different. Yes,
Speaker 1: the reality of their existence is an affront to your universe.
Speaker 1: So if I can take their rights, maybe they'll stop existing.
Speaker 1: Is that your is that? Is that your logic? Because
Speaker 1: that's what it sounds like your logic is so when
Speaker 1: I think about like you said, like, well, well we
Speaker 1: won't trade with Haiti, Well we wanted that. It's like,
Speaker 1: because you all want them to exist, you don't think
Speaker 1: this should have happened, but it did. And rather than
Speaker 1: saying maybe I should rethink what I consider reality, I'd
Speaker 1: rather just say no, we just we'll just make them
Speaker 1: pay forever. Yeah, we'll just we'll just we'll just go
Speaker 1: out of our way to sabotage them forever. Um, you
Speaker 1: know who else will go out of their way to
Speaker 1: sabotage hey t forever sabotage money going into black community. Yeah, boy,
Speaker 1: this is it's not a great way to do an
Speaker 1: ad plug prop. How do you feel about getting food
Speaker 1: delivered deer House. I'm not gonna lie to you, man.
Speaker 1: It's one of those one of those things that are
Speaker 1: clearly a privilege. But that's what that word means because
Speaker 1: it is great. Well, there we go. That's a better
Speaker 1: way to lead a nats uh uh, So we're bad.
Speaker 1: I guess we are. We're back. That's the sound that
Speaker 1: you find in your place in this script. It is
Speaker 1: it is so Haitian politics doesn't grow more functional over
Speaker 1: the course of the eighteen hundreds for reasons we've discussed.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of revolts. Right when people can't build
Speaker 1: any kind of uh, functional civil society, or when it's
Speaker 1: a lot harder and all of their money is going
Speaker 1: to other countries, it's difficult to um, you know, have
Speaker 1: a happy civil anyway. So the republic had kicked off
Speaker 1: with an emperor than reverted to a republican government with
Speaker 1: presidents and stuff. But in the eighteen forties they go
Speaker 1: back to having emperors. And also the eighteen forties and
Speaker 1: the eighty four when the Dominican Republic fights a war
Speaker 1: with Haiti and they separate, so there's there's two different
Speaker 1: countries on the same island. The Menican Republic is definitely
Speaker 1: it seems to be in a better position than than
Speaker 1: Haiti has been lately. Uma, but they have constant they're
Speaker 1: like always kind of at each other's throats, like there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of a bunch of a bunch of issues
Speaker 1: going on between the anyway that all happens, uh. And
Speaker 1: then in eighteen fifty nine there's a military coup in
Speaker 1: Haiti and that brings back a republican government and president
Speaker 1: presidents again. So we go from emperor to president to
Speaker 1: emperor to president right. Um. In eighteen sixty one, the
Speaker 1: outbreak of the Civil War gives the people who didn't
Speaker 1: totally suck in US politics an opportunity to recognize the
Speaker 1: Haitian government. After a long Congressional debate, President Lincoln enacts
Speaker 1: the law recognizing Haiti and appointing the first U S
Speaker 1: Haitian Commissioner. So that is, we recognize Haiti kind of
Speaker 1: as like a fuck you to the Confederacy. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what you really don't like somebody like, you know what.
Speaker 1: A matter of fact, Haiti, I'll rock with y'all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll take it, like yeah, all right. So the political situation, though,
Speaker 1: does not grow more stable in the late eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: In eighteen nineties six, President Hippolyte died of a stroke
Speaker 1: on his way to crush a rebellion in the Southwest.
Speaker 1: He was replaced by President teresi is Sam, who was
Speaker 1: nicknamed the incompetent for reasons that are probably pretty obvious,
Speaker 1: right not not because he was so popular. Um. Under
Speaker 1: his ages, the Haitian government grew more corrupt and less
Speaker 1: functional than ever The most egregious example of this was
Speaker 1: the finance minister, the President's cousin, Gilliam Gilliam Sam developed
Speaker 1: an extensive grift system, whereby he would have the government
Speaker 1: order and pay for non existent goods, and then pocket
Speaker 1: the payment himself. President Sam allowed dozens of his relatives
Speaker 1: and positions of power. Together they robbed the nation blind
Speaker 1: while blinder um. This compounded the economic misery created by
Speaker 1: the crushing debt to France. Under Sam's reign, civil service
Speaker 1: salaries were cut by public works projects almost ceased entirely.
Speaker 1: When Sam came to power. A tramway station had been
Speaker 1: under construction in Porta Prince, and the beginnings of a
Speaker 1: national railway station had been laid. All of this died
Speaker 1: on the vine as the Sam family sucked Haiti dry.
