HAITI: 206 YEARS SINCE JANAK DESALIN

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Oct. 17, 2012 – 206 years of suffering later, The Gathering honors the roots of liberty, Janjak Desalin and the indigenous Haiti army

Ezili Dantò

It’s October 17th and the gathering honors Janjak Desalin, Haiti’s founding father. We gather as one. Nou fè yon sèl kò.

Jean Jacques Dessalines (Janjak Desalin, born September 20, 1758) said:

Et ceux dont les pères sont en Afrique, ils n’auront donc rien - I want the assets of the country to be equitably divided.

And for this, Janjak Desalin, Haiti’s founding father was assassinated on October 17, 1806 by the mullato sons on France.

That was the first coup detat/regime change in Haiti (Ayiti). It marks the beginning of neocolonialism.

“The Haitian holocaust – organized exclusion of the masses, misery, poverty, endless debt and the impunity of the economic elite – continues with the Feb. 29, 2004 Bush bi-centennial regime change marking the 33rd coup d’état in Haiti. Haiti’s peoples  continue to resist the return of despots, tyrants and enslavers who wage war on the poor majority and Black, contain-them-in poverty through neocolonialism’ debts,  unfair trade, privatization, UN occupation and foreign “investments.” These neocolonial tyrants refuse to allow an equitable division of wealth, excluding the majority in Haiti from power and from sharing in the country’s wealth and assets.” (Haiti: Jan 1, 2012 Another Independence Day Under Occupation.)

“Oceans of our blood have poured and watered the soil to nourish civilized co-existence on this planet Earth and continue, this very minute, to soak the earth needlessly, simply because Haitians were the first to counter, in combat, European/U.S. biological fatalism, destroy their myth of white superiority and to do what even Spartacus could not.”

October 17, 2012 marks the 206 year since Haiti has faced the wrath of the rabid global elites. Gran Guiton, Desalin’s spiritual advisor and priest advised him not to travel south that fateful day to see Petion. He did not listen.

Every October 17th in Haiti the drums speak at Gran Guiton where the umbilical cord reaches for unseen portals. Where the great crossroads meet. “Ayiti Toma. Sacred highland.” The sound reverberates. In the hearts of Ginen Fran and what’s left on planet earth with the courage to risk and answer when called “Ayisyen.” Nou fè yon sèl kò. One body, one soul, one force, one voice. Desalin cannot die.

Mèsi papa Desalin.
Mèsi Gran Guiton.
Kouwòn pou Defile.

Desalin said: “Recall everything I have sacrificed to fly to your defense – relatives, children, wealth, so that now the only riches I possess is your freedom. Recall that my name horrifies all those who are enslavers, and that tyrants and despots everywhere only bring themselves to utter it when they curse the day I was born. Remember, if you should ever discard or forget the law that the God who watches over your well being has dictated to me for your happiness, you will deserve the fate that inures to ungrateful peoples. ” —  Jean Jacques Dessalines (Janjak Desalin), Haiti’s Founding father, Haiti Declaration of Independence, Gonaives, on January 1st 1804, year first of Haiti’s independence, I Have Avenged America, Kanga Mundele: Our mission to live free or die .)

No Ayisyen will ever forget what the whites wanted in Haiti after kidnapping, torturing and killing General Toussaint Louverture.

Napoleon’s general said it thus: “It is not everything to have removed Toussaint, there are two thousand other chiefs here to have taken away…Here is my opinion of this country. It is necessary to destroy all the negroes of the mountains, men and women, sparing only children under the age of twelve, and destroy half of those of the plain, without leaving a single colored man in the colony who ever wore an epaulette. Without that, the colony will never be at peace.” —French General Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc

JanJak Desalin and Africa’s indigenous army in Ayiti responded:
Live free or die – Grenadye alaso!

Desalin’s Law

“…Never again shall colonist or European set foot on this soil as master or landowner. This shall henceforward be the foundation of our constitution.” –Janjak Desalin (Desalin’s Law).

On January 1, 1804, in proclaiming Haiti’s independence, General Janjak Desalin told the nation: ”Citizens, It is not enough to have expelled from your country the barbarians who have bloodied it for two centuries; it is not enough to have put a brake to these ever reviving factions which take turns to play-act this liberty, like ghost that France had exposed before your eyes; it is necessary, by one last act of national authority, to forever assure the empire of liberty in the country of our birth; we must take any hope of re-enslaving us away from the inhuman government that for so long kept us in the most humiliating torpor. In the end we must live independent or die.  Independence or death… May these sacred words bring us together, and may they be the signal of our struggles and of our gathering.” –Janjak Desalin, Haiti’s Founding father, Haiti Declaration of Independence, January 1, 1804, I Have Avenged America)

Desalin created a nation with ideals opposed to bourgeois democracy and that created a different paradigm to rival that of the Euro/US tribes on this planet. Haiti was also created as a space, a land where all people who were enslaved anywhere in the world could come to and find refuge and all Black people enslaved anywhere in the world could come to and find citizenship.

