FIFA targets Haiti

FIFA rejected a jersey recognizing what may be the greatest ever win for human liberation. It’s part of a long history of punishing Haiti for its important contribution to advancing equality.

International football federation FIFA recently decided that Haiti’s jersey for the World Cup violated its rules prohibiting political imagery. Named after the elite soldiers of the Haitian Revolution, the Grenadiers’ jersey featured a small image based on the Battle of Vertières, which was the culmination of a 13-year struggle for independence.

The 1791-1804 Haitian Revolution delivered a major blow to slavery, white supremacy and European colonial rule. “Arguably”, notes Peter Hallward, “there is no single event in the whole of modern history whose implications were more threatening to the dominant global order of things.”

Before the 1791 slave revolt the French colony of Saint Domingue was home to 450,000 people in bondage. At its peak in the 1750s the ‘Pearl of the Antilles’ provided as much as 50 per cent  of France’s GNP.

The African masses put a stop to that with a merciless struggle that overcame the most barbaric slave plantation system. The revolt rippled through the region and compelled the post-French Revolution government in Paris to abolish slavery in its Caribbean colonies.

Between 1791 and 1804 ‘Haitians’ would defeat tens of thousands of French, British and Spanish troops (‘Canada’ backed the British and Washington backed France financially), leading to the world’s first and only successful large-scale slave revolution. The first nation of free people in the Americas, Haiti established a slave-free state 27 years before human bondage was abolished in today’s Canada and 58 years before the USA’s emancipation proclamation (it wasn’t until after this proclamation ending slavery that the US recognized Haiti’s independence.)

The Haitian Revolution’s geopolitical effects were immense. It stimulated the Louisiana Purchase and London’s 1807 Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The revolutionary state also provided important support to South American independence movements.

After winning their liberation from slavery and colonial rule in a war that killed half the population, Haitians were forced to pay their former slave masters an astronomical sum for their freedom. In a remarkable act of imperial humiliation, two decades after independence Haiti began paying France a huge indemnity for lost property, which was the now free Haitians. Under threat of invasion and the restoration of slavery, Francophile Haitian president Jean-Pierre Boyer agreed to pay French slaveholders 150 million francs. It took Haiti 122 years to pay the ransom.

In the lead-up to the 200-year anniversary of the Battle of Vertière and country’s independence, the Haitian government instigated a commission to estimate the cost of the ransom, which they put conservatively at $21 billion. The Jean-Bertrand Aristide government called for its restitution and instigated legal proceedings to force Paris to pay. The demand was part of why France (along with Canada and the US) helped overthrow Aristide in 2004 and the coup government dropped the issue.

A country born in the only ever successful large scale slave revolt should be allowed to mark a struggle that greatly advanced human equality on its football jersey. FIFA demanding the Grenadiers expunge its commemoration of the Battle of Vertières is odious.

Let’s hope the Haitian team responds with a successful tournament.

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