Speaker 1: In nineteen o two, dogged by economic disaster and riotous
Speaker 1: content among the citizenry, Sam resigned. He barely escaped with
Speaker 1: his lute ahead of a mob bent on murdering him
Speaker 1: and his family. Foreign diplomats escorted him to the docks,
Speaker 1: and he eventually wound up in Europe with his fortune. Again.
Speaker 1: The reason part of like he's he's not, He's not
Speaker 1: just stealing money. He's greasing palms in Europe because yeah, again,
Speaker 1: they're They're always. All of these grifter dictators are very
Speaker 1: tied to the West and generally backed by them and
Speaker 1: often funded by them. Um, and the wake of his
Speaker 1: disastrous regime came political chaos. He was eventually succeeded by
Speaker 1: a very old man named Nord Alexis, who was overthrown
Speaker 1: himself a couple of years later by a revolt in
Speaker 1: the middle of all of this chaos. These just constant revolts, right,
Speaker 1: no peaceful transfers of power. And in the middle of
Speaker 1: all this chaos, on April fourteenth, nineteen o seven, Francois
Speaker 1: du Volier is born into duval in Euritia du Volier. Now,
Speaker 1: this is, by the way, the subject of our episode,
Speaker 1: Francois Duvolier, the guy better known as Papa Doc. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be an understatement to say that he did
Speaker 1: not grow up in a functional state, right. This guy
Speaker 1: doesn't fuck haiti up. This guy is born into fun
Speaker 1: and adopts it. You call y'all with that one. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's good. So when Papa doc was a toddler, President
Speaker 1: Alexis is succeeded by Antoine Simone, who ruled for three
Speaker 1: years before another revolt forced him to flee to Jamaica.
Speaker 1: The next president, Lecante, came to power when Francois was
Speaker 1: about five. He survived only a single year in office.
Speaker 1: He was murdered by again unknown assassins. His body was
Speaker 1: hidden to cover up their crime. The conspirators blew up
Speaker 1: the presidential palace on August eight, nineteen twelve, leaving Haiti
Speaker 1: without a capitol building or ahead of state now. Despite
Speaker 1: the shall we say tumultuous times, Francois parents managed to
Speaker 1: make a decent living. They were lower middle class but
Speaker 1: upwardly mobile. His father, Duval, was a school teacher and
Speaker 1: his mother, Euridia, worked for a bakery. Duval was politically
Speaker 1: active and aware. He wanted a better life for his children,
Speaker 1: and he worked like a demon in order to scrape
Speaker 1: together the funds necessary to send his son to private
Speaker 1: schools in nineteen which is something very few Haitians that
Speaker 1: never happens. The education system is not in good shape,
Speaker 1: so he grows up very well educated in nineteen. Hold
Speaker 1: that thought, because I would be doing you and the
Speaker 1: listeners a horrible disservice and if I didn't stop and
Speaker 1: acknowledge the name Papa Doc. Papa Doc. Yes, in the
Speaker 1: here's a pop culture reference. So he was a character
Speaker 1: an eight Mile the the Eminem movie. Oh really, I
Speaker 1: gotta happen. Yeah, yeah, I know what eight mile is.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so yeah, I was like, I don't know
Speaker 1: how far down his rabble I need to go. Papa
Speaker 1: Doc was one of the main characters, and it seems
Speaker 1: like it seemed like a strange name to choose as
Speaker 1: a rapper, unless you know who Papa Dock is. Yeah, Haiti.
Speaker 1: So there you go. Connect your dots, guys. That is interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was unaware of that part because all I know
Speaker 1: about the eight Mile movie is Rabbit that it's about.
