On Saturday, October 17, 2026, the 220th anniversary of the death of Emperor Jacques I, father of the Haitian nation, the association Hérit’Haïti (Memory, Art & Heritage) organized a conference-debate on the theme “Completing the Work of Dessalines: From Political Independence to the Building of a Free and Prosperous Nation.” The meeting was held online on Google Meet at 3 p.m., Haiti time.

About a hundred participants, connecting from several regions including Haiti, France and the United States, took part in the exchange, held under the association’s motto: “Memory, Reflection, Action. For a Free and Prosperous Haiti.”

Four speakers, a sociologist, an education specialist and two historians, took the floor under the guidance of the moderator, Faranday Pierre-Louis, multilateral diplomat and member of the Port-au-Prince Bar. Each addressed, from a different angle, the need to carry on the Dessalinian legacy.

Creole, the cement of national reconstruction

University professor, education specialist and former Executive Secretary of the Haitian Creole Academy, Luna Gourgue argued for promoting the Creole language as the cement of Haiti’s reconstruction. She traced the evolution of Creole, established as an official language of Haiti in 1987 alongside French, and the key dates of that journey, notably the creation of the Haitian Creole Academy in 2014.

She called for the effective use of Creole in legal institutions as well as in public and private institutions. “In our courts, to this day, judgments are delivered entirely in French. Lawyers speak only French. And often the plaintiff they are defending does not even understand what they are saying. Haitian Creole is not well represented in our judicial system or in many other sectors such as education and public and private administration,” she lamented. For her, language is above all a vehicle for memory and transmission.

Dessalines’ foreign policy: humanism and solidarity

Diplomat, historian and Ambassador of Haiti, Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, Dr. Weibert Arthus devoted his remarks to Dessalines’ foreign policy. His starting point: slavery is not a normality.

In his view, Dessalines wanted to found a society without color hierarchy. “Dessalines redefined the question of race. For him, the Polish and German whites who had found refuge in Haiti, the Amerindians (the few who remained on the island) and the Africans were all Black,” he explained. Humanism, solidarity and openness to the world were at the heart of his policy. The constraints of the era, however, kept Haiti from truly opening up: the country was under embargo.

The challenges of nation-building after 1804

Sociologist Rency Michel examined the challenges facing the young state after 1804: managing internal political order and choosing the form of government for the new state. He recalled that the intended social order rested on the equality of all citizens, with a ban on using color to identify the Haitian people.

He also noted that the Haitian Revolution has long been passed over in silence because it was perceived as an anomaly.

Returning to the place of the people in this project, Dr. Arthus added a nuance: “However, the Haitian people did not understand Dessalines’ vision. Dessalines wanted a community of brothers who would rise above all color prejudice, but the masses did not share that vision. Hence the social contract Rousseau speaks of could not be established in the new state, because its members could not manage to coexist peacefully. There was a kind of dichotomy between the popular agenda and the leaders. The Dessalinian ideal did not triumph, since he was assassinated.”

A republic “empty as a shell”

Historian, author and university professor Pierre Buteau addressed the heart of the theme: completing Dessalines’ work. He revisited the circumstances of the Emperor’s death before describing a republic empty as a shell. He called for social reconstruction in all its depth, drawing on the geo-racial logic that Dessalines sought to put in place, while rethinking the Haitian economy and the question of modernization, which in Dessalines’ time meant a plantation economy.

“The Dessalinian project could not survive because of a clash of opposing interests. The problem of connection between citizens, which Dessalines wanted to eliminate, still exists today,” he stated.

The meeting ended with a question-and-answer session moderated by Faranday Pierre-Louis, which allowed participants to engage directly with the speakers. True to its motto, “Memory, Reflection, Action,” Hérit’Haïti thus extended its guests’ reflections into open debate on how to complete the work of Dessalines, on the 220th anniversary of his death.