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Haitians should never be asking to be freed—that is a birthright our ancestors secured in our favor with their blood.

Haiti’s existence as a country and Haitians’ existence as a people are two things contradictory to white supremacist thinking. Ever since Jean Jacques Dessalines beat Napoleon’s army, racist, colonialist white people have never stopped conspiring to reduce us to a group of people who are foolish, who cannot govern ourselves, and who still need their control. Creating a nation with our own two hands, with our own blood, without asking for permission will never be an acceptable thing in a racist world dominated by white supremacist thinking. More than 200 years after Haitian independence, Haitians who wish to liberate Haiti from the boot of racist neoliberal politics need to accept this truth. The existence of Haiti and Haitians is synonymous with resistance in a world dominated by white supremacy.

Fellow Haitians, Haitian history is not a choice you made, it is a heritage. You have a responsibility to protect it. There is nothing that’s happening in 2021 that isn’t connected to what happened at Bwa Kayiman in August 1791. There is nothing happening in Haiti today that isn’t connected to the white supremacist thought that a group of “inferior” people should never be allowed to prove them wrong. Imperialist nations who built their fortunes from colonization will never accept the victory we had over the murderous French army in 1803 at Vertières. If you are a Haitian that knows your history and accepts the responsibility of protecting the heritage of our ancestors, you have the responsibility to act in the spirit of these ancestors to always walk with your head high and fight against all forms of oppression. 

We are the ones who will liberate Haiti… Let’s do it again.

Freeing Haiti in 2021 means the same thing it meant in 1791. It is true we are no longer in slavery, but we are still under the domination of the United Nations, United States, and the European Union. The alliance between the corrupt Haitian elite and imperialist countries is not an accident. When you place it in its proper historical context, you understand better why they support corruption, impunity and massacres. There is no true liberation for Haiti without a true movement against all systems of oppression. It is not an accident that the economic elite in Haiti that supports the establishing of dictatorship in the country resembles the colonizers in our history. The reality is this stems directly from white supremacist thinking that wants you to believe that there is a specific category of people that should never be able to prove that they are able to govern themselves.  

While the political context is different in 2021, liberating Haiti means liberating Haiti. Historically, we were the ones that liberated ourselves and built our own reality. If we agree on this historic truth, then we should agree that we need to take the responsibility to fight. Haitians should never be asking to be freed—that is a birthright our ancestors secured in our favor with their blood. Our country is under neocolonialist domination and occupation, and this is a reminder: we are the ones who will liberate Haiti. Our ancestors understood this, and this was the strength behind the success of 1804. To put this in clearer terms, let me repeat a message that is present in so many of our favorite Carnival songs: let’s do it again.