Speaker 1: It's about Eminem, Mom Spaghetti exactly, Mom Spaghetti. Um. So.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifteen, when Francois was eight, Haitian President Joseph
Speaker 1: daffl Mar Theodore was ousted and yet another coup, this
Speaker 1: one of the military variety. He was replaced by General
Speaker 1: Jean Phil Brune. Gilliam Sam now the president and of
Speaker 1: the United States in this period is a fellow named
Speaker 1: Woodrow Wilson, who is one of the most racist people
Speaker 1: who's ever been president of the United States, which is
Speaker 1: which is bar So you are saying, as listeners of
Speaker 1: two people that y'all know on this pod, me and
Speaker 1: Robert are bona fide history nerds, we know what the
Speaker 1: hell we talk about. Well, we tell you that Woodrow
Speaker 1: Wilson Old the Crown. He's up there. Yes, he's competed
Speaker 1: with guys like eight Team twin because he would like
Speaker 1: Andrew Jackson, and we're probably like you could like like
Speaker 1: they named the Trail of Tears after this man. He's
Speaker 1: a loyal piece of ship. Yes, so like like, let's
Speaker 1: pause for a second, really outraci he is. He is
Speaker 1: a repeatedly praised the Ku Klux Klan and screened a
Speaker 1: movie about their founding in the White House level races,
Speaker 1: and Woodrow Wilson is particularly concerned. Um, he's he's concerned
Speaker 1: for a number reasons. Number one, he sees a black
Speaker 1: republic as a week is a weak link in the
Speaker 1: political structure of the Caribbean, which is really close to
Speaker 1: the United States. So you know, um, he's also further
Speaker 1: concerned by you know, in this period, World War One
Speaker 1: has just kicked off, right UM and Germany, prior to
Speaker 1: World War One, had developed strong economic interests on the
Speaker 1: island of Haiti. UM German investor or on the island
Speaker 1: of Hispaniel. In the Haitian nation, UM German investors had
Speaker 1: started to directly impact Haitian politics, and eighteen nine two
Speaker 1: Germany had been instrumental in defeating a reform movement within
Speaker 1: the Haiti that would have hurt their economic design. So
Speaker 1: this is a weak government, it's a country that's in chaos.
Speaker 1: Colonizers see the opportunity in this. Germany doesn't colonize Haiti,
Speaker 1: but they come in and they help defeat a political
Speaker 1: movement that would have been bad for the interests of
Speaker 1: German corporations. Right. So, in the months leading to the
Speaker 1: coup that brought General Sam to power, Wilson had been
Speaker 1: considering sending in US troops to Haiti to replace the
Speaker 1: government with one that would be more friendly to us
Speaker 1: and interests and less friendly to German ones. And again,
Speaker 1: the Germans are against positive reform in the Haitian government.
Speaker 1: The US doesn't support positive reform in the Haitian government.
Speaker 1: We just want a government that's more friendly to our
Speaker 1: companies than to German ones. Right. Um, So the coup
Speaker 1: gave him the excuse that he needed, right, and in
Speaker 1: short order he sends the United States Marines, including frequent
Speaker 1: bastards pod Side character Smedley Butler, into occupied Haiti. Yeah, Smedley,
Speaker 1: counterinsurgency work there, dog smed He's still he's still a
Speaker 1: heel at this point. Now heel turn. He has a
Speaker 1: real good heel turn, which we've talked about, but he's
Speaker 1: still a heel at this period. So from nineteen yeah,
Speaker 1: Smedley's in play. So from nineteen fifteen to nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: which is basically all of Francois de Volier's childhood and
Speaker 1: early adulthood, the United States rules Haiti with an iron fist.
Speaker 1: Protests that break out against the occupation are put down
Speaker 1: with machine gun fire. In one protest alone, US soldiers
Speaker 1: gunned down two thousand Haitian protesters. So, yeah, we're not
Speaker 1: talking like Kent State here, We're talking, are you know? Yeah? Um.
Speaker 1: From a write up by the Origins Project. Quote, for
Speaker 1: nineteen years, the United States controlled customs in Haiti, collected taxes,
Speaker 1: and ran many governmental institutions, all of which benefited the
Speaker 1: United States in ninety two, for example, the United States
Speaker 1: extended Haiti a debt consolidation and loan that was designed
Speaker 1: to pay off its remaining debt to France, but in
Speaker 1: many ways, Haiti simply exchanged one master for another. Although
Speaker 1: Haiti was finally free if it's debt to France, it
Speaker 1: now had a new creditor, the US government and the
Speaker 1: US banks, who made a small fortune off the loan arrangement.
Speaker 1: So US is is like, I can help you out
Speaker 1: with this France problem, because like France, France right nineteen
Speaker 1: fifteen desperately needs us help because they have gone broke
Speaker 1: fighting this stupid, stupid fucking war, Like we can't really
Speaker 1: afford to do anything but barely hold off the Germans.
Speaker 1: The US is like, well, we gotta, we gotta proposition
Speaker 1: for you, Like when we work this out, we'll give
Speaker 1: give you guys some money up front, you cut down
Speaker 1: the loan, but also had he's gonna owe us forever.
Speaker 1: And now this is why you never open your junk mail.
