A Giant Step for Mankind – Made in Haïti
The Bwa Kay Iman uprising against slavery
By Jeant Saint-Vil
Global Research, August 11, 2009
There was a time, not so long ago, when popes, kings and queens enriched themselves and built vast empires on the profits made with the sweat and blood of kidnapped men, women and children loaded on ships, stacked like sardines and reduced to slavery on plantations of coffee, sugar, cotton, cocoa, all over the Americas[1]. From the 1444 Portuguese attacks against the coast of Africa, followed by the 1452 papal bull of pope Nicholas V[2] which invited Christians to attack and enslave non-Christians, to the faithful year of 1791, millions of human beings had already been kidnapped, terrorized, thrown to sharks in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean . Immediately upon arrival on the islands or the mainland, they were worked to death, tortured, eaten alive by dogs that were especially trained to feed on African flesh or they were blown to pieces with ignited gun powder shoved into their sexual parts by British, Spanish, French and Portuguese colonizers. It has been estimated that the population of Africa in the mid 19th century would have been 50 million instead of 25 million had this catastrophe known as the MAAFA not taken place[3].
It is within such an atmosphere of unparalleled terrorism and human decadence that a remarkable gathering of men and women took place on the small Caribbean island of Haiti , the evening of August 14-15, 1791. Known as the Bwa Kay Iman Ceremony[4], it is said that this revolutionary meeting brought together representatives of twenty-one displaced African nations who vowed to revolt against the powers that had unleashed against their people such a relentless campaign of terror; a genocide that was expertly conceived and implemented, state-sponsored and financed, justified with numerous literary works and blessed by the most powerful and influential religious institutions of the day[5]
The Bwa Kay Iman uprising against slavery
By Jeant Saint-Vil
Global Research, August 11, 2009
There was a time, not so long ago, when popes, kings and queens enriched themselves and built vast empires on the profits made with the sweat and blood of kidnapped men, women and children loaded on ships, stacked like sardines and reduced to slavery on plantations of coffee, sugar, cotton, cocoa, all over the Americas[1]. From the 1444 Portuguese attacks against the coast of Africa, followed by the 1452 papal bull of pope Nicholas V[2] which invited Christians to attack and enslave non-Christians, to the faithful year of 1791, millions of human beings had already been kidnapped, terrorized, thrown to sharks in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean . Immediately upon arrival on the islands or the mainland, they were worked to death, tortured, eaten alive by dogs that were especially trained to feed on African flesh or they were blown to pieces with ignited gun powder shoved into their sexual parts by British, Spanish, French and Portuguese colonizers. It has been estimated that the population of Africa in the mid 19th century would have been 50 million instead of 25 million had this catastrophe known as the MAAFA not taken place[3].
It is within such an atmosphere of unparalleled terrorism and human decadence that a remarkable gathering of men and women took place on the small Caribbean island of Haiti , the evening of August 14-15, 1791. Known as the Bwa Kay Iman Ceremony[4], it is said that this revolutionary meeting brought together representatives of twenty-one displaced African nations who vowed to revolt against the powers that had unleashed against their people such a relentless campaign of terror; a genocide that was expertly conceived and implemented, state-sponsored and financed, justified with numerous literary works and blessed by the most powerful and influential religious institutions of the day[5]
