Middling passages?

By Brendan de Caires

 

Caribbean Middlebrow: Leisure Culture and the Middle Class
by Belinda Edmondson
(Cornell University Press, ISBN 978-0-8014-4814, 240 pp)

Covers of early paperback editions of Edgar Mittelholzer’s novels Children of Kaywana and Kaywana Blood. Images from the H.D. Carberry Collection of Caribbean Literature, University of Illinois at Chicago library

In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon memorably dismisses the postcolonial middle-class as hapless intermediaries between the glories of Europe and the banalities of their complicated locales:

Here the dynamic aspect, the characteristics of the inventor and of the discoverer of new worlds which are found in all national bourgeoisies are lamentably absent . . . because the national bourgeoisie identifies itself with the Western bourgeoisie, from whom it has learnt its lessons.

Is this damning verdict true? Nearly fifty years later, are we still, culturally speaking, hiding black origins behind white masks? If not, then how do race and class signifiers influence our ideas of West Indian culture?

Wander around Port of Spain’s Queen’s Park Savannah at the height of Carnival, and the answers aren’t clear. One or two determined white women have won recognition as “real” calypsonians, which suggests some flexibility in these matters, yet Trinidad seems reluctant to choose dark-skinned girls as beauty queens (Wendy Fitzwilliam is the exception, not the rule), nor, due to a symmetrical prejudice, ones that look too white or foreign. Confusingly, we also seem anxiously ambivalent about intermediate skin tones and skeptical as to whether the middle class really can produce genuine culture. This indeterminacy makes for strange politics. The “brand identity” of Trinidad Carnival is loudly defended — some even want to trademark its distinctive features to prevent infringement by regional simulacra — but there is nothing like the same interest in or concern for an Indo-Trinidadian festival like Divali.

In Caribbean Middlebrow: Leisure Culture and the Middle Class, Belinda Edmondson wades into this cultural quicksand with revisionist zeal. By re-reading a neglected corpus of middlebrow literature, she makes the case that Fanon’s bewildered intermediaries contributed much more to our cultural patrimony than many critics have been willing to allow. As an associate professor in the departments of English and African American and African Studies at Rutgers, Edmondson is well placed to consider these questions and, happily, she writes lean, erudite prose.

Early on Edmondson sets out the prevailing orthodoxy:

As a group, the black and brown middle class were dissociated from many of the “lowbrow” cultural traditions of the black peasantry, but they were also at odds with the politics and attitudes of the white ruling elite. Critics such as Kenneth Ramchand have argued that this dissociation was cultural alienation borne [sic] of the black middle class’s isolation and, as he saw it, lack of wealth and privilege. Historian Gordon Lewis went further, painting middle-class culture in the early years as a kind of tragic mulatto problem. Like the region’s dependent political status, its culture was “sterile” and “borrowed”; middle-class Caribbean citizens were at best guilty of “militant philistinism” and at worst subject to “the cruel pressures that make life so much of a misery” for this pathetic group.

Against these sweeping dismissals, she gathers evidence that the mulattos had a clear-eyed and often original view of their culture. Far from being silenced by their putative isolation, Edmondson argues that brown musings on hybridity gave rise to a fascinating body of literary fiction, much of it still highly relevant to the cultural transactions and anxieties of the modern West Indies. If it is true that we must, as a region, eventually decide whether Shabine (Walcott’s “red nigger” in “The Schooner Flight”) is “nobody or a nation,” this book could be read as a brief for the nation-building potential of long-forgotten nobodies.

Caribbean Middlebrow is an ambitious book. In two hundred brisk pages, Edmondson surveys mid-nineteenth-century novels, fin-de-siècle newspapers, the gentrification of dialect poetry, the social politics of beauty pageants and jazz festivals, and transnational markets for popular fiction, from Edgar Mittelholzer’s novels of the 1940s and 50s to Colin Channer’s in the present. (“Much has been made of the ‘new’ sexuality that pervades so much of today’s popular literature,” Edmondson writes, “but as the covers of Mittelholzer’s books illustrate, there is nothing new about it.”) This range may sound overbroad, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that none of the chapters felt like a makeweight. The historical breadth allows Edmondson to tease out intriguing continuities in her material, including several which will surprise a general reader. In her analysis of “early literary culture,” she writes that although the British empire remained in full control of the Caribbean at the close of the nineteenth century, its cultural heart clearly belonged elsewhere.

The marked American cultural presence has gone virtually unremarked by critics and scholars. British literature was taught; American literature was consumed. Edification versus consumption; modernity is intimately tied not simply to what we learn but to what we imbibe — what we eat, what we watch, how we play. Consumption does not reflect what we think we should be, but what we desire to be, which is not always the same thing. Jamaicans of the 1920s understood that they were supposed to be made in the image of Britain; that image, however, did not reflect the quotidian desires of the middle class, surrounded as it was by American films, American music, American popular literature. By that measure, the relationship of the early twentieth-century Caribbean to American popular culture, and Caribbean understandings of what constitutes the modern, are inescapably tied to American identity.

This insight adds depth to a telling remark in Edmondson’s chapter on popular fiction. Noting that writers like the Jamaican Channer have successfully tapped into the lucrative market for African American fiction, Edmondson pauses to consider why they bridle at the cultural associations that go with their niche. In his novel Passing Through, Channer even has a character who is himself a West Indian author warn his African American girlfriend that

after Terry McMillan, babe, the constitution of your country says that there is a book that every negress has to write . . . four sister-friends in Atlanta, DC, or LA. Places where they get to drive expensive cars . . . There you have the recipe. Go cook the people’s book.

Edmondson will have none of this patronising hauteur: “The recipe,” she observes, “appears to be one that Channer himself uses. His early novels feature main characters with obvious appeal for young black readers with professional aspirations: sexy, well-read black bohemians with glamorous occupations who move easily between the metropolitan centers of North America and the Caribbean.”

Reviewing Caribbean history through the lens of early literary novels like the anonymously published Adolphus (1853) and Michel Maxwell Philip’s Emmanuel Appadocca (1854), Edmondson shows that the brown middle class, “the most ambiguous in Caribbean social history,” always had a keen sense of its social and political dilemmas. Even before Emancipation, there seems to have been little tolerance for racial ambiguity. In the anonymous Jamaican novel Marly; or, a Planter’s Life in Jamaica (1828), the slaves warn: “You brown man hab no country, only de neger and buckra hab country.”

Endorsing Rex Nettleford’s view that the creolisation of the Caribbean is “a battle for cultural space,” Edmondson argues that:

In the literary world there are nationalist texts — and imperialist ones. There is an Afro-Caribbean aesthetic, an Indo-Caribbean aesthetic, a creolised or hybrid aesthetic, but no brown aesthetic. Regardless, both popular and critical celebrations of a creolised cultural sensibility rest on the struggles of an earlier age to define the contours of a cultural brownness that nevertheless was connected in some material way to actual, physiognomical brownness . . . I contend that these early Caribbean novels aimed to provide just such a definition of a creolised society, and that their emphasis on popular genres bespoke their authors’ desire to create a middle class that was naturalised. In other words, it was not so much an endlessly proliferating hybridity that was the goal — the celebrated “out of many, one people” model — but rather brownness as a homogeneous, consistently reproducible type.

Accordingly, Edmondson marshals a great deal of persuasive evidence to show that brown writers responded to the rhetoric of exclusion by “declar[ing] themselves to be native Caribbean citizens, if for no other reason than that, as one early spokesman put it, ‘we have nowhere [else] to go’ . . . In other words, cultural brownness is what makes the Caribbean the Caribbean, an idea that has seized the popular imagination.” Oddly enough, however, although creolité has become a dominant meme in our cultural DNA, “the brown class is associated in the minds of most scholars not with creolisation but with the cultural decreolisation of the Caribbean.”

Three editions of the Jamaica Times from 1905. Images from the Digital Library of the Caribbean, University of Florida

Repeatedly, Edmondson shows the limits of this simplistic association. Both in early brown novels and in Jamaica’s newspapers, which flourished near the end of the nineteenth century, she unearths nuanced responses to the problems of cultural identity. Some of this was due to foreign travel. Fortified by their experience of London, where the popularity of American slave memoirs and a far more tolerant social atmosphere had allowed select members of the brown middle class to befriend their English counterparts, the texts assert that, in cultural terms, the brown West Indian was the true inheritor of English culture, certainly far more so than the local whites, who lost no opportunity to emphasise their social superiority. In terms of culture and education, the browns were simply more English. In Adolphus:

An elaborate distinction is made between physiognomic Caribbean whiteness — inevitably connected with moral degeneracy and cultural philistinism — and an idealised Englishness, which is rendered in love of books and good manners, and which is apparently accessible to all. The stereotypes that Europeans held about the degeneracy of whites in the tropics were stereotypes that brown people held as well; or, as one might argue, brown people simply tarred and feathered whites with the same stereotypes as those held by whites of brown people. At any rate, in contrast to the conventional scholarly view that the early brown middle class simply wished to be white, Adolphus makes a point of showing that its brown characters are proud of their brownness and have no desire to be otherwise.

Ironically, given its author’s political sympathies, one of the texts that sheds most light on the cultural progress of the brown middle class is Jane’s Career (1914), by the Jamaican novelist H.G. de Lisser. After an intelligent and nuanced account of de Lisser’s life and work, Edmondson concludes:

[He] clearly had an investment in preserving the old colonial order. [Yet, if] we consider that de Lisser was a brown man until he was “whitened” by his enhanced social pedigree, his searing indictment of brown middle-class pretensions may be read as an erasure of his own past. Jane’s “career” from poor black peasant to “browned” middle-class matron reveals the blackness latent in brown middle-class respectability; by contrast, de Lisser made no such examination of the white elite society to which he claimed allegiance. The mystification and reinvention of ethnic and class origins are, after all, a brown story.