Speaker 1: Thatsolidate your debt. Yeah, like that's what just this is
Speaker 1: what you're looking at right now. Yeah, you're about to
Speaker 1: get Haiti. Yeah. So although the US finally withdrew troops
Speaker 1: from Haiti in nineteen thirty four. The U. S. Government
Speaker 1: still maintained fiscal control over the country until nineteen forty seven. Again,
Speaker 1: the US has never had colonies. We just maintained military
Speaker 1: and control of Haiti for nineteen years and then controlled
Speaker 1: their finance system until seven, when they finally paid off
Speaker 1: their loan to us UM. In order to pay off
Speaker 1: this loan, Haiti was forced to expend its entire gold
Speaker 1: reserves pretty much, which left the company bereft of any
Speaker 1: kind of hard currency. Perhaps more importantly, the removal of
Speaker 1: the U. S. Military didn't mean the end of US
Speaker 1: military influence in Haiti. In nineteen sixteen, We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about some ship that happened while the US was in
Speaker 1: charge here. In nineteen sixteen, the all white wives of U. S.
Speaker 1: Marine Corps officers joined their husbands on the island. Right.
Speaker 1: They were immediately, in the words of one source, I
Speaker 1: found squeamish about meeting or socializing with native Haitians. You
Speaker 1: have to remember, these women are white women coming from
Speaker 1: the segregated United States, where many of them had probably
Speaker 1: never met a black person who wasn't a servant, and
Speaker 1: going to it. Then they went to an island where
Speaker 1: the black people were ostensibly in charge. Obviously the US
Speaker 1: is in charge, but there we like the fiction that
Speaker 1: we're letting them govern this, right. They were disgusted by this.
Speaker 1: They refused polite invitations to dance and snubbed even the
Speaker 1: Haitian elite. As a result, US occupiers formed essentially their
Speaker 1: own micro society in Haiti. This really piste off the
Speaker 1: Haitian elite. Of course, so again they're the elite. They
Speaker 1: also suck right like, but they're also justly piste off
Speaker 1: by how racist these white Americans who come over an okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're increasingly disgusted not only by the racism of
Speaker 1: these these occupiers, but by how fucking drunk they get.
Speaker 1: So at this point, Haitian culture was very conservative in
Speaker 1: regards to alcohol consumption. Um, crowds of drink and yeah,
Speaker 1: these guys are fucking these guys are white people in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen drunk, which is we still have not eclipsed
Speaker 1: those levels of drunk. Yeah. And let's say, I don't know,
Speaker 1: by drink like white people boy, so to imagine a boy, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a yeah. Yeah. Their nightcaps are just points of liquor,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, So how drunk these Americans get when
Speaker 1: they get time off, when it's like the weekend or whatever.
Speaker 1: This horrifies them. And they're also shocked by the seer
Speaker 1: sheer frequency with which US soldiers engaged in whoring. Again,
Speaker 1: nobody's I mean nobody whoards like soldiers. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say the US is particularly that's just it. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, people, but it's it's at a level that
Speaker 1: they were not used to see. Um. In a few years,
Speaker 1: there are a hundred and forty seven new dance halls
Speaker 1: and saloons, most of which are barely disguised brothels. Since
Speaker 1: Americans were getting super racist, they had to import girls
Speaker 1: to work in these places, generally lighter skinned women from
Speaker 1: the Dominican Republic. Rights. Again, you never get over this
Speaker 1: racial cast system, even when it's like some drunk nineteen
Speaker 1: year old Texan boy, like, it's all the fucking you know,
Speaker 1: the divide between mixed race and black YadA, YadA, keeps going. Um.
Speaker 1: US domination brought Jim Crow hotels, segregated Catholic masses, and
Speaker 1: segregated white neighborhoods. The US remade Haiti in its own image,
Speaker 1: which meant instituting something that looked like democracy if you squinted,
Speaker 1: but was really just a way to make sure no
Speaker 1: one wound up president who wasn't good for us business interests.
Speaker 1: Not all that different from our presences. Yeah, yeah, in fairness,
Speaker 1: we do the same thing to ourselves in this regard. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: this is important because the elections that take place during
Speaker 1: this period are the first ones. Friendcois Duvalier would have
Speaker 1: been really cognizant of. Right. There's again there's a lot
Speaker 1: of chaos in his childhood, but by the time he's
Speaker 1: eight nineteen years old old enough to like no ship
Speaker 1: and actually like think about what's happening. This is the
Speaker 1: kind of elections that are happening. And this excerpt from
Speaker 1: the book Haiti, the Davoliers and their Legacy makes it
Speaker 1: clear that this was not a good thing. Quote though
Speaker 1: are the Americans insisted on the semblance of democracy, They
Speaker 1: refused even the slightest democratic substance. Nowhere was this more
Speaker 1: obvious than an American sponsored Haitian presidential elections. The State
Speaker 1: Department approved the first occupation, President Philip Sudre, not even
Speaker 1: going to try to pronounce that last name. Sorry. After
Speaker 1: he agreed to surrender financial control and receivership of the
Speaker 1: customs haiti sole source of revenue, asking in return only
Speaker 1: from marine protection against assassin's He was the sole candidate.
