Dear Editor,
Amid the surging COVID-19 numbers on New Providence, The Bahamas is gearing up to commemorate Majority Rule Day on January 10.
Recently, the media reported that three groups of Haitian migrants were apprehended by law enforcement officers in Exuma, Anguilla Cay and Eleuthera.
Six months removed from the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, Haiti remains a bloody mess.
On New Year’s Day, interim Prime Minister Dr. Ariel Henry had to flee Gonaives during a service at Cathedrale Saint-Charles-Boromée, which was held to commemorate the 218 anniversary of Haiti’s independence from France. Haitian rebels had opened fire on the Haitian leader and his entourage.
Henry was appointed to his post approximately two weeks after Moïse’s death.
According to The Borgen Project, nearly 25 percent of Haitians live in extreme poverty, surviving on less than $1.25 per day. And nearly 60 percent of Haitians live on less than $2 per day.
To understand the wealth disparity in Haiti, the top 20 percent of Haitian households hold 64 percent of the total wealth, according to The Borgen Project.
The Bible says in Psalm 33:12 that blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.
Haiti’s centuries-old economic, social and political malaise is due to the sinister, malevolent foundation its spiritual forebears laid.
Three of the most important Haitians of the revolution era were Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Dutty Boukman.
It was Boukman, a voodoo priest captured in Senegambia, Africa, and transported to the Caribbean by European slaveholders, who presided over a voodoo ceremony at Bois Caïman in August 1791.
Boukman was also a catalyst in organizing the slave revolt, which would mushroom into a full-scale war between the French, the Haitian Mulattos and the Black slave population.
During the voodoo ceremony, Boukman and the other participants drank blood from an animal that was sacrificed. Within months of the rebellion, Boukman was captured and executed by the French in November 1791.
On January 1, 1804, Dessalines declared Saint Domingue an independent state, changing its name to the Arawak Haiti. Haiti is the first Black republic in the Western Hemisphere.
Dessalines would later take on the title Emperor Jacques I. In 1806, his life would come to a violent end during a mulatto revolt.
The Bois Caïman voodoo ceremony is the main reason American evangelical Pat Robertson once alleged that Haiti’s ongoing crises is due to it being dedicated to Satan.
Sir Lynden O. Pindling and the first Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) government took the opposite approach from their Haitian counterparts – albeit separated by nearly 180 years.
The Bahamas was built on the Judeo-Christian tradition. Christianity is referenced in the preamble of the Bahamian Constitution. The PLP would partner with the Rev. Harcourt W. Brown and the Baptist community in the fight against the stranglehold of the White minority government. Not having any oil at commercial quantity or gold, diamond and other mineral mines, The Bahamas’ unprecedented prosperity is nothing short of miraculous.
In the lead-up to the January 10, 1967 general election, one Euthal Rodgers of Deep Cay, Andros, viewed that election as spiritually paralleling the Passover in the Old Testament.
As the 1967 election would be held on the 10th day of the first month, so was the Passover held on the 10th day of the first month (Abib) of the Hebrew sacred calendar.
The general election victory would usher in majority rule and freedom from the Bay Street oligarchs.
To Rodgers and other religious Black Bahamians, the United Bahamian Party administration and its European ancestors were likened to Pharoah and the Egyptians who oppressed the Hebrews for 400 years.
Sir Lynden, according to them, was our Bahamian Moses. And Majority Rule Day was our Exodus and Passover.
In fact, according to historian Michael Craton, the PLP would use the theme song of the film Exodus for its election campaign.
Credit must be given to Sir Lynden and the first PLP administration for steering The Bahamas towards the Judeo-Christian tradition, instead of the African superstitious religions of our ancestors.
The Bahamas would’ve never achieved the success it has enjoyed had the leaders of the quiet revolution followed the example of Boukman and the other Bois Caïman voodoo participants.
– Kevin Evans
The post The spiritual foundation of Majority Rule Day and the Haitian Revolution appeared first on The Nassau Guardian.
source https://thenassauguardian.com/the-spiritual-foundation-of-majority-rule-day-and-the-haitian-revolution/
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