Edmondson also writes well on beauty pageants, the transmigration and/or importation of Trinidad Carnival into other islands, and the elasticity of what constitutes “jazz” at the St Lucia Jazz Festival. My only real grouse at the end of this clever book was that there was surprisingly little analysis of recent Trinidadian calypso and rapso. If the meanings of Louise Bennett can be parsed for a chapter, and the long-shot success of Denyse Plummer merits consideration, surely a few pages on David Rudder and 3Canal and their appeal for today’s “brown” Trinidadians wouldn’t have gone amiss. That aside, this book certainly deserves a slot on any shelf reserved for the serious study of West Indian culture.

•••

The Caribbean Review of Books, July 2010

Brendan de Caires was born in Guyana and now lives in Toronto. He has worked as an editor for various publishers, and written book reviews for Caribbean Beat, Kyk-Over-Al, the Stabroek News, and the Literary Review of Canada.

Interview With President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, by Nicolas Rossier

Submitted by CHAN on November 13, 2010 - 09:02

President Jean_Bertrand Aristide interviewed by Nicolas Rossier, November 2010

Exiled Former President of Haiti Talks with Filmmaker Nicolas Rossier

Saturday, November 13, 2010

" When we say democracy we have to mean what we say"

Currently in forced-exile in South Africa, former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is still the national leader of Fanmi Lavalas – one of Haiti's most popular political parties. A former priest and proponent of liberation theology, he served as Haiti's first democratically elected president in 1990 before he was ousted in a CIA backed coup in September 1991. He returned to power in 1994 with the help of the Clinton administration and finished his term. He was elected again seven years later, only to be ousted in a coup in February 2004. The coup was lead by former Haitian soldiers in tandem with members of the opposition. Aristide has repeatedly claimed since, that he was forced to resign at gunpoint by members of the US Embassy. US officials have claimed that he decided to resign freely following the violent uprising. He now lives in exile in South Africa where he still waits to get his diplomatic passport renewed. He is not allowed to travel outside South Africa.

Aristide is still the subject of many controversies. He is reviled by the business elite and feared by the French and American governments, who deem his populism dangerous. But he remains loved by a large portion of the Haitian population.

In a June 10 report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, "Haiti: No Leadership – No Elections”, ranking Republican member Richard Lugar denounced the systemic injustice of excluding his Fanmi Lavalas party.

Last week, independent reporter and filmmaker Nicolas Rossier, conducted an exclusive two-hour interview with former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the hills of Johannesburg. He spoke with the former President about his life in forced exile, Haiti’s current political situation, and his possible return to Haiti. This is an excerpt of the interview. The interview is re-posted here, to the website of the Canada Haiti Action Network, with permission of Nicolas Rossier.

*****************************************************

Mr. President Aristide, thank you for having me today. My first question is about the earthquake that took place in Haiti in January of 2010. Can you tell me how and when you learned about the tragedy?

It was morning here. I was at Witwatersrand University here in Johannesburg to work in the lab of the Faculty of Medicine for Linguistics and Neuroanatomy. I realized that it was a disaster in Haiti. It was not easy to believe what I was watching. We lost about 300,000 people, and in terms of the buildings, they said that about 39% of the buildings in Port-au-Prince were destroyed, including fifty hospitals and about 1,350 schools.

Up until today they have cleared only about 2% of these 25 million cubic meters of rubble and debris. So this was a real disaster. We could not imagine that Haiti, already facing so many problems, would now face such a disaster. Unfortunately this is the reality. I was ready to go back to help my people, just as I am ready to leave right now if they allow me to be there to help. Close to 1.8 million victims are living in the street homeless. So this is a tragedy.

Your former colleague, the current President René Préval, was highly criticized after the earthquake for being absent. Overall, he was judged as not having shown enough leadership. Do you think that’s a fair criticism?

I believe that January 12, 2010 was a very bad time for the government and for the Haitian people. To have leadership, yes it was necessary, overall, to be present in a time of disaster like this one. But to criticize when you aren’t doing any better is cynical. Most of those who were criticizing him sent soldiers to protect their own geopolitical interests, not to protect the people. They seized the airport for their own interests, instead of protecting the victims – so for me there should be some balance.

Can you give us your thoughts on the recent cholera epidemic?

As for this recent incident of cholera, whether or not it was imported – as the evidence strongly suggests – it’s critical. First, those who organized the coup d’état/kidnapping of 2004, paving the way for the invaders now accused as having caused the recent outbreak of cholera, must also share the blame. Second, the root causes, and what facilitated the deadly spread of the disease are structural, embedded in Haiti’s historical impoverishment, marginalization and economic exploitation. The country’s once thriving rice industry – destroyed by the subsidized US rice industry in the 1980s – was in the Artibonite, the epicenter of the cholera outbreak. The near destruction of our rice industry coupled with the systematic and cruel elimination of the Haitian pigs rendered the region and the country poorer. Third, in 2003 our government had already paid the fees on an approved loan from the InterAmerican Development Bank to implement a water sanitization project in the Artibonite. As you can remember, that loan and four others were blocked as part of a calculated strategy by the so-called friends of Haiti to weaken our government and justify the coup d’état.

Many observers in Haiti and elsewhere keep asking me the same question, which is this: what are you doing here and what prevents you from coming back to your own country? The Haitian constitution does not allow political exile. You have not been convicted of anything, so what prevents you from going back? You are a Haitian citizen and should be allowed to move freely.

When I look at it from the South African perspective, I don’t find the real reasons. But if I try to understand it from the Haitian perspective, I think that I see the picture. The picture is that in Haiti, we have the same people who organized the invasion of 2004 after kidnapping me to put me in Africa. They are still there. That means there is a kind of neo-colonial occupation of 8,900 UN soldiers with 4,400 policemen spending, more or less, fifty-one million US dollars a month in a country where 70% of the population lives with less than a dollar a day. In other words it’s a paradise for the occupiers. First we had the colonization of Haiti and now we have a kind of neo-colonial occupation of Haiti. In my view, they don’t want me back because they still want to occupy Haiti.

So you see the elite in Haiti basically influencing those currently in power and pressuring them to prevent you from coming back? There is certainly a more friendly administration now in Washington. Are they still sending the same messages to South Africa regarding you?

JBA: No … (laughs)

I heard that you tried to go to Cuba for an urgent eye surgery and you were not allowed to go. Is this true?

Allow me to smile…(laughs) because when you look at this, you smile based on the contradiction that you observe in the picture. They pretend that they fear me when I am part of the solution, based on what the majority of the people in Haiti still continue to say. If they continue to ask for my return by demonstrating peacefully, that means you still have the problem. So if you want to solve the problem, open the door for my return.

Before the coup, I was calling for dialogue in such a way to have inclusion, not exclusion - to have cohesion, not an explosion of the social structure. The opposition, with foreign backers, decided to opt for a coup and the result is what I would say in a Hebrew saying: ?? ??? ?? ???? , in English meaning, “things went from bad to worse.” So if you they are wise, they should be the first to do their best for the return because the return is part of the solution, not part of the problem.

You have said that you do not intend to become involved in politics, but rather return as a citizen. Is that your vision?

Yes, and I said it because this is what I was doing before being elected in 1990. I was teaching and now I have more to offer based on my research in linguistics and neurolinguistics, which is research on how the brain processes language. I have made a humble contribution in a country where once we had only 34 secondary schools when I was elected 1990, and before the coup of 2004 we had 138 public secondary schools. Unfortunately the earthquake destroyed most of them. Why are they so afraid? It’s irrational. Sometimes people who want to understand Haiti from a political perspective may be missing part of the picture. They also need to look at Haiti from a psychological perspective. Most of the elite suffer from psychogenic amnesia. That means it’s not organic amnesia, such as damage caused by brain injury. It’s just a matter of psychology. So this pathology, this fear, has to do with psychology, and as long as we don’t have that national dialogue where fear would disappear, they may continue to show fear where there is no reason to be afraid.

What has to be done for you to be able to return to Haiti? What do you intend to do to make that happen? It’s been six years now. It must be very tough for you not to be able to return with your family. You must feel very homesick.

There is a Swahili proverb which says: “Mapenzi ni kikohozi, hayawezi kufichika” - or “love is like cough that you cannot hide.”

I love my people and my country, and I cannot hide it, and because of that love, I am ready to leave right now. I cannot hide it. What is preventing me from leaving, as I said earlier, if I look from South Africa, I don’t know.

But when you ask the question to the people responsible here, they say they don’t know.

Well (pause) I am grateful to South Africa, and I will always be grateful to South Africa and Africa as our mother continent. But I think something could be done in addition to what has been done in order to move faster towards the return, and that is why, as far as I am concerned, I say, and continue to say that I am ready. I am not even asking for any kind of logistical help because friends could come here and help me reach my country in two days. So I did all that I could.

Do you think that the Haitian government is sending signals to the South African government that they are not ready? For instance, maybe they do not want you to return because they are concerned about security issues for you. The Haitian government may not be able to ensure your security. There are some individuals who, for ideological reasons, don’t support you and could go as far as to try to assassinate you. Is that part of the problem?

