A painful reckoning
Haiti’s payments to its former slave masters ran up generations, costing the economy billions of dollars over time, The Times found, and a little-known public bank called the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations collected the vast majority of the money.
But after Haiti’s disastrous 2010 earthquake, French ambassador Didier Le Bret said the bank had reached out to him to help him and, at least in part, make amends: it donated about $400,000.
A bank spokesman said the donation was simply part of its policy to help countries hit by humanitarian disasters. But Augustin de Romanet, the bank’s director at the time of the donation, told The Times that “there were probably some useful things to do toward Haiti, given what had happened in the past.”
The bank’s discreet gesture, however small, spoke to a wider phenomenon: Mr Aristide has been out of power since 2004, but his struggle has led to a slow, often painful, settlement in France.
In recent years, famous intellectuals have spoken out in favor of restitution, and academics have increasingly delved into the economic and legal aspects of reparations. Last year, France’s national public research organization published a database of compensations paid to French slave owners, including those from Haiti.
Myriam Cottias, who oversaw the database, was a member of the French commission that turned down Aristide’s requests for restitution two decades ago. But she said her views had changed and that reparations needed to be discussed.
“The debate, yes, it needs to be raised,” she said.
The French authorities have at times shown some willingness to tackle this past as well. In mid-December, the French Ministry of Finance organized for the first time an international symposium on the economics of slavery, with conferences focusing specifically on the history of Haiti’s payments to France.
But the public discussion involved some rhetorical tightrope walking.
In his 2015 speech, Mr. Hollande, the French president, acknowledged that Haiti’s payments to its former slave masters were sometimes referred to as “the ransom of independence.”
“If I come to Haiti,” he said, “I will pay off the debt we have for my part.”
The crowd in front of him, including African heads of state and the Haitian president, immediately stood up and applauded.
“People were crying,” Michaelle Jean, former secretary general of the International Organization of La Francophonie, recalled during the speech. “It was huge.”
A few hours later, Mr. Hollande’s aides made an important caveat: Mr. Hollande was talking only about a “moral debt” owed by France to Haiti, not a financial one. The French government maintains the same position today. (Mr. Hollande declined to comment on this article.)
France’s delicate stance on Haiti reflects an ongoing uncertainty, sometimes malaise, about how to handle the country’s colonial past and slave ownership. In 2016, the French parliament symbolically repealed the 1825 ordinance requiring Haitian payments to former slave owners, but stopped considering any financial restitution.
“One cannot objectively make the slightest argument that we owe nothing to Haiti,” Christiane Taubira, a justice minister in Mr Hollande’s government, said in an interview.
Looking back, Mr Aristide said his restitution campaign had at least led to French recognition of his past.
“If I hadn’t asked the question in 2003, François Hollande probably wouldn’t have admitted to being blamed in 2015,” he said.
“That was a step,” he said. “It’s not finished.”
