October 17 marked the 197th anniversary of the assassination of Haiti’s founding father, Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

To mark the occasion and following tradition, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide traveled to the town of Marchand-Dessalines, nestled under the mountains at the edge of the fertile Artibonite Valley, where General Dessalines, a former slave, had established his headquarters.

There Aristide renewed his call that France restitute Haiti some $21 billion for the 90 million francs Haiti paid France during the 19th century as “compensation” for winning its independence in 1804.

Aristide originally called for restitution and reparations from France during ceremonies on April 7, the bicentennial of the death in a French prison cell of Toussaint Louverture, another former slave who led the struggle to abolish slavery and became governor of the French colony St. Domingue in 1801.

The French government has rebuffed Haiti’s request, responding that it already provides aid to Haiti and that Aristide’s government does not manage money well.

But the Haitian government has persisted in its demand, which is echoed in regular demonstrations outside the French Embassy in Port-au-Prince like the one held on Oct. 16. Last month, Haitians also demonstrated outside France’s Mission to the United Nations in New York (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 21, No. 28, 9/24/2003). The slogan “Restitution and Reparations” now adorns every Haitian government podium and stage.

The pressure campaign seems to be causing cracks in France’s defenses. Last week, the French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, appointed Régis Debray to head up a “Committee of Reflection on Haiti.” Famed for his collaboration with both Che Guevara and François Mitterand, Debray, the quintessential French intellectual, is on a “perilous mission,” quipped the French daily Le Monde. “Haiti represents a return to the source for Régis Debray, since Latin America and the Caribbean was the land of choice of the young student.”

Meanwhile, the Haitian government’s own “Interministerial Commission for Restitution and Reparations” organized an international colloquium in Port-au-Prince from Oct. 13-15 entitled “Restitution and Development.” Attended by a diverse crowd of lawyers, historians, economists, and activists, this meeting starred another well-known French intellectual, Claude Ribbe, who has just published a French-language novel entitled The Expedition. The book tells the story of France’s doomed 1802 mission to restore French rule and slavery in Haiti through the eyes of Napoleon’s sister, Pauline Bonaparte, who was married to the expedition’s leader, General Charles Leclerc.

Ribbe was the guest on the government’s “Press Tuesdays” TV show, where he read an extract of Leclerc’s Oct. 7, 1802 letter to Napoleon. “I will have to carry out a war of extermination,” Leclerc wrote. “This is my opinion of this country. We must destroy all the blacks in the mountains, men, women and children over 12 years old, destroy half of those in the plains, and not leave in the colony a single man of color wearing epaulettes.”

On the television program and during the colloquium, Ribbe, a philosopher and historian, acknowledged the “unspeakable” crimes which France committed against the Haitian people’s ancestors during both slavery and the independence war. Supporting Haiti’s demand for restitution, he called on the French government to “assume its responsibilites” and for French President Jacques Chirac to visit Haiti.

Aristide addressed the opening of the colloquium at the National Palace on Oct. 13. He said that he wanted to “abandon the path of confrontation” and find an amicable solution to the dispute between Haiti and France. “We know what happened here in Haiti,” he said. “There was slavery, a crime against humanity... In this spirit of dialogue, the government invites our foreign friends to look at the case for Restitution, to speak calmly and see how together we can arrive at the fruit of comprehension.”

The colloquium included guided tours of the Museum of the National Pantheon (MUPANAH), work shops, debate sessions, and an exposition by artists who participated in a contest on the theme of Restitution.

“Let’s not forget, that capitalism was built principally from the colonies of the Antilles and particularly from St. Domingue,” said one Haitian intellectual during the colloquium’s opening session. “Thus the splendor of Europe, and particularly the splendor of France, was built on Haiti’s back. Haiti didn’t owe France any debt. France owed Haiti a debt.”

In 1825, France sent an armada to Haiti to intimidate the young, isolated republic’s President Jean Pierre Boyer into signing an agreement for Haiti to pay an unprecedented indemnity in exchange for France’s recognition of Haiti’s independence.

Ironically, the most vocal critics of Haiti’s demand for restitution has been the small clique of politicians, power brokers, and pundits huddled in the Haitian opposition’s formations: the 15 “party-cle” Democratic Convergence opposition front, the hyper-inflated “Group of 184" organizations of assembly-industry-owner-turned-activist Andy Apaid, and the Civil Society Initiative of former neo-Duvalierist-minister Rosny Desroches.

Opposition spokespersons have argued, for example, that Haiti’s indemnity was paid not to the French government but rather as compensation to the former colonialists who lost their property in the independence war. Therefore, the French government is not liable, according to them.

Convergence leaders such as Gérard Pierre-Charles of the OPL and Evans Paul of the KID have also parroted French government retorts that Aristide has displayed poor governance and cannot be entrusted with a large restitution, as if it were up to France to decide.

Aristide responded to such statements during his speech in Marchand-Dessalines. “Is the big money [that restitution would bring] for the big leaders?” he asked the crowd. “That’s how it used to be done in the past. But with the Lavalas it should never be like that at all. Services should be provided if big money comes. Leaders had better make roads, hospitals, town squares, distribute food, irrigate land, and make the country more beautiful. That money has to serve everybody, rich and poor, minority and majority, people in the Lavalas and those not in the Lavalas.”