|
Salvador
de Madariaga
Schocken
Books
New
York 1969
Pages
268-269, 273
Bolivar
arrived in Port-au- Prince on December 31st, 1815, in the evening,
and was received by Pétion, President of the Negro Republic, on
January 2nd, 1816. Haiti was the only free Republic in the New World
outside the United States. Pétion received Bolivar cordially and
made an excellent impression on him. "I hope much of his love
of liberty and justice", he wrote to Brion immediately after
the interview. His decision to settle in Haiti as a base for his
liberating expedition was momentous. Henceforth the republican cause
was committed to a policy of equality of rights between whites and
blacks on the Main Land, and therefore to the abolition of slavery.
Both sides in the Venezuelan wars, had, of course, wooed the blacks
with promises of emancipation; but never had either of them
committed itself to the cause of the Negroes as openly and clearly
as when Bolivar called on Pétion and sought his help against Spain.
For the race of men brutally brought to the New World to toil in
slavery for the whites, that day was a day of victory and, if not of
revenge, of compensation. That white visitor whom Pétion received
with an affable smile was Simon Bolivar, the direct descendent of
that Simon Bolivar, brought up on the same island two centuries
earlier, who, settled in Caracas, had called on Philip II to seek
permission to import several tons of black slaves yearly in
Venezuela.
Pétion
made the freedom of his brothers a condition for his aid. Bolivar
wrote to him (8.ii.16) that he was accablé
du poids de vos bienfaits, and added: En
tout vous êtes magnanime et indulgent. Nos affaires sont presque
arrangées, et sans doute dans une quinzaine de jours nous serons en
état de partir. Je n'attends que vos dernières faveurs; et s'il
m'est possible j'irai moi-même vous exprimer l’étendue de ma
reconnaissance. Dans ma proclamation aux habitants de Venezuela et
dans les décrets que je dois expédier pour la liberté des
esclaves je ne sais pas s'il me sera permis de témoigner les
sentiments de mon coeur envers Votre Excellence, et de laisser à la
postérité un monument irrécusable de votre philanthropie. Je ne
sais, dis-je, si je devrais vous nommer comme l'auteur de notre
liberté.
Could
Simon de Bolivar have guessed that a descendent of one of those
negroes he was importing under license by the ton, and one of his
own descendants, and a namesake of his to boot, would some day
change places in the tragicomedy of life, and that a Simon Bolivar
write in court-like style that he owned his liberty to the son of a
slave?
..On
April 10th, 1816, an expedition sailed from Aux Cayes to liberate
Venezuela. It had been financed by the Haitian State and the
Curaçaoan mulatto Louis Brion... In the case of Haiti, the motive was
a natural desire to liberate the Negroes of Venezuela not merely
from Spain but from serfdom as well; and this fact, coupled with the
predominantly Negro composition of the troops that Bolivar was
taking over, led to the belief that Bolivar was sailing to found a
Negro republic in Venezuela.
All
authors mention the army chiefs and officers on board; and Ducoudray
waxed both eloquent and merry about the women also; but no one
speaks of the "other ranks". This gap is both
filled and explained by Bolivar, who, in 1816, referring to his
second expedition, told a friend that "his friend Pétion was
helping him wiyth four hundred men and the necessary
transports". Therefore Pétion had also supplied the rank and
file for the first -- and, as will be seen anon, about twice that.
|