Speaker 1: His rival Dr Rosalvo Bobo had earlier disqualified himself with
Speaker 1: fits of peak and arrestability. Allow election of president to
Speaker 1: take place whenever Haitians want, ordered Secretary of State Daniels,
Speaker 1: the US prefers the election of the guy that was
Speaker 1: the only real candidate. Um. And again he's saying, I
Speaker 1: will give you all of our money if you make
Speaker 1: me the boss and give me marines to stop me
Speaker 1: from being murdered. Right, that's the deal. I want your
Speaker 1: jack boots to protect me. I will give you all
Speaker 1: of my people's money in response. UM. As a result,
Speaker 1: Franchois early political understand name was heavily informed and influenced
Speaker 1: by completely understandable hatred of the United States. As a
Speaker 1: young man, he wrote articles for the nationalist anti occupation
Speaker 1: newsletter Action Nationale. He used a pseudonym Abderrahman to avoid
Speaker 1: being arrested or murdered by US occupiers. In nine Francois
Speaker 1: and a black lawyer in Mystic named Laura more Denise.
Speaker 1: Lauramer Denise founded the Haitian Negratude movement. Now, the Negratude, Yeah,
Speaker 1: have you heard of this great word? It is a
Speaker 1: great word, and it's it's in brief, it's a black
Speaker 1: nationalist movement that advocates black Haitians overthrowing or otherwise taking
Speaker 1: power both from the the Americans who were you know,
Speaker 1: colon I well, who were dominating, colonized whatever you wanna
Speaker 1: call it their nation, and from the mixed race political
Speaker 1: elite who collaborated with European colonizers in the US in
Speaker 1: this period, but who throughout Like yeah, now, if you'll
Speaker 1: remember from earlier in the episode, voodoo had a long
Speaker 1: history as part of the black liberation struggle in Haiti,
Speaker 1: and voodoo becomes a major part of the neg Tude movement,
Speaker 1: right because it's authentically ours, right, you know, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not something you've got this kind of mixed race
Speaker 1: dominated political and economic elite who's working with the Americans,
Speaker 1: who's trying who are trying to become more Western, right,
Speaker 1: who are adopted Western clothing, Western customs and stuff. Because
Speaker 1: that's where the money is in partant because it's just fashionable,
Speaker 1: and Francois and others like him, we're like, no, what
Speaker 1: we need to do is actually that this is authentically ours.
Speaker 1: Voodoo's arms doesn't like like fuck their ship, we don't
Speaker 1: need your ship. Very understandable motivations um The negratude movement
Speaker 1: continued to grow as Francois went to medical school in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen thirties. He graduated in nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: which is the same year that the U. S Marines
Speaker 1: finally left his country. He started his medical career working
Speaker 1: in hospitals and clinics around Port of Prince. In the
Speaker 1: late nineteen thirties, he and Laura mur Denise founded a
Speaker 1: pro Voodoo African focused political organization called the Grillo, which
Speaker 1: means the Bards. The Grio included an academic journal where
Speaker 1: France While bushed articles laying out his thoughts on the
Speaker 1: negrotude movement. He also wrote a book in which he
Speaker 1: urged black Hasians to take power from the mixed race elite.
Speaker 1: Despite his hatred of the US government, He traveled to
Speaker 1: the mountainous interior of Haiti to work as part of
Speaker 1: a US supported effort to wipe out malaria and yaws,
Speaker 1: which is a horrible disease. I don't know much about.
Speaker 1: Yaws is a bad disease. This happens in the night
Speaker 1: in the early forties, and you find when you find
Speaker 1: writings about this guy, a lot of them portrayed as
Speaker 1: like baffling or inconsistent. Will this guy hates the U
Speaker 1: S why is he doing because he he's a doctor
Speaker 1: and they're helping fight a disease. Like, it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: they didn't do a bunch of other fun up shit.
Speaker 1: It means he's like, Okay, I'll take your money to
Speaker 1: vaccinate people. Yeah. I don't think it's in any way inconsistent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um yeah. Francois seems to have been good at this work,
Speaker 1: and eventually he becomes the head of a clinic. In
Speaker 1: August of nineteen forty four, he briefly travels to the
Speaker 1: United States to attend Michigan State University to study public health.
