Restavec

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
 This article is written like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (March 2009)

A restavec (or restavek; from the French reste avec, "one who stays with") refers to a social system in Haiti in which parents unable to care for their children send them to relatives or strangers living in more urban areas where they receive food and housing (and sometimes an education) in exchange for "light" housework. In reality restavecs often live in grinding poverty, enslaved to their "hosts" and seldom receiving an education. Sometimes, the child is even raped. The restavec system is considered a form of slavery.

Jean-Robert Cadet vividly recounted his life as a Restavec in a book of the same name, published in 1998.

Contents

[edit] History

Poverty, oppression and slavery have been connected with Haitian culture since Spain and France divided this region in 1697. In 1804, Haiti proclaimed itself the world’s first black republic. However, this did not eliminate the systems of oppression [1]. It created more of a problem within this Haitian nation. After they were set free, they created a class of people. There was the upper and lower class, the rich and the poor, and the light skinned and the dark skinned. The upper, rich, light-skinned Haitians controlled the government and the way life was to unfold [1]. The elite class made the poor families believe that if they did not have enough money to meet their financial needs, then they should send their children off. This system soon became well known in Haiti and a lot of poor families had to resort to this way of life. These children that were being sent off were later called "Restavecs".

[edit] Characteristics of Restavecs

These children slaves always seem to have the same kind of characteristics. They are all usually young black girls that are around the age of 9 and younger. However, there are still young males that are involved in this system as well. These young girls are born into poverty and they have suffered some type of mental, physical, and sexual abuse. They have no literal, social, or political voice, so they can not determine their futures. A lot of parents send their children to be restavecs thinking that they are going to live a better life, but a lot of times this is not the case. Children who are raised in a poor family or lose their parents become domestic workers in Haiti[1].

[edit] Conditions

Restavecs work many hours and receive no funding in return. These children do not enjoy the luxuries of playing outside and acting as a child their age would. They work in horrible conditions that are not good for their health.[2] Along with these working conditions, they have to work excessive hours, from sun up to sun down. While at work some of the girls suffer sexual harassment from their owners.

Restavecs are slave children who belong to well-to-do families. They receive no pay and are kept out of school. Since the emancipation and independence of 1804, affluent blacks and mulattoes have reintroduced slavery by using children of the very poor as house servants. They promise poor families in faraway villages who have too many mouths to feed a better life for their children. Once acquired, these children lose all contact with their families and, like slaves of the past, are sometimes given new names for the sake of convenience.[2]

[edit] Current condition

The adult class of this community cannot provide for their children so they still continue to send them to be restavecs. Haiti is a nation of eight million people and out of all of these people 300,000 of the children here are restavecs [3] There is still a "hidden nature" about this domestic service that these children have to deal with. Employers and other elite people want these restavecs because they know that they can pay them little or no wages and children have more energy so they can work longer hours [4].

As poverty and political turmoil continue to increase, human rights observers report that the number of restavecs continues to rise dramatically [3] Most people will get rid of their restavecs by the time they turn fifteen, because a law was passed stating that at age fifteen all people must be paid. Therefore, these children are then thrown out into the streets to provide for themselves. Right now there are efforts being made to help these children in Haiti. There has been international exposure about the issue and this could strengthen the struggle to end this silent form of child labor. Restavec's were the subject of a 2009 episode of the television drama Law & Order.

In May of 2009, over 500 Haitian leaders gathered in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti to discuss the restavek system and how to make positive changes to this complex problem. Leaders from all facets of society attended the full day session and conference organizers from The Jean Cadet Restavek Foundation and Fondation Maurice Sixto hope that this dialog is the start of a large grass-roots movement to, at a minimum, stop the abuse of restavek children. [5]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Janak, Timothy C., (1998) Haiti's "Restavec" slave children:Difficult choices, difficult lives, yet...Lespwa fe Viv University of Texas Press
  2. ^ a b Cadet, Jean-Robert, (1998) Restavec:From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American University of Texas Press
  3. ^ a b Cohen, Gigi (2004-03-24). "Haiti's Dark secret:The Restavecs". National Public Radio. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1779562. 
  4. ^ Chung, D, (1997) The Development Challenge in Haiti World Bank
  5. ^ http://restavek.donordrive.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=cms.page&id=1037

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restavec"
Personal tools