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EKL 28 writes to Erzili Danto --
/7/04 10:45:19 AM,:
I really do not think that you are honest about
the assessment of the political arena in Haiti. He [Aristide] had
created its own defeat in the political arena. He does not have
the support that he had in 1991. You could see the crowd in
the streets of Haiti being happy of its departure. I was one of
his fans. I thought that he [was] a chance to do something great
for Haiti. He lied so much that no government could trust him
anymore. He had paid his "shemeres" to kill and destroy
the people and you know.
I have [been] to Haiti a few time this year,
and I live a few miles from his mansion. I could see for myself
that He has electricity for his birds and a few miles away there
is none. He had paid millions, millions of dollars to lobbyists
instead of taking care of the people. We need to stop that motto
in Haiti: "the winner takes all.". All the sections in
the country must be involved in order to change the
landscape of the country. I'm sick in tired of traveling to
Santo Domingo and see all this infrastructure and Haiti does not.
We need to stop blaming other governments for our failure. It is
about time for us to look at ourselves in the mirror and
said that we failed as Haitian for the past 200 years.
We need to move forward and do something for the country so our
kids can see a better life in the country instead of being
ridicule by the world.
Ezili Danto responds to EKL28:
Dear EKL28,
Yes indeed, you, EKL28 may look at yourself in the mirror and say
you've failed because all you are doing is repeating the racist
U.S. State department's refrain. I, on the other hand, work
directly with Haiti's grassroots, both in the U.S. and in Haiti,
for decades now. I can't be fooled or moved by lies or crowds in
streets seemingly celebrating Aristide's abduction.
I am a lawyer and stand for the principles of
law, for the Constitution. There is a Constitutionally elected
president in Haiti. He is the only legitimate Haitian leader and
shall remain so until his term is duly served. He cannot simply be
forcefully removed or abducted so that his people's Duvalierist
enemies may set up an illegitimate government. That is unlawful
and in contravention of every civilized principle human beings
worldwide have carved out during these last 2004 years of human
history.
A crowd cheering doesn't make this any less
reprehensible. The fact that you were once one of Aristide
"fans" also doesn't allow you or anyone else to try and
overthrow a duly elected government by violent coercion or at
gunpoint. There are democratic ways of removing a President. If
"fans" like you had the people-juice to have removed
Aristide, then "fans" like you would have put together a
platform of your own and built a constituency and gone to
elections to counter the ruling party you now no longer like.
Indirectly supporting the U.S. with this
"let's move on" refrain is tantamount to collaborating
in and approving the U.S/Euros arming and giving room to their old
Tonton Macoutes-CIA assets (now called FRAPH) to kill Haitians
while plying their Duvalierist-opposition candidates with tons of
U.S. dollars and clout to foment violence and social conflict in
Haiti. This is simply not the democratic way of doing things to
understate the matter.
The corruption in the political system of Haiti
pre-dated Aristide and is not reflective of some innate Haitian
character dysfunction. Your children sir have nothing to be
ashamed about that they are Haitian. The Haitian people are
pioneers in the human rights struggle on this hemisphere. Teach
them that. Don't teach your Haitian children the lie "we
failed as Haitian for the past 200 years." Take off
your rosy colored visors and take a good look at U.S. politics and
the history of the U.S. in this Hemisphere and worldwide if you
really want to talk about corruption and a blood-soaked history of
violence. I can't teach Haitians are corrupt like you can Mr/Ms
EKL28. For I know how hard the Haitian people work to make an
honest living, to educate their children, to contribute to world
civilization. How honest they are and sincere about making Haiti a
better place for all Haitians.
Yet we have a bunch of sterile Eurocentric
Haitian "intellectuals" and businessmen ashamed of being
Haitian and demonizing most of the population as thugs and
corrupt, simply because they can't get elected in a fair election,
or because Aristide somehow didn't give them the government post
they wanted, or because they watch TV so much, they buy the lie a
social revolution can occur in one generation, one administration,
with one single Haitian President, or in two hours like on TV.
Thus, these bitter, self-righteous Haitians with no historical
perspective whatsoever and unhinged from Africa's womb, must
demonize Lavalas with class and race coded words like "chimere."
I say, if a bunch of Nazis walked into a Jewish
neighborhood taunting them, like Group 184 Duvalierist/FRAPH
collaborators did at Cite Soleil, basically saying to the people
of Cite Soleil, who know them, who have suffered under them for
decades: "listen we will get back to power again and then we
will take care of you." What the hell do you think would
happen?
Sure enough Haitians know what the Duvalierist,
FRAPH and old guard are, look like and the State-terrorism, Black
genocide, and social exclusion they sponsored between 1991-94 and
before since Dessaline's 1806 death. They respond to these taunts
by throwing rocks, by getting violent. I'd throw a rock myself
given the same scenario if I was put in the position of seeing my
sister's, mother's, father's murderers throwing their evil deeds
back in my face with no fear.
Walking the streets in full view of their
victims, like Toto
Constant, Guy Philippe, Louis Jodel Chamblain or other
Duvalierists like Apaid and DeRonceray. Showing me that they
can sponsor or directly exploit, kill, burn, rape and rampage but
won't go to jail because they've got CIA connections and IRI/US
Embassy dollars and clout at their disposal.
