Over the past two years, the Kidnapping has become the main fear of Haitian society. It is a crime, a model of enrichment at the expense of the middle and lower classes, and an affront to our nation’s slave-owning past. In an interview with Hebdo24, Professor Frantz Délice explains the similarities between kidnapping for ransom and slavery.
From a sociological and historical perspective, what is the analogy between slavery and kidnapping?
Slavery and kidnapping are two phenomena that are separate in time and history, but which have similarities in that they share a common base or content.
In slavery, a person is abducted by force and subjected to an economic and political regime that deprives him of all freedom, and forces him to perform the most arduous economic functions with nothing in return other than room and board. We see that the basis is deprivation of freedom, coercion, the use of force and the dehumanization of the person. These elements are also found in the phenomenon of kidnapping.
Kidnapping is an abduction, an abduction, a rapture in which a human being is seized and held against his or her will in order to be exchanged for a ransom or compensation in kind.
In the phenomena of slavery and kidnapping, force is used to deprive a human being of his freedom against his will. There is also the application of constraint, the dehumanization of the person. There is also the search for compensation, whether economic, monetary or in kind. In both cases, the other person is denied his or her human dignity, because he or she is no longer considered a human being.
it becomes a thing that can be traded for mercantile profit.
We observe in both phenomena that there is a denial of the recognition of the inherent dignity of̀ all members of the human family, a denial of the equal and inalienable rights that should form the foundation of freedom, justice and peace according to the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”.
Ignorance and contempt for human rights were the factors that led the warriors of 1804 to rise up against the system of slavery, exploitation and anti-colonialism. Haiti rebelled against slavery and contempt for rights, and wanted to be a land where human dignity is magnified. For Haiti wanted to be a land of freedom.
To forcibly detain a person against his or her will and then exchange him or her like a common economic commodity in 2021 is to flout the ideals of 1804, to forget the reasons why our ancestors fought and sacrificed their lives, to misunderstand our history, and to suffer collective historical amnesia.
We’re reproducing the pre-1804 context in this new cycle, and this time we’re our own executioners.
Why has kidnapping, which is tantamount to slavery, arisen in a country that has experienced the slave trade and colonization?
One gets the impression that Haiti has not yet emerged from the pre-1804 system. We seem to have replaced the white settlers with other colonial figures. The French colonist may have been ousted, but the system of exploitation of man by man remains. We’re in the process of collective and historical amnesia. We are in the process of forgetting or examining the gesture of 1804 and its content of emancipation, progress and dignity. And this is something our elites have built up over the years.
Their choice brought us to this charnel house moment in our history. Haiti has magnified the gesture of 1804, as if the country had been built from 1804 onwards, without going through the period of slavery.
The memory of slavery
is oscillating in our society, while the defects persist in our subconscious and in our DNA as a people. We have retained elements of the colonial system, and with all this we want to enter globalization and today’s post-modern society marked by confusion, the disintegration of principles and regulations, and the loss of confidence in the values of modernity, notably progress and emancipation. We’re at a crossroads where we have to choose between continuing the revolution of 1804 or abandoning the ideals of 1804, denying ourselves and allowing ourselves to be assimilated by the machine of postmodernism.
The deconstruction of the colonial, slave-owning and exploitative mentality must continue in the country, starting with our elites.
Can we say that our people have forgotten or even ignored their history?
I’ve just tried to answer that question. But I wanted to add that Haiti has forgotten one part of its history, the part that deals with the suffering and condition of slaves, and has magnified another part, the glorious part, of independence. The gesture of 1804 has been highlighted to the detriment of the memory of slavery. One part of history is not magnified. The suffering of servitude, the plight of the slave, his condition, are not taught, nor are the reasons that led him to rise up against the slave system. I think we need to revisit the memory of slavery, highlight it, talk about it, and that will help us really understand what slaves endured and why they rebelled. If we want to revolt against the current system, we need to visit the slave’s sufferings, understand his condition and then we can really draw analogies with our current condition.
– Will this have an impact on Haiti’s social fabric?
The consequences are already here. We are witnessing this “post-modern marooning”, the search for individual solutions to the detriment of the collective. Individual brains, young people and professionals are trying to escape this unjust and exploitative system. We’re moving towards another 1804 at the moment, we’re in the phase of “postmodern marronage” the individual realization that this system deserves to be changed, but citizens feel that they don’t yet have the resources to deal with it. They look for individual solutions, leaving the country to other, more organized collectives. As was the case before 1804, marronnage has replaced a phase of collective awareness in the face of a collective danger stalking all players. We will have to face a moment when it will no longer be possible to escape to other skies, other “el dorado”, where Haitians from the interior and the diaspora will have to face up to the problems to ensure their survival in this troubled world.
We observed the same phenomenon with the Jewish people in the face of Hitler. There came a time when it was necessary for them to have a physical homeland, to fight against the dangers that threatened them from all sides, and to face problems collectively. I think we’re heading towards that moment, when Haitians will have to fight to ensure their collective survival as a people, as a nation, where we won’t be able to flee to other skies, where we’ll have to face our demons and defeat them once and for all, otherwise we won’t have the right to be part of the concert of nations. And when that time comes, we won’t be talking about the descendants of blacks, mulattoes, Syrians, Lebanese, Egyptians and Jews, but about “Haitians”, we’ll be one people and one nation. We must reach this historic moment to overcome our shortcomings and collectively face up to what lies ahead. We have a “historic reprieve” and a “rendezvous with history”, with ourselves, and we must take advantage of it now, despite the difficulties. It’s time to burst the abscess.
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