February 12, 2025 • 54 mins
Margaret finishes talking with Prop about how the people of Haiti destroyed a slave empire.
Sources:
https://www.newsweek.com/poland-nationalism-new-york-haiti-slave-rebellion-revolution-1382388
A Secret among the Blacks: Slave Resistance before the Haitian Revolution, John D. Garrigus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VofAQYxcHHY
https://catholiceducation.org/en/faith-and-character/king-afonso-i-of-kongo12-06-17.html
https://ecda.northeastern.edu/makandal-knowledge/
http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/ideology/pdf/F6.2.pdf
https://ecda.northeastern.edu/makandal-knowledge/
https://www.afrikaiswoke.com/makandal-the-black-messiah/
https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2011/01/slavery-in-the-french-colonies/
https://haitidoi.com/2013/03/18/1804-census-gros-morne-haiti/
https://haitidoi.com/2016/01/26/dessalines-reader-1-april-1804-2/
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41603-019-00071-5
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
Special Whoops All Context edition, because we are on part
four of our four parter and we're finally about to
get to the Haitian Revolution.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Whoops All Context harr Your.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Host, Margaret Kiljoy, and my guest today is problem.
Speaker 4 (00:20):
We are the only people on cool Zone that really
appreciates that reference.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I actually can't even remember what it is, but I
was thinking. I was like, I think this dates.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
It's from the cereal. It's it's Lucky Charms.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Oh shit.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Yeah, when they did the whoops all Marshmallows.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, I was thinking about it before I record. I
was like, why is this a thing in my head?
I think no one younger than me has this in
their head exactly.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
That's why I was like, we're the only ones that
appreciate it. That was when they did the all marshmallows.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah, how is that cereal? Number one?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
But yeah, I would try it once. That's what I
would do.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Yeah, I did to obtaining away in the world. My
black Mama would have bought any way in the world.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
She put that for us.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
You know, I didn't get Lucky Charms as a kid, No,
not at all. Yeah, my mom would take honey nut
cheerios and regular cheerios and put them in a tupperware
fifty to fifty so I could have like almost honey nut.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Your mom and my mom were clearly best friends. Yeah,
clearly best friends. Yeah, they read the same book apparely. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
You know, that's probably about as much sugar as I
should have in my cereal off exactly.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
It's that's the truth.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah, Well, we don't have a producer today, but I
mean we do actually have a producer, just not on Mike.
Our producer is Sophie Yeah. Our audio engineers Rory Hi
Rory Yeah. And our theme music was written for us
by on Women. And we are on part four of
the Haitian Revolution, the part with the revolution in it.
The more I read about the Haitian Revolution, the more
(01:50):
I realize I will never know everything about the Haitian Revolution.
Anyone could easily dedicate their entire career to understanding it.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Correct.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
On my shelf, I've got at least two books that
I've barely touched on the subject. Like I started skimming
them and being like this isn't I don't know time?
When is the Haitian Revolution's influence on the intellectual tradition
of the West. It's like sheesh, I know, right, but
it's actually one of the books that like did a
good job of Like I've read some of it. It
it broke down the like, hey, this wasn't enlightenedment came
(02:18):
to enslaved people Haiti and the Haitian Revolution exported ideas
of what liberty means, you know.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yeah. Good.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
And then another one that I didn't get to touch
at all is literally just how it compares to Cuba.
And I'm like, oh, yeah, oh, there's so much. That's
the thing about trying to learn history. Yeah, it's infinite.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Yeah, everything is everything that already happened. Yeah, as has
a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
And why you're learning it more of it happens while
we're here.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Yeah yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Then you learn more about like some of the books
that like change the way that everyone thinks about the
Haitian Revolution came out in twenty twenty three, you know, yeah,
like yeah, and all this histories argued about. I don't
feel one hundred percent certain about the parts that I'm
going to talk about, but it is the best that
I was able to come up with on August fourteenth,
seventeen ninety one, there was a meeting in the woods.
(03:14):
For years, decades and centuries, and slave people on the
island as well as maroons, had been building these communication
networks that were robust and powerful, and they were waiting
for a purpose. I mean they had a purpose. They
were used for marooning and all kinds of things. But
it's almost like they spent hundreds of years building this thing,
and then it got to work. The French Revolution, the
(03:37):
labor strikes, the increasing repression by the white supremacists, the
sudden interest in revolution from the free people of color
all came together to give the communication networks this purpose.
And so the first meeting probably was in the woods
the Lenhment de Meisee sugar plantation two hundred. Whenever I
pronounce French, I just start dropping letters and hope for
(03:59):
the best. Good to me, Yeah, thank you, yeah, thank
you yeah. And I spent a month in France. Once
I clearly know, oh you got it. Then how to
order bag attes, that's all I learned. How to do jesuit, Yeah,
that's all I got. So woplay. Yeah, I can say
a bag at please, and I don't speak French there
it is everyone there loved me. People in France not
(04:22):
like it. But you don't speak French.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
You know, there's a couple of languages that like I'm
not saying words, but I feel like I can.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
I could do the accent.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
Well, Like that's like a bit with like Conan O'Brien
where it's like he doesn't speak German, but he sounds
like he does.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
So like for me, that's French where I'm just like.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Jesu of Ecal, Like I'm like, yeah, say anything, it
just sounds French.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I I've learned about ten words in every language where
I've been in the country of you know, I learned
how to say like I don't speak this language, hello, goodbye,
thank you, fuck off?
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yeah, beer beer yep.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
But all these people came together in the woods at
the sugar plantation. Two hundred drivers and other skilled enslaved
workers gathered together, and they all together represented thousands of people.
This is a spokes council, which is one of the
most important pieces of communication technology and existence. Disparate people
can come together to talk about shit and get things
(05:27):
done by each group sending a spokesperson to the spokes council, okay,
and so they got together and they were like, well,
we should have a revolution. And then they're like, yeah,
we should have a revolution.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
We should go ahead and do it.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
At this meeting, someone announced that the king had given
enslaved people three days off a week, but the owners
were hiding that and.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
This isn't true, but it okay.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
One, it's not the first time on this show that
even recently that we've talked about enslave people using rumors
of like, well, the king wouldn't allow this in order
to spur people into action, what are.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
You gonna call him?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, yeah, totally. And also it's like the specifics aren't true,
but the idea that the king is actually kind of
trying to be like a little bit more moderate towards
the enslaved people, and then the owners aren't allowing it,
that part is true. Yes, it is, yeah, And so
they announced the revolution and word spreads across the entire
(06:23):
north of the country. The little we know about this
first meeting comes from the confessions of one of the
captured revolutionaries, because there was this eighteen year old driver
and he was like, all right, the revolution's on and
he's eighteen. So he just goes and says fire to
a plantation.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Uh, were good, We're good. Yeah, Oh, we're good. It's
time okay cool? Yeah yeah, and uh sorry, I didn't
hear you. What'd you say? Oh it's already burned now yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, And so he gets caught and he confesses, and
that's how we know in the historical record about this meeting.
A couple days after that, a free black man who
was a veteran of the Oji rebellion when the rich
people who happen to be people of color all got attacked. Yeah,
this guy leads a revolt at a sugar estate that recently
(07:12):
had a strike, because these networks that came out of
strikes were a huge part of it. And the plan
that they came up with was three guys with knives
are going to go kill the manager. But they failed,
and so these first two sparks that the revolution tried
to cast out didn't catch. But that's what happens when
you try and start fires with sparks. Yeah, just got
(07:32):
to keep going. So they do on August twenty first,
or the twenty fourth, or the fourteenth, or not at all,
depending on your source. Yes, there's so many versions where
like there was only one meeting, there was zero meetings.
I've become a believer in the two meeting theory of
the Haitian Revolution over the past two weeks of reading
(07:52):
about this constantly.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Well, the T shirts say twenty fourth, that's what the
T shirts say. But oh, interesting, it's just a T shirt.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Yeah I know that.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Oh huh, all right, but what do they know, Like, yeah,
at some point you have the second meeting, and this
is the meeting that goes down in history. Yeah, it's
the more famous meeting in the woods, the one that
really got shit going. I've seen framed or the first
meeting was the meeting of the leaders and the next
one was the rallying of the troops. But I think
(08:21):
that this is coming a little bit from a bias,
from someone believing that everything is like hierarchically organized. I
think it was a planning spokes council and then a
rallying of the troops. But the leaders are at both
in the eighteen year old wasn't a leader, he was
anyway whatever.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
The second meeting was more famous because it's a ceremony
and it was coole as shit. It was at a
place that is now famous blas Kma Alligator Woods. The
revolutionaries forgot to do a roll call, and they didn't
keep detailed minutes of these meetings and ceremonies, and so
they've become folkloric.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
So did the meeting even happen?
Speaker 4 (08:58):
I know, anybody's second was aired? Did we have an
open floor discussion?
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah, And most people agree that two people led this ceremony.
There was a male priest, a Hungen, which is named
for a male priest in Vodu. Yeah, name Bookman Duddy.
And there was a female priest, a mambo named Cecil Fatima.
And we'll start with Bookman. I've read that he was
born in Jamaica, and I've read that he was born
(09:25):
free in what was called then Senegambia in Africa, and
then he was transported to Jamaica. I don't know. He
was likely a Muslim cleric as well as a Vodu practitioner,
or he was one and not the other, or he
was both, or he was not. People really argue about
this shit.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
The thing that seems convincing to me is that he
was both a Muslim cleric and a Vodu practitioner. Yeah,
his name either comes from the fact that he was literate,
the name Bookman, or it comes that as a Muslim cleric.
He was a man of the Book's interesting and he
either converted to vod away from Islam, or he stayed
Muslim and became Vodu. And I honestly, as far as
(10:05):
I can tell, what people say has more to do
with the religious preferences of the people who wrote that history,
because he's an important hero.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Either way, the British guy who owned him sold him
off to a French colonist in San Deimong, possibly for
teaching other enslaved people how to read. People say that
he was a quote imposing physical stature, and in all
the art people made of make of him, he is
ripped as hell. It's a really good art of this guy.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Oh yeah, hell yeah, hell yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
He was a coachman for a while, which allowed him
to travel around and help build that communication network that
was necessary for the revolution. It's also possible that he
marooned himself and was living free. That's one of the
leaders of this ceremony.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
The other is a woman named Cecil Fatiman who's a
mambo and she is even more mythologized, and we know
even less about her for certain, but there is a
strong oral tradition around her, and you know that's a
very very valid and important way of transmitting information through
a time.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Totally.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
I promised yet another character ostensibly born to royalty the
way at the beginning, someone else was ostensibly born to royalty.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
And yeah, so is she.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
She was born to an African woman and supposedly a
white Corsican prince or the Prince of Corsica himself, and
she and her mother and two brothers were sold into
slavery when she was young, and sand among her two
brothers were never heard from again. Sometimes she is presented
as one of the organizers of the ceremony. Sometimes she
was just a woman in the crowd who stepped up
to perform the ceremony and be mounted by the lawa.
(11:36):
Either way, it was a dark and stormy night and
the rain is ripping through the trees, and it what
a fucking beautiful moment I have been in.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Like dude at the down at the equator in Haiti.
It's raining beautiful.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Yeah, yeah, I have read both that the this is
how mad I am it all the way the history
is written about it. I have read both that the
ceremony is very well documented, with accounts appear in print
only a few years later, and I've also read that
all of our documentation on it is terrible and it
might not have happened at all. Great, it's almost certain
that this happened. Yeah, one day, I am going to
(12:12):
take a year and just learn about the Haiti Revolution,
and I will be very excited for that entire year.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Oh, it'd be so good to just like, imagine having
a year per subject instead.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Of a week or two. Just deep dive.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah, I'll get a million degrees instead of the zero
degrees I currently have. So, because the ceremony is one
of the most important parts of Haitian history and cultural pride,
it is also a contentious point. The modern evangelical factions
claim that this was a Satanic ritual, which is why
the whole country is cursed today because they made a
(12:45):
deal with the devil. You can tell by my tone
of voice that I don't care about this position at all.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
I suspect that more Marxist historians are downplaying the religious
nature of the revolution, and so they kind of talk
less about the ceremony, whereas other people play up the
ceremony because they want to sell seats to the show.
