It was a beautiful Thursday afternoon, November 18, 1926. In the different towns of the Western side of Hispaniola, most people were still in festive mood. A nation, proud of the deeds of its ancestors, was on its feet. This little piece of land of ten thousand seven hundred fourteen square miles, inhabited by former slaves, ancient French colony, had ousted France and its powerful army to become the first independent Republic of the New World. This very memorable day for Haiti and all Haitians, wherever they are on the face of the globe, was really worth celebrating.

The Spanish Rule

When the expedition led by Christopher Columbus set foot on the island on Wednesday December 5, 1492, they were stunned by the vegetation and the wealth there. The seven hundred thousand Taíno people who had been living peacefully and happily there did not have any idea what those criminals would do to them. Within twenty-five years, most of the Taíno had died from enslavement, massacre, or disease. By 1514, only 32,000 Taíno survived the privations, the misery and the abuse that the new settlers had inflicted them. Then Africans, which the Europeans called “Blacks” because of the color of their skin, were targeted, tracked, trapped and sold as “Slaves” to replace the Indians. The Spanish had had more or less control of the whole island for the next 200 years.

The French Rule

However, in 1625, led by the same spirits of conquest, some English and French pirates and filibusters arrived and kept fighting for an island of the size of 69 square miles on the Northwestern coast of Haiti. Due to its shape, Christopher Columbus had named the island “Tortuga”. The French, having been successful in expelling the English people, kept fighting their way through the main land. In 1697, Spain had to give up one third of the island to the French who, in their turn, will have control of its new colony until 1803. So, After two centuries of Spanish rule, the western part of Hispaniola was under the French rule for over one hundred years.

Indigenous Rule

Those slaves could not take it anymore. They had to do something to put an end to their plight. Rebellions led to revolts. Mulattos and Blacks joined forces together and took arms against the French. Through their resilience, and aided by a contagious deadly disease called the “Yellow fever” that had plagued on the French soldiers, they fought against the most powerful army of the World, the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. They came out victorious in the battle called “the Battle of Vertieres” on that Friday November 18, 1803, and claimed this piece of land theirs, a land of liberty for “Black People”, a land where they could live without the threat of being beaten for not providing hard labor for free. This is something that is incarnated in the blood, tattoed in the brain of every single person of Haitian descent. This is an act that calls for respect and honor to those valiant soldiers. Year after year, the date is celebrated with great respect as they think of famous people like Toussaint Louverture, Jean Jacques Dessalines, Alexandre Pétion, Jean Pierre Boyer, etc…

So, after 123 years of Creole rule, imagine on that Friday the thrill, the joy, the dance, the music, and the feeling of a nation that was until then the ONLY independent black nation within the Western Hemisphere. Imagine the beating of the drums, the resounding sounds of bullets that were shot as a remembrance of the victory at Vertieres. Envision the marching of the soldiers… Picture the whole scene as the military was going on a parade… Heads and chests up, guns on shoulders, obeying commands as they go: One, two, three…

… giving a real show

Of how it had happened years ago;

Some making music with bamboos,

Others hopping like kangaroos

Every one leaping like young gnus

Talking solemn like real gurus…

 

Little did they know that the same night would echo…

… the voice, in one of the mountain peaks in northwestern Haiti, of a woman in labor who was about to give birth on the following morning to …

a hero,

my superhero,

my successful superhero… whose life would have a great impact not only on me, and on a host of people in Haiti, but on a lot more people throughout the face of the globe…

… even on you.