Having consolidated control of the colony by 1799, L’Ouverture quickly set about firmly establishing Haitian independence. “There cannot exist slaves [in Saint-Domingue], servitude is therein forever abolished. All men are born, live and die free and French,” he wrote in a draft constitution for the new nation.
Having almost completely eliminated the Amerindian population in Haiti, the Spanish now began importing kidnapped Africans as early as 1501 under the rule of Nicolás de Ovando; thus making him the first enslaver of both the Americas and Haiti.
The land of Haiti was originally inhabited by one of the many indigenous native tribes that called the islands of the Greater Antilles (including Jamaica, Haiti, Trinidad, Barbados, and several others) their home. They were the Arawaks or Taínos people.
Goodbye Uncle Tom is possibly the most politically incorrect “shockumentary” you are ever likely to see. A disgusting, perverted, apparently hysterical, look at the slave trade in the mid 1800s by Italian directors Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi.
Too long there has been a popular perception that somehow the Haitian nation-building project, launched on January 1, 1804, has failed on account of mismanagement, ineptitude, corruption.
MISTY IN ROOTS’ status in the canon of British Reggae is unparalleled; not just because of the band’s longevity (still going strong) but also because they have stuck to their original brief of playing spiritual, rootsy, African fusion reggae.
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