And if you talk about Vodo, you know it's exotic.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
You know.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
I got to tell you, man, this has been one
of the struggles I've had over the years, that juxtaposition
of either playing up or playing down the religious element
of stuff. It's been a struggle for me, and it's
kind of been hard to articulate. But it's when black
(13:31):
history isn't covered by black people, like yeah, is I
mean down to like the civil rights of being like
well these were pastors, yeah, you know, like and they
you know, so to say, on one hand, like you said,
the evangelical being like, well, that was a Christian, a
Christian movement, and then being like well, it was a
lot of Christians in it that had theological positions that
(13:52):
made them feel like they needed to move forward. But
then you got the same evangelicals that were like, well
Martin Luther King didn't understand gospel.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
He preached the gospel wrong.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
He believed in a social gospel, So how could this
be a Christian revolution? And like and then like you said,
then you have the Marxist being like no, this was
about justice, it was about equality, it was about you know,
the political movements. And it's like the answer is yes, yeah,
you know, and that is like and in some senses,
it's like I don't know if anybody who listens to
(14:22):
pod will know who Vince Staples is. But Vince Staples
is is a long beach rapper who's probably one of
the funniest humans on earth. But somebody asked him like,
when'd you fall in love with hip hop? He was like, man,
it's like, I was born in nineteen what do you say?
Like he was like, either ninety one or eighty nine.
He was like, I was born in nineteen eighty nine
something like that. The numbers not the point. But he
was just like, that's like asking black people when they
(14:44):
met Jesus, like we're black, Like you know what I'm saying,
Like this, that's always a part of our story, you know,
It's always there. So that's what his point about hip hop.
He was like, if you're born in nineteen ninety, there's
no part of your life that wasn't that hip hop
wasn't a part of So when did I fall in
love with hip What are you talking about? Like, like
it was always there. So I feel like this particular
(15:06):
thing to be like it just threw this whole thing.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Was a Muslim? Was a voodoo? Did this happen?
Speaker 4 (15:10):
Was this important with And it's like yes, right, like
you know what I'm saying, like that is our experience?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Yeah, yeah, no that that makes so much sense to me.
And it's like why I end up like frustrated reading
about that stuff because I'm like, yeah, like because people
are like which neat category? Yes he's going to go in. Yes,
you know, everyone is trying to claim him in different directions.
And he was like probably just like believed in some
shit very deeply, in a very meaningful and useful way,
you know. Yeah, and maybe it doesn't map perfectly and
(15:37):
maybe it did, you know, and.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
And maybe it did and maybe they saw no, which
is what I keep finding, like they just saw no contradiction. Yeah,
like I see no contradiction between this voodoo and Muslim,
like I don't.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
I don't see any contradiction.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
No exactly, And like yeah, I mean I remember once
years ago I had my my great aunt was a
nun and I was like she used to teach and
I was like, hey, like what's the deal with like
creation versus evolution or whatever you teach evolution and she's
like yeah, And I'm like, is that contradiction And she's
like no, just don't worry about it.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
I like her.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Yeah, Like that was their answers. It's just like no,
it's just not a big deal, Like it's fine, cared,
just complicated, and I yeah, and I think you're right
about the Like I specifically find myself frustrated at how
much religious people are. They're rel like people are like
we love John Brown, like like white white leftist love
John Brown, right, yeah, and like good, he's great. I
(16:33):
like John Brown too.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Yeah he's not. He's a good one. What it was yeah,
and uh.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
But then the same people will be like militantly atheist
and I'm like, that's okay, you can be an atheist,
but like John Brown wasn't.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
He was not an atheist. Yes, I believed a mandate
from God. I am doing God's work here.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, And to take away that part of his character
is kind of shitty.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Yeah yeah, as disrespectful man. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Like so yeah, no, I'm with that, Like I appreciate that,
like that has always been like a I'm never able
to put my finger out when I'm like some like
it don't like I can't. I don't know what to
tell you, Like, it's it's a it's a cultural experience
that I feel like others have like in their real life,
(17:20):
like in the life you actually live, just like you said,
like you were like I go up a Catholic school.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Yeah, mom, you know aunties a nun like yeah, so
there was no part of your life that I went
to public school.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
I'm real proud of that.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
But yeah yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
My aunt's none.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Yeah, yeah, yours and none. So it's just like, you know,
we just stuff.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
We went to mass yeah, like yeah, yeah, Like what
do you want me to say?
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Yeah, you know, yeah, anyway, so yeah, the ceremony, uh,
last week we talked about voting, and we talked about
the Laa, the spirits, the angels, the saints, whatever people
want to want to call it, and how there's different
nations of the Laa, and the Petro nation is the
nation that doesn't take shit and is willing to get
(18:02):
shit done and does not mind hurting people to get
shit done. So that night in the woods, they called
in a lah named Azilie Danto, who is the most
important Lua in the Petro family. Azili is more broadly,
to quote the Encyclopedia of African religion, the Laah of love,
the symbol of cosmic fertility, par excellence, the mother of
(18:23):
the universe, the giver of children. It is Azille, indeed,
who is responsible for the continuous flow of life. So
that's the more broad like feminine spirit that they're bringing in.
But there's a lot of different versions of Azille. Azili
Freda is the Rata version of Azille, the nice one,
the calm one, the embodiment of femininity, who is bisexual
as hell and doesn't care what gender of person she
(18:45):
mounts love it. Ezili Danto, the one that they're going
to call in this night. She is not the nice
version of her. She is the feminine incarnation of rage
and the hard working mother god dog. Yes, yes, let's go.
And like that's why I'm like, oh, we can't strip
out the religion, because this is the spirit, the literal spirit,
(19:08):
that is where they're coming from at the start, you know, Yeah,
Danto is angry and enraged when she is displeased. She
is depicted as a black woman carrying a black infant
girl in pink clothes. She has two parallel vertical scars
on her right cheek. Some people say that the scars
were ritualistically done in an African style, others that she
got them fighting white people in the revolution. Sometimes she
(19:31):
is presented as no nose which was cut off in battle.
And she is the single mother of seven children. So
you know she knows how to get shit done.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
She can get it done. Yeh.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Yeah. So they're in the wind torn woods planning a
violent revolution that they each assume will be the death
of them. Duddy Bookman gives a speech at the end
of everything. He said, He said, listen to the voice
of liberty which speaks in the hearts of us all.
He called on people to reject the Christian false guy
and trust in the Supreme being, something found in most
(20:03):
of the African religious traditions that have come over. Yeah,
he said, quote the God who created the sun, which
gives us light, which rouses the waves and rules the storm.
Though hidden in the clouds, he watches us. He sees
all that the white man does. The god of a
white man inspires him with crime. But our God calls
upon us to do good works. Our God, who is
(20:24):
good to us, orders us to revenge our wrongs. He
will direct our arms and aid us throw away the
symbol of the God of the whites, who has so
often caused us to weep and listen to the voice
of liberty, which speaks in the hearts of all.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Who that is a scathing yeah, scathing report.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Yeah, yeah, buddy is.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
I've always been like, you know, fascinated on, like, yeah,
the role like in American the American slavery tradition where
like generally speaking like Sunday's slaves were allowed to go
to church, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
And because of that, like that's.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
Why I like a lot of our expression is very passionate,
you know what I'm saying, and energetic, and also looking
a lot more like our own animus traditions of embodiment.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
But one thing I've always cracked up on is like
y'all handed us this book and by the second by
the second book, you get to Exodus, and you're like,
well wait.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
A minute, now, like.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
It's say right here, yeah, you're the bad guys, Like
I'm just saying, according to the book, yeah, Like you know,
so we was like I like this, Moses, dude, you know,
like yeah, so so yeah, so you come up with
that and where you're and so like a lot of times, yeah,
just in like the Black Church tradition, who was like,
(21:53):
I don't know what, I don't know a Bible they reading, but.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
This one this will say liberty. You don't anyway?
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah, no, like I I meet ex evangelicals, that's the
word I think. Yeah, yes, they're like I was like, well,
how'd you get away from the church, And they're like, well,
I read the book they gave me.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Listen, listen.
Speaker 5 (22:14):
You're like, oh, if I'm a followed dude, yeah, like
the dude that you supposed to was supposed to be followed.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
That means I can't follow, y'all. That's what it certain
turns out to me.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, there's like, you know, there's a lot of inconsistencies
and complicated things in the Bible and like, but it's
fairly consistent on like take care of poor people and
the rich people are in trouble on the care for
the poor.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Yeah, yeah, being on the side of those suffering.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah. So they have this ritual in the woods. Social
fatimon sacrificed a black pig and then they all drank
its blood. Some say they drank human blood too, which
probably didn't happen, but you know what, if it did,
it does not bother me. One.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Well, that's the Filipino side of me. I'm like, yeah,
it's a dinner one anyway.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Oh oh no, I don't know that one.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Oh I got it.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Oh oh hey, okay, now the cool Zone Reddit all
my p noise listen, So diniguan they call it the
chocolate meats. So I know this stuff because from where
I'm from and my Stepmo's Filipino. But basically it's it's
beef and pork and it looks like a brown sauce
over it, but the sauce is blood.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Oh okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean it's like Catholics
literally drink blood.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
English people all of their food is like blood pudding.
I don't know. I can't handle English food.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
And still got blood in it. Yeah yeah again, it anyway.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Wouldn't bother me. But it's all played up, you know. Yeah,
And this is not the first time we talked about
this on the show. Before they have this revolution, they
swear a solemn oath to one another. I think ritual
is a really important and underutilized tactic and way of
bringing people together. Absolutely, they swear a solemn oath to
each other that they will never betray the revolution. They
(23:53):
declared that those who died were promised that their soul
would return to Ganen, just sort of a spiritual conception
of affort. He's used as like an afterlife. Those who
betrayed the plot never would. Bookman himself would die early
in the fighting. His head is on a pike, probably
at the age of twenty four. But you know what,
he fucking succeeded. He accomplished something in his life that
(24:17):
almost no one else can claim, Like, yeah, leading the
most successful slaver vault in fucking probably human history and
at least the Western Hemisphere's history.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
Like yeah, since them Europeans stepped foot on Africa, this
is the most successful.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
And so like I'll take Dina twenty four for that,
you know, Like.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
It's like it's pretty rad.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah, And Fatimon survived the revolution. She married one of
the most important commanders who was later president of Haiti
for like a year, and by most accounts, she lived
to be one hundred and twelve years old. Obviously, birth
records are kind of fuzzy, but you know what, she
could live to be one hundred and twelve.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
After she died, she became a Lawah named Marionette. She
is known as Marionette of the Dry Arms or Marionette
of the dry Feet because she's a skeleton. Her colors
are black and blood red. When she possesses people, they
become violent. People are afraid of her, but she frees
people from bondage, and I think she's cool. She's the
protector of were wolves.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Whoa yeah, okay, yeah, I know a lot of people
are named after her. Fuck yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
And they have the ceremony, they vow to be faithful
to the revolution, and then they fight. They don't fight
for ads, but because I didn't have a producer telling
me when to cut to ads, I forgot, And so
they're later in the episode. And I know you all
were thinking, where are my ads? But here, here they are,
(25:49):
and we're back. The very next morning, a group of
people from a bunch of different plantations and maybe maroons
showed up and set off towards the Noah Sugar factory.
