rasanblaj · the library

Istwa Nou

We Haitians have always known who we are and where we are going. Every generation sets out for it, and in every generation something interrupts our journey, our walk. Sometimes it comes from outside. Sometimes it comes from among us. Those interruptions are in this chronology because they happened; they're not who we are. We have never been defined by those off-road moments; and we have never internalized them.

We keep marching.

3,523 entries3,484 sourced claims10,413 runaway noticesthe library
Clear search 1 of 3,523 shown

The 1900s

1 entry · 1 year recorded Sezisman

1920

1 entry
1920 to 1922 · Haitianspan

Vincent's prison arithmetic gives one jail 28,470 deaths in a year

Heinl checks the figures the Union Patriotique gave the Senate and finds them impossible.

Read the full entryClose

Dantes Bellegarde wrote that his countrymen lived in an atmosphere of lying, and the propaganda of the Union Patriotique bore him out. Russell was accused of embezzlement. When Colonel Hooker sailed home in 1921 Le Courrier Haitien announced the fortune he had made. Jolibois fils marked the end of Wilson's presidency with a prayer that the man never find a resting place and eat his own waste on his deathbed. In August 1921 Stenio Vincent told a United States Senate committee that four thousand prisoners had died at the Cap between 1918 and 1920, and that seventy-eight bodies a day went into the pits there through 1918, which in a prison holding about four hundred people would mean 28,470 deaths in twelve months. He added 5,475 dead at Chabert. An anonymous member of the Union said Caperton had sold the entire Haitian navy for fourteen thousand dollars. A French colleague of Bellegarde informed his readers that Haitian villages had been eaten by war dogs shipped in from the Philippines.

Dantes BellegardeStenio VincentJolibois filsWilliam B. CapertonUnion Patriotique Cap-HaitienChabertPort-au-PrinceWashington
Where this comes from Heinl, R. D., & Heinl, N. G. (2005). Written in blood: The story of the Haitian people. University Press of America.HT-WIB-000443HT-WIB-000444

A code like HT-WIB-000044 is a bates number. It marks one page of our stamped scan of the book, so the same page can be found again by anyone working from the same copy. Open one to see every entry drawn from that page.

Permanent link to this entry
eras