In Latin they say: “Post hoc ergo propter hoc” or "after this, therefore because of this." It’s a logical fallacy. In 1994, when I returned home, they said the same: if he comes back the sky will fall. I was back during a very difficult time where I included members of the opposition in my government, moving our way through dialogue in order to heal the country. But unfortunately we did not have a justice system, which could provide justice to all the victims at once. However slowly, through the Commission of Truth and Justice, we were paving the way to have justice. Now I will not come back as a head of state, but as a citizen. If I am not afraid to be back in my country, how could those who wanted to kill me, who plotted to have the coup in 2004, be the first to care about my security? It’s a logical fallacy. (laughs) They are hiding, or try to hide themselves behind something that is too small…no no no no.

Are they afraid of your political influence – afraid that you can affect change?

Yes, and I will encourage those who want to be logical (laughs), not to fear the people, because when they say they fear me, basically it’s not me. It’s the people, in a sense that they fear the votes of the people. They fear the voice of the people and that fear is psychologically linked to a kind of social pathology. It’s an apartheid society, unfortunately, because racism can be behind these motivations.

I can fear you, not for good reasons, but because I hate you and I cannot say that I hate you. You see? So we need a society rooted in equality. We are all equal, rich and poor and we need a society where the people enjoy their rights. But once you speak this way, it becomes a good reason for you to be pushed out of the country or to be kidnapped as I was (laughs). But there is no way out without that dialogue and mutual respect. This is the way out.

In your view, what is the last element missing for you to go back? You said there was one more thing they could do for you do go back. Can you tell us that?

They just need to be reasonable. The minute they decide to be reasonable, the return will happen right away.

And that means one phone call into the US State Department ? One green light from one person? Technically, what does that mean?

Technically I would say that the Haitian government, by being reasonable, would stop violating the constitution and say clearly that the people voted for the return as well. The constitution wants us to respect the right of citizens, so we don’t accept exile. That would be the first step.

Now if other forces would oppose my return, they would come clear and oppose it but as long as we don’t start with a decision from the Haitian government, it makes things more difficult.

So the first gesture has to come from the Haitian government?

Yes

And they could make this happen by telling the US State Department you should be allowed to come back, and should come back.

They would not have to tell the State Department.

So it’s not a political decision in Washington? It’s between the Haitian government and the South African government?

As a matter of fact, I don’t have a passport because it is expired. I have the right to a diplomatic passport. By sending me a normal diplomatic passport there would be a clear signal of their will to respect the constitution.

But it’s the Haitian government that has to do that?

Yes

Or they could just renew your Haitian passport?

Yes

Ask you for a new photo of yourself and issue a new passport?

(laughs) You see why when I said earlier that we should not continue to play as a puppet government in the hands of those who pretend to be friends of Haiti. I am right because as long as we continue to play like that we are not moving from good to better or good to good, but from bad to worse.

There was a lot of noise lately in the US media about the candidacy of singer Wyclef Jean, who eventually was denied running by the CEP (Haiti's Interim Electoral Commission). Any comment about the whole commotion around his candidature?

When we say democracy we have to mean what we say. Unfortunately, this is not the case for Haiti. They talk about democracy but they refuse to organize free and fair democratic elections. Is it because of a kind of neocolonial occupation? Is it because they still want exclusion and not inclusion that they refused to organize free and fair democratic elections?

Last year, we observed that they said they wanted to have elections, but in fact they had a selection and not an election. Today they are moving from the same to the same. They are not planning to have free and fair democratic elections. They are planning to have a selection. They excluded the Lavalas* party, which is the party of the majority. It is as if in the US they could organize an election without the Democrats. So from my point of view, Wyclef Jean came as an artist to be a candidate and it was good for those who refuse elections because they could have a “media circus” in order to hide the real issue, which is the inclusion of the majority. So this is my view of the reality.

Looking back at the dramatic events that lead to your overthrow in 2004, is there anything in hindsight that you wished you had not done? Anything tactically or strategically that you wish you had done differently and that could have prevented the coup?

If I could describe the reality from that day in 2004 to today, you would allow me to use the Hebrew phrase again (speaks in Hebrew), which means “from bad to worse”. That is how it has been from 2004 to today. When we look at that coup d’état, which was a kidnapping, I was calling for dialogue and they manipulated a small minority of Haitians to play the game of moving from coup d’état to coup d’état, instead of moving to free and fair democratic elections. The first time Haiti had free and fair democratic elections was 1990, when I was elected. Then we wanted to move from elections to elections. So in 2004, we were moving towards a real democracy and they said no. The minority in Haiti – the political and economic elite – is afraid of free and fair elections, and their foreign allies don’t want an election in Haiti. That is why they excluded Famni Lavalas. As long as they refuse to respect the right of every citizen to participate in free and fair democratic elections, they will not fix the problem.

That is an interesting answer, but I was more thinking of strategic mistakes you made such as asking France to pay reparation in 2003. In doing that, you lost a natural ally that could have stood with you before the coup and within the United Nations Security Council to protect your government. In fact, France stood with the US and did not come to your rescue this time, probably because they were very upset by your demand for restitution.

I don’t think this is the case. The first time I met with French President Jacques Chirac, I was in Mexico. At that time he was with Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. I invited them to join us to celebrate freedom as a universal value. So that was an opportunity for France to realize that yes, Haiti and France can stand up together to celebrate freedom as a universal value.

In 1789, when France had their revolution, they declared “liberty, equality, fraternity” for all people, but in the back of their minds slaves were not human beings. To them neither Haitian nor African slaves were human. We fought hard and we got our independence; it was not a gift. It was the blood of our forefathers that was shed to gain our freedom. Despite that, we did not want to celebrate our 200 years of independence with any kind of spirit of vengeance, nor a spirit of glory to remind France of what they had done. It wasn’t that. It was an invitation to celebrate freedom as a universal value. So that would give a wonderful opportunity for France if they wanted to do it together. That would not exclude the truth because the truth is they obliged Haiti to pay 90 million francs, which for us today, is more than 21 billion USD. This is restitution, not reparation.

In 2001, here in Durban South Africa, the UN gave the Haitians and French an opportunity to address this issue of reparation. The French refused, but we respectfully asked them to let us have an opportunity to address this issue in a mutually respectful way. In one word – if today I were the President of Haiti, as I was in 2004, I would ask France to join Haiti to celebrate freedom, but also to address this issue of 21 billion USD. As a matter of fact, a head of state elected by his people must respect the will of the people. When President Sarkozy went to Haiti after the earthquake, Haitians were not begging for cents, they were asking for the 21 billion USD because it is a question of dignity. Either we have dignity or we don’t, and Haitians have dignity. That means we respect your dignity, so you should also respect our dignity. We will not beg for cents. Cents will never solve the problems of Haiti. After 200 years of independence, we are still living in abject poverty. We still have what we had 200 years ago in terms of misery. It is not fair. So if we want to move from misery to poverty with dignity, France must address this issue with Haitians and see what kind of agreement will come out from this important issue.

But don’t you think now, with hindsight, that this may have cost you your presidency?

It could be part of the picture but I don’t think it was the main reason.

If France had asked the UN Security Council to send UN peacekeepers to maintain your government, do you think you would not have been pushed out of power?

Sometimes you know there are diplomatic words to cover something else. I think at the time, the burning issue was Iraq.

France opposed the US on this issue and that was a golden opportunity for them to sacrifice Haiti in terms of leading and participating in a coup or in the kidnapping of a president.

But the real reason underneath was that France did not want you to annoy them anymore with this request. 2003 was the first time, at least publicly and officially, that a Haitian President made such a request.

I smile because former colonists defend their interests, not their friends. Even if they call themselves friends of Haiti, they will always continue to defend their own interests.

We could compare what is going on right now today, post-earthquake, to what was going on in 2004, in order to find out if France is really helping Haiti and if they would change their policy or not. From my point of view, they would not change their policy because they have enough in front of them, in terms of the disaster, to address the issue of 21 billion USD now. But they still don’t want to, meaning that if they don’t want to address it today after what happened in Haiti in January 2010. I don’t think they would have changed their policy in 2004.

That is my way to read it. But maybe one day the French government will take up the issue because men can change if they want to change. I wish they would change their policy to respectfully address the issue with Haiti, because it’s a must.

As a matter of fact, as soon as Gérard Latortue was placed as Prime Minister after your removal, the Haitian government dropped the issue right away.

But that did not kill the issue (laughs). If we look at the history of Haiti before 2004, no one dared to address the issue, but we were moving from misery to poverty with dignity. Then when we addressed the issue they did not want to answer – but that does not kill the issue. It means that it will remain a reality as long as they refuse to address it.

My wish is that, one day, they will realize that they have to do it. What happened with Italy and Libya? Italy addressed the issue of reparation and that was good for both countries. The same way that we must address with France the issue of restitution.
I remember a recent article from Jacqueline Charles in the Miami Herald where an historian was quoted as saying: “Lavalas was never a party. It was a movement, which is now in deep crisis and divided among distinct factions led by some of its old barons'' …They all want the Lavalas vote without appealing to Aristide. So, yes, Lavalas as we knew it is dying a slow death.'' He was commenting on the current debate around the future elections in Haiti. What do you think of what he said?

Some people pretend they are experts on Haiti but they often act like people suffering from social amnesia. When you take a group of mice and you put them in a lab, if these mice don’t have the capacity of producing oxytocin in the brain, they are not able to recognize other mice. That is how it is, it is a fact. These people suffer from social amnesia. They are unable to recognize Haitians as human beings because of our color, our poverty and misery. The majority of the Haitian people declared “Lavalas is our political party.” That is what the majority said and they have their constitution, so how can someone pretend that it’s not? These people, from my humble point of view, act as if they were mental slaves, meaning they have their masters giving them financial resources to say this, and they can cover themselves under a “scientific” umbrella, when in fact they are mental slaves.