This is the one that had kicked off a lot
of the strikes with that guy Jean Jacques was hanging
out as an unemployed slave, a concept that had never
occurred to me.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Yeah, yeah, I never thought about it.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah. They found the white guy overseeing night work and
they stabbed him to death. The estate agent ran out
to see what was happening, so they shot him. They
killed at least two more white workers. They didn't kill
the surgeon, and then just around midnight they burned the
fucking slave labor saw factory to the ground.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Then they marched the Dudy plantation. Oh that was the
reason bookman's name is Duddies because he was owned by
someone name.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
He was owned by. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah. They went Hut to Hut and spread the word
to people to spread the word elsewhere, to go to
the other plantations. They took the agent prisoner. The agent
said that they discussed their plans openly in front of him,
which was that they wanted quote, nothing less than the
destruction of all of the white people except some who
didn't own property, some priests, some surgeons, some women, and
(26:56):
to set fire to all the plantations and making themselves
masters of the country. And it's like this is presented
as like a gotcha, but I'm like, yeah, that's really
nice of them to carve out so many exceptions.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
It's so great. Yeah, you know, it so great.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah, Like I doesn't even own anyone. Why are you
gonna kill his?
Speaker 3 (27:13):
All right?
Speaker 2 (27:13):
You know cool? Like yeah, they marched and gathered forces
as they went. Fifteen hundred of them were fighting by
the time they reached the coast. And this wasn't the
only force. There was already revolt at the coastal plantations
as well. So they like show up and people are
already revolting coffee workers. Yeah, like it just fucking this
is like fucking it was just go time. And then
(27:34):
they all went basically yeah, like is it We're waiting
for it? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Coffee workers threw off their chains and were coming down
out of the mountains to join up with them. All
the forces met up at the coast and then split
into two. Bookmen went east, burning sugar fields and refineries
as he went. And there's one fun moment that stands out.
This huge army comes upon twenty white militia people, all
but one guy is like fuck this fleet. Nineteen of
(28:01):
the white guys run away, but the guy who stays
is a slaver who used to own one of the
guys in the army, and the slaver says, quote, you wretch,
I was only ever good to you. Why do you
want to kill me?
Speaker 3 (28:14):
That's what they always say. Yeah, but I was I
was nice.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Yeah, okay, god yeah, well what about Meto?
Speaker 3 (28:23):
But I was like you you like y'all like Meto?
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Right, yeah, totally yeah. And the coachman ex slave, stabs
the guy and says, that is true, but I promised
to kill you.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
I love it. It's like, oh yeah, but I mean
I swore an oath man. It's just a law.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yes, what's happening. Other revolutionaries would actually protect their former owners,
just a few of them, but a lot of the
leaders ended up doing this, And I think I think
this probably relates to that a lot of the leaders
were like the drivers and the people who are a
little bit closer to I knew them. The leader of
the second wing was a guy named Bellin, and he
gave a boat to the people who ran his old
(29:02):
plantation so that they could get away, and so then
the people fighting alongside him killed him for letting the
slavers escape. These two forces go around, mostly winning, burning
almost two hundred plantations foreing fifteen thousand people in like
the first like ten days, and all the colonists in
the north flee to capt fronts while the capital but
(29:23):
the revolution was just getting started. And I know that
to keep coming back to this like did they have
a kill all the white people attitude, because it's the
thing that gets argued about, and I know I kind
of keep being like, I kind of don't care if
they did. But it's also still messier than anyone can
easily explain, yea, because they all had different fucking ideas. Yeah,
(29:47):
and they were at this point probably, but again, but
it's also it's so frustrating, right because then there's all
this propaganda against them for hundreds of years about how
they're all evil or whatever the fuck. But probably they
were killing white peop, putting their including kids, and putting
their heads on pikes and shit, the same shit that
had been happening to them. The white people insisted it
was a race war, and it became a race war.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Colonial forces counter attacked, attacking armed camps of rebels, but
the rebels melted into the mountains. Bookman himself died in battle.
Jean Jacques was captured and executed. Peace talk started up
pretty quick. The priests did a lot of the intermediary
work because they were sort of neutral. Yeah, And the
first offer was return to slavery and we won't punish
(30:30):
you for the revolt, like amnesty.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
You know, like, uh, are are we winning?
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Yeah? That was there at a Yeah, we're winning.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Their counteroffer, which was honestly perfectly fucking like nicer than
they should have asked for, was full amnesty, emancipation for everyone,
and then they would go back and work for wages,
whereas I'm like, ah, I just seize them means a
production while you're at it, but like you know.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
What, like yeah, like I'm down to work. Yeah, Like
I'm just saying.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Yeah, yeah, I want to get paid for my work
instead of being owned.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Yeah, that's all I'm saying. Don't you like getting paid
for your work? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
And so at this point they're not actually fighting against
France in their mind, they're fighting against the white supremacist
local occupation.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
So France looks at this revolt and is like, all right, fine,
we're taking away what's left of the rights for free
black people. And so then the free black people are like,
all right, even more, we're with the revolution, and here
we are in part four. I thought I was gonna
do all the ins and outs of this incredibly complicated
strategic thing, and I am not going to, yeah, because
I'm not going to make a six parter or yet.
(31:38):
But in broader strokes, the new revolutionary government in France,
I'm gonna put revolutionary quotes there because they're going to
send six thousand troops to put down the slaver volt.
They fail, and they're like, all right, fine, this isn't working.
We need to let free black people join the reactionary
forces fighting against the slaver volt. So they started enrolling
free men of color into the military, including as officers,
(32:00):
and so they force diversified the Colonial Assembly to be
half white and half free men of color. And you'll
be shocked to know the colonial administration isn't happy about this.
The whole Western world is kind of going ape shit.
At this point. It's seventeen ninety three. The French killed
their king, Spain and England declare war on the revolutionary government.
(32:21):
Spain decides to back the Haitian revolution, making Toussaint and
the other revolutionary leaders officers in the Royal Spanish Army.
They offer enslave people their freedom if they fought. They're
not abolishing slavery, they're just freeing individuals. But you know
that's a decent deal for people. They're like, yeah, we'll
take it.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah. In seventeen ninety three, it wasn't looking great for
the Haitian revolutionaries. Thousands of people were back in chains.
But then the fucking white supremacist colonists they're like, we
don't like having these free black people around, so they
staged a revolt against the French government, also, the one
that was sort of trying to help them but like
forcing them to diversify. It's all of a sudden, the
(32:59):
pro diversity crowd is like, all right, fuck it, full
emancipation if you help us beat back the other parts
of France, and so fucking messy. The rebels now joined
the French revolutionary army. On Halloween seventeen ninety three, France
declares a general emancipation, no more slavery, and this kicks
in in seventeen ninety five. Not because they were like
slow to do it, I think, but I think it
(33:20):
was like, literally, they're in the middle of a revolution.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
Yeah, we're busy too, Yeah, yeah, France is like, listen,
you guys, Okay, listen, if we just call emancipation, will
you guys stop calling us?
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly, that's what they did. They're like,
I fine, you fucking win, and.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
But you got it, you got it, go for it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
So suddenly all the former enslaved people are French citizens. Meanwhile,
Macndahl and the Mosquitos are doing most of the killing
of the various invading European armies. It's yellow fever is
killing most of the soldiers. You saw it, Levitor, who
we haven't talked about it in any length I thought
was going to be the primary character of this entire thing. Yeah,
(33:58):
he is consolidating power. He's sort of a moderate at
this point. He doesn't want to kill all the white people.
He's down to be part of France so long as
he's in charge. And he actually, controversially to his own people,
he wants the plantation economy back. He just wants people
working as paid workers.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
He starts using his army to force people to go
back to work.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
And then he goes to war against other would be leaders.
He comes out victorious. He's pretty against Vodu at this point.
Once he's in charge, he forbids dancing and gathering at night,
and things probably would have settled down at this point.
But Napoleon comes to power in France and he's planning
on bringing back the French Empire instead of the Republic.
(34:39):
He's like, fuck this, We're conquering San du Moung. We're
bringing back slavery because he wants the economy back and
he's a racist. Yeah, he sends twenty thousand troops and
again this is really about race for him. His brother
in law, Charles Leclerc or Leclair or whatever, I don't know,
fuck with this guy. He invades in eighteen oh two
and he we must destroy all the blacks in the mountains,
(35:03):
men and women, and spare only children under twelve years
of age. We must destroy half of those in the planes,
and we must not leave a single colored person in
the colony who has worn an epaulet. Like why though,
because he it's funny, because I think he claims he's like,
oh woe is me, This is the only way to
do it, because he's like they can't be trusted or something. Yeah,
(35:28):
and his own black officers start defecting from his ranks. Right,
because he's like, I were just going to kill all
the black people now, and all of those people who
went and joined his military. He arrested all the black
troops and his own forces, executing a thousand of them
by pushing them overboard with flower sacks tied to their necks. Wow,
(35:48):
though it doesn't do you any good decide with the fascists.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Yeah, it's just it never works out for you.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah. The French arrest Lutorm. He dies in French prison.
But people keep fighting, as far as I can tell.
One thing I read was like, look, they actually didn't
fight too hard to protect Luvatore. They kind of didn't
like him because he's being a dick and like he
was in the army to force everyone to go to work. Yeah,
but he dies in French prison, which is a shame
(36:16):
because before he didn't have a chance to listen to
the products and services that support this show.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
You see what I'm saying, Like he should have Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
They should have stuck around longer.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Yeah, it was very smooth, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Yeah, here's the ads and we're back, and so the
cleric dies a yellow fever and so this should be good, right,
The racist guy dies, Yeah, the way more racist guy
comes in row Shambau ro Shambo. Yeah, rock paper scissors.
(36:55):
You might have known this. You know where the world's
first gas chambers were used.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
So I did know this.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yeah, yeah, they were used to kill the black prisoners
of war. Yeah, right here by Rochimbo. Yeah. They would
just fill up the bottoms of the ships with like
a poison gas and then throw all the black prisoners
of war down there.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
And the interesting thing I'm going to say, controversially, no
white people fought for the Haitian Revolution. But do you
want to know why? I can say this for certain
because the revolution reformulated the concept of race in Haiti.
Hundreds of Polish soldiers fought for the revolution, and so
(37:37):
how the Haitian Revolution defined blackness was if you're fighting
for the revolution, you're black. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
So the polls, most of whom had European heritage, actually
some of at least I'm aware of one officer and
probably some others who actually had African heritage. Also because
there's black Polish people because yeah, much to the shock
of modern wise supremacist Europe actually had black people in it,
going back forever yes, anyway, the polls are mostly what
we would call white.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
They were considered black in the war legally and have
been ever Cincinnati.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
This is one of my favorite things about race and politics. Yeah,
Like it's a it's a it's a choice, like being white.
It's a choice, like you know that, Like it's it's
only by the law. It's just like you said, look,
you Bolus was black people. So just I don't know
(38:34):
what to tell you, buddy. Yeah, I Irism, Irish, Yeah, Irish,
y'all y're black.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Made the wrong choice.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
You had a chance, Yeah, you could have. You could
have stayed with us.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Yeah, I'm pretty fucking mad about that. Like, whiteness is
such a like it's the devil's bargain, right, You're like
give up your entire culture and uniqueness in order to
gain power, you know. Yeah, and so all that's left
is like fucking shamrocks in Saint Patrick's Day parade.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
You know, you guys have but the Irish have been
very on the whole when it comes down to it
being pro Palestine, you know, supporting a black panthers Like.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Oh, Irish, yes, Irish American, No, yeah, Irish.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
American is holy your story. I'm talking about the Irish, yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, because they remember what it's like
to be colonized because it was their grandfather's time, you know,
like and actually part of them it's still call a colony.
Like yeah, So the Polish legions, which I yeah, I
find this a fucking fascinating story.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
So amazing.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Napoleon sent five thousand of the twenty thousand troops were Poles.
Most of them died a yellow fever, about four thousand
of them, but hundreds of them switched teams because they
themselves were freedom fighters. Because Poland. Yeah, other countries, especially
Prussia and Russia, had been piecemeal stealing bits of Poland
for a while. Yeah, Poles fought back. They lost a
couple of wars. In seventeen ninety four, they staged an
(40:05):
uprising that grew out of popular revolt against this occupation.
After about half a year, the uprising was put down. Austria,
Prussia and Russia were like, fine, we're carving this shit up.