But allow me to tell you EKL28 that my people,
Haitians, are flesh and blood,
entitled to the same human feelings of grief, lost, outrage,
and vengeance as anyone else. When you live in a country where the
U.S. can escort out the Constitutionally elected president while
simultaneously escorting in the old bloody U.S.-Haitian army and
their tonton macoute FRAPH paramilitary, what do you
expect the people to do? Bow down and say, sure I'll
accept the act of war without complaint. Why, just because
scoundrel's such as Guy
Philippe had his own imbedded AP reporter on board as he
terrorized Haiti's villages and hamlets?
Can get to Wolf Blizer and FRAPH victims can't?
Just because they have U.S. media, diplomatic, financial and
political clout behind them doesn't make Aristide the culprit. So
no, it's not okeydokey, "lets all now get along and move
on" that the Duvaliers, under whom 50,000 Haitians where
killed, are back. It's simply fiendishly evil to say "Let's
move on" now that fourteen years of work is being dismantled
by the U.S./Canada/France soldiers protecting and maintaining this
new power grab. No. It's not Ok for the U.S./Euros to bring back
dictatorship to Haiti. Those who think it's perfectly ok to lets
move on are unhinged sell outs.
Why? Do you believe Haitians are just wild
seeds, less than 3/5th human? That we don't have the brains to
understand that on February 29, 2004, the Bush administration
summarily executed democracy in Haiti and disenfranchised more
than 8.5 million Black people in one fell swoop? What? That no red
blood run in our veins? We have no feelings, no inalienable rights
to be upheld? We are not sentient beings?
The old guard along with the U.S./Euros can
launch an extermination campaign on February 5, 2004, and
intensify it to cataclysmic levels on February 29, 2004, the likes
of which Haiti has not seen since Napoleon sent his brother-in-law
Leclerc to destroy every Haitian man, woman, and child?
EKL28, perhaps you've been lobotomized by
your school-bought thoughts. But fool yourself with your own State
Department, PR, EKL28. Haitians know they are
at war. Such straight-up colonialism is an act of war. Ask
George Washington? We will not live and work and sweat in Haiti without
ruling ourselves. Haiti shall be a Black ruled independent nation.
It's people's vote shall count and their right to choose their own
leader respected by the old Haitian guard and the US/Euros or
Haitians will die fighting for this. There can be no "moving
on" until justice is done. Period.
We will not reconcile with this injustice. It's
never worked before. We take a stand now or generations of Haitian
children to come will judge us for losing the little bit of
democracy we've fought for and had, the day before the Marines
landed in Haiti in 2004.
Thus, EKL28, if you and your other Haitian ilk
are in denial sir and want to "move along" do so. Go and
hide. But stay out of the way of Haiti's Liberators. For the
Haitian people's dignity and self-respect requires that this power
grab and denial of the People's Will will not stand. That's it.
With our souls and bare hands, wherever we are,
Haitians will not let the old guard with the U.S. and Euros return
us back to ground zero. It appears impossible to take on Goliath,
but we shall step out and let our vision make a way.
So, if you are not ready for the war that's
here EKL28, back off. But Haitians have got work to be
Personally I don't see anything more nobler to
do with my work but to stand for the noblest people I know on
earth. Don't ask me to stop writing on this. That's what I can
contribute and I shall continue to do so. It's not much, in view
of the fact my people are being slaughtered right now. But it is
what I see to do. So don't preach to me.
I know what dictatorship and state sponsored
repression is. And it wasn't systematized either by Aristide nor
Lavalas. Save your preaching for some Washington beltway Blan and
noire already predisposed to believe all Blacks are naturally
corrupt and in need of a "council of
elders" to civilized them and show them whom to vote
for and whom to bow down to. Just as they needed to save our
souls by putting us in chains for 300 years of slavery.
Perhaps you EKL28 need a "Council of
Elders" for yourself and your Haitian children, but ibo
granmoun lakay ibo.
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The Impact of the
Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World
Reviewed by Mimi Sheller
The slave
revolution that two hundred years ago created the
state of Haiti alarmed and excited public opinion on
both sides of the Atlantic. Its repercussions ranged
from the world commodity markets to the imagination
of poets, from the council chambers of the great
powers to slave quarters in Virginia and Brazil and
most points in between. Sharing attention with such
tumultuous events as the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic War, Haiti's fifteen-year struggle for
racial equality, slave emancipation, and colonial
independence challenged notions about racial
hierarchy that were gaining legitimacy in an
Atlantic world dominated by Europeans and the slave
trade. The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the
Atlantic World explores the multifarious
influence—from economic to ideological to
psychological—that a revolt on a small Caribbean
island had on the continents surrounding it. |
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Fifteen international
scholars, including eminent historians David Brion Davis,
Seymour Drescher, and Robin Blackburn, explicate such diverse
ramifications as the spawning of slave resistance and the
stimulation of slavery's expansion, the opening of economic
frontiers, and the formation of black and white diasporas.
Seeking to disentangle the effects of the Haitian Revolutionfrom
those of the French Revolution, they demonstrate that its impact
was ambiguous, complex, and contradictory.—Publisher,
University of South
Carolina Press
David P. Geggus is a
professor of history at the University of Florida in Gainesville
and a former Guggenheim and National Humanities Center fellow.
He has published extensively on the history of slavery and the
Caribbean, with a particular focus on the Haitian Revolution. He
is the author of
Slavery, War and Revolution: The British Occupation of Saint
Domingue, 1793–1798 and an editor of
A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater
Caribbean. Geggus lives in Gainesville.
* * * * *
Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804
A Brief History with Documents
By Laurent
Dubois and John D. Garrigus
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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update 6 May 2010
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