HIST 144 SC - Haiti & Colombia - Maroon Nations & Paramilitary States
This course looks at two countries that are not commonly compared, Haiti and Colombia, with a focus on the African Diaspora. Starting in 1791, the enslaved broke their chains in the Haitian Revolution and radically recast the promise of freedom in the Americas. Colombia is home to the second largest Black population in Latin America after Brazil, and Blacks have stood at the heart of its struggles for dignity across the course of the nation’s history.
Throughout the colonial era (1697 to 1791 in Haiti and the 1520s to 1810 in Colombia), the poor practiced marronage or escape from beneath the control of European slave elites and metropoles. Metaphorically, those who liberate themselves or break free are the maroon nations, the peoples who have built societies based upon egalitarianism and profound respect for the land. Ranged against them were elites closely tied to Europeans, at first, and then to the United States, up to the present.
Black Colombians have won rights to the land that are historic for all people in the African Diaspora in the hemisphere. The Black majority of Haiti has, in recent decades, twice elected a president who obeys the will of the poor, and that sort of political project has encountered the full wrath of foreign soldiers, extractive economic models, and U.S.-backed coups.
Course Credit: 1.0
Offered: Every three semesters
Please refer to the course schedule on the Scripps Portal for current course offerings and details.
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