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Article: In 200 years of independence, Haitians proud of achievement, critical of pain.
- Article from:
- Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
- Article date:
- December 18, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Jacqueline Charles and Jane Regan
HAITI _ Emboldened by Haiti's hard-won independence war, the feared and revered Gen. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a former slave turned revolutionary hero, addressed the first free black republic in the Western Hemisphere:
"Citizens, it is not enough to have expelled from your country the barbarians who have bloodied it for two centuries ... which held for so long our spirits in the most humiliating torpor... . We must at last live independent or die."
The speech was delivered Jan. 1, 1804, in Gonaives, Haiti. Dessalines was the proud black warrior who tore the white out of the French flag to create a new ...