So there is this amnesia because most commentators admit that Préval won in 2006 thanks to the Lavalas base. Many in Haiti want to use Lavalas as well to win, but nobody wants the Lavalas party to win or mention your name in the process. How do you feel about this contradiction?

Unfortunately, what South Africa had before 1994 is what Haiti still has as a reality today. The structure of apartheid is still rooted in the Haitian society. When you have apartheid, you don’t see those behind the walls. That is the reality of Haiti. The people exist, but they don’t see the people and they don’t want to see them. That is why they don’t count them. They want to use them, but they don’t want to respect their will.

When they talk about Lavalas and the Haitian people, they fear them because if there is a fair election the people will defeat them. So they have to exclude the Lavalas party or the majority, in order to make sure that they will select what they want to select. So this is the kind of apartheid that they have in Haiti. If you say that, they will hate you and they may try to kill you. It is because they don’t want you to see the reality. Why do I say this? It’s because I love my country. If you have a cancer and refuse to call it a cancer, it will kill you. You better accept it and find a way to prevent death. That is what I want for my country.

But there has been some opportunism lately. We saw people like your former friend and later foe Evans Paul asking for your return. They are using you to get support from the Lavalas base. Or many want to appeal to Lavalas but are scared to mention you. What is your thought on this current reality in Haiti?

The day I would think that I can use the Haitian people, the Haitian people would start to distance themselves from me and deny me. They would be right to do that, because no one, as a politician, should pretend the people are dumb enough to be used for votes, for instance. I did my best to respect the Haitian people and I will continue to do my best to show respect for them and for their wishes. In 1990, when I was elected president, people were working in sweatshops for nine cents an hour. When I managed to raise the minimum wage it was enough to have a coup. And it happened in Honduras last year because part of the game was this: don’t raise the minimum wage, so people must work as slaves.

Today, the Haitian people remember what together we were trying to do. We were not just using them for votes. They are not dumb: we were moving together through democratic principles for a better life. If now they continue to ask for my return six years after my kidnapping that means they are very bright. They may be illiterate, but they are not dumb. They remember what together we were trying to do. So I wish that the politicians would not focus on me, but rather on the people and not the people for elections but for their rights – the right to eat, the right to go to school, the right for healthcare, and the right to participate in a government. Unfortunately, in 2006 they elected someone who betrayed them, so they realize that now. Wow. They say: Who else will come? Will that person betray us after getting our votes? They are hesitating, and I understand them because they are not dumb.

Now here is a practical question. How do you want to deal with the Lavalas party in Haiti? You are still the national leader of Lavalas. Don’t you think that it would be a better idea to transfer the leadership to someone in Haiti? Would that not be a better long-term strategy, rather than hanging on to the title of party leader? After all, that's one of the pretexts used to not allow Lavalas to participate in the past elections and the future of Haiti as well?

If we respect the will of the people, then we must pay attention to what they are saying. I am here, but they are making the decisions. If today they decide they have to go that way, then you have to respect their will. That means I am not the one preventing them from moving on with a congress and having another leader and so on. As a matter of fact I am not acting as national leader outside of Haiti, not at all. I don’t pretend to be able to do that and I don’t want to do that. I know it would not be good for the people to do something like that.

They have said that it is a question of principle. First, they want my return, and then they can organize a congress to elect a new leader and move ahead. I respect that. If today they want to change it, I will their will. That is democracy.

What is behind the national picture is a logical fallacy. It’s a logical fallacy when, for instance, they pretend they have to exclude Lavalas to solve the problem. To not have Lavalas in an election, because it's a selection, it’s a logical fallacy.

Before I said ”Post hoc ergo propter hoc” or “after this, therefore because of this” and now I can say “Cum hoc, ergo propter hoc,” - “With this therefore because of this.” It’s a logical fallacy as well. They would not solve the problem without the majority of the people. They have to include them in a free and fair democratic election with my return or before my return or after my return. The inclusion of the people is indispensable to be logical and to move towards a better Haiti. That’s the solution.

So practically, if you were to say today that you would endorse Maryse Narcisse as the national leader they would accept Lavalas candidates?

Last year I received a letter from the Provisional Electoral Council, by the way, a council that was selected by the president, which is why they do what he wants. Excluding Lavalas was the implementation of the will of the government of Haiti.

I received a letter from them inviting me to a meeting and I said to myself, “Oh that is good. I am ready. I will go.” Then they said in the letter, “If you cannot come, will you send someone on your behalf?” So I said okay and I replied in a letter (1), which became public, asking Dr. Maryse Narcisse to represent Lavalas and to present the candidates of Lavalas based on the letter I received from the CEP. But they denied it because the game was to send the letter to me and assume that I would not answer. Then they could tell the Haitian people, “Look he does not want to participate in the election.” So they were using a pretext to pretend that they are intelligent, but in reality to hide the truth.

Did they not claim it was false at some point, or that it was not your signature?

They claimed that the mandate from me should have been validated by the Haitian consulate in South Africa, when they know that there is no representative of the Haitian government in South Africa, you see.

No embassy at all.

No. When I was President, I had named an Ambassador to South Africa, but that ended with the coup. After our independence, we had to wait until 1990 to have free democratic elections. We cannot change the economic reality in one day, in one year, but at least we should continue to respect the right of Haitians to vote. So today, why play with the right to vote? It’s cynical. You cannot improve their economic life and you deny them their right to vote. It’s cynical. South Africa did something which could be good for many countries, including Haiti. In 1994, when South Africans could vote, they voted. They are trying to move from free and fair elections while trying to improve their economic life. This is the right way to go. Not denying the right for poor people to vote while you cannot even improve their life.

The night of the coup. You spoke about it already and at the time you said to me that you were writing a book about it. Is that still in the works?

The book has been finished since 2004.

Ready to be published?

It was ready to be published and it would be published if I were allowed to do that.

Do you still remember the night of the coup - and I am sure you do because nobody is used to being awakened in the middle of the night and sent on a plane surrounded by armed people. Do you wish you had said no to Mr. Moreno, “I am not signing this letter of resignation” or “I won’t get on that plane. I will deal with the security issues in Haiti with my government”?

As I just said, if I were allowed to publish the book, the book would have been published in 2004. So in the book, you have the answers to your important questions and that is why now I will not elaborate on it, based on what I just said. In one word, I would do exactly what I did and I would say exactly why I said because it was right what I said and what I did. They were wrong, and they are still wrong.

What is known is the letter (2) in Kreyol that you signed and was according to you mistranslated.

Of course it was mistranslated.

Right, but you also you clearly stated that you were forced at gunpoint and that’s public knowledge.

It is, but if I don’t elaborate, it’s not because I want to give an evasive answer. It’s just based on what I said to you before.

What if the book never gets published?

Maybe it’s the same reason why I am still here (laughs). I wish they let me leave as well as let the book get published (laughs).

There have been these accusations (3) of corruption against you starting with filmmaker Raoul Peck and then taken over by Ms. Lucy Komisar and Ms. Mary Anastasia O’Grady of the Wall Street Journal about your personal involvement in a Teleco/IDT deal back in 2003. Can you put these accusations to rest?

First, they are lying. Second, what can we expect from a mental slave? (laughs) He will lie for his masters. He is paid to lie for his masters, so I am not surprised by these nonsensical allegations. As I said, they are lying.

They are lying. But it’s possible that maybe under you at some level in your government there was some corruption involving Teleco and IDT?

I never heard about things like that when I was there and I never knew about it. If I had known, of course we would have done our best to stop it or to prevent it or to legally punish those who could have been involved in such a thing.

Why have you not declared this publicly? Because these things happen all the time. I am sure there is corruption at every level in the South African government as there is under the Obama Administration. Things happen and we don’t need to examine Haiti only to find it. You could say that you were the head of state but not the head of Teleco. Things happen.

As I said, there are more people receiving money to lie than people receiving money to tell the truth. I don’t know how many times I have answered this question, but sometimes the journalist may have the answer but is not allowed to make it public. (laughs).

Would you be in favor of creating a Haitian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, similar to what South Africa did, that would allow some of the people who have been exiled under Duvalier and Cedras and your two presidencies to come back and be called to appear in that commission - and ask for forgiveness and amnesty if needed?

What I will say now, is not because I am now outside Haiti wanting to go back that I will say it. No, I already said it and I will just repeat it: There is no way to move forward in Haiti without dialogue. Dialogue among Haitians. Once we had an army of 7,000 soldiers controlling 40% of the national budget, but moving from coup d’état to coup d’état. I said no. Let’s disband the army, let’s have a police force to protect the right of every citizen, let’s have dialogue to address our differences. There is no democracy without opposition.

We have to understand one another when we oppose each other. We are not enemies, so we have to address our differences in a democratic way and only then can we move ahead. I have said it so many times already. We still have people calling themselves friends of Haiti coming to exploit the resources. They don’t want national dialogue. They don’t want Haitians to live peacefully with Haitians.

South Africa did it when they had The Commission of Truth and Reconciliation. People came and realized that they had made mistakes. Everybody can make mistakes. You must acknowledge that you made mistakes, and the society will welcome you. If you cannot do that through tribunals because of the numbers, then find a way to address it. We cannot pretend that Haiti will have a better future without that dialogue. We must have it.

