Jean-Bertrand Aristide
In 1825, under threat of another French invasion and the restoration of slavery, Haitian officials signed the document which was to prove the beginning of the end for any hope of autonomy. The French king agreed to recognize Haiti’s independence only if the new republic paid France an indemnity of 150 million francs and reduced its import and export taxes by half. The ‘debt’ that Haiti recognized was incurred by the slaves when they “deprived” the French owners not only of land and equipment but of their selves. By the end of the 19th century, payments to France consumed around 80 per cent of Haiti’s budget.
In 1990, 67% of Haitians voted for and elected their first president: Jean Bertrand-Aristide. For the first time since his 2004 kidnapping, Aristide returned home to Haiti on March 18, 2011 to a welcoming party as far as the eye could see.
In Eyes of the Heart, Aristide sees the gap between the rich and the poor as a moral crisis of staggering proportion requiring immediate attention. “Behind this crisis of dollars there is a human crisis: among the poor, immeasurable human suffering; among the others, the powerful, the policy makers, a poverty of spirit which has made a religion of the market and its invisible hand. A crisis of imgaination so profound that the only measure of value is profit, the only measure of human progress is economic growth.” With fierce moral vision, Jean-Betrand Aristide insists that “women, children and the poor must be the subjects, not the objects, of history. They must sit at the decision-making tables and fill the halls of power.”
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