Seventeen ninety seven, they split the country up three ways
and basically was like, there's no more Poland. And Poland
was gone for like one hundred years. A fuck ton
of Polish troops escaped to France and join the French
(40:27):
military because they're like, well, enemy and my enemy, right, yeah,
and they thought revolutionary France and revolutionaries, they make them
rescue us. Napoleon came to power in eighteen hundred and
he was like, hell, yeah, let's use these Poles as
fucking useful idiots. So he sent five thousand of them
to die and send them on, and they were horribly
mistreated within the military. They were ordered to like just
(40:49):
whenever you need someone like run at the front and
get killed. They sent the Poles and they were often
just like straight up not paid. And so they were like, well,
these Haitians they're doing the same thing that we're doing.
They're trying to fight off empires and everything has been
stolen for them. So roughly half of them switched sides,
(41:09):
and as far as I can tell, the ones who
didn't switch sides, like functionally switch sides, they were like
refusing to shoot and just call.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
They're just like yeah, yeah, they quiet quit it. Yeah,
they quiet.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Quit the fucking invasion.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
So when the revolution was one in eighteen oh four,
Haiti gets a constitution and it formally enshrined the polls,
the white Negroes of Europe.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
I love it. I love it. That is a ska band.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Yeah totally. I'd be sketched out by them, right right right.
Speaker 4 (41:41):
Like, hey, I need y'all need to unpack this. Every
time you started doing music, you need to unpack where
you got this name.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Yeah totally. Yeah, there's this this Norwegian folk band. There's
maybe Swedish on a Scandinavian folk band that I listen
to sometimes for a while. Before every single show, they
would be like, we are not Nazis, and we are
against Nazis. We were against the fact that Nazis use
our heritage to try and do racism. Here's traditional music, Okay,
here we go yeah's and they're not even like leftists
(42:11):
or whatever. They're just not Nazis.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
No, it's like just we're not Nazis. Yeah, we still
we still live on a planet that that's the wrong
side of history.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
And one of the Polish generals who actually died a
yellow fever. We don't know what he would have done
was the first known black Polish general named uh Jablinowski.
Again because again he was just but this guy speaking
of when you're saying like how these people went to
the same schools as like you know, the Napoleons or whatever.
Speaker 4 (42:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Yeah, Jablinowski had actually gone to school with Napoleon literally, wow, Okay,
and Napoleon and all the other students had called him
racist shit. Because I also don't want to paint Europe
as like a weird post, you know, racial utopia just
because there's black people there. Yeah, but Napoleon, Yeah, you
to call this guy racist shit. And yeah, about four
(43:04):
hundred people in the end survive. The Poles survived this,
and they mostly stayed in a village called Cazale.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
And one of the most.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Interesting syncretic traditions that comes out of it, because like
we talked about a Zelee and how there's like the
black Madonna figure is one of the symbols, right, Yeah,
there's a Polish icon of the Virgin Mary that goes
back at least to fourteen thirty, but probably the year
three twenty six.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
And it's one of the most important Polish Christian pieces
of art. It's called the Black Madonna of Chestejova, and
it's a super old painting that is a black Madonna
holding a black Jesus. I think that's important because you
have all these people being like you still run across
people who think Jesus was white, you know.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
At that they're dinosaurs if they do. Ye. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
And like in the year three twenty six there was
a painting of came black Jesus and black Madonna.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
Yeah there was already a black Jesus. Yeah yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
This is one of the most important Polish icons.
Speaker 3 (44:08):
Wow, what a connection. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (44:10):
So when they landed in Haiti, they was like, oh, yeah,
you're not scary.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Yeah, I actually agree with y'all. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
So again them speed running the revolution and pointing out
different bits of it, Haiti becomes a country. This guy,
Jean Jacques de Sellin us he's in charge. He is controversial,
he's accused of genocide. Interestingly enough, no one bothers accusing
the French of having led a genocide on the island
and focuses.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
On him, of course.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
In a public statement from eighteen oh four, he said,
quote liberty, independence or death. Considering that there still remains
in the island of Haiti individuals who have contributed, by
their guilty writings or by their sanguinary acquisitions, to the drowning, suffocating,
assassinating hanging and shooting of more than sixty thousand of
our brethren under the inhuman government of la cleric in
(44:58):
russiam Beau. This measure is entered into the order to
inform the nations of the world that although we grant
asylum and protection to those who act candidly and friendly
towards us, nothing shall ever turn our vengeance from those
murderers who have bathed themselves with pleasure in the blood
of the innocent children of Haiti. And so you have
this the massacre of eighteen oh four, and basically he's like, hey,
(45:21):
we should kill all the remaining French people on the
island except all of the following list of don't kill
these people. Yeah, And they killed between three thousand and
seven thousand people. A lot of people were like, the
saliness had to actually show up before people would really
do it. People were like, Oh, we don't know if
we want to kill all these people. The Poles were
of course legally black, so they weren't killed. So were
(45:42):
the Germans, apparently just literally just because they had nothing
to do with the slave trade. Like I don't think
they even fought. I think they just were a flavors
and they spared many or most surgeons, women and children.
They absolutely killed a bunch of people, And yeah, I
don't know. And then to Salonis, he he regularly consulted
(46:02):
with Votu priests, but he also banned vodu ceremonies and
regularly had votu practitioners shop because he was afraid of
being poisoned. I want to read like whole books about
a lot of these people, but I get the impression
it's just kind of the classic power problem, Like you
can be a really amazing revolutionary and then once you
have absolute power, you don't always do great. Yeah, but
(46:24):
the revolution itself scared the ever loving piss out of
white supremacist all over the Western world and emboldened abolitionists everywhere,
and the rest of the world has never forgiven Haiti
for it. But the people of the world fucking owe
so much to the people who fought in that revolution,
more than we can ever know.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
It's a good way to put it.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
Yeah, we've meddled in Haiti and Haitian politics ever since,
and like do everything we can. It almost is it's
almost like I just don't know what you gain from this.
To make sure that Haiti stays unstable.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
Margaret from the future.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
Here.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
There's a part of all of this that prop and
I talked about a couple days after the recording that
I want to add in here about just how brutal
the world has been to Haiti ever since. In eighteen
twenty five, twenty years after Haiti's independence, the French king
sent warships to Haiti to demand that they pay reparations
like Haiti had to pay reparations to France for freeing
(47:28):
itself one hundred and fifty million francs. This is ten
times the amount that the US had to pay to
literally double itself with the Louisiana purchase. And this reparations
was about stolen property, including you know themselves. Then France
gave Haiti predatory loans to pay it back, kind of
(47:50):
prefiguring the modern International Monetary Fund style of predatory loans.
It took one hundred and twenty two years to pay
off this loan, and along the way, the US occupied
Haiti violently for nineteen years from nineteen fifteen to nineteen
thirty four, using forced labor of Haitians, which killed just
a fuck ton of people. In the end, imperialists basically
(48:10):
just demanded Haiti pay forty percent of its income towards
its debt, and so they finally paid off their debt
in nineteen forty seven by crippling their economy.
Speaker 4 (48:23):
My curiosity, of course stays itching. But I think ultimately
is what you're saying, where it was just like they
threw off their slave owners and it was proof of
concept and that's what we needed, you know.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, And like I think that's part of the you know,
you're like, well, what's what does the world have to
gain to keep punishing Haiti over and over and over again.
And I think it gets back to that thing where
at the end of the day, it's not about economics,
it's about white supremacy. It is about like, you did
that and you were not allowed and you are punished
(48:57):
forever for dare to challenge white supremacy and like, and
I used to it's like interesting because I see how
white supremacy is this very important piece of the master
oppressive world we have in front of us or whatever.
But I used to kind of think that it all
came down to economics. Yeah, and it's just like learning
more and more that I'm like, no, a lot of
(49:19):
it really just straight up comes down to racism and
like white supremacy.
Speaker 4 (49:24):
Yeah, and to have to continue to bolster something that
is materially false, which is we are a superior spechi,
that white is a superior species than everybody else. You
have to keep adding little twigs and duct tape to
keep that thing standing, you know. And it's just like
(49:46):
this is at what point are you like this is absurd? Guys,
just like you don't have Like sometimes I feel like
the human in me wants to be like you don't
have to do this, man, Like you don't have to
do this, Like you're I know, you're exhausted, Like you're exhausted.
You don't have to do this. Yeah it's fine, Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
You can just like you can just chill out with
everyone else, you know, just real.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
Man, Like just here, have a beer.
Speaker 4 (50:12):
Yeah, just sit down, man, smoke this like just like
you see we're all having a great time. Yeah, we're
all just we're all having a great time.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Yeah. When you're saying earlier about how like just a
second about it leaves you like this four parter does
not get into half of the shit that I thought
it was going to. And like there's still so much
about the way that the revolution itself unfolded on a
political level larger than that. I found myself focused in
the end on the like the whipsaw context, the like
(50:43):
things that built up to it, partly because I'm like,
there's more modern overlaps than I expected, especially all the
weird basically DEI and like the you know, there's all
these things that I thought were really important, and then
I but yeah, I look at this and I'm like,
I want to know more about to some and the
like complicated nature of like coming to power where he
(51:04):
was like, look, oh, I'm fine to be French and
I'm fining to keep the plantation system. I just want
people to get work, you know. But then also, like
the implication at least some of the stuff I'm reading
is that we've kind of became kind of a tyrant
and so did dissalonest or whatever. Yeah, then I'm like,
but but everything's so politicized with the Haitian Revolution that
it's like maybe more than any other topic. I'm not
(51:25):
sure I've probab run across all the ones almost as
bad as this, but like everything is so politicized and
propagandized in different directions. It's like just fucking hard to know,
you know, without without getting my degree in it. And
and so that's like why I'm trying to focus on
the like stuff I can feel a little bit more
confident about I can, which is that it's fucking cool
(51:48):
to have a revolution.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
Man, well these are these are cool folks.
Speaker 4 (51:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
Yeah, it is always moral and good to burn down
the plantation that slaves people.
Speaker 5 (52:00):
I mean, I feel like there are very few absolutes.
Speaker 4 (52:04):
Yeah, that would be that would be one.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
Yeah, they're like stabbing the guy being like but I
always treat you good, and you're like, yeah, I gotta
kill you.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
I don't know, man, that's just like that's just.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
Kind of a moral truth. Sometimes you're like, yeah, but
you you fucking own me.
Speaker 3 (52:20):
Yeah, here's the thing.
Speaker 4 (52:21):
Man, But if I but see, if I don't kill you,
and this guy's asking and that, and then it's like
then we just all go home.
Speaker 3 (52:28):
So I might as well, you know, this is what
we're gonna do. Yeah, at times nine o'clock, you know.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
Yeah, I was just the arrogance of like being alone
in front of an army and being like, you wretch,
you know, you're not getting out of.
Speaker 4 (52:42):
That and then to be like Okay, so if y'all stop,
we won't punish you.
Speaker 3 (52:46):
You just go back to you like stop what Yeah?
Speaker 2 (52:50):
Yeah, yeah, because they had a chance out so many
times they were down to be part of France. They
were down to hell they probably maybe not, maybe it's
possible that the slave system would have stayed if they
hadn't fucking alienated all the free people of color, like yeah,
you know, like, yeah, it's possible. And I would like
(53:11):
to say that, you know, the slaves were the largest
portion of the people doing the fighting, you know, of course. Yeah,
so I like to think they would have pulled it
off anyway. But yeah, well thanks for coming along on
this this uh this journey with me.
Speaker 4 (53:27):
Oh man, thank you. You gave me an option, and
I'm glad I took this option. This is uh, this
is fun times.
Speaker 3 (53:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
Well I am fucking brain dead.
Speaker 3 (53:38):
I'm done. Help me done, Like I was like prop bipop,
I think.
Speaker 2 (53:45):
Hell yeah yeah, everyone check out Who Politics Is prop
It is an amazing podcast about current events and I
have a sub stack you can google it.
