Sarkozy’s visit to Haiti revives bitter legacy

February 17, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Nicolas Sarkozy’s visit today, the first by a French president, is reviving bitter memories of the crippling costs of Haiti’s 1804 independence.

A third of the population was killed in an uprising against exceptionally brutal slavery, an international embargo was imposed to prevent slave revolts elsewhere, and 90 million pieces of gold were demanded by Paris from the world’s first black republic.

The debt hobbled Haiti, it seemed for life.

A country plagued by natural and unnatural calamities of biblical proportions was desperately poor and mismanaged even before a magnitude-7 earthquake smashed up Port-au-Prince, killing more than 200,000 people and leaving more than a million homeless.

Haitian politicians this week diplomatically skirted the question of reparations — a demand put to Paris by ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. That suggests Sarkozy’s four-hour visit could herald a new era.

Some are welcoming France’s new interest in what was its richest colony as a counterbalance to the United States, which occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934 and has sent troops three times in the past 16 years.

French officials say Sarkozy will announce details of “a French plan for the reconstruction of Haiti” — if Haitian officials agree. It differs little from proposals from Haitian, U.S. and U.N. officials to decentralize power away from the devastated capital and boost agriculture and tourism.

The trip brings Sarkozy to an island where, French officials acknowledge, fascination with things French duels with strong, lingering resentments.

One official close to the French presidency, briefing reporters in Paris on condition of anonymity, hinted that France is not deaf to calls for reparations, calling Sarkozy’s visit “an occasion to show that France is mobilizing to give Haitians control of their destiny and pay past debts.”

For Millien Romage, a legislator for Aristide’s party when reparations were demanded, “This is not a time to be making loud demands. We don’t want to fight. But perhaps the French could recognize their debt by helping us to get out of poverty. They can help build roads, houses, schools.”

Sarkozy himself has said the catastrophe, following so many others, offers “a chance to get Haiti once and for all out of the curse it seems to have been stuck with for such a long time.”

Some Haitians would say they were cursed by their French colonizers.

“The indemnity imposed by France condemned the Haitian people to a cycle of indebtedness, environmental degradation and underdevelopment from which they have yet to recover,” said Norman Girvan, a professor at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. “President Sarkozy would do France — yes France — a great service if he were to acknowledge the role of the French Republic in Haiti’s present plight.”

France has already said it was canceling all of Haiti’s $77 million debt to Paris.

In 1825, crippled by the U.S.-led international embargo that was enforced by French warships, Haiti agreed to pay France 150 million francs in compensation for the lost “property” — including slaves — of French plantation owners.

By comparison, France sold the United States its immensely larger Louisiana Territory in 1803 for just 60 million francs. The amount for Haiti was later lowered to 90 million gold francs.

Haiti did not finish paying the debilitating debt — which was swollen by massive interest payments to French and American banks — until 1947.