"Ayti! Ayti!"

HaitiAnalysis.com

"Copyright 1996 By: Dave Welsh. Song recorded in September 2006. Lyrics:

"In Seventeen Hundred and Ninety Four there was a French slave colony on Haiti's shore. Came the Revolution all the slaves went free while the US was still...a slave...society. Picture the US rulers, consumed by fear an independent Black republic in the hemisphere. So President Wilson sent in the Marines Twenty years later they were still on the scene. CHORUS: Ayiti! Ayiti! Tryna get free from the bourgeoisie Ayiti! Ayiti! Free from the US Embassy And then the US propped up Papa Doc but when you've struck the Haitian people, you've struck a rock. There was a reign of terror by the Tontons Macoutes And then the people rose up and gave 'em the boot. CHORUS And then the people of Haiti got into the street swept into power Father Aristide In just a few months a lot of changes made with hope for the future and a lot of faith. CHORUS And then the US paid for a coup d'etat, A lot of people killed and all of that With US vultures and the bourgeoisie A-gettin fat from the people's misery. CHORUS Now the people of Haiti beginnin' to rise Tryna get rid of these parasites Spirit risin' through the pain and tears Fightin for freedom 500 years. CHORUS

Dave Welsh writes "Friends feel free to sing and reproduce this. We took a few liberties with the historical facts, for artistic reasons, but the essential truth remains. The Haitian Revolution actually began in 1791, not 1794. And we collapsed over a hundred years between the proclamation of the independent Black republic in 1804 and President Wilson's Marine invasion of 1915. The song was written after the 1991-94 coup d'etat. We sang it while picketing the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince with a Pastors for Peace delegation in 1996. If you change Verse IV to read "in just a few years" instead of "in just a few months", then the song will encompass the situation before and after the 2004 coup, as well. Everything in it still applies."

Dave Welsh is a long time Haiti activist and served as a war correspondent in Vietnam.