In 1994, when I went back to Haiti from exile, we established a Commission for Truth and Justice and Reconciliation. I passed the documents to the next government, and I never heard about it again. Haitians never heard about it because the government wanted to move fast towards privatization of state enterprises instead of that path which was recommended.

Would that mean allowing all the political exiles to come back no matter how bad they were, including people like Raoul Cedras and Jean-Claude Duvalier.

I will not move forward with conclusions outside of that framework of justice. The Commission addressed the case of these criminals and paved the way for justice and dialogue. You see, so I said it and will continue to say it: We need to continue to address this issue of dialogue, truth and justice. Otherwise, we will continue to play either like a puppet government or be mental slaves in the hands of those who still want to exploit our resources and they will not decide to change it for Haitians. Haitians must start to say no. Let’s change it – not against foreigners, not against true friends, with them if they want, but they will not do it for us unless we start to do it.

Do you hold a grudge today against president René Préval for not being more forceful in trying to facilitate your return to Haiti? He owes his election thanks to the Lavalas base.

If I pay attention to what the people are saying, they describe President Préval as someone who betrayed me and it's true. They voted for him. I did not vote, I was here, but those who elected him now realize he has failed them. He betrayed them.

He is playing in the hands of those who are against the interests of the people – that is what they said.

Do you feel personally betrayed? I am sure you realize the difficulties of the situation he was in.

Personally, I say let’s put the interests of the people first. Not my interests. If I can do something for him, or if I have to, I will do it. It’s a matter of principle an in his case he did not have to do anything for me. He just had to respect the constitution. The constitution does not allow exile. He should not violate the constitution. That is it. But as he did, history takes note and history will recognize that he failed, unfortunately.

I remember a famous progressive journalist in Geneva reviewing my film (4) and one of the critics he had was that I did not speak about voodoo and how it affects Haiti’s politics. What do you think of this tendency among many western journalists who try to explain Voodoo as one main reason for Haiti’s problems?

I enjoy drawing parallels between voodoo and politics. Why? Because in the west when they want to address political issues, they may, as you suggested or indicated, mix it with voodoo as a way to avoid going straight to the truth. The truth could be, for instance, historical.

Fourteen years after Christopher Columbus arrived in Haiti, in 1492, they had already killed three million indigenous people. Do they speak about it today? Do they know about it? I don’t know. At that time, one could be 14 years old and would have to pay a quarter of gold to Christopher Columbus or they would cut your arm or feet or ears. Do they talk about it? If you do, it’s like “oh really or maybe.” They have problems exposing the truth, acknowledging what was going on at that time. And if you look at the reality of today, it is almost the same thing.

Last week there was some trouble because of storms and earthquakes and Haiti lost about ten people, some say five some say more than ten. In any case, even if it were one person, it would already mean a lot for us because a human being is human being. Instead of focusing on what is the reality of misery, abject poverty, occupation, colonization, some prefer to find a scapegoat through voodoo. The UN itself had to expel 114 soldiers for rape and child abuse. So we see people invading a country, pretending to help, while they are actually involved in rape, child abuse and so on. And it is not an issue for people who like to talk about voodoo as if voodoo by itself could cover this reality. The same way they don’t want to face our historical drama linked to colonization.

Is it a racist distraction?

It is, it is. I respect religion and will respect any religion. Africans had their religion here. They went to Haiti and continued their practice and I have to respect that. In addition, the Haitian constitution, respects freedom of religion. So let’s address the drama, misery, poverty, exploitation, occupation, and people without the right to vote or eat. People want to be free. They don’t have self-determination. Let’s focus on people who have no resources and are dying. We had such a wonderful solidarity after January 12 in the world, where citizens worldwide were building solidarity with Haitians. That was great to see Whites and Blacks crossing barriers of color to express their solidarity with the victims of the deadly earthquake.

And on behalf of the Haitian people, if I may, I will say thank you to all those true friends who did it while others who call themselves true friends of Haiti preferred to send soldiers with weapons to protect their own interests instead of protecting human beings who were really suffering. Amputations – we had them by the thousands without anesthesia. They were cutting hands and feet of victims and it’s not an issue for some people who prefer to talk about voodoo as if voodoo could be the cause of what is going on in Haiti. No, what is going on in Haiti is rooted in colonialism, neo-colonialism in that neoliberal policy applied and imposed upon Haiti, not in religious issues like voodoo. For me, as long as they don’t try to face the reality as it is, they may continue to use issues like voodoo to hide facts, any attempt to replace truth by racist distractions will fail.

Anything that you would like to add that you have at heart and have not been able to tell?

Well … if you ask a Zulu* person the way to reach somewhere while you are on the right path, that person will tell you (in Zulu): “Ugonde ngqo ngalo mgwago” which means go straight on your way.

That is why the Haitian people who are moving from misery to poverty with dignity should continue to move straight towards that goal. If we lose our dignity we lose everything. We are poor – worse than poor because we are living in abject poverty and misery. But based on that collective dignity rooted in our forefathers, I do believe we have to continue fighting in a peaceful way for our self-determination, and if we do that, history will pay tribute to our generation, because we are on the right path.

Mr. President, thank you for your time.

*****************
Footnotes:
[*] Lavalas is a Creole word meaning ‘flood’, ‘avalanche’, a ‘mass of people’ or ‘everyone together’. Fanmi means ‘family’. [*] Zulu is the name of the largest ethnic group in South Africa and the most widely spoken home language as well.
(1) Letter of President Aristide - November 2009 - authorizing Dr. Maryse Narcisse to register Lavalas candidates. http://www.hayti.net/tribune/index.php?mod=articles&ac=commentaires&id=725
(2) Letters of resignation of Jean-Bertrand Aristide - The Kreyol translation by professor Bryant Freeman, http://www.nathanielturner.com/aristidedidnotresign.htm - The official translation provided by the US embassy and used most widely in mainstream medias, http://articles.cnn.com/2004-03-01/world/aristide.letter_1_constitution-...
(3) “Aristide’s American Profiteers”, an article by Mary Anastasia O’Grady, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121720095066688387.html
(4) “Aristide and the Endless Revolution”, a documentary by Nicolas Rossier, http://www.aristidethefilm.com

Nicolas Rossier is an award winning independent filmmaker and reporter who lives in Brooklyn New York. In 2005, he directed and produced the outstanding 85-minute documentart, "Aristide and the Endless Revolution." For copyright information and publishing rights, please contact the author at Nicrossier@gmail.com.

The New Visual Stories of ‘Africa’

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June 1st, 2010 · by David Campbell · More posts, photography, politics

What is the visual story that needs to be told about Africa? Is there a pictorial strategy that can account for one billion people, living in 53 countries that occupy 12 million square miles, speaking two thousand languages, embodying multiple cultures and numerous ethnicities, with manifold intersections with our globalised world? #

Would we even ask that question of the Americas, Asia or Europe? It is unlikely. Others are represented in ways designed to shore up the self and  ‘Africa’ is central to the formation of European and North American identity. This process embodies colonial relations of power that distill a complex, hybrid place into visual stereotypes that cast people and their place as superior/inferior, civilized/barbaric, modern/traditional, developed/underdeveloped and so on. #

These stereotypes construct both conventional wisdom and its possible alternatives. Others can be reviled for their barbarity or exalted for the closeness to nature, but these options are no more than two sides of the same coin, and each distances ‘us’ from ‘them’. Binyavanga Wainaina’s satirical account of how (not) to represent Africa captures this dual operation, and news coverage often sees ‘Africa’ as a place of either human misery or natural exoticism. ‘Africa’ is therefore a mythic space, the quotation marks signifying its production. #

The visual story that needs to be told about ‘Africa’ is not a single story. It is a series of stories assembled to end the idea of a singular ‘Africa’. We need accounts of complexity, contrasts, and diversity that are drawn from the everyday as much as the exceptional. We need reports that are aware of their own construction and understand how they either affirm or challenge stereotypes. #

There is plenty of photographic work that does that. It is too much to ask of each individual project that it ticks all the boxes, but what projects like African Lens can do is aggregate and curate the rich material being produced so that we can see how, in combination, these images enable stories that complicate the simplistic and deepen the superficial. #

How this project is framed will go a long way to determining its success. If we do not go beyond the limits of either/or options we will be stuck replicating colonial dualisms. This means that: #

• we need to interpret photographs in terms of the work that they do in relation to stereotypes rather than via an outmoded commitment to ‘objectivity’ and its spouse, ‘subjectivity’. When it comes to reportage we should demand accuracy, but photographs are inescapably representations and never simply mirrors or windows;

• we need to think beyond negative versus positive as the way to categories images and move toward what Guy Tillim called self-aware, interesting, penetrating, and original pictures;

• we need to exceed the idea that optimism versus pessimism, and especially “Afro-romanticism” versus “Afro-pessimism,” defines the options for stories;

• we need to discard the idea that local versus international makes much sense in the global visual economy; while it is vital indigenous photographers are accorded equal status with their American and European counterparts, we should not assume that “the local” is itself a singular place with just once voice;

• we need to support new developments in the multimedia practice of photography that can literally give subjects a voice for their own stories.

