Who is Afraid of The Haitian People?

By Jean H Charles



President Michel Martelly has failed his appointment on November 18, 2011, to visit the historic and touristic city of Cape Haitian on the historic day of the Battle of Vertieres.   Previous presidents used to visit Cape Haitian on that date, to commemorate the final epic story of the slaves who defeated the mighty army of Napoleon on November 18, 1803, to render Haiti and the rest of the world free of the scourge of slavery of man by man.

They were all there -- the school children in bright costume uniforms marching to the beat of the drum and the sound of the trumpet, proud as the Spartacus of antiquity crossing the Rubicon to enter Rome, the conqueror that was at last defeated by a band of slaves.   The Haitian people have re-edited once more this event in the annals of world history.

Vertieres should occupy a preeminent place, along with Marathon, Waterloo, and Gettysburg in the record of great battles of the world!

It does not!

The people in Sunday dress were there on the battlefield en masse, waiting for the president and his officials to deliver the famous speech magnifying the glory of the past and urging the spirit of appurtenance to continue to build together a nation free and independent.   The momentum was at its peak.   The Haitian people were expecting Urbis et Orbi from Cape Haitian to the world, a mighty and revered president as the commander in chief declaring that the Haitian armed forces, issued from the patrimony of the ragged but dignified indigenous army, are reinstalled on the territory of the republic.

He was not there!

He has succumbed to the weight of the international community, France, the former slaveholder; the United States that profited from the Haitian victory to become from sea to shining sea a predestined nation in the Western Hemisphere; the United Nations, of which Haiti was a founding member, with its so called stabilization force, now the enforcer of the great powers agenda.

Who is afraid of the Haitian people is a legitimate question that astute observers should be concerned about?

I am!

Out of a population of 10 million people, 8 million of them are living in almost destitute poverty yet there is an energy of creativity and a reservoir of resilience coupled with a wit that sustains daily living.   This phenomenon is rare and maybe unique to Haiti.

The former slaves and their descendants have been denied for two hundred years the bread of education and the discipline of sophistication and refinement, as a line of demarcation for holding them indefinitely in the bondage neo-slavery.   They have survived by paying dearly for their children to be educated with the hope of a better tomorrow.

They have been deceived not only by the international community but also by their own nationals in positions of power and authority, who took their cue from those who assassinated their founding father to impose the rule that freedom was only for a few, not for all.

Finally, two hundred-plus years, 208 to be exact, Haiti has a president in love with Haiti and with the Haitian people.   He must be crushed by a Parliament, whose venal interests are in opposition to the national destiny.

I was not sure where this line of inquiry would lead me until I attended a conference this weekend in Cape Haitian on the national dialogue and fraternity in Haiti, organized by the Haitian Institute of the Christian social doctrine.   Two eminent bishops were present, the Archbishop Louis Kebreau, the president of the Haitian Episcopal, and the very intellectual and scholarly Bishop Dumas to underscore this momentous experience.

Dr Antonio M. Baggio, the main speaker for the day, was sharing with the audience the product of his research, a book entitled: Letters to France by Toussaint Louverture.   Dr Baggio has revolutionized the political thinking of the day by reviling and proving that Toussaint Louverture may have inspired the philosophical underpinning of the French Revolution not the other way around.

It will take some time for the world and the western civilization to accept this phenomenon that President John Adams of the United States had already perceived.   He wanted to help Toussaint to become king of Haiti and as such helping his own cause, liberate the slaves on the American territory half a century earlier.

Here we are!   Haiti that accomplished one of the most signature revolutions in the world does not have its place as a universal patrimony of the rational homo species.   Having forced onto the world order the concept of liberty, equality and fraternity for all, the concept of fraternity according to Professor Baggio has been eliminated from the political praxis and discourse.   (La fraternidad en perspective politica, exigencias, recourses, definiciones del principio olvidado.   Buenos Aires 2009 and La fraternita nella rifles-sione politoligica contemporanea, Roma 2007.)

Professor Emil Vlajki, as the great thinkers of the world who sing the same song in different languages from different countries (Moses, Jesus, Rousseau, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud), has reformulated the same concept by defining the world of absolute rationality (liberty, equality without fraternity) and the world of human rationality (liberty, equality with fraternity).

The young people of America assaulting Wall Street to demand fraternity, or human rationality in a world where cynicism is the rule are playing their own partition in this quest where fraternity must be, as dictated by Toussaint Louverture, a key underpinning of the world order.

President Michel Joseph Martelly, enrobed with a popular mandate, has the possibility to help Haiti recover for itself and for the rest of the world the possibility that fraternity, or human rationality becomes a reality in the country and by ricochet for the rest of humanity.

As in 1804, when slaves were ready to explode slavery of man by man, the Haitian people are ready today to follow a leader with the guts to confront the western powers to make this world a better one for all by injecting the concept of fraternity and human rationality as the oil that will fuel the transactional activities such as commerce, arts and industry between different and all nations.