At the Battle of Vertierres, Desalin defeated Haiti’s tormentors.

Once the tyrants returned with the assassination of Janjak Desalin on October 17, 1806, the Haiti struggle going on today began. It is the greatest David vs. Goliath battle being played out on this planet earth. (Demand France Pay back the $22Billion Independence Debt: France Vertieres and Ayisyen Ginen).

We are the rebels,
who quietly say NO to neo-feudalism, European “development” and Euro-”civilization”.
We stand mostly alone.
Without the white skin privileged of those who are called heroes
We are invisible.


Saving ourselves – a Haitian father carries daughter through storm Isaac, 2012

Like the sun, we witness to ourselves.
The rebels.
The Haitians.
Celebrating our own legacy,
our own history.
Reminiscing to syncopated beats
about Mari Klèr Erwez,
Defile, Gran Guiton, Mari Jann, Sanit Belè, Gran Toya, Kapwa Lamò, and of course, lanperè Janjak Desalin – our braves.

300-years of depraved Euro chattle enslavement. From 1503 to 1804.

“Ours has been a long struggle. It started, 509 years ago in 1503 when the first kidnapped African captives set enchained feet on what is now known as Haitian soil.” (Another Day Under Occupation.)

200,000 Africans died for our liberty during the 13-year great revolutionary Haitian war, begun with Bwa Kayiman that beat all the great European armies and their mercenaries in combat, including the French, British, Spanish, and a US embargo.

We glorify the unknown African maroons, all Ayisyen, our survivors and overcomers, neg and neges Ginen – our lineage who:


I am the history of rape by Ezili Dantò

“suffered and died
Every bloody month
Of the bloody year.
… was born
Of abject inhumanity
With the noble destiny
Of carrying the sword
Of precious humanity
In a New World
Cursed by the West Storm
And raped by the powers
Of greed, wickedness, and death…” (Haiti, the Rebel by Michel Sanon)

Janjak Desalin lost his life 206 years ago.

206 years of struggling against recolonization as corporate chattel in this merciless white storm.

206 years of living within a hostile, profit-over-people American Mediterranean.

Slave labor is no longer the white settlers’ gig, prison labor is.

Ayiti battles on – a broken piece of indigenous Africa.

We are Alkebullan’s aboriginals, holding to sustainable konbit, viv and lakou values after 300-years of hammering agony, depraved Euro-Maafa brutality, with only a two year independence respite before these two centuries (1806 to 2012) of containment-in-poverty. No nostalgic historical space for us but a legacy, inner knowings.

And, determine not to become what Ayisyen struggle against, sacred Ayiti stays alive from one generation to the next.

Knowing soul deep that healthy, empathetic human beings are not meant to accept a world where the land, labor, bodies and resources of about 6.5 billion out of the 7 billion peoples on planet earth mostly service the Northern few.

Ayiti fights on
for universal freedom,
equitable distribution,
honor and respect, not bourgeois democracy. ReMEMBERing Desalin’s ideals, Law and legacy – never outgunned or outnumbered. Desalin lives.

206 years later, Desalin’s name continues to horrify “all those who are enslavers.” Tyrants and despots everywhere only bring themselves to utter it when they curse the day Desalin was born.

Desalin’s descendants, fragmented, splintered and separated cling to source, singing every September and October the story of Janjak, the greatest hero to ever live. We are the rebels who, like Defile at Pon Rouj, heartsore and soul weary push to pick up the broken pieces of ourselves every hungry month of every bloody NGO day in Haiti. Every bloody month of every UN/US day in Haiti. Every diseased month of every Paul Farmer, Bill Clinton and Bafyoti day in Haiti. Desalin cannot die, is rising. Mèsi papa Desalin. ( Mesi papa Desalin ; Three ideals of Dessalines ; Desalin’s Law ; Kouwòn pou Defile).

“Independence or death… May these sacred words bring us together, and may they be the signal of our struggles and of our gathering.”

Oct 17, 2012 Ayiti gathers.

Justice lives in the inner spaces Haiti colonizes. Ginen poze.

Ezili Dantò
October 17, 2012
Li led li la

Recommended Janjak links:

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Category : HAITI