#

Government speaker at a political get together, Abidjan. Photo: Joan Bardeletti. #

There are many recent photographic projects contributing to this re-visualization of ‘Africa’. Consider Joan Bardeletti’s work on the middle class in Africa alongside Finbarr O’Reilly’s story on white poverty in South Africa. Think of Andrew Esiebo’s portfolio of Lagos nightlife and Ed Kashi’s Niger Delta project, Michael Tsegaye’s pictures of working girls in Addis Ababa, Andrew Tshabangu’s documentation of Johannesburg and Marcus Bleasdale’s presentation of the Kimbangist Symphony Orchestra in Kinshasa to name just a few. #

The problem with stereotypes, as Chimamanda Adichie says, is “not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete.” Because of this, the new visual stories of ‘Africa’ cannot ignore the issues of famine, injustice, poverty and war. While we can sympathies with Paul Melcher’s cry for no more “dying Africans,” we must have visual accounts of atrocities when they occur. However, they have to go beyond the stereotypes, as with the Condition Critical project on the Congo war or the coverage of human rights issues in Burundi and Malawi. #

These are exciting times for visual storytellers, with the power of the web facilitating the global production and circulation of new photographic projects. There are many challenges involved in getting better stories to the right people, but the gatekeepers of the mainstream media no longer have total control over what we can or cannot see. If we appreciate how stereotypes have been produced and can be contested, we can, over time,  achieve the re-visualization of ‘Africa’. #

The need to re-visualize ‘Africa’ is a major concern of mine, and with my colleagues DJ Clark and Kate Manzo, we established the Imaging Famine blog last month as a way of continuing our Imaging Famine project by aggregating and curating work that both confirms and challenges stereotypes. #

Many people are contributing to the production and circulation of new photographic portrayals of ‘Africa’ , and to support the recent launch of African Lens I wrote an editorial that summarises what I see as the issues involved in this important effort. This post reproduces that editorial. #

Featured photo: Media circus photographing an American Marine with a malnourished boy during Operation Restore Hope, Somalia, 1991. Paul Lowe/Panos. #

Tracking the Trail of Cholera in Artibonite

Georgianne Nienaber

Investigative journalist, author, Haiti relief worker

Posted: November 11, 2010 10:56 PM

The last figures on the cholera epidemic indicate over 11,000 cases and 724 deaths. The mortality rate is approaching 7 percent, up from 6 percent a few days ago. As you read this, the figures are most likely outdated and just plain wrong, since the epidemic is growing exponentially. Factor in the observation that reporting from rural areas is non-existent and it becomes clear that Haiti is facing an uncontained crisis. If you want to watch the spread of cholera in Haiti on a map, look at the Pan American Health Organization's tracking tool here.

The red indicator is bleeding across the screen in a graphic that resembles a horror movie.

Government statistics are also lagging, but they can be found here.

Chatter on Twitter and Google paints a picture of a totally broken health care system, and demonstrates malfeasance in planning for an epidemic after the January 2010 earthquake claimed up to 300,000.

Here is a World Share report from Twitter:

Cholera now hits the island of La Gonave, Haiti. The only functioning hospital on the island is filled to capacity. There is insufficient medical staff to treat those affected. Newborn babies and their mothers are dying.

Here is another from a Google Group:

The situation at the other Limbe hospital (Government hospital St. Jean) was worse. We brought a patient there only to discover a huge tent and no one attending a building full of patients. There was no doctor or nurse present, dry IV bags, and when we asked how a doctor could be reached no one really knew. Staff have been overwhelmed and they are looking for nurses. I think that things are not great at the hospital (St. Michel) or at the gymnasium where they are putting the suspect cholera cases. I had thought that MSF (Doctors Without Borders) was all set up, but they still won't be for a couple of days apparently.

There are hundreds of similar reports on social networking sites.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports "a need for medical staff with more experience, additional medical supplies, including at least 1,200 body bags" in Artibonite--the center of the outbreak.

Lack of sanitation and at least 1.3 million living under plastic sheeting and tarps in ill-named "tent" cities created an environment ripe for the outbreak of diarrheal disease. Cholera, which has not been known in Haiti for an entire generation, was unexpected, but had the government, NGO's and other "charitable" organizations properly positioned rehydration supplies throughout the country in anticipation of an outbreak of an inevitable lesser intestinal disease, part of this catastrophe could have been avoided and lives saved. Cholera is treatable with rehydration. Don't treat it, and you can die within 12 hours.

Numerous rivers and streams flow through Haiti's mountainous areas. The largest drainage system in the country is that of the Artibonite River. It is strongly suspected that the United Nations Nepalese Annapurna camp introduced cholera into the Meye River, a tributary of the Artibonite River, from a faulty septic system.

Picture Haiti as a horseshoe with the opening facing left or west. Haiti has three regions: the northern region, which includes the northern peninsula; the central region; and the southern region, which includes the southern peninsula. Four days ago, we drove through the central region from the UN compound in Mirebalais to the coastal city of St. Marc in the Artibonite region. In Haiti, these regions are called "departments." We had last been in St. Marc in March, and now wanted to track the flow of the cholera bacterium through the Artibonite River Valley to the sea. Our goal was to see how local communities and clinics were coping, and whether proper supplies were in place to deal with the epidemic.

 

 

Turn on the caption function on the lower right of the slide show and follow our journey.

As we made our way north from Port-au-Prince, and finally west from Mirebalais, fog obscured the hillsides and a light rain continued throughout most of the route. This was the remnant of Tomas, which had come and gone two days previously. The rivers and streams were flowing fast, and the Artibonite, if it had not already done so, was about to overflow its banks--spreading the cholera contagion throughout the valley--contaminating crops, water supplies and homesteads.

On the way to La Chapelle, the Creole spelling is "Lachapèl," a village in the Artibonite Department of Haiti, we found the St. Guillaume Clinic.

The only rehydration supplies the clinic had on Sunday were two boxes of infant Pedialyte. 26,500 people reside in the region. Nurse Marie Suzie Mondesir said "villagers are not making it to the hospital," and unknown numbers are dying at home. They see 30 patients per day, have no soap, and the five-gallon pail of disinfectant is filled once a day by the Red Cross. The Haitian Red Cross offered this container of bleach water for hand washing. This is the only help St. Guillaume had received since November 1.

To put this discovery in context, the Red Cross bulletin of November 8 claims:

To respond to the cholera outbreak, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (International Federation) has issued a preliminary emergency appeal for $6,000,000 to assist 345,000 people in Haiti and 150,000 people in the Dominican Republic. The American Red Cross continues to respond to the cholera outbreak, most recently providing $500,000 to support the global Red Cross response, as well as purchasing 250,000 sachets of oral rehydration solution.

Where is the money previously donated immediately after the earthquake? Where are the purchased supplies and rehydration solutions?

The roads in the central region are in perfect condition with no earthquake damage and little to no traffic. There is no excuse for not getting supplies to these people.

Meanwhile the International Red Cross says it is printing "100,000 informational brochures to be distributed in camps and communities. 160-180 hygiene promoters are verbally disseminating hygiene messages and distributing soap in the capital."

Haiti does not need brochures. The 180 "hygiene promotors" are a little late, and instead of delivering soap, they should be put to work delivering emergency medical supplies to the countryside. Is the Red Cross is focusing on publicity in Port-au-Prince, where international media congregates to gather photos of the suffering in what has become known as "disaster porn" in Haitian circles? CNN has just issued a request for photos from Haiti, and what they are looking for are photos of the sick and dying. Media hardly ever sends the cameras to the central plateau, and the Red Cross and other NGOs know this. Put the logo and put the brochures where they will get the most bang of publicity for the buck.

Our next stop was the world-renowned Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles. The sprawling grounds are located on an old banana plantation and the staff is predominately Haitian, serving a community of 300,000.

We spoke by phone with Hospital Director Sylvia Ernst who told us on Sunday, November 6, that things had stabilized and that there was no increase in the numbers of patients. They had treated 300 since the beginning of the outbreak, two week previous. By November 9, admissions had doubled after the Artibonite River overflowed its banks.

Still, the hospital was functioning and was well supplied when we were there. Ernst said we could call her any time for updates.

 

Cholera trends at Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Artibonite Department

 

The scene in St. Marc at St. Nicholas Hospital was far different. Anger, despair and confusion were obvious consequences of an epidemic that was having its way with an impoverished population, compounded by the imperious attitude of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) toward the local population. Look at the Internet and you will find that MSF is dominating in the arena of publicity about themselves. If they are doing such a good job, why are the Haitians so angry with them?

MSF's own website says that a demonstration at a cholera treatment center in St. Marc on October 26 resulted in angry crowds burning tents within the compound.

The Haitians will tell you that they did not want their town to become a refugee camp for cholera victims. Sanitation was already terrible. What about the increased medical waste? What about the possibility of disease being spread within their community?

The subtext in the MSF field report suggests that the Haitians are to blame for their own misery, especially by "disrupting efforts to prevent the spread of cholera."

From an AP report of the incident:

U.N. peacekeepers from Argentina arrived with riot shields to reinforce police. Warning shots were heard; the U.N. said its soldiers fired blanks. There were no reports of injuries.

Haitian health officials assured the crowd the clinic would not open in that neighborhood. Doctors Without Borders-Spain country chief Francisco Otero said the medical aid group would try to reopen it in another part of St. Marc.

 

The French and Spanish are masters at blaming the victims. The French have done it expertly in central Africa, and I personally have witnessed this same imperious attitude in Congo. Given the attitude of MSF to the local population and refusal to communicate with independent media attempting to document this story, Haitian anger is understandable. This observation does not take into account the deplorable history of both the French and Spanish in Haiti.

Adding insult to injury the UN, responsible for the outbreak that began in Mirebalais, fired on the crowd with "blanks."

Still, we wanted to try to get some answers and see how the doctors were doing. Not everyone associated with an organization is responsible for its poor leadership.

