Sherry Chandler

Mud Mothers

This morning, Allison Hedge Coke posted to the Wom-Po list a poem by Lenelle Moïse, “Mud Mothers,” which begins like this:

Mud Mothers

the children of haiti
are not mythological
we are starving
or eating salty cakes
made of clay

because in 1804 we felled
our former slave captors
the graceless losers sunk
vindictive yellow
teeth into our forests

what was green is now
dust & everyone knows
trees unleash oxygen
(another humble word
for life)

This poem reminded me that back on December 2, I mentioned Margaretta Mason Brown, wife of Kentucky’s first U.S. Senator, who wrote,to her husband that

the Monster Slavery may destroy the people of Kentucky before long [p. 57]

As I wrote then, Margaretta Brown was an emancipationist, one who favored a gradual freeing of the slaves. She made this statement because she was afraid of an uprising like that in Santo Domingo. She was afraid that the incendiary language of abolitionists would incite such a rebellion.

Once upon a time evangelicals were on the side of the angels, and in 1834, a particularly fiery abolitionist sermon by “a young Presbyterian minister, Mr. Davidson” in a church “to Galleries overflowing with Negroes,” caused Mrs. Brown to write to her niece:

The cause of gradual emancipation is gaining ground daily in the West, but these premature and violent measures, will have a tendency to create such a spirit of insubordination amongst the slaves, as will render it necessary to rivet their chains more closely in order to our self preservation, or they will be stimulated to take their cause in their own hands and the tragedy of St. Domingo may indeed be reacted here.

The passage above is from Helen Deiss Irvin’s Women in Kentucky. The paternalism of it makes me cringe, but it illustrates how the institution of slavery enslaved a whole culture. Look at this story from Irvin:

. . . Kentucky owners dreaded slave uprisings. Like other slaveholders, they feared poisonings and the hand raised against an owner that might begin some frightful massacre. [john W.] Coleman [author of Slavery Times in Kentucky] tells of a Lexington woman from Massachusetts, Caroline Turner, despised by whites for her insanely sadistic treatment of slaves. While she was whipping a young coachman in chains early one morning, he broke free and strangled her. Sympathetic as they had previously been toward the Turner slaves, Lexington citizens quickly closed ranks to hunt the young slave down and have him hanged. [p. 57]

It pains me to believe that the people of Haiti are still suffering because once they took their fates in their own hands. And yet, here is Pat Robertson illustrating that the memory of ignorant whites is long. If there is a devil involved here, I would say it has a white skin. How did such a man as this become the voice of evangelism, evangelism that once was on the side of freedom for all? I wonder how Mr. Robertson would react to being whipped in chains.

To learn more about the Haitian Revolution and how Robertson got it all wrong, see Juan Cole who reminds us that these things are never simple:

As Charles Tilly pointed out, all revolutions are multiple revolutions

Read more about the deforestation of Haiti here at the Alicia Patterson Foundation:

No matter how many environmental, agriculture and forestry experts in American and international aid agencies one talks with, there are no illusions that even the best techniques available today can save Haiti. It will never be restored to the richest jewel that adorned France’s colonial crown in the 18th century. The French brought a million African slaves to clear the forests for sugar and coffee. As a result, a huge part of Haiti’s precious woods were felled. This was followed by a procession of lumber companies in the 19th century that paid large sums to landowners and corrupt government officials for access to the forests. The Haitian peasantry also was in need of fuel, building materials and crop lands. They cut down more forests and ended up being blamed for the devastation, now in epic proportions.

(My emphasis)

To read more of Lenelle Moïse at her blog, where you will find links to donate to the Haiti earthquake fund.

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Added: Another good explanation of how Haiti came to be where it is today from The Guardian:

As Stephen Keppel of the Economist Intelligence Unit puts it, Haiti’s revolution may have brought it independence but it also “ended up destroying the country’s infrastructure and most of its plantations. It wasn’t the best of starts for a fledgling republic.” Moreover, in exchange for diplomatic recognition from France, the new republic was forced to pay enormous reparations: some 150m francs, in gold. It was an immense sum, and even reduced by more than half in 1830, far more than Haiti could afford.

“The long and the short of it is that Haiti was paying reparations to France from 1825 until 1947,” says Von Tunzelmann. “To come up with the money, it took out huge loans from American, German and French banks, at exorbitant rates of interest. By 1900, Haiti was spending about 80% of its national budget on loan repayments. It ­completely wrecked their economy. By the time the original reparations and interest were paid off, the place was basically destitute and trapped in a ­spiral of debt. Plus, a succession of leaders had more or less given up on trying to resolve Haiti’s problems, and started looting it instead.”