November 29, 2011

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My reading of the situation on the ground in Haiti

By Jean H Charles:


I have travelled from the southern point of Haiti, the beautiful town of Port Salut, to the bursting frontier city of Ouanaminthe in the northern part of the country near Fort Liberte, talking to the locals, observing and forming an opinion on the situation on the ground.

My conclusion is the nation of Haiti is plagued with the syndrome of mediocrity and of leveling at the bottom due to fifty years of ill and corrupt governance. There was, first, 35 years of dictatorship by the Duvaliers, then three years of military governance -- Namphy-Cedras -- and lately twenty years of anarchic-populism by the Preval-Arisitide regime that set Haiti into a course leading to an abyss without end.

It was first the assassination of the intellectuals in the 70s, followed by the forced departure of the middle class in the 90s and now governance by the mob culture.

The Haitian middle class that in the past set national values in education, formation and upbringing has fled the country for pastures in Montreal, Canada; Miami, Florida or Brooklyn, New York, leaving the large mass of uneducated Haitians on their own, fending without proper guidance. The successive Haitian governments for the past fifty years have cultivated lower aspirations in the minds and the spirit, trickling down into a culture of arrogance, incompetence and plain criminality as a way of life accepted by most.

Compounding the problem, the international community has been a loyal incubator and facilitator of the successive regimes that keep their tight grip in the past, the present and the future destiny of the Haitian people.

On the ground, the road from Port au Prince to the south of Haiti is a pleasant experience. The nightmare comes when travelling through the suburb of the capital (Carrefour- Martissant), where a water pipe break has been unrepaired for the last forty years. The road construction is carried on during the day instead of at night when the traffic is lighter. Being caught in a traffic jam that lasted three hours is not unusual.

Passing through that logjam, the entire country is unspoiled and undeveloped. The Aquin beachfront has sand so soft and water so warm that one has great pain to leave for firm land. Filling oneself with lobsters, crabs and shrimp is limited only by the fear of a sudden death due to an overdose of cholesterol. Haiti, for those who have the means, is a land of fantasy, where everything is possible for the simple reason that you can.

Yet the extreme misery as well as the lack of governmental service is overwhelming. Public transportation is not regulated. People are packed like sardines in recycled American school buses that serve as the backbone of the transportation system. The mountains of Haiti that an enlightened government would fill with mahogany trees that would enrich the nation in the next generation are showing rocks that were deep into the ground.

Crossing the capital, which is now in rubble, with tent quarters everywhere, including on the dividing line of the highway, one has the impression of travelling through a war zone, except Haiti is not at war and the Haitian people are busy, surviving one day at a time. The gate to the north of the country needs a bus station but successive governments did not realize this minimum of standard of service and attention is a must in most metropolis of the world.

Large improvements have been made in the auto-route to the north of the country; the headache is crossing the city of Gonaives, which after six years since the inundation of 2004 still necessitates a long and dangerous detour. Why is this repair not a governmental priority? You enter into the realm of arrogance of the government on one side and complaisance of the people on the other side that explains the squalid condition of Haiti.

Cape Haitian, the second largest city of the country, a damaging jewel that rivals Old Town, San Juan, the French Quarter of New Orleans or Old Santo Domingo, is showing the pressure of overcrowding (some 350,000 new internal refugees have invaded the city since the earthquake!), as well as profound neglect and plain disregard of a minimum standard of public hygiene. The main Iron Market should be closed by any respectable public hygiene inspector due to the large amount of detritus and unclean sewers that may go back to 15 years of lack of maintenance.

The city streets are undergoing a much needed renovation. The city’s splendor of the past can already be perceived. Yet Labadie, the celebrated beach facility of Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, located 15 minutes from the city proper, cannot pour into the city its 10,000 foreign visitors who visit Haiti every week to meander into the antique streets where each home could be a museum site.

Haiti has a fully-fledged government with all types of ministries. Taking as an example the ministry of labor, we find 87% of the population is unemployed; yet, there is not systematic program of job creation. The ministry of tourism has a master plan with no incremental process to deliver essential services that will induce the tourists to come back.

The city of Cape Haitian has no running water for a population of more than a million people. There was a breakdown of the system some fifteen years ago. The city now has electricity thanks to Hugo Chavez, a thank you note for the Haitian contribution to the Venezuelan liberation against slavery.

There is no excitement in the air about the upcoming election, orchestrated by the Preval government, monitored by CARICOM, engineered by the OAS and secured by the UN. Those under tents have now raised their voice, they will not vote under their appalling condition; the public at large has called the exercise a political masquerade where the winner is known beforehand.

Haiti, like South Africa before Mandela, needs the help of all good people of the earth to profit from this transitional window of opportunity to usher into a true democracy. The comedy has lasted for too long! Mother Nature is showing clear signal of fatigue; the chickens are coming home to roost!

Map of Haiti with Port Salut in the south-west and Ouanaminthe near Fort Liberte in the northeast

September 11, 2010


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