Speaker 4 (53:54):
I gotta figure out I got to figure out a
way to get you on, Like I gotta figure out, Like,
we got to find a topic.
Speaker 2 (53:59):
That like wors the angle is?
Speaker 3 (54:00):
Yeah, what the angle is? Yeah, I'll be into it.
We'll figure it out. I think, I think the crowd
wild love it.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
Okay, all right, well next week more cool stuff.
Speaker 3 (54:13):
Bye everyone, Let's go.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
visit our website Foolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 2 (54:32):
You get your podcasts.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
Special Whoops All Context edition, because we are on part
four of our four parter and we're finally about to
get to the Haitian Revolution.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Whoops All Context harr Your.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Host, Margaret Kiljoy, and my guest today is problem.
Speaker 4 (00:20):
We are the only people on cool Zone that really
appreciates that reference.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I actually can't even remember what it is, but I
was thinking. I was like, I think this dates.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
It's from the cereal. It's it's Lucky Charms.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Oh shit.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Yeah, when they did the whoops all Marshmallows.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, I was thinking about it before I record. I
was like, why is this a thing in my head?
I think no one younger than me has this in
their head exactly.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
That's why I was like, we're the only ones that
appreciate it. That was when they did the all marshmallows.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah, how is that cereal? Number one?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
But yeah, I would try it once. That's what I
would do.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Yeah, I did to obtaining away in the world. My
black Mama would have bought any way in the world.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
She put that for us.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
You know, I didn't get Lucky Charms as a kid, No,
not at all. Yeah, my mom would take honey nut
cheerios and regular cheerios and put them in a tupperware
fifty to fifty so I could have like almost honey nut.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Your mom and my mom were clearly best friends. Yeah,
clearly best friends. Yeah, they read the same book apparely. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
You know, that's probably about as much sugar as I
should have in my cereal off exactly.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
It's that's the truth.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah, Well, we don't have a producer today, but I
mean we do actually have a producer, just not on Mike.
Our producer is Sophie Yeah. Our audio engineers Rory Hi
Rory Yeah. And our theme music was written for us
by on Women. And we are on part four of
the Haitian Revolution, the part with the revolution in it.
The more I read about the Haitian Revolution, the more
(01:50):
I realize I will never know everything about the Haitian Revolution.
Anyone could easily dedicate their entire career to understanding it.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Correct.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
On my shelf, I've got at least two books that
I've barely touched on the subject. Like I started skimming
them and being like this isn't I don't know time?
When is the Haitian Revolution's influence on the intellectual tradition
of the West. It's like sheesh, I know, right, but
it's actually one of the books that like did a
good job of Like I've read some of it. It
it broke down the like, hey, this wasn't enlightenedment came
(02:18):
to enslaved people Haiti and the Haitian Revolution exported ideas
of what liberty means, you know.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yeah. Good.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
And then another one that I didn't get to touch
at all is literally just how it compares to Cuba.
And I'm like, oh, yeah, oh, there's so much. That's
the thing about trying to learn history. Yeah, it's infinite.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Yeah, everything is everything that already happened. Yeah, as has
a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
And why you're learning it more of it happens while
we're here.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Yeah yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Then you learn more about like some of the books
that like change the way that everyone thinks about the
Haitian Revolution came out in twenty twenty three, you know, yeah,
like yeah, and all this histories argued about. I don't
feel one hundred percent certain about the parts that I'm
going to talk about, but it is the best that
I was able to come up with on August fourteenth,
seventeen ninety one, there was a meeting in the woods.
(03:14):
For years, decades and centuries, and slave people on the
island as well as maroons, had been building these communication
networks that were robust and powerful, and they were waiting
for a purpose. I mean they had a purpose. They
were used for marooning and all kinds of things. But
it's almost like they spent hundreds of years building this thing,
and then it got to work. The French Revolution, the
(03:37):
labor strikes, the increasing repression by the white supremacists, the
sudden interest in revolution from the free people of color
all came together to give the communication networks this purpose.
And so the first meeting probably was in the woods
the Lenhment de Meisee sugar plantation two hundred. Whenever I
pronounce French, I just start dropping letters and hope for
(03:59):
the best. Good to me, Yeah, thank you, yeah, thank
you yeah. And I spent a month in France. Once
I clearly know, oh you got it. Then how to
order bag attes, that's all I learned. How to do jesuit, Yeah,
that's all I got. So woplay. Yeah, I can say
a bag at please, and I don't speak French there
it is everyone there loved me. People in France not
(04:22):
like it. But you don't speak French.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
You know, there's a couple of languages that like I'm
not saying words, but I feel like I can.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
I could do the accent.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
Well, Like that's like a bit with like Conan O'Brien
where it's like he doesn't speak German, but he sounds
like he does.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
So like for me, that's French where I'm just like.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Jesu of Ecal, Like I'm like, yeah, say anything, it
just sounds French.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I I've learned about ten words in every language where
I've been in the country of you know, I learned
how to say like I don't speak this language, hello, goodbye,
thank you, fuck off?
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yeah, beer beer yep.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
But all these people came together in the woods at
the sugar plantation. Two hundred drivers and other skilled enslaved
workers gathered together, and they all together represented thousands of people.
This is a spokes council, which is one of the
most important pieces of communication technology and existence. Disparate people
can come together to talk about shit and get things
(05:27):
done by each group sending a spokesperson to the spokes council, okay,
and so they got together and they were like, well,
we should have a revolution. And then they're like, yeah,
we should have a revolution.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
We should go ahead and do it.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
At this meeting, someone announced that the king had given
enslaved people three days off a week, but the owners
were hiding that and.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
This isn't true, but it okay.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
One, it's not the first time on this show that
even recently that we've talked about enslave people using rumors
of like, well, the king wouldn't allow this in order
to spur people into action, what are.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
You gonna call him?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, yeah, totally. And also it's like the specifics aren't true,
but the idea that the king is actually kind of
trying to be like a little bit more moderate towards
the enslaved people, and then the owners aren't allowing it,
that part is true. Yes, it is, yeah, And so
they announced the revolution and word spreads across the entire
(06:23):
north of the country. The little we know about this
first meeting comes from the confessions of one of the
captured revolutionaries, because there was this eighteen year old driver
and he was like, all right, the revolution's on and
he's eighteen. So he just goes and says fire to
a plantation.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Uh, were good, We're good. Yeah, Oh, we're good. It's
time okay cool? Yeah yeah, and uh sorry, I didn't
hear you. What'd you say? Oh it's already burned now yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, And so he gets caught and he confesses, and
that's how we know in the historical record about this meeting.
A couple days after that, a free black man who
was a veteran of the Oji rebellion when the rich
people who happen to be people of color all got attacked. Yeah,
this guy leads a revolt at a sugar estate that recently
(07:12):
had a strike, because these networks that came out of
strikes were a huge part of it. And the plan
that they came up with was three guys with knives
are going to go kill the manager. But they failed,
and so these first two sparks that the revolution tried
to cast out didn't catch. But that's what happens when
you try and start fires with sparks. Yeah, just got
(07:32):
to keep going. So they do on August twenty first,
or the twenty fourth, or the fourteenth, or not at all,
depending on your source. Yes, there's so many versions where
like there was only one meeting, there was zero meetings.
I've become a believer in the two meeting theory of
the Haitian Revolution over the past two weeks of reading
(07:52):
about this constantly.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Well, the T shirts say twenty fourth, that's what the
T shirts say. But oh, interesting, it's just a T shirt.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Yeah I know that.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Oh huh, all right, but what do they know, Like, yeah,
at some point you have the second meeting, and this
is the meeting that goes down in history. Yeah, it's
the more famous meeting in the woods, the one that
really got shit going. I've seen framed or the first
meeting was the meeting of the leaders and the next
one was the rallying of the troops. But I think
(08:21):
that this is coming a little bit from a bias,
from someone believing that everything is like hierarchically organized. I
think it was a planning spokes council and then a
rallying of the troops. But the leaders are at both
in the eighteen year old wasn't a leader, he was
anyway whatever.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
The second meeting was more famous because it's a ceremony
and it was coole as shit. It was at a
place that is now famous blas Kma Alligator Woods. The
revolutionaries forgot to do a roll call, and they didn't
keep detailed minutes of these meetings and ceremonies, and so
they've become folkloric.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
So did the meeting even happen?
Speaker 4 (08:58):
I know, anybody's second was aired? Did we have an
open floor discussion?
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah, And most people agree that two people led this ceremony.
There was a male priest, a Hungen, which is named
for a male priest in Vodu. Yeah, name Bookman Duddy.
And there was a female priest, a mambo named Cecil Fatima.
And we'll start with Bookman. I've read that he was
born in Jamaica, and I've read that he was born
(09:25):
free in what was called then Senegambia in Africa, and
then he was transported to Jamaica. I don't know. He
was likely a Muslim cleric as well as a Vodu practitioner,
or he was one and not the other, or he
was both, or he was not. People really argue about
this shit.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
The thing that seems convincing to me is that he
was both a Muslim cleric and a Vodu practitioner. Yeah,
his name either comes from the fact that he was literate,
the name Bookman, or it comes that as a Muslim cleric.
He was a man of the Book's interesting and he
either converted to vod away from Islam, or he stayed
Muslim and became Vodu. And I honestly, as far as
(10:05):
I can tell, what people say has more to do
with the religious preferences of the people who wrote that history,
because he's an important hero.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Either way, the British guy who owned him sold him
off to a French colonist in San Deimong, possibly for
teaching other enslaved people how to read. People say that
he was a quote imposing physical stature, and in all
the art people made of make of him, he is
ripped as hell. It's a really good art of this guy.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Oh yeah, hell yeah, hell yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
He was a coachman for a while, which allowed him
to travel around and help build that communication network that
was necessary for the revolution. It's also possible that he
marooned himself and was living free. That's one of the
leaders of this ceremony.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
The other is a woman named Cecil Fatiman who's a
mambo and she is even more mythologized, and we know
even less about her for certain, but there is a
strong oral tradition around her, and you know that's a
very very valid and important way of transmitting information through
a time.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Totally.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
I promised yet another character ostensibly born to royalty the
way at the beginning, someone else was ostensibly born to royalty.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
And yeah, so is she.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
She was born to an African woman and supposedly a
white Corsican prince or the Prince of Corsica himself, and
she and her mother and two brothers were sold into
slavery when she was young, and sand among her two
brothers were never heard from again. Sometimes she is presented
as one of the organizers of the ceremony. Sometimes she
was just a woman in the crowd who stepped up
to perform the ceremony and be mounted by the lawa.
(11:36):
Either way, it was a dark and stormy night and
the rain is ripping through the trees, and it what
a fucking beautiful moment I have been in.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Like dude at the down at the equator in Haiti.
It's raining beautiful.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Yeah, yeah, I have read both that the this is
how mad I am it all the way the history
is written about it. I have read both that the
ceremony is very well documented, with accounts appear in print
only a few years later, and I've also read that
all of our documentation on it is terrible and it
might not have happened at all. Great, it's almost certain
that this happened. Yeah, one day, I am going to
(12:12):
take a year and just learn about the Haiti Revolution,
and I will be very excited for that entire year.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Oh, it'd be so good to just like, imagine having
a year per subject instead.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Of a week or two. Just deep dive.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah, I'll get a million degrees instead of the zero
degrees I currently have. So, because the ceremony is one
of the most important parts of Haitian history and cultural pride,
it is also a contentious point. The modern evangelical factions
claim that this was a Satanic ritual, which is why
the whole country is cursed today because they made a
(12:45):
deal with the devil. You can tell by my tone
of voice that I don't care about this position at all.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
I suspect that more Marxist historians are downplaying the religious
nature of the revolution, and so they kind of talk
less about the ceremony, whereas other people play up the
ceremony because they want to sell seats to the show.