Speaker 1: Does he's not in there long? But if you if
Speaker 1: you went to Michigan State, what if you're Papa Doc.
Speaker 1: Papa Doc went to Michigan State man famed in Michigan
Speaker 1: State grad Well, but yeah, he goes um. So he
Speaker 1: never finishes the program, and he rather quickly goes back
Speaker 1: to Haiti to continue his work trying to eliminate laws.
Speaker 1: At the same time, he helps another doctor named Price
Speaker 1: Mars formed the Bureau of Ethnology, an organization dedicated to
Speaker 1: studying and propagating indigenous Haitian customs, including voodoo. Now, at
Speaker 1: this point Francois d Volier is pretty rad. Unfortunately, in
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen forties, he makes the call to get
Speaker 1: into politics, which is not a thing that ever tends
Speaker 1: to go well for people. And I want to quote
Speaker 1: now from a book published by the Federal Research Division
Speaker 1: of the Library of Congress in nine Francois de Volier's
Speaker 1: first overly political act was to become general secretary of
Speaker 1: Danielle Fignol's Party of Young Professionals, the m O P.
Speaker 1: Incame a I'm sorry, there's so many like a lot
Speaker 1: of happening the m O P. As far as like, uh,
Speaker 1: the rap group from New York, which I never thought about,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, and um, and then when
Speaker 1: you said the Grio, I always thought that was a
Speaker 1: reference reference to the griyachts, you know, we're like the
Speaker 1: African storytellers. But yeah, yeah, yeah, it's g R g
Speaker 1: R I O T S. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, Okay, cool.
Speaker 1: I was just pronounced to it probably wrong, Okay, I
Speaker 1: thought it was something else. I was like, no, it
Speaker 1: mean it's barred. So yeah, it's like African storytellers. Yeah yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: oh man, Okay, well then yeah, there it is. So
Speaker 1: there's all these like these ties that like I knew
Speaker 1: the Papa doc one, but I didn't think about the
Speaker 1: m O p one. You know what I'm saying. That's dope. Okay, Anyway,
Speaker 1: may I hope it's I hope MP is referring to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I honestly don't know. Um, but yeah, it's
Speaker 1: fucking yeah, it's it's fascinating. So he becomes a protege
Speaker 1: in six of a guy named du Marcailles esteem A
Speaker 1: uh and then um steam A becomes like the MP candidate.
Speaker 1: A steam A gets elected president and Davolier enters his
Speaker 1: cabinet as the Minister of Labor. But a steam Ay
Speaker 1: gets ousted in a coup in nineteen fifty, right, and
Speaker 1: Duvalier loses his job. Um, so when a steam Ay,
Speaker 1: the guy who had made Duvolier a member a minister
Speaker 1: of Labor gets you know, forced out of power. A
Speaker 1: new guy, General Magliore, takes power right, so again one
Speaker 1: of these things that keeps happening in Haitian history, and Duvolier,
Speaker 1: because he was a member of the old government, finds
Speaker 1: himself a wanted man, and he winds up hiding from
Speaker 1: the government. He befriends a school teacher named Clement Barbeau,
Speaker 1: who becomes his trusted friend and helps him move from
Speaker 1: one hiding place to the next, often dressed as a woman.
Speaker 1: For years, Duvolier hid and built a base of supporters
Speaker 1: in the mountains, biding his time until the end came
Speaker 1: from Magliore, which it did in nineteen fifties six. So
Speaker 1: he spends years kind of like a guerilla leader, right,
Speaker 1: doing the castro thing, right, hiding in the mountains, building
Speaker 1: my support. He's got support in the mountains already because
Speaker 1: he's this famous doctor who helped people with these horrible diseases,
Speaker 1: so he's very well liked there and he starts building.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, he builds up a movement. Um. So nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six, General Magleore gets kicked out in ten months
Speaker 1: of chaos follows in which six different governments attempt and
Speaker 1: failed to hold onto power. While this was going on,
Speaker 1: du Vallier succeeded in appointing his followers to several public offices.
