What is Haiti to me?

The heartbeat of Africa cloned to the Caribbean;

A nation of defiant and valiant freedom fighters who dared to rise up

Against the French, Spanish and British colonial overlords against the chains of slavery;

Who desired freedom and were prepared to wage a 13-year-long guerrilla war against

European overlords who did not believe in ‘liberté, fraternité, equalité’ for blacks;

A nation of half a million Africans who cherished their African-ness in the Vodun religion

Against the caricatures and demonization of this religion by Hollywood;

A people who believed their freedom was worth paying the French 150 million francs –

Yet were to be squeezed and punished in other ways by American occupation

And deathly neo-liberalism that fails to trickle down growth;

A people who know the meaning of struggle, pain, suffering, tragedy –

But remain in spite of hurricanes and tornadoes that cannot quench their spirits and hopes for a dignified life

A people who profoundly know the meaning of dictatorship lived during the Duvalier era

That ‘disappeared’ thousands, killed many who spoke out against kleptocracy, corruption, and inequality;

A people who know the meaning of neo-colonialism; that house negroes remain in the land;

A people who know that uncle toms and aunt jemimas are a powerful minority in collusion

With Uncle Sam wearing a black face and their neo-colonial brothers and sisters across in the neo-colonial Dominican Republic;

A people who know that colorism remains in the land and the ruling elite are not safe

Under a genuine democracy but with their US supplied automatic rifles

The presence of the Tonton Macoutes that they support and the various military attachés Uncle Sam funds to allow the rich to sleep easily at night;

It is a people who have recovered their agency and voted for a radical priest in two genuine elections

Only for the US and their detractors to deny this electoral victory on account that they did not like what the radical priest represented;

It is the masses who see the rich minority seated at a ‘vast table covered with white damask and overflowing with good food’ whilst the people are ‘hunched over in the dirt and starving’ [1] – waiting once more to knock down that table and construct a new one in which all will equitably eat.

ENDNOTE
1. Words of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide.