Bwa Kayiman: On Liberation and Resistance

Every year, HKW invites its audience to join artists, scholars, activists, and musicians to commemorate the Haitian Revolution that led to the independence and birth of the first Black nation. Though Haiti claimed its independence in 1804, the foundations for the Revolution were laid in August 1791 during the invocation and ceremony of Bwa Kayiman. What are the historical and economic considerations that have to be looked at to understand Haiti today, 220 years after independence? How are Haiti’s socio-political and economic realities related to other post-colonial realities in Africa, Asia, and the Americas? If the Haitian Revolution pre-empted abolitionist and independence movements across the globe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, what does today’s Haiti forebode?