Speaker 1: So while all these different dudes are like trying to
Speaker 1: take power and failing, he's kind of quietly like making
Speaker 1: deals with whoever he has due to shotgun guys loyal
Speaker 1: to him into different political positions in order to and
Speaker 1: he uses these guys a beachheads to build support for
Speaker 1: a regime headed by him among civil servants. Right, what
Speaker 1: the kind of equivalent to the deep state. That's what
Speaker 1: he's trying to hes trying to set his guys up
Speaker 1: and positions that don't get overthrown because nobody wants to
Speaker 1: overthrow the guy keeping the sewers going or whatever. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but if that guy's will to you, and then the
Speaker 1: guy doing this, the guy doing that, the guy keeping
Speaker 1: power going, right, that you gradually build up a basis
Speaker 1: support makes it easy for you to take over. He's
Speaker 1: very smart about this, is what I'm saying, very methodical
Speaker 1: about it. He doesn't just take the easy grabbed to
Speaker 1: get power. Because those motherfuckers are going to get kicked
Speaker 1: out by the other people. He lets them fight among
Speaker 1: themselves a while. In nineteen fifty seven, after again six
Speaker 1: different governments try and fail to hold onto power, Haiti
Speaker 1: has another election and Davolier runs on a campaign of
Speaker 1: what one writer called undeluded africanism um, and one of
Speaker 1: the things he advocates is the removal from public life
Speaker 1: of all Mulatto's. Well, I say that. But despite this
Speaker 1: rather hard line, a number of Mulatto business owners, a
Speaker 1: lot of these rich mixed race elite, support his run
Speaker 1: for president because he assures them in private that he
Speaker 1: didn't really mean what he was saying. Okay, Like no,
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm saying. We all make campaign promises. It's
Speaker 1: like creature, like we're to remove all the light skin.
Speaker 1: We're not gonna really all the light skin. Gotta go
Speaker 1: Drake out of here. Yeah, it was his, It was
Speaker 1: his closing Guantanamo. Yeah, I just threw Drake under a buzz.
Speaker 1: I was about to say with Rob he just light skinned,
Speaker 1: shave it a heart into his head, Like we're not
Speaker 1: just put just irrationally salty. We you know, we still
Speaker 1: beef with the Mulatto's we need to really work this out.
Speaker 1: We still we need to really work this out with him.
Speaker 1: I got, I got no comment there, No, don't don't
Speaker 1: this in house debate here, guys. A matter of fact,
Speaker 1: one of the shows we did on the my mama
Speaker 1: told me with listing that was my episode about like
Speaker 1: light scared people are sensitive, and if this is the case,
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, we did try to run y'all out
Speaker 1: of Haiti, so maybe you got it. Honestly, this is
Speaker 1: obviously obviously, this is ridiculous. I don't really think about
Speaker 1: this about light scared people. But it was a very
Speaker 1: funny thing to point out. So from a right up
Speaker 1: by the New York Times here um about how de
Speaker 1: Volier kind of comes to power because it's not, you know,
Speaker 1: the election is a very flawed election, um. And and
Speaker 1: it's more a matter of who he's able to get
Speaker 1: in his corner before the quote unquote vote happens. Du
Speaker 1: Volier had the all important support of the army, whose
Speaker 1: generals considered him affectless puppet. Even his campaign workers openly
Speaker 1: boasted that they could easily manipulate him, and some rewrote
Speaker 1: his campaign speeches without even consulting him. She Haitian intellectuals
Speaker 1: who were later exiled have speculated that Duvolier, far from
Speaker 1: being a stupid pawn, cunningly stepped into a deceptive role
Speaker 1: as puppet and figurehead, playing various power blocks and interests
Speaker 1: against one another to divide and conquer. And conquer he
Speaker 1: did with an overwhelming majority in the election of September
Speaker 1: twenty two, nineteen fifty seven. He was inaugurated on October
Speaker 1: twenty two. The two dates were felicitous ones from his
Speaker 1: point of view, as Papa Doc had always considered twenty
Speaker 1: two his lucky number. He was to continue to hold
Speaker 1: it in superstitious reverence. Francois came to power with the
Speaker 1: support of the army, who are again in a very
Speaker 1: like themselves, in a pretty desperate situation in fifty seven.
Speaker 1: They were very unpopular, disorganized, not very well equipped or trained,
Speaker 1: and Francois saw this as an opportunity. He was a
Speaker 1: smart guy. He lived through a lot of military coups
Speaker 1: and he was not going to let that ship happen
Speaker 1: to him. So one of his first acts when he
Speaker 1: becomes president, um like two years after he takes office
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty nine is he starts building a civilian
Speaker 1: militia which will be the Tonton mccoot. Are kind of
Speaker 1: described alternatingly as a secret police and a militia and
Speaker 1: uh an imperial guard. They're not really any of those,
Speaker 1: and they're kind of all of them. It's an interesting
Speaker 1: organization how he makes this as he starts drawing in
Speaker 1: poor young men from Capital City slums and he arms
Speaker 1: them with an antique guns that he found in the
Speaker 1: basement of the Presidential Palace, and he puts them under
Speaker 1: the command of his old friend Clement Barbeau, who had
Speaker 1: helped him hide out during the bad years. This militia
Speaker 1: he calls officially the Volunteers for National Security or vs N,
Speaker 1: and they become better known as the Tonton mccoot, whose
Speaker 1: name was taken from a myth about a Haitian uncle
Speaker 1: who kidnaps and punishes bad kids by trapping them in
Speaker 1: a gunny sack and then eating them for breakfast. H Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like they're not they're called that because they're scary,
Speaker 1: because people are terrified. Okay. Yeah. From the New York
Speaker 1: Times quote. Within weeks, hundreds of Davoliers political enemies were
Speaker 1: thrown into jail, others simply disappeared, and within a year,
Speaker 1: according to the later claim if Mr Barbow, more than
Speaker 1: three persons had been killed by the Tontons on Devolier's
Speaker 1: personal orders. And as we'll discuss in part two, Jason's
Speaker 1: only get worse from there. That's Part one. Some Haitian history,
Speaker 1: some Papa doc Papa good stuff, Good stuff man, Papa
Speaker 1: dot man. Go back to just battle rapping man, when
Speaker 1: you were just spitting bars to be rabbit. You know
Speaker 1: it was better than Yeah, you got any plugs for us?
Speaker 1: Prop man Hood Politics will PROP coming at you. Uh,
Speaker 1: We're we're cranking um in the Politics pod uh Instagram
Speaker 1: and in Twitter is cranking. We're doing silly takes on that.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, things that can't you know, become a
Speaker 1: full episode. So we're doing takes on that. Uh. Prop
Speaker 1: hip hop dot Com for the book and for the
Speaker 1: music and for the Instagram and the twitters. It's all
Speaker 1: proper hip hop right Well. Check out prop, check out
Speaker 1: Hood Politics, and check out I Got a book if
Speaker 1: you find it at a t r book dot com.
Speaker 1: You can find the podcast After the Revolution. Check that
Speaker 1: shout out too, I'm a man. I'm I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm caught up on it with with with skull fucker
Speaker 1: on his uh. Every time I hear every time I
Speaker 1: hear the names on this, I'm like, I can totally
Speaker 1: picture Robert just giggling as you keep making these names, like, oh,
Speaker 1: oh no, you shouldn't. I will never write a British
Speaker 1: person into a story again. Oh would you trying to
Speaker 1: do the British terrible mistake on? Oh my god, it's
Speaker 1: so unbelively fun for me. Oh my god, I hate it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hate it. Well, I enjoy it. I enjoy you
Speaker 1: attempting to do the British accent. I love Robert. Hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, he thought he's British, not Australian, so
Speaker 1: that an island. I am on record as saying British
Speaker 1: and Australian people are the same thing. Um, one could argue, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, well if you think British and Australian people
Speaker 1: are different, hit me up on Twitter and argue with me,
Speaker 1: but I will not respond to you episodes over Hey, everybody.
Speaker 1: Initially I was going to plug the go fund me
Speaker 1: for the sequel to my book. Um, after the Revolution,
Speaker 1: which you can find at a t r book dot com.
Speaker 1: But um, here in the Pacific Northwest, we're having an
Speaker 1: unprecedented heat wave and it's causing disastrous conditions, life threatening
Speaker 1: conditions for a lot of houseless people, a lot of
Speaker 1: people without air conditioning. UM, particularly in the city of Salem.
Speaker 1: UM activists everywhere have been kind of gathering to try
Speaker 1: and um mitigate set up cooling stations, hand out cold drinks,
Speaker 1: to do things to help people get their temperature down. UM.
Speaker 1: I want to try and raise funds for the Free
Speaker 1: Fridge of Salem, UM, which are doing cooling stations in
Speaker 1: the capital of Oregon, Salem. So if you go to
Speaker 1: venmo At Free Fridge Salem, that's venemo At Free Fridge Salem,
Speaker 1: and send them a couple of bucks, they could really
Speaker 1: use it. UM. Local government has destroyed a number like
Speaker 1: police particularly have destroyed a number of water and cooling
Speaker 1: stations they've set out. UM. It's you know, we're not
Speaker 1: going to be in triple digit heats for the next
Speaker 1: couple of days after I'm recording this on Monday, but
Speaker 1: it's still going to be very hot. People still need this,
Speaker 1: so please venmo At Free fridge Salem. If you have
Speaker 1: the wherewithal and the financial resources to do so one
Speaker 1: more time, the Venemo is at free fridge Salem. Thanks