Tag: Lavarice Gaudin

Aristide returned to Haiti today. I’ve not seen such genuine happiness on the faces of Haiti’s poor in over seven years. Welcome, President Jean Bertrand Aristide and family. Today is a good day for the poorest of the poor. Blessed be the endless Haiti revolution against the organized tyranny of the “civilized” and “schooled” peoples. On this day, we remember the sacrifice of the warriors who took up arms in self-defense against the occupation and coup d’etat. We recall the 20,000 slaughtered by the coup regime from 2004 to 2006, slaughtered with the complicity of U.N./U.S. firepower.

Haitians are helping Haitians. Young men have organized into teams to guard communities of homeless families. Women care for their own children as well as others now orphaned. Men and boys are scavenging useful items from the mounds of fallen buildings. Women are selling mangoes and nuts on the street. Teens are playing with babies.

Reports of violence in Haiti are largely disinformation. For centuries Haiti has been portrayed as a dangerous country filled with volatile and threatening people, unsafe for foreigners. This supposition, this fear and misunderstanding, has very deep implications for foreign aid and cross-cultural understanding.

The young man who appears to have been gunned down by U.N. occupation troops after a funeral last month received an all but secret funeral himself on July 14 in Port-au-Prince because the priest and family were fearful of U.N. and Haitian government reprisals.

The mood was militant, even joyous, as thousands poured out of the Port-au-Prince Cathedral following the funeral of Father Gérard Jean-Juste on June 18. They merged with rara bands which had been circulating in the streets outside the church during the four hours since the service began at 6 a.m. Then about 10 gunshots rang out. People ran and dove for cover. It all lasted about 30 seconds.

"Look at what Haiti's tyrants did to me!" said the priest who could have been president: The Haitian oligarchy jailed him, the Catholic church denied him health coverage, the hospital denied him care, the Miami Herald denigrated his memory. The Bay Area memorial for Father Jean-Juste is Saturday, June 27, 7 p.m., at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison, Berkeley.

Haitian Americans demand that the Obama administration stop the threatened deportation of some 30,000 Haitians back to their strife and storm battered country and that Haitian migrants be granted Temporary Protected Status.