Once Again, Haiti Seems to Be Dying

What will Latin America do about it?

30June 2021 — (Wall Street International)* —  The story goes that on his first voyage to what would become America, Christopher Columbus disembarked on October 12, 1492, on a beach he named San Salvador, today Wattlin, in the Bahamas archipelago.

By December 1 he chose to live in a wonderful setting on an island he called Hispaniola. He took possession of it without asking, obviously, the locals. Colonization began by building a fort called “La Navidad”, on the north coast of what is today Haiti.

There he celebrated, on December 24 of that very year, the first Christmas Eve in this continent unknown to Europeans, which would deliver unlimited riches to the crown of Spain and infinite pain to its inhabitants. In the name of his lord king, Columbus initiated from here the occupation, exploitation, disease, extermination and colonization of Latin America.

However, it was also this very island, already divided and partially converted into Haiti, which became the first place to abolish slavery in 1803 and the second independent republic of the continent in 1804, after the United States. It was also the first republic in the world formed by Afro-descendants.

Previously, in the 17^thcentury, this rich colony had been offered as a gift by Spain to France. It specialized in the production of sugar and therefore imported thousands of thousands of slaves who were hunted and transported from various parts of Africa, with different cultures, beliefs and languages; mixed and exploited on the island that was by then called Saint-Domingue.