Campaign flyers for candidates in the upcoming November election plastered the front gate of St. Nicholas Hospital. A dirty litter used to transport the sick was abandoned near the wheel of a motorbike. There are no ambulances, and many patients are transported by litters and stretchers on foot, or in the case of long distance, by motorcycle.

Ward at St. Nicholas Hospital

We made our way inside the grounds and after a few camera shots to establish location; we put the lens cap back on the Nikon where it belonged. The people here did not need a camera's intrusion into their suffering. We can demonstrate in words that cholera is a terrible way to die and an incomprehensible illness to endure. It is enough to see three men carrying an unconscious young boy with sunken eyes and head listing hopelessly out of alignment with his spine. It is horrible to remember an old woman, covered in vomit and her own excrement, borne on a dirty green canvas stretcher into the bowels of the ward. It is disgusting to see family members carrying gallon after gallon of body fluids in a kaleidoscope of brightly colored five-gallon pails to a disposal site in back of the hospital. The procession of pails and people was endless.

Some pathways on the hospital grounds were awash in mud, with cement blocks forming a precarious walkway. Most people gave up trying to balance on the blocks and sloshed through the mud, bringing it into the wards. We managed to stay out of the mud in a mostly futile attempt to stay clean.

In what appeared to be the main treatment ward, a woman doctor working for Partners in Health under MSF wanted to talk with us, but said she was under a gag order from MSF, and thus, could not. The patient cots were almost touching, were covered in contaminated bedding, and family members juggled buckets of feces and vomit as they attempted to nurse loved ones.

The doctor gave us the phone number of "Carlos the Coordinaor," whose job it was to direct the flow of information. We located MSF's Carlos, who told us he was "too busy," and that we should contact the MSF press agent "Richard" in Port-au-Prince, or Cisco Otero. We reached Otero and he insisted that only the elusive "Richard" could give us the facts and figures about patient flow and numbers. We tried for two days to contact "Richard," and even called Otero again. During this process, it was easy to understand how frustrated the Haitians of St. Marc must feel. MSF was behaving in a secretive, imperious, colonialist manner towards the Haitian people, as well as myself and the Haitian man who was assisting me. I'll leave it at that.

Since we could not get "official" counts on numbers or death counts from MSF, we decided to explore the grounds. Where were the contaminated buckets of medical waste and bedding going? Behind the hospital, we found a truck loaded with grey plastic bags some of which were already punctured. Abandoned colored pails were scattered nearby. This is the disposition site for medial waste. It is put into plastic bags and loaded onto a truck--destination unknown. There are no medical waste incinerators in Haiti. What happens when this truck goes down the road, bags are broken, and liquid matter drains out along the way?

We once again to contact "Richard," the MSF press coordinator, to find some answers. He never answered the phone and did not return our calls. We left a number and are still waiting.

Discouraged by the lack of information forthcoming from MSF, we continued south along Highway One.

Cubans in Solidarity with Haitians

We had not traveled very far when we saw a Cuban flag hanging beside the Haitian flag on the outside of a building in the community of Kalfou Boua. Kafou means "corner" in English, and the building sits next to a highway intersection.

An exhausted Dr. Iliuska Sanchez of the Cuban Brigade

Dr. Iliuska Sanchez looked completely exhaused, but she welcomed our questions and her associate, Dr. Alexander Perez, opened his handwritten spreadsheet, urging that we photograph it. The Cubans had carefully documented the numbers, dates and ages of the cholera victims and were very proud of the fact that not one patient had died. Were they well supplied? The answer was "yes."

The attitude of the Cuban contingent, and their willingness to share information, was in very strong contrast to that of MSF.

In fact, there are several international institutions such as PAHO and the CDC, who are advising the Haitian Ministry of Health, but the lead role, although you don't hear about it in the mass media, is played by Cuba in close coordination with the health institution in Haiti. The Cuban Brigade, which includes 252 Cubans and Haitians who were trained in Cuba, is composed of 118 doctors, 78 nurses, 56 others including technicians, lab, and engineers working in Artibonite. Read about it on the Ezili Danto Open Salon blog.

So, after a very long day, filled with hope, despair and frustration, we headed back to Port-au-Prince. The Cuban doctors provided the hope that there was a group of doctors who were open and forthcoming about the epidemic, and more importantly, working in solidarity with the Haitian people. The experience with MSF was totally frustrating. The Albert Schweitzer Clinic offered transparency and communication, and the tiny clinic of St. Guillaume was the poster child for the rural crisis.

As we navigated the garbage-strewn streets of Port-au-Prince and Cite Soleil once more, the situation looked hopeless. We wondered if cholera had already infiltrated the slums. It had, but we did not know this last Sunday. The report was official this week that cholera is in the city--a terrible scenario.

The Pan American Health Organization is braced for catastrophe.

PAHO Deputy Director Jon K. Andrus compared the Haiti epidemic that appeared on October 19 to the one registered in 1991 in Peru, and said everything points to a "crashing increase" of the contagion.

Andrus said that the Peru epidemic of 1991 spread to 16 countries and caused, just in Peru, over 650,000 cases in six years. With a proportional adjustment to the size of the population, a model of a similar contagion "could produce over 270,000 cases in Haiti."

Cholera, as of November 11, 2010, has reached Port-au-Prince.

The first portion of U.S. reconstruction money for Haiti is finally its way more than seven months after it was promised. The U.S. government will transfer $120 million -- about one-tenth of the total of nearly $800 million pledged from an authorization bill blocked by Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.

Will it do any good?

In FY 2010, USAID provided $1,147,815 to purchase and pre-position commodities in Haiti for the 2010 hurricane season. (Fact Sheet #4, Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 November 10, 2010)

This does not take into account the millions collected by private charities and NGOs that have not benefited the people of Haiti.

It is eleven months since the January earthquake, and the streets are still filled with garbage and rubble, the camps are filthy, and cholera will ultimately have its way.

 

 

 

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Haiti cholera death toll tops 900Continue reading the main story

More than 14,000 people have been hospitalised since the outbreak

The number of people in Haiti who have died from cholera has reached 917, the country's health ministry says.

The disease is present in six out of 10 provinces and 14,642 people have been hospitalised since the outbreak of the waterborne disease began last month.

Aid agencies are battling to contain cholera in the capital Port-au-Prince, amid fears it will spread through camps housing 1.1m earthquake survivors.

The UN is appealing for $164m (£101m) to treat the disease in the next year.

The death toll has risen by 121 since Friday.

The worst affected area remains the central province of Artibonite, where 595 people have died, said an update on the health ministry's website.

In Port-au-Prince - which was badly damaged by the earthquake in January - 27 deaths have been recorded.

Earlier this month, Hurricane Tomas brought heavy rains, which aid agencies say contributed to the spread of the disease, as rivers burst their banks.

Up to 200,000 Haitians could contract cholera, the United Nations says.

Cholera itself causes diarrhoea and vomiting, leading to severe dehydration. It can kill quickly but is treated easily through rehydration and antibiotics.

Presidential and parliamentary elections are due to take place in two weeks' time, on 28 November.

Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere.

>via: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11753411

Home, Land & Sea

For Nate, Steve & Sarah. Live performance of Home, Land & Sea from the last Trinity Roots concert.

Trinity Roots live in Amsterdam, The Melkweg. Great band from New Zealand

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Trinity Roots reform for NZ tour

NZPA

TRIPLE TROUBLE: Trinity Roots are reforming after five years apart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's five years since Wellington band Trinity Roots split and turned their one waka into three.

Now Warren Maxwell (lead vocals/guitars/keyboards), Rio Hunuki-Hemopo (bass/vocals) and Riki Gooch (drums/vocals) are rejoining the bits and setting out to revive the spirit with a couple of live shows.

The trio met in 1998 when they came from the Far North (Maxwell is from Whangarei), the South (Gooch grew up in Dunedin) and the King Country (Hunuki-Hemopo is from Taumarunui) to study jazz in Wellington.

Being "the only bros" at school they were drawn to each other and soon Trinity Roots was born.

And with it a unique blend of soul, blues, jazz, reggae and roots enriched with heartfelt lyrics, incorporating a love for the land and their Maori heritage.

With only two albums the band set the stage for many other roots and reggae band in New Zealand and gave the protest against the controversial 2004 foreshore and seabed legislation a voice.

This week sees the release of Music is Choice, featuring audio from two shows at Wellington's town hall, one being the band's final 2005 concert.

A bonus CD contains Wellingtonian Sarah Hunter's documentary of the same name. It premiered at this year's International Film Festival and gave not only audiences the chance to re-connect with the band.

"When I saw it, I genuinely enjoyed the music for the first time," Maxwell said. Around the same time a yet to be named New Year's Eve festival contacted the band and asked if they would ever consider getting back together.

"That opened a few synapses and I called the guys and we all felt it would be great to get together and rekindle some of the old songs," he says.

The documentary follows the band from their beginnings to their split on the zenith of their popularity.

"There was something going on in the music scene in the late 90s, the whole roots and reggae thing was coming in out of a decade of rock and it was just luck, because we were around creating something really original in the roots reggae," Maxwell says.

The two albums True (2002) and Home, Land and Sea (2004) hit right into their listeners' hearts, creating a truly loyal fan base.

As a composer, Maxwell says, he would always set out to touch people with his music.

"I really put a heavy emphasis on writing something that was poignant and means something.

"And I guess my style of writing is from a deeply metaphorical angle, I used a lot of Maori philosophy, and Maori proverbs as well.

He remembers people coming up and saying 'Hey Warren, I hope you don't mind but my dad passed away last year and we used Little Things at his tangi and I hope that is OK."And when Trinity got bigger and bigger around the country, I felt like we were accomplishing that and it felt really satisfying," he says.

''That for me is far greater than album sales. It means that we touched people and that is one of the many roles music has to play in society," he says.

Trinity Roots' Home, Land and Sea is a love song to Aotearoa and has become something like an anthem against the seabed legislation. Maxwell hopes that his music has helped people to re-connect with the land and become political aware.

"I am kind of arrogantly optimistic, that it did and from individual feedback that I had from people saying, that the song touched them more than any speech from Helen Clark or John Key.

"That is something that music does, it seems to infiltrate your being much more than just somebody standing up and talking about an issue.

"What I really love about this song, is that it rekindles memories of a very happy childhood in New Zealand, having the ability to swim in the rivers being able to go and walk along the beach and all you have to do is think about all those memories and what would be if they were gone, if they wouldn't exist anymore," the artist explains.

Although the band had a great time together, making many friends along the way, Maxwell never regretted the decision to split.

"It was some kind of cosmic thing, part of the faiths," he says.

We split up for a good reason and it was basically after being in Trinity for five or six years, we all felt that we needed to explore other musical genres and Trinity was becoming some sort of machine.

"If you get to a certain level, there is a momentum that takes over. And you feel like you're not in control anymore and it is a bit unnerving," he says.

Maxwell went on to form Little Bushman, Gooch Eru Dangerspiel and Hunuki-Hemopo released solo work and cooperated with the likes of Fed Freddy's Drop and Breaks Co-Op.

"It just happened quite organically, so does this coming together after a five year break. We've done all these other things and now we just carry on.

If the reunion will be a one-off or will lead to further recordings is not decided yet.

"We're not sure, what we've discussed is just to see how this summer goes and what everybody's other commitments are, and we'll just have to see how it all feels after these few gigs and you never know.

"Watch this space," he says.

>via: http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/entertainment/4108690/Trinity-Roots-refo...

IMAGINE - Snoop Dogg ft Dr Dre & D'Angelo  

Snoop & Dre over a dope beat with what's left of D'Angelo lacing the track. It's a few years old but the message is timeless. The trio ask the musical question; where would we be without Hip Hop, can you imagine?

BURMA: SUU KYI RELEASE SPOTLIGHTS REMAINING POLITICAL PRISONERS

World Leaders Should Turn Up Heat to Free All Other Political Prisoners | Chronology of Detention >>

Human Rights Watch / Hellman-Hammett Grants

Human Rights Watch administers the Hellman/Hammett grant program for writers all around the world who have been victims of political persecution and are in financial need. The program is financed by the estate of the playwright Lillian Hellman with grants given in her name and that of her long-time companion, the novelist Dashiell Hammett. Hellman and Hammett were both interrogated in the 1950s about their political beliefs and affiliations; Hellman before the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and Hammett before the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee headed by Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, whose communist paranoia helped fuel nearly a decade of anti-communist "witch hunts." Hellman suffered professionally and had trouble getting work for a number of years. Hammett spent time in jail.

Forty two writers from 20 countries received Hellman/Hammett grants in 2010 in recognition of their commitment to free expression and the courage they showed when facing political persecution. Learn more about the 2010 awardees.

The grants are awarded annually after the nominations have been reviewed by a selection committee composed of authors, editors, and journalists who have a long-standing interest in free expression issues. Nominations should be sent to the New York office of Human Rights Watch. The form for making nominations can be downloaded here.  For further information, contact hhgrants@hrw.org.

The nominator should try to provide:

1.  Biographical information about the nominee;
2. A list of the nominee's published writing;
3. A statement about the political persecution suffered;
4. A statement of need.

Nominations for the grants to be awarded in the spring of 2011 must be submitted by December 10, 2010.  Emergency nominations are accepted throughout the year. 

Hellman/Hammett grants typically range from $1,000 to a maximum of $10,000. In addition to providing much needed financial assistance, the Hellman/Hammett grants focus attention on repression of free speech and censorship by publicizing the persecution that the grant recipients endured. In some cases the publicity is a protection against further abuse. In other cases, the writers request anonymity because of the dangerous circumstances in which they and their families are living.

Since the program began in 1990, more than 600 writers have received grants including several group grants to writers in Bosnia, Burma, Peru, and Sierra Leone. Even so, the recipients are a tiny portion of the many writers around the world whose books have been banned or who have been exiled, imprisoned, tortured, and harassed because of their work.

(Last updated on November 11, 2010)

Call for Submissions for Books
Published in 2010

 

The Publishing Triangle is now accepting submissions for its 2011 fiction, nonfiction, and poetry awards, given for books published between January 1 and December 31, 2010. Each year, we present five competitive awards to lesbian and gay authors: the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction; the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction; the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry; the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry; and the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. The Ferro-Grumley Literary Awards foundation presents its annual prize for LGBT fiction in conjunction with our awards ceremony, so you can submit candidates for that award as well.

All of these literary prizes include honorariums: $1000 each for White debut fiction and nonfiction; and $500 each for poetry and Ferro-Grumley fiction.

The deadline for nominations is December 3, 2010. If you are nominating more than one book, please make photocopies of the nomination form before you begin. There is an entrance fee of $35 per title.

For instructions click here. The submission form is available as a downloadable Word document or as a downloadable PDF file. For past winners, go to our awards page.

 

 

Frank Andre Guridy. Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. xiv + 270 pp. $59.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8078-3361-2; $22.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8078-7103-4.

Reviewed by Jeff Donnelly (Miami Design Preservation League)
Published on H-Florida (November, 2010)
Commissioned by Jeanine A. Clark Bremer

 

Ninety Miles Away, But Not So Far Apart

Frank Andre Guridy has produced a fascinating study of “cross national exchange between Afro-Cubans and African Americans” (p. 2). While the focus of this book is on four specific stories, the author’s ambitions extend to commentary on the phenomenon of diaspora, the awareness and kaleidoscopic expression of a people’s migration in multiple national and temporal contexts. Guridy contends that “Afro-descended peoples in Cuba and the United States came to identify themselves as being part of a transcultural African diaspora, an identification that did not contradict black aspirations for national citizenship” (p. 4). In development of his thesis, Guridy has selected four exemplary moments in U.S. and Cuban republican history: Booker T. Washington’s effort to enroll Afro-Cubans in his Tuskegee Institute, the role of Garveyism in Cuba, the interface of the Harlem Renaissance and afrocubanismo, and the development of Afrocentric tourism in Cuba and the United States before the Cuban Revolution.

Guridy has uncovered a Tuskegee-Cuba connection not widely noted in other commentary. From archival sources, Guridy documents the efforts of Washington to enable African-descended students from other nations, including Cuba, to attend his Tuskegee Institute. Guridy concludes that Cubans attending Tuskegee were able to use that experience as a way to achieve upward mobility in Cuban society, especially in the field of architecture, a program that attracted most of the successful male Afro-Cubans at Tuskegee. The building housing the major twentieth-century Afro-Cuban cultural center, Club Atenas, was designed by a Tuskegee alumnus, Luis Delfin Valdes.

In his second example, Guridy points out that Cuba had more “divisions” or chapters of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) than any other country outside the United States. Garvey’s cosmopolitan movement not only involved people of varying nationalities, but also relied on the efforts of many whose life stories included extensive migrations among Caribbean countries and the United States. These migrations, in Guridy’s view, contributed to the creation of a diasporic consciousness, sometimes expressed as “the Negro peoples of the world.” Guridy also locates the role of Garveyism in Cuba, highlighting the tensions the UNIA movement produced in a society not fully comfortable with its multiracial reality and its racial hierarchies.

Langston Hughes appears in the third segment of Guridy’s story, which includes a detailed account of Hughes and his search for the “heartbeat and songbeat of Africa” in Cuba (p. 135). This is perhaps the most developed section of Forging Diaspora and where the specific examples selected by Guridy best exemplify his thesis: African Americans and Afro-Cubans discovered a commonality without losing their nationality. Poetry, art, sculpture, and music all figure in the development of this section, but the most vivid moments occur when Hughes discovers that the patrons and musicians of the Afro-Cuban dance halls are “Mi gente” (p. 133).

The final section of Guridy’s work describes the advent of African American tourism in Cuba and Afro-Cuban visits to the United States. In both cases, the tourists had to overcome obstacles arising from racial discrimination, and Guridy provides some revealing examples of the comparison and contrast between the racial hierarchies of the United States and Cuba. In this section, racial uplift, advocacy for civil rights, and black entrepreneurship combine in complex ways, delineating and overcoming the racialization of leisure in both countries. Guridy highlights the role of Howard University in this period.

Guridy relates each of these four stories in a felicitous summation of his extensive archival research. He provides, from each of the stories, evidence that both African Americans and Afro-Cubans developed an awareness of their common experience and national differences through their contacts. His work presumes some basic knowledge of African American history in the United States, the imperial project of the United States, the history of race relations in the Cuban republic, and the wider intellectual and cultural context of negritude. At the end, Guridy’s book provokes more questions than it provides answers. Forging Diaspora will encourage readers to explore more deeply by demonstrating that substantial understanding of any one of these topics requires a better understanding of the others.

Guridy discussed his book further in the context of American imperialism and the African diapora at the African American History Panel at the Harlem Book Fair, on July 10, 2010. In this discussion, He offered a more concise statement of his concept of the African diaspora. His comments can be heard or read at http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/294543-6&showFullAbstract=1.

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GO HERE TO VIEW VIDEO OF PANEL

AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY PANEