PORT-AU-DELUSION

Haiti bills France for slavery debt: $21.7 billion (Carol J. Williams, 6/15/03, Los Angeles Times)

France owes this country exactly $21,685,135,571.48, the government figures - not counting interest, penalties or consideration of the suffering and indignity inflicted by slavery and colonization.

On the 200th anniversary of the death of Toussaint Louverture, who led fellow slaves to throw off their French colonial oppressors, Haiti is making a bicentennial spectacle of refusing to take no for an answer.

In one of the most colorful campaigns to galvanize Haitians in years, the country is awash in banners, bumper stickers, television ads and radio broadcasts demanding payback.

Haiti originally raised its $21.7 billion claim on April 7; 200 years to the day after Louverture died a captive in a French prison. Seven months after his death, Haitian slaves defeated French forces and proclaimed the world's first independent black republic.

France recognized Haiti's statehood 35 years later, after the country began paying 90 million francs in gold to compensate French landowners driven out by the revolution.

The reparations demand, Haitians say, is today's value for the 90 million gold francs Paris strong-armed from Haiti in the 19th century. Reparations for moral crimes have yet to be calculated, says the government spokesman.

And anyone reading newspapers aligned with President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government, or listening to state-sponsored broadcasts, would think a check for the staggering sum was all but in the mail.

Counting on French moral scruples seems a lost cause. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 15, 2003 6:00 AM