Haiti / only the dead are free?
Sometimes it seems so.

Rarely have the words made with raw evidence that the dual degree of alienation of the loss of identity and identification of the victim with the scale of the executioner. The slaves of Haiti, largely originating from Dahomey to indicate the flight used the expression "to steal his corpse" (Les chasses à l'homme, Grégoire Chamayou). Aware that the condition of a slave did correspond to civil death, still usied the language of their masters. Classified by the law of the time as "movable property", they continued to perceive themselves as property ("goods") even when they rebelled.
At the time, "Society of the Spectacle" was still in its infancy, but the situation could have almost certainly talked about "reification", but of the consciences.
The slave on the run as the natives in revolt against colonialism mentioned by Frantz Fanon in "Les damnés de la terre." Both aware that the price for their rebellion was death. As the insurgent, as the runaway slave, "began his life as a man from the end, is regarded as a dead man in power." By the way, Toussaint Louverture, "the soul of the independence of the first black republic," is a synthesis historically insurmountable.
It should not seem paradoxical that some anthropologists are trying to restore dignity and history to victims of the slave trade exploring cemeteries and mass graves. "At the time of slavery - says Dr. Jean Felicien Bongolo (better known as Masengo Ma Mbongolo) - the funeral ceremonies were the only place where you could express a kind of new-found freedom," even if temporary. "The death - goes - was the time for crying out loud its release, the immortality of the spirit."
Fifteen years ago, after a series of hurricanes that hit the island of Guadeloupe, several human skeletons had appeared on the beach of Sainte-Marguerite. Archaeologists, in a short time, identified hundreds of tombs dating from a period between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The idea of having discovered a "graveyard of the slaves of African origin", was confirmed by the study of the skulls. Several teeth had characteristics of ritual mutilation of some populations of Africa.
So far, experts from the Institute national de recherche en archéologie preventive et anthropologue of the University of Bordeaux were exhumed some 300 bodies - men, women and children - of about a thousand buried.
More than a century and a half from the final abolition of slavery, this is the first systematic archaeological study conducted in the "French West Indies. " Until a few years ago would have been a kind of taboo, a collective shame to hide for both the descendants of slaves and for those of owners. In the past, similar findings were hastily buried and forgotten
Instead, the excavations of Sainte-Marguerite (considered in academic circles as "the beginning of the colonial archeology") are perceived by much of the population of Guadeloupe as "important in the search for identity."
The place of research would have been used as a cemetery by a number of "habitations," the sugar cane plantations in the Caribbean. In the burials have been identified two different periods. The first ends with the first abolition of 1794, the other (in 1802, after slavery had been re-established by Napoleon Bonaparte) is up to the final abolition in 1848.
While in the oldest part of the cemetery the bodies were buried in a disorderly fashion, in the most recent bodies are generally oriented in an east-west, covered with clothes and a crucifix. The study of skeletons operated by students of paleopathology has confirmed that the living conditions of slaves on the plantations were very harsh. Are still visible signs of trauma caused by the hardships and sufferings to which they were exposed.
All bodies show less than 30 years and on many subjects than twenty years have been found spinal arthritis that usually do not appear before 50. A generalized loss of teeth, even among children, is the consequence of poor nutrition. To escape the pangs of hunger, slaves ate too much sugar cane. The combination of sugar and silica (contained in the fibers) had a devastating effect on teeth. Widespread bone tuberculosis (almost 100% "according to scholars) because of promiscuity and poor hygienic conditions. Do not miss the signs of abuse and torture. Amputation of a phalanx of toes should be interpreted as the classic punishment for the slave trying to escape "stealing his body."

Gianni Sartori