Par Ives Isidor
For many, the government of Jean Pierre Boyer is the most obscurantist government in the history of Haiti. President Boyer is criticized for having favored the construction of barracks and prisons to the detriment of the creation of educational institutions, the basis of the social and economic development of the young nation and the first independent black republic in the world. Reproaches and reproaches from both Haitians and Dominicans. According to historical accounts, the Dominicans admit a visceral hatred for Boyer whom they accuse of all evils.
However, a political science student that I met in 1999 in New Jersey made me understand that former President Jean Pierre Boyer is in the odor of sanctity among many Dominican conservatives, notably former President Joachim Balaguer, who consider the contribution of Jean Pierre Boyer to the birth of the Dominican Republic is fully appreciated. According to this student who worked at the Haitian consulate in the Dominican Republic, it was Jean Pierre Boyer who laid the foundations for the constitution of the purely Dominican army as a safety valve in reaction to the Praslin insurrection which was brewing in the western part of the island under the leadership of Rivière Hérard.
According to the student, President Jean Pierre Boyer had skillfully designed the creation of this army to consolidate his power in the event that he was forced to leave the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince. The creation of the so-called Dominican force would also be a sort of reprisal against Haitian generals based in the eastern part of the island who were fed up with his long reign and who sympathized with the Praslin insurgents.
Ironically, according to the student, it was these same Dominicans hired by Boyer to undermine the Praslin revolution who, following the overthrow of Jean Pierre Boyer, became the spearheads of the birth of the Dominican Republic in February 1844.
I want to submit this discovery to both Haitian and Dominican historians who must shed the true light and completely resurrect these facts of the past marking the history of the secession of Quisqueya Island.
Ives Isidor
December 2007
