Jean-Robert Cadet :
The Face Behind The Mask
From the ashes of the institution of slavery rose Haiti in 1804, the
first black republic in the western hemisphere. Soon after, the same
former slaves who had unchained themselves, reinstituted a new kind of
slavery. Under the pretext of caring for destitute children, the
former slaves chained these children in the worst kind of servitude
that they themselves had experienced. These slave children are called
restavec, a French word that means "staying with". They are deprived of
all humanities and basic education, and brutalized worse than the
slaves of the past because the supply seems unlimited, and they have no
monetary value.
These slave children sleep on rags or cardboard. They go to bed late
and wake up early, and are forced to do the work that the paid servants
will not do. Today, there are approximately 250,000 restavec children
in Haiti, lost human resources that the country will never recover, and
who will never have the opportunity to become productive member of
Haitian society. Despite laws that have been created under the
pressure of human rights organizations, Haiti continues to hide child
slavery behind the mask of restavec. And the laws are often violated by
the very people who helped write them.
As a former restavec, I came to the United States at the age of fifteen
to resume my restavec status in the home of my former "masters." When
they realized that the restavec system was not conducive to American
society, I was shown the door to fend for myself in the streets of New
York. In Restavec, my autobiography, published by the University of
Texas Press, I show the faces of the restavec children behind the mask.
I vividly describe my childhood in restavec servitude as well as my
subsequent life in the Unites States, where, despite American racism, I
put myself through college and found success in the United States Army
and in business. Today I am a high school teacher in Ohio.
May this book
serve as a testament to show that even the destitutes
have the potential to become productive members of their society, and I
sincerely hope that the readers of this book will persuade their
government to abolish child slavery wherever it exists.
