The Restavec System Is Considered A Form Of Slavery.
The term Restavec refers to a social system in Haiti whereby 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. The Restavec system is considered a form of slavery.
Haiti has often had obstacles to enforcing its own laws and though abolished in law both in 1793 and 1804, slave conditions and class distinctions have survived through the present day. Seeing coffee and sugar as Haiti’s only economic asset, Toussaint L’Ouverture immediately implemented mandatory labor after leading history's only successful slave revolt and winning Haiti's independence. Law required all inhabitants to be employed as servants, soldiers, or plantation workers. Slaves were renamed cultivateurs and, although their masters were no longer white, their plight was improved marginally at best. L’Ouverture even called for the import of more African laborers to make up for wartime losses. Under Dessalines, L’Ouverture’s successor, conditions only worsened as a reign of terror became the norm from which Haitians have seldom seen respite. “Haiti’s new rulers could have turned Haiti into a model of individual freedom in the New World. Instead they maintained an oppressive labor code on the plantations . . . and the restavek system (child slavery) survived into the twentieth century and beyond”
Restaveks have numerous roots in Haitian culture and history; it is reported that the practice started with the mixed-race children on the plantation mansions. the white father often allowed his bastards to stay in the main house serving as assistant servants. regarding the mixed-race assistant servants as the physical evidence of their husbands' infidelity, the white wives often mistreated them both verbally and physically; and there also is a diametrical duality of attitudes vis-a-vis the restavek and the children of the master-family. for instance, the extreme mistreatment of the restavek child is often contrasted with an equally extreme admiration for the host-family's children. perhaps, this is a psycho-historical trait that can be interpreted as " the scorn of the resented colonial wife". after all, the bulk of the abuse suffered by the restavek child stereotypically comes from the hands of a resentful wife paralleling the anger and feeling of self-impotency of a colonial wife. the children of slaves were given menial tasks and household chores until they were strong enough for field duty.
After the abolition of slavery, household servants stayed on. The nouveaux-riche black army officers that took over the plantations became just as accustomed to these servants as their white predecessors and the system perpetuated. In a parallel root, this system originated as traditional Haitian hospitality. The term restavek derives from French and Creole, literally meaning: “stay with.” Wealthier distant relations would take in one of the children of a struggling family member. In exchange for menial tasks and light household chores, the child would be clothed, fed, educated, and provided for in ways that his or her parents could not. As this practice became more common, however, families with less and less money began taking in restaveks as a status symbol. Haiti is already one of the most impoverished nations in the world and when families that can barely afford to feed, clothe, and educate themselves properly take on a restavek, they are that much less inclined to share what little they have with him or her. Restaveks are then forced to work 10-16 hour days of backbreaking labor, often on only one meal a day. They are clothed with the rags and hand-me-downs of the other children, usually without underwear or shoes. Seldom educated, they sleep on cardboard or rags, suffer constant humiliation and abuse – “Girls are especially vulnerable: They are commonly used for the sexual initiation of teenage boys in the house” (Hoag) and are generally seen as something slightly less than human.
Restaveks today are often not even related to their supposed caretakers. Most come from the poor rural areas under their parents’ belief that they will be given a better life living with another family in a big city like Port-au-Prince with access to schools. Haiti’s lack of infrastructure from phones to roads means little communication: most families just assume that their child is better off and never see him or her again or hear of the atrocities he or she suffers.
One of the biggest challenges in addressing the restavek situation is changing the mentality that allowed it to occur for 200 years and that refers to children as young animals (Hoag). Slavery placed no value on children and that lack of value has carried over into the Haitian culture. Parents can even put their children in jail as a form of discipline (Lord). Having a restavek is technically illegal, but the laws are rarely enforced. Or as the U.S. Department of State put it, “Governmental agencies and programs to promote children’s rights and welfare existed, but the government lacked the capacity and the resources to adequately support or enforce existing mechanisms.”
The restavek system is culturally acceptable; therefore, those that could report abuses rarely do. Most families believe they are doing a good deed by taking in a restavek, especially if they take him or her to the U.S. As a result, many restaveks are not discovered until they have been illegally trafficked into other countries. In one case a twelve-year-old girl was found in Miami, unkempt and complaining of abdominal pain as a result of constant rape since she was 9. She recounted her story of being forced to move to New York and work eighteen hours a day. (Padgett). Haiti’s government has set up a program called SOS Timoun where restaveks can call in to report this illegal activity and seek help, but it is only open during business hours and most restaveks are illiterate and have no access to a phone, making this program ineffectual. Child labor laws have also been passed in recent years, but this has simply resulted in restaveks being released and becoming street children when they reach the ages at which the laws apply. The most progress has been seen in NGOs and private aid agencies such as the Maurice Sixto Home in Port-au-Prince, which feeds and educates restaveks. Awareness alone may be having some impact on the situation as we are now seeing occasional help by adults. In one case a neighbor took a mistreated child to the Maurice Sixto Home and in another case a restavek reported proper treatment by his caretaker, but these appear to be the exceptions, not the norm (Hoag).
The value placed on class hierarchy is not easily broken down in Haiti and perpetuates the restavek system in much the same way as traditional Haitian views of children. Something as simple as having a portable radio or wearing somewhat new-looking American clothing can be a status symbol. “The restavek’s owner climbs a rung in the social strata. The restavek system flourishes in part because of the sharp class divisions in Haiti” (Lord). Conversely, being seen wearing old, dirty clothes or not having shoes incites taunting calls of “restavek, restavek.”
The term "restavek" is considered a dirty word in Haitian culture. Few will actually admit to having a restavek, instead, caretakers may say they are taking care of someone else's child or that they have a child in domesticity, but not a restavek. Switchvert Pty. Ltd. travelled to Haiti in September of 2006 to shoot a documentary on the subject and found that the majority of households in Haiti have at least one extra child and some are treated well and sent to school, but of the experts interviewed, none would say that even half of the children living in domesticity are treated properly. When asking the average Haitian how they defined the term "restavak," interviewres found that there seemed to be three ready-made responses. Some claimed they could not define the term because they did not know any. The second typical response was that a restavek is a child who does not do what he or she is told, who steals or refuses to do what he or she is told and has to be beaten and reprimanded just to do a few simple chores. The third and most common response was that restaveks are like slaves and mistreated, but very few people would admit to knowing of any restaveks. The crew of Switchvert remarked that the responses were very similarly worded to a billboard they saw in Port-Au-Prince, probably placed by an NGO.
