21 685 135 671.48

[bcholmes]

It's trendy, at the moment, to post your favourite integer and threaten to copyright it under the terms of the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act. And if I were playing along, I'd be interested in this integer number:

21,685,135,671.48

My problem is that the reason most people are copyrighting their integers is to keep hackers from sharing important codes that are used to encode DVDs. Well, no, most people seem to be mocking those who are copyrighting their integers to keep hackers from sharing DVD codes. Me, I want more people to know my favourite number. I certainly didn't know that number before I got involved in Haiti activism.

This is a number stated by President Aristide in 2003. According to him, it was the amount, in US dollars, that France owed Haiti in the form of reparations. It's unclear to me how big a role the reparations discussion played in Aristide's ousting. Paul Farmer seems to think it played a big role, but, in an interview with Naomi Klein, Aristide said that the three things that lead to his overthrow were "Privatization, privatization and privatization."

Here's the way that works. In the late 1700's, Haiti (Saint-Domingue) was the richest colony in the new world, producing more wealth than all the other colonies combined. And this wealth, of course, was produced using slavery.

When I heard Jean-Yvon Kernizan speak a coupl'a months ago, he mentioned that, during the Haitian slave revolt, Napoleon's decision to sell the Louisiana Purchase was partially motivated by a desire to focus his energies on retaining Saint-Domingue. It didn't work, however, and the Haitian people won their independence as of January 1st, 1804. Twenty years later, after the rebel army had grown a bit older, France returned to Haiti with a bunch of warships and, under the threat of re-establishing slavery, forced the Haitian government, under President Boyer, to agree to pay France 90 million gold francs in compensation for the property that French citizens lost during the Haitian war of independence. And, by "property", they mostly mean slaves.

This forced compensation is a big part of Haiti's financial troubles, and it's a big reason why Haiti activists don't like the phrase "the poorest nation in the western hemisphere," preferring instead, "the most impoverished nation in the western hemisphere." In fact, last night, I was at a screening of Bitter Cane, and someone made the observation that "Haiti has been impoverished by other countries." I was reminded of epi_lj's post from the other day: we say, "Haiti has been impoverished", not "France, the US and other countries impoverished Haiti".

Again, according to Kernizan, in the early 2000's, France declared that slavery was a crime against humanity. And, to this, Aristide said (I'm paraphrasing), "I'm glad you think so. Hopefully, you'll understand if we ask for our 90 million francs back. By our reckoning, that'll be US $21,685,135,671.48 in current money."

In the documentary, Aristide and the Endless Revolution, a French diplomat discusses this request and says (again, I'm paraphrasing), "yes, this all happened, but it's history. You can't go back. It's like asking the Spanish to reimburse people for the Inquisition." He conveniently omits the fact that it's not all ancient history. Haiti was still paying off this compensation in the 1950s. Think of this in terms of Canada: we've recently apologized (and provided some compensation) for the Chinese Head Tax and Mulroney compensated Japanese internees during World War II. It's not ancient history.

When I was interviewing Isabel Macdonald earlier this week, she stated it nicely: in a lot of cases where former slaves attempt to get restitution from their former masters, they don't usually have a receipt. Haiti has a receipt.