And if you talk about Vodo, you know it's exotic.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
You know.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
I got to tell you, man, this has been one
of the struggles I've had over the years, that juxtaposition
of either playing up or playing down the religious element
of stuff. It's been a struggle for me, and it's
kind of been hard to articulate. But it's when black
(13:31):
history isn't covered by black people, like yeah, is I
mean down to like the civil rights of being like
well these were pastors, yeah, you know, like and they
you know, so to say, on one hand, like you said,
the evangelical being like, well, that was a Christian, a
Christian movement, and then being like well, it was a
lot of Christians in it that had theological positions that
(13:52):
made them feel like they needed to move forward. But
then you got the same evangelicals that were like, well
Martin Luther King didn't understand gospel.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
He preached the gospel wrong.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
He believed in a social gospel, So how could this
be a Christian revolution? And like and then like you said,
then you have the Marxist being like no, this was
about justice, it was about equality, it was about you know,
the political movements. And it's like the answer is yes, yeah,
you know, and that is like and in some senses,
it's like I don't know if anybody who listens to
(14:22):
pod will know who Vince Staples is. But Vince Staples
is is a long beach rapper who's probably one of
the funniest humans on earth. But somebody asked him like,
when'd you fall in love with hip hop? He was like, man,
it's like, I was born in nineteen what do you say?
Like he was like, either ninety one or eighty nine.
He was like, I was born in nineteen eighty nine
something like that. The numbers not the point. But he
was just like, that's like asking black people when they
(14:44):
met Jesus, like we're black, Like you know what I'm saying,
Like this, that's always a part of our story, you know,
It's always there. So that's what his point about hip hop.
He was like, if you're born in nineteen ninety, there's
no part of your life that wasn't that hip hop
wasn't a part of So when did I fall in
love with hip What are you talking about? Like, like
it was always there. So I feel like this particular
(15:06):
thing to be like it just threw this whole thing.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Was a Muslim? Was a voodoo? Did this happen?
Speaker 4 (15:10):
Was this important with And it's like yes, right, like
you know what I'm saying, like that is our experience?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Yeah, yeah, no that that makes so much sense to me.
And it's like why I end up like frustrated reading
about that stuff because I'm like, yeah, like because people
are like which neat category? Yes he's going to go in. Yes,
you know, everyone is trying to claim him in different directions.
And he was like probably just like believed in some
shit very deeply, in a very meaningful and useful way,
you know. Yeah, and maybe it doesn't map perfectly and
(15:37):
maybe it did, you know, and.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
And maybe it did and maybe they saw no, which
is what I keep finding, like they just saw no contradiction. Yeah,
like I see no contradiction between this voodoo and Muslim,
like I don't.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
I don't see any contradiction.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
No exactly, And like yeah, I mean I remember once
years ago I had my my great aunt was a
nun and I was like she used to teach and
I was like, hey, like what's the deal with like
creation versus evolution or whatever you teach evolution and she's
like yeah, And I'm like, is that contradiction And she's
like no, just don't worry about it.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
I like her.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Yeah, Like that was their answers. It's just like no,
it's just not a big deal, Like it's fine, cared,
just complicated, and I yeah, and I think you're right
about the Like I specifically find myself frustrated at how
much religious people are. They're rel like people are like
we love John Brown, like like white white leftist love
John Brown, right, yeah, and like good, he's great. I
(16:33):
like John Brown too.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Yeah he's not. He's a good one. What it was yeah,
and uh.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
But then the same people will be like militantly atheist
and I'm like, that's okay, you can be an atheist,
but like John Brown wasn't.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
He was not an atheist. Yes, I believed a mandate
from God. I am doing God's work here.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, And to take away that part of his character
is kind of shitty.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Yeah yeah, as disrespectful man. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Like so yeah, no, I'm with that, Like I appreciate that,
like that has always been like a I'm never able
to put my finger out when I'm like some like
it don't like I can't. I don't know what to
tell you, Like, it's it's a it's a cultural experience
that I feel like others have like in their real life,
(17:20):
like in the life you actually live, just like you said,
like you were like I go up a Catholic school.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Yeah, mom, you know aunties a nun like yeah, so
there was no part of your life that I went
to public school.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
I'm real proud of that.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
But yeah yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
My aunt's none.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Yeah, yeah, yours and none. So it's just like, you know,
we just stuff.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
We went to mass yeah, like yeah, yeah, Like what
do you want me to say?
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Yeah, you know, yeah, anyway, so yeah, the ceremony, uh,
last week we talked about voting, and we talked about
the Laa, the spirits, the angels, the saints, whatever people
want to want to call it, and how there's different
nations of the Laa, and the Petro nation is the
nation that doesn't take shit and is willing to get
(18:02):
shit done and does not mind hurting people to get
shit done. So that night in the woods, they called
in a lah named Azilie Danto, who is the most
important Lua in the Petro family. Azili is more broadly,
to quote the Encyclopedia of African religion, the Laah of love,
the symbol of cosmic fertility, par excellence, the mother of
(18:23):
the universe, the giver of children. It is Azille, indeed,
who is responsible for the continuous flow of life. So
that's the more broad like feminine spirit that they're bringing in.
But there's a lot of different versions of Azille. Azili
Freda is the Rata version of Azille, the nice one,
the calm one, the embodiment of femininity, who is bisexual
as hell and doesn't care what gender of person she
(18:45):
mounts love it. Ezili Danto, the one that they're going
to call in this night. She is not the nice
version of her. She is the feminine incarnation of rage
and the hard working mother god dog. Yes, yes, let's go.
And like that's why I'm like, oh, we can't strip
out the religion, because this is the spirit, the literal spirit,
(19:08):
that is where they're coming from at the start, you know, Yeah,
Danto is angry and enraged when she is displeased. She
is depicted as a black woman carrying a black infant
girl in pink clothes. She has two parallel vertical scars
on her right cheek. Some people say that the scars
were ritualistically done in an African style, others that she
got them fighting white people in the revolution. Sometimes she
(19:31):
is presented as no nose which was cut off in battle.
And she is the single mother of seven children. So
you know she knows how to get shit done.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
She can get it done. Yeh.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Yeah. So they're in the wind torn woods planning a
violent revolution that they each assume will be the death
of them. Duddy Bookman gives a speech at the end
of everything. He said, He said, listen to the voice
of liberty which speaks in the hearts of us all.
He called on people to reject the Christian false guy
and trust in the Supreme being, something found in most
(20:03):
of the African religious traditions that have come over. Yeah,
he said, quote the God who created the sun, which
gives us light, which rouses the waves and rules the storm.
Though hidden in the clouds, he watches us. He sees
all that the white man does. The god of a
white man inspires him with crime. But our God calls
upon us to do good works. Our God, who is
(20:24):
good to us, orders us to revenge our wrongs. He
will direct our arms and aid us throw away the
symbol of the God of the whites, who has so
often caused us to weep and listen to the voice
of liberty, which speaks in the hearts of all.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Who that is a scathing yeah, scathing report.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Yeah, yeah, buddy is.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
I've always been like, you know, fascinated on, like, yeah,
the role like in American the American slavery tradition where
like generally speaking like Sunday's slaves were allowed to go
to church, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
And because of that, like that's.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
Why I like a lot of our expression is very passionate,
you know what I'm saying, and energetic, and also looking
a lot more like our own animus traditions of embodiment.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
But one thing I've always cracked up on is like
y'all handed us this book and by the second by
the second book, you get to Exodus, and you're like,
well wait.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
A minute, now, like.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
It's say right here, yeah, you're the bad guys, Like
I'm just saying, according to the book, yeah, Like you know,
so we was like I like this, Moses, dude, you know,
like yeah, so so yeah, so you come up with
that and where you're and so like a lot of times, yeah,
just in like the Black Church tradition, who was like,
(21:53):
I don't know what, I don't know a Bible they reading, but.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
This one this will say liberty. You don't anyway?
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah, no, like I I meet ex evangelicals, that's the
word I think. Yeah, yes, they're like I was like, well,
how'd you get away from the church, And they're like, well,
I read the book they gave me.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Listen, listen.
Speaker 5 (22:14):
You're like, oh, if I'm a followed dude, yeah, like
the dude that you supposed to was supposed to be followed.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
That means I can't follow, y'all. That's what it certain
turns out to me.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, there's like, you know, there's a lot of inconsistencies
and complicated things in the Bible and like, but it's
fairly consistent on like take care of poor people and
the rich people are in trouble on the care for
the poor.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Yeah, yeah, being on the side of those suffering.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah. So they have this ritual in the woods. Social
fatimon sacrificed a black pig and then they all drank
its blood. Some say they drank human blood too, which
probably didn't happen, but you know what, if it did,
it does not bother me. One.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Well, that's the Filipino side of me. I'm like, yeah,
it's a dinner one anyway.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Oh oh no, I don't know that one.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Oh I got it.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Oh oh hey, okay, now the cool Zone Reddit all
my p noise listen, So diniguan they call it the
chocolate meats. So I know this stuff because from where
I'm from and my Stepmo's Filipino. But basically it's it's
beef and pork and it looks like a brown sauce
over it, but the sauce is blood.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Oh okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean it's like Catholics
literally drink blood.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
English people all of their food is like blood pudding.
I don't know. I can't handle English food.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
And still got blood in it. Yeah yeah again, it anyway.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Wouldn't bother me. But it's all played up, you know. Yeah,
And this is not the first time we talked about
this on the show. Before they have this revolution, they
swear a solemn oath to one another. I think ritual
is a really important and underutilized tactic and way of
bringing people together. Absolutely, they swear a solemn oath to
each other that they will never betray the revolution. They
(23:53):
declared that those who died were promised that their soul
would return to Ganen, just sort of a spiritual conception
of affort. He's used as like an afterlife. Those who
betrayed the plot never would. Bookman himself would die early
in the fighting. His head is on a pike, probably
at the age of twenty four. But you know what,
he fucking succeeded. He accomplished something in his life that
(24:17):
almost no one else can claim, Like, yeah, leading the
most successful slaver vault in fucking probably human history and
at least the Western Hemisphere's history.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
Like yeah, since them Europeans stepped foot on Africa, this
is the most successful.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
And so like I'll take Dina twenty four for that,
you know, Like.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
It's like it's pretty rad.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah, And Fatimon survived the revolution. She married one of
the most important commanders who was later president of Haiti
for like a year, and by most accounts, she lived
to be one hundred and twelve years old. Obviously, birth
records are kind of fuzzy, but you know what, she
could live to be one hundred and twelve.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
After she died, she became a Lawah named Marionette. She
is known as Marionette of the Dry Arms or Marionette
of the dry Feet because she's a skeleton. Her colors
are black and blood red. When she possesses people, they
become violent. People are afraid of her, but she frees
people from bondage, and I think she's cool. She's the
protector of were wolves.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Whoa yeah, okay, yeah, I know a lot of people
are named after her. Fuck yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
And they have the ceremony, they vow to be faithful
to the revolution, and then they fight. They don't fight
for ads, but because I didn't have a producer telling
me when to cut to ads, I forgot, And so
they're later in the episode. And I know you all
were thinking, where are my ads? But here, here they are,
(25:49):
and we're back. The very next morning, a group of
people from a bunch of different plantations and maybe maroons
showed up and set off towards the Noah Sugar factory.
This is the one that had kicked off a lot
of the strikes with that guy Jean Jacques was hanging
out as an unemployed slave, a concept that had never
occurred to me.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Yeah, yeah, I never thought about it.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah. They found the white guy overseeing night work and
they stabbed him to death. The estate agent ran out
to see what was happening, so they shot him. They
killed at least two more white workers. They didn't kill
the surgeon, and then just around midnight they burned the
fucking slave labor saw factory to the ground.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Then they marched the Dudy plantation. Oh that was the
reason bookman's name is Duddies because he was owned by
someone name.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
He was owned by. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah. They went Hut to Hut and spread the word
to people to spread the word elsewhere, to go to
the other plantations. They took the agent prisoner. The agent
said that they discussed their plans openly in front of him,
which was that they wanted quote, nothing less than the
destruction of all of the white people except some who
didn't own property, some priests, some surgeons, some women, and
(26:56):
to set fire to all the plantations and making themselves
masters of the country. And it's like this is presented
as like a gotcha, but I'm like, yeah, that's really
nice of them to carve out so many exceptions.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
It's so great. Yeah, you know, it so great.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah, Like I doesn't even own anyone. Why are you
gonna kill his?
Speaker 3 (27:13):
All right?
Speaker 2 (27:13):
You know cool? Like yeah, they marched and gathered forces
as they went. Fifteen hundred of them were fighting by
the time they reached the coast. And this wasn't the
only force. There was already revolt at the coastal plantations
as well. So they like show up and people are
already revolting coffee workers. Yeah, like it just fucking this
is like fucking it was just go time. And then
(27:34):
they all went basically yeah, like is it We're waiting
for it? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Coffee workers threw off their chains and were coming down
out of the mountains to join up with them. All
the forces met up at the coast and then split
into two. Bookmen went east, burning sugar fields and refineries
as he went. And there's one fun moment that stands out.
This huge army comes upon twenty white militia people, all
but one guy is like fuck this fleet. Nineteen of
(28:01):
the white guys run away, but the guy who stays
is a slaver who used to own one of the
guys in the army, and the slaver says, quote, you wretch,
I was only ever good to you. Why do you
want to kill me?
Speaker 3 (28:14):
That's what they always say. Yeah, but I was I
was nice.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Yeah, okay, god yeah, well what about Meto?
Speaker 3 (28:23):
But I was like you you like y'all like Meto?
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Right, yeah, totally yeah. And the coachman ex slave, stabs
the guy and says, that is true, but I promised
to kill you.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
I love it. It's like, oh yeah, but I mean
I swore an oath man. It's just a law.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yes, what's happening. Other revolutionaries would actually protect their former owners,
just a few of them, but a lot of the
leaders ended up doing this, And I think I think
this probably relates to that a lot of the leaders
were like the drivers and the people who are a
little bit closer to I knew them. The leader of
the second wing was a guy named Bellin, and he
gave a boat to the people who ran his old
(29:02):
plantation so that they could get away, and so then
the people fighting alongside him killed him for letting the
slavers escape. These two forces go around, mostly winning, burning
almost two hundred plantations foreing fifteen thousand people in like
the first like ten days, and all the colonists in
the north flee to capt fronts while the capital but
(29:23):
the revolution was just getting started. And I know that
to keep coming back to this like did they have
a kill all the white people attitude, because it's the
thing that gets argued about, and I know I kind
of keep being like, I kind of don't care if
they did. But it's also still messier than anyone can
easily explain, yea, because they all had different fucking ideas. Yeah,
(29:47):
and they were at this point probably, but again, but
it's also it's so frustrating, right because then there's all
this propaganda against them for hundreds of years about how
they're all evil or whatever the fuck. But probably they
were killing white peop, putting their including kids, and putting
their heads on pikes and shit, the same shit that
had been happening to them. The white people insisted it
was a race war, and it became a race war.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Colonial forces counter attacked, attacking armed camps of rebels, but
the rebels melted into the mountains. Bookman himself died in battle.
Jean Jacques was captured and executed. Peace talk started up
pretty quick. The priests did a lot of the intermediary
work because they were sort of neutral. Yeah, And the
first offer was return to slavery and we won't punish
(30:30):
you for the revolt, like amnesty.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
You know, like, uh, are are we winning?
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Yeah? That was there at a Yeah, we're winning.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Their counteroffer, which was honestly perfectly fucking like nicer than
they should have asked for, was full amnesty, emancipation for everyone,
and then they would go back and work for wages,
whereas I'm like, ah, I just seize them means a
production while you're at it, but like you know.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
What, like yeah, like I'm down to work. Yeah, Like
I'm just saying.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Yeah, yeah, I want to get paid for my work
instead of being owned.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Yeah, that's all I'm saying. Don't you like getting paid
for your work? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
And so at this point they're not actually fighting against
France in their mind, they're fighting against the white supremacist
local occupation.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
So France looks at this revolt and is like, all right, fine,
we're taking away what's left of the rights for free
black people. And so then the free black people are like,
all right, even more, we're with the revolution, and here
we are in part four. I thought I was gonna
do all the ins and outs of this incredibly complicated
strategic thing, and I am not going to, yeah, because
I'm not going to make a six parter or yet.
(31:38):
But in broader strokes, the new revolutionary government in France,
I'm gonna put revolutionary quotes there because they're going to
send six thousand troops to put down the slaver volt.
They fail, and they're like, all right, fine, this isn't working.
We need to let free black people join the reactionary
forces fighting against the slaver volt. So they started enrolling
free men of color into the military, including as officers,
(32:00):
and so they force diversified the Colonial Assembly to be
half white and half free men of color. And you'll
be shocked to know the colonial administration isn't happy about this.
The whole Western world is kind of going ape shit.
At this point. It's seventeen ninety three. The French killed
their king, Spain and England declare war on the revolutionary government.
(32:21):
Spain decides to back the Haitian revolution, making Toussaint and
the other revolutionary leaders officers in the Royal Spanish Army.
They offer enslave people their freedom if they fought. They're
not abolishing slavery, they're just freeing individuals. But you know
that's a decent deal for people. They're like, yeah, we'll
take it.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah. In seventeen ninety three, it wasn't looking great for
the Haitian revolutionaries. Thousands of people were back in chains.
But then the fucking white supremacist colonists they're like, we
don't like having these free black people around, so they
staged a revolt against the French government, also, the one
that was sort of trying to help them but like
forcing them to diversify. It's all of a sudden, the
(32:59):
pro diversity crowd is like, all right, fuck it, full
emancipation if you help us beat back the other parts
of France, and so fucking messy. The rebels now joined
the French revolutionary army. On Halloween seventeen ninety three, France
declares a general emancipation, no more slavery, and this kicks
in in seventeen ninety five. Not because they were like
slow to do it, I think, but I think it
(33:20):
was like, literally, they're in the middle of a revolution.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
Yeah, we're busy too, Yeah, yeah, France is like, listen,
you guys, Okay, listen, if we just call emancipation, will
you guys stop calling us?
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly, that's what they did. They're like,
I fine, you fucking win, and.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
But you got it, you got it, go for it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
So suddenly all the former enslaved people are French citizens. Meanwhile,
Macndahl and the Mosquitos are doing most of the killing
of the various invading European armies. It's yellow fever is
killing most of the soldiers. You saw it, Levitor, who
we haven't talked about it in any length I thought
was going to be the primary character of this entire thing. Yeah,
(33:58):
he is consolidating power. He's sort of a moderate at
this point. He doesn't want to kill all the white people.
He's down to be part of France so long as
he's in charge. And he actually, controversially to his own people,
he wants the plantation economy back. He just wants people
working as paid workers.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
He starts using his army to force people to go
back to work.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
And then he goes to war against other would be leaders.
He comes out victorious. He's pretty against Vodu at this point.
Once he's in charge, he forbids dancing and gathering at night,
and things probably would have settled down at this point.
But Napoleon comes to power in France and he's planning
on bringing back the French Empire instead of the Republic.
(34:39):
He's like, fuck this, We're conquering San du Moung. We're
bringing back slavery because he wants the economy back and
he's a racist. Yeah, he sends twenty thousand troops and
again this is really about race for him. His brother
in law, Charles Leclerc or Leclair or whatever, I don't know,
fuck with this guy. He invades in eighteen oh two
and he we must destroy all the blacks in the mountains,
(35:03):
men and women, and spare only children under twelve years
of age. We must destroy half of those in the planes,
and we must not leave a single colored person in
the colony who has worn an epaulet. Like why though,
because he it's funny, because I think he claims he's like,
oh woe is me, This is the only way to
do it, because he's like they can't be trusted or something. Yeah,
(35:28):
and his own black officers start defecting from his ranks. Right,
because he's like, I were just going to kill all
the black people now, and all of those people who
went and joined his military. He arrested all the black
troops and his own forces, executing a thousand of them
by pushing them overboard with flower sacks tied to their necks. Wow,
(35:48):
though it doesn't do you any good decide with the fascists.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Yeah, it's just it never works out for you.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah. The French arrest Lutorm. He dies in French prison.
But people keep fighting, as far as I can tell.
One thing I read was like, look, they actually didn't
fight too hard to protect Luvatore. They kind of didn't
like him because he's being a dick and like he
was in the army to force everyone to go to work. Yeah,
but he dies in French prison, which is a shame
(36:16):
because before he didn't have a chance to listen to
the products and services that support this show.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
You see what I'm saying, Like he should have Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
They should have stuck around longer.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Yeah, it was very smooth, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Yeah, here's the ads and we're back, and so the
cleric dies a yellow fever and so this should be good, right,
The racist guy dies, Yeah, the way more racist guy
comes in row Shambau ro Shambo. Yeah, rock paper scissors.
(36:55):
You might have known this. You know where the world's
first gas chambers were used.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
So I did know this.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yeah, yeah, they were used to kill the black prisoners
of war. Yeah, right here by Rochimbo. Yeah. They would
just fill up the bottoms of the ships with like
a poison gas and then throw all the black prisoners
of war down there.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
And the interesting thing I'm going to say, controversially, no
white people fought for the Haitian Revolution. But do you
want to know why? I can say this for certain
because the revolution reformulated the concept of race in Haiti.
Hundreds of Polish soldiers fought for the revolution, and so
(37:37):
how the Haitian Revolution defined blackness was if you're fighting
for the revolution, you're black. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
So the polls, most of whom had European heritage, actually
some of at least I'm aware of one officer and
probably some others who actually had African heritage. Also because
there's black Polish people because yeah, much to the shock
of modern wise supremacist Europe actually had black people in it,
going back forever yes, anyway, the polls are mostly what
we would call white.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
They were considered black in the war legally and have
been ever Cincinnati.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
This is one of my favorite things about race and politics. Yeah,
Like it's a it's a it's a choice, like being white.
It's a choice, like you know that, Like it's it's
only by the law. It's just like you said, look,
you Bolus was black people. So just I don't know
(38:34):
what to tell you, buddy. Yeah, I Irism, Irish, Yeah, Irish,
y'all y're black.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Made the wrong choice.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
You had a chance, Yeah, you could have. You could
have stayed with us.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Yeah, I'm pretty fucking mad about that. Like, whiteness is
such a like it's the devil's bargain, right, You're like
give up your entire culture and uniqueness in order to
gain power, you know. Yeah, and so all that's left
is like fucking shamrocks in Saint Patrick's Day parade.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
You know, you guys have but the Irish have been
very on the whole when it comes down to it
being pro Palestine, you know, supporting a black panthers Like.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Oh, Irish, yes, Irish American, No, yeah, Irish.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
American is holy your story. I'm talking about the Irish, yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, because they remember what it's like
to be colonized because it was their grandfather's time, you know,
like and actually part of them it's still call a colony.
Like yeah, So the Polish legions, which I yeah, I
find this a fucking fascinating story.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
So amazing.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Napoleon sent five thousand of the twenty thousand troops were Poles.
Most of them died a yellow fever, about four thousand
of them, but hundreds of them switched teams because they
themselves were freedom fighters. Because Poland. Yeah, other countries, especially
Prussia and Russia, had been piecemeal stealing bits of Poland
for a while. Yeah, Poles fought back. They lost a
couple of wars. In seventeen ninety four, they staged an
(40:05):
uprising that grew out of popular revolt against this occupation.
After about half a year, the uprising was put down. Austria,
Prussia and Russia were like, fine, we're carving this shit up.
Seventeen ninety seven, they split the country up three ways
and basically was like, there's no more Poland. And Poland
was gone for like one hundred years. A fuck ton
of Polish troops escaped to France and join the French
(40:27):
military because they're like, well, enemy and my enemy, right, yeah,
and they thought revolutionary France and revolutionaries, they make them
rescue us. Napoleon came to power in eighteen hundred and
he was like, hell, yeah, let's use these Poles as
fucking useful idiots. So he sent five thousand of them
to die and send them on, and they were horribly
mistreated within the military. They were ordered to like just
(40:49):
whenever you need someone like run at the front and
get killed. They sent the Poles and they were often
just like straight up not paid. And so they were like, well,
these Haitians they're doing the same thing that we're doing.
They're trying to fight off empires and everything has been
stolen for them. So roughly half of them switched sides,
(41:09):
and as far as I can tell, the ones who
didn't switch sides, like functionally switch sides, they were like
refusing to shoot and just call.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
They're just like yeah, yeah, they quiet quit it. Yeah,
they quiet.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Quit the fucking invasion.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
So when the revolution was one in eighteen oh four,
Haiti gets a constitution and it formally enshrined the polls,
the white Negroes of Europe.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
I love it. I love it. That is a ska band.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Yeah totally. I'd be sketched out by them, right right right.
Speaker 4 (41:41):
Like, hey, I need y'all need to unpack this. Every
time you started doing music, you need to unpack where
you got this name.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Yeah totally. Yeah, there's this this Norwegian folk band. There's
maybe Swedish on a Scandinavian folk band that I listen
to sometimes for a while. Before every single show, they
would be like, we are not Nazis, and we are
against Nazis. We were against the fact that Nazis use
our heritage to try and do racism. Here's traditional music, Okay,
here we go yeah's and they're not even like leftists
(42:11):
or whatever. They're just not Nazis.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
No, it's like just we're not Nazis. Yeah, we still
we still live on a planet that that's the wrong
side of history.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
And one of the Polish generals who actually died a
yellow fever. We don't know what he would have done
was the first known black Polish general named uh Jablinowski.
Again because again he was just but this guy speaking
of when you're saying like how these people went to
the same schools as like you know, the Napoleons or whatever.
Speaker 4 (42:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Yeah, Jablinowski had actually gone to school with Napoleon literally, wow, Okay,
and Napoleon and all the other students had called him
racist shit. Because I also don't want to paint Europe
as like a weird post, you know, racial utopia just
because there's black people there. Yeah, but Napoleon, Yeah, you
to call this guy racist shit. And yeah, about four
(43:04):
hundred people in the end survive. The Poles survived this,
and they mostly stayed in a village called Cazale.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
And one of the most.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Interesting syncretic traditions that comes out of it, because like
we talked about a Zelee and how there's like the
black Madonna figure is one of the symbols, right, Yeah,
there's a Polish icon of the Virgin Mary that goes
back at least to fourteen thirty, but probably the year
three twenty six.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
And it's one of the most important Polish Christian pieces
of art. It's called the Black Madonna of Chestejova, and
it's a super old painting that is a black Madonna
holding a black Jesus. I think that's important because you
have all these people being like you still run across
people who think Jesus was white, you know.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
At that they're dinosaurs if they do. Ye. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
And like in the year three twenty six there was
a painting of came black Jesus and black Madonna.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
Yeah there was already a black Jesus. Yeah yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
This is one of the most important Polish icons.
Speaker 3 (44:08):
Wow, what a connection. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (44:10):
So when they landed in Haiti, they was like, oh, yeah,
you're not scary.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Yeah, I actually agree with y'all. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
So again them speed running the revolution and pointing out
different bits of it, Haiti becomes a country. This guy,
Jean Jacques de Sellin us he's in charge. He is controversial,
he's accused of genocide. Interestingly enough, no one bothers accusing
the French of having led a genocide on the island
and focuses.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
On him, of course.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
In a public statement from eighteen oh four, he said,
quote liberty, independence or death. Considering that there still remains
in the island of Haiti individuals who have contributed, by
their guilty writings or by their sanguinary acquisitions, to the drowning, suffocating,
assassinating hanging and shooting of more than sixty thousand of
our brethren under the inhuman government of la cleric in
(44:58):
russiam Beau. This measure is entered into the order to
inform the nations of the world that although we grant
asylum and protection to those who act candidly and friendly
towards us, nothing shall ever turn our vengeance from those
murderers who have bathed themselves with pleasure in the blood
of the innocent children of Haiti. And so you have
this the massacre of eighteen oh four, and basically he's like, hey,
(45:21):
we should kill all the remaining French people on the
island except all of the following list of don't kill
these people. Yeah, And they killed between three thousand and
seven thousand people. A lot of people were like, the
saliness had to actually show up before people would really
do it. People were like, Oh, we don't know if
we want to kill all these people. The Poles were
of course legally black, so they weren't killed. So were
(45:42):
the Germans, apparently just literally just because they had nothing
to do with the slave trade. Like I don't think
they even fought. I think they just were a flavors
and they spared many or most surgeons, women and children.
They absolutely killed a bunch of people, And yeah, I
don't know. And then to Salonis, he he regularly consulted
(46:02):
with Votu priests, but he also banned vodu ceremonies and
regularly had votu practitioners shop because he was afraid of
being poisoned. I want to read like whole books about
a lot of these people, but I get the impression
it's just kind of the classic power problem, Like you
can be a really amazing revolutionary and then once you
have absolute power, you don't always do great. Yeah, but
(46:24):
the revolution itself scared the ever loving piss out of
white supremacist all over the Western world and emboldened abolitionists everywhere,
and the rest of the world has never forgiven Haiti
for it. But the people of the world fucking owe
so much to the people who fought in that revolution,
more than we can ever know.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
It's a good way to put it.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
Yeah, we've meddled in Haiti and Haitian politics ever since,
and like do everything we can. It almost is it's
almost like I just don't know what you gain from this.
To make sure that Haiti stays unstable.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
Margaret from the future.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
Here.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
There's a part of all of this that prop and
I talked about a couple days after the recording that
I want to add in here about just how brutal
the world has been to Haiti ever since. In eighteen
twenty five, twenty years after Haiti's independence, the French king
sent warships to Haiti to demand that they pay reparations
like Haiti had to pay reparations to France for freeing
(47:28):
itself one hundred and fifty million francs. This is ten
times the amount that the US had to pay to
literally double itself with the Louisiana purchase. And this reparations
was about stolen property, including you know themselves. Then France
gave Haiti predatory loans to pay it back, kind of
(47:50):
prefiguring the modern International Monetary Fund style of predatory loans.
It took one hundred and twenty two years to pay
off this loan, and along the way, the US occupied
Haiti violently for nineteen years from nineteen fifteen to nineteen
thirty four, using forced labor of Haitians, which killed just
a fuck ton of people. In the end, imperialists basically
(48:10):
just demanded Haiti pay forty percent of its income towards
its debt, and so they finally paid off their debt
in nineteen forty seven by crippling their economy.
Speaker 4 (48:23):
My curiosity, of course stays itching. But I think ultimately
is what you're saying, where it was just like they
threw off their slave owners and it was proof of
concept and that's what we needed, you know.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, And like I think that's part of the you know,
you're like, well, what's what does the world have to
gain to keep punishing Haiti over and over and over again.
And I think it gets back to that thing where
at the end of the day, it's not about economics,
it's about white supremacy. It is about like, you did
that and you were not allowed and you are punished
(48:57):
forever for dare to challenge white supremacy and like, and
I used to it's like interesting because I see how
white supremacy is this very important piece of the master
oppressive world we have in front of us or whatever.
But I used to kind of think that it all
came down to economics. Yeah, and it's just like learning
more and more that I'm like, no, a lot of
(49:19):
it really just straight up comes down to racism and
like white supremacy.
Speaker 4 (49:24):
Yeah, and to have to continue to bolster something that
is materially false, which is we are a superior spechi,
that white is a superior species than everybody else. You
have to keep adding little twigs and duct tape to
keep that thing standing, you know. And it's just like
(49:46):
this is at what point are you like this is absurd? Guys,
just like you don't have Like sometimes I feel like
the human in me wants to be like you don't
have to do this, man, Like you don't have to
do this, Like you're I know, you're exhausted, Like you're exhausted.
You don't have to do this. Yeah it's fine, Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
You can just like you can just chill out with
everyone else, you know, just real.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
Man, Like just here, have a beer.
Speaker 4 (50:12):
Yeah, just sit down, man, smoke this like just like
you see we're all having a great time. Yeah, we're
all just we're all having a great time.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Yeah. When you're saying earlier about how like just a
second about it leaves you like this four parter does
not get into half of the shit that I thought
it was going to. And like there's still so much
about the way that the revolution itself unfolded on a
political level larger than that. I found myself focused in
the end on the like the whipsaw context, the like
(50:43):
things that built up to it, partly because I'm like,
there's more modern overlaps than I expected, especially all the
weird basically DEI and like the you know, there's all
these things that I thought were really important, and then
I but yeah, I look at this and I'm like,
I want to know more about to some and the
like complicated nature of like coming to power where he
(51:04):
was like, look, oh, I'm fine to be French and
I'm fining to keep the plantation system. I just want
people to get work, you know. But then also, like
the implication at least some of the stuff I'm reading
is that we've kind of became kind of a tyrant
and so did dissalonest or whatever. Yeah, then I'm like,
but but everything's so politicized with the Haitian Revolution that
it's like maybe more than any other topic. I'm not
(51:25):
sure I've probab run across all the ones almost as
bad as this, but like everything is so politicized and
propagandized in different directions. It's like just fucking hard to know,
you know, without without getting my degree in it. And
and so that's like why I'm trying to focus on
the like stuff I can feel a little bit more
confident about I can, which is that it's fucking cool
(51:48):
to have a revolution.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
Man, well these are these are cool folks.
Speaker 4 (51:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
Yeah, it is always moral and good to burn down
the plantation that slaves people.
Speaker 5 (52:00):
I mean, I feel like there are very few absolutes.
Speaker 4 (52:04):
Yeah, that would be that would be one.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
Yeah, they're like stabbing the guy being like but I
always treat you good, and you're like, yeah, I gotta
kill you.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
I don't know, man, that's just like that's just.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
Kind of a moral truth. Sometimes you're like, yeah, but
you you fucking own me.
Speaker 3 (52:20):
Yeah, here's the thing.
Speaker 4 (52:21):
Man, But if I but see, if I don't kill you,
and this guy's asking and that, and then it's like
then we just all go home.
Speaker 3 (52:28):
So I might as well, you know, this is what
we're gonna do. Yeah, at times nine o'clock, you know.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
Yeah, I was just the arrogance of like being alone
in front of an army and being like, you wretch,
you know, you're not getting out of.
Speaker 4 (52:42):
That and then to be like Okay, so if y'all stop,
we won't punish you.
Speaker 3 (52:46):
You just go back to you like stop what Yeah?
Speaker 2 (52:50):
Yeah, yeah, because they had a chance out so many
times they were down to be part of France. They
were down to hell they probably maybe not, maybe it's
possible that the slave system would have stayed if they
hadn't fucking alienated all the free people of color, like yeah,
you know, like, yeah, it's possible. And I would like
(53:11):
to say that, you know, the slaves were the largest
portion of the people doing the fighting, you know, of course. Yeah,
so I like to think they would have pulled it
off anyway. But yeah, well thanks for coming along on
this this uh this journey with me.
Speaker 4 (53:27):
Oh man, thank you. You gave me an option, and
I'm glad I took this option. This is uh, this
is fun times.
Speaker 3 (53:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
Well I am fucking brain dead.
Speaker 3 (53:38):
I'm done. Help me done, Like I was like prop bipop,
I think.
Speaker 2 (53:45):
Hell yeah yeah, everyone check out Who Politics Is prop
It is an amazing podcast about current events and I
have a sub stack you can google it.
Speaker 4 (53:54):
I gotta figure out I got to figure out a
way to get you on, Like I gotta figure out, Like,
we got to find a topic.
Speaker 2 (53:59):
That like wors the angle is?
Speaker 3 (54:00):
Yeah, what the angle is? Yeah, I'll be into it.
We'll figure it out. I think, I think the crowd
wild love it.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
Okay, all right, well next week more cool stuff.
Speaker 3 (54:13):
Bye everyone, Let's go.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
visit our website Foolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 2 (54:32):
You get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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