Vertières, with the V for Victory

Haitian monument honouring the battle

By Guillermo Barreto

This year marks the 222nd anniversary of the Battle of Vertières. It took place on November 18 south of Le Cap, in what was then known as Saint Domingue. In that battle, which lasted five hours, Napoleon Bonaparte’s elite troops were defeated by battalions of former slaves led by Jean Jacques Dessalines, who consolidated the independence of what would henceforth be called Ayti or Haiti.

Haiti is always mentioned in the media in connection with misfortune. The poorest nation in the hemisphere, famine, cholera, violence. What is not mentioned is the cause of poverty or famine or the cholera epidemic or violence, consequences of centuries of colonial and neocolonial domination. At this moment, the situation is particularly serious, especially in the capital Port-au-Prince and in the Artibonite Department. In fact, a series of heavily armed gangs have taken control of large areas, unleashing unprecedented violence that has claimed more than 5,000 lives this year and caused the internal displacement of more than 1.3 million Haitians to safer areas of the country. The situation of children is particularly alarming. According to reports from UNICEF, 680,000 children have been displaced from their homes, 300,000 have interrupted their studies, either because schools have been destroyed or are being used as shelters, and 288,544 children under the age of 5 are at risk of malnutrition. It is important to note that displacement places children in a vulnerable situation, including health risks due to poor hygiene in shelters, malnutrition, and even forced recruitment by armed gangs. A recent report by Catherine Russell, Executive Director of UNICEF, estimated that 30 to 50 percent of gang members were minors, who are used as messengers, kitchen workers, sex slaves, and even forced to participate in acts of armed violence.

It is important to note that these gangs have destroyed vital infrastructure, including 38 hospitals, six universities, and libraries, and have forced more than 1,000 schools to close. All of this, and the resulting demobilization of the population that this violence entails, calls into question the idea that these are simply conflicts between criminal gangs. These gangs regularly receive weapons and ammunition from the United States, and this action indicates a project that seeks to make the functioning of a nation unviable. But this attack on the Haitian nation is not recent. Haiti has been under siege by imperial powers since its independence.

The island of Haiti was invaded by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage in 1492, establishing the first European settlement in Our America. The entire island became a colony of the Castilian, then Spanish, empire. In 1697, the Treaty of Ryswick between France and Spain granted the western part of the island to France, henceforth to be called Saint Domingue. The island was rich in resources, and Europeans, in need of labor, brought in millions of Africans who were kidnapped and enslaved to work in mines, plantations, and estates. It would not be an exaggeration to say that it was this wealth that provided the economic basis for the development of imperial France. In 1789, the year of the Storming of the Bastille in Paris, the colony had 793 sugar plantations, 3,150 indigo plantations, 3,117 coffee plantations, 789 cotton-producing units, and 182 rum distilleries. With a population of 40,000 whites and 28,000 free mulattoes, production was sustained by the slave labor of 452,000 Africans and their descendants, who made up 86% of the total population.

Control of the colony was characterized by unimaginable cruelty. Rebellions took place from the very beginning of the conquest of the territory. I highlight here the ceremony of Boïs Caiman in 1791, when Dutty Boukman and the voodoo priestess Cecile Fatima managed to gather 200 slaves and, in a ceremonial cry, swore to fight for their freedom. That same year, a massive uprising began with the burning of plantations and the killing of settlers. It was Tousant L’Overture who managed to organize an army and defeat the occupiers, declaring freedom for all. L’Overture trusted revolutionary France with its ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, but that same revolution betrayed him, and he ended up dying in a cold prison in eastern France.

France decided to send an expeditionary force of 84 ships with 25,000 soldiers to regain control of its most precious colony and placed a sinister character in command: Donatien Marie Joseph de Vimeur, Count of Rochambeau. In his novel Estela, Emeric Bergeaud describes him as follows: “his small stature, his angular features, his haughty gaze, which complement the approximate portrait of his moral ugliness.” Rochambeau committed atrocities from the moment he landed in Saint Domingue, including the use of dogs trained to hunt and kill. In a letter to his commander Ramel dated May 6, 1803, he writes: “I am sending you, my dear commander, a detachment of 50 men from the Cape National Guard, commanded by M. Bari; they are bringing 28 mastiffs. These reinforcements will also enable you to complete your operations. I will not let you ignore that you will not be paid any rations or expenses for feeding these dogs. You must give them blacks to eat.”

Rochambeau did not count on the determination of a people fighting for their freedom. L’Overture did not die in vain, and the flags he waved were taken up by Jean Jacques Dessalines, who led the resistance and heroically defeated the most powerful army in Europe at Vertières 222 years ago.

Dessalines assumed power as emperor, as Napoleon Bonaparte would do that same year. But unlike Napoleon, Dessalines promoted a constitution for a nation of free men and women. Slavery was abolished forever, freedom of worship was established, and divorce was permitted. Likewise, respect for the self-determination of peoples was established, without this preventing Dessalines from supporting revolutionaries such as Francisco de Miranda or, later, Alexandre Pétion and Simón Bolívar. The latter not only obtained ships, weapons, ammunition, and combatants. Bolívar obtained a political project from the Haitian revolution, and from there the Liberation Army would become a popular army that would end Spanish colonial rule from the Caribbean coast to the Andean highlands. Haiti was a beacon of light on the continent.

Today, when US imperial arrogance threatens the entire continent with its military power, we must remember that powerful imperial armies have been defeated time and again by the Caribbean peoples. The Battle of Vertières is a historical milestone that has been rendered invisible by hegemonic historiography. The Haitian feat must be studied, discussed, and understood. Haiti was a beacon of light that today succumbs to the interests of the Global North but carries within it the seed of rebellion, just as the Caribbean peoples who inherited that seed. Today, in the face of the military threat from the United States in the Caribbean, we remember the Battle of Vertières and what peoples are capable of when they are determined to decide their own destiny.

Guillermo R Barreto is Venezuelan and holds a PhD in Science (Oxford University). Retired professor at Simón Bolívar University (Venezuela). He was Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, president of the National Science and Technology Fund, and Minister of Ecosocialism and Water (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela). He is currently a researcher at the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research and a visiting collaborator at the Center for the Study of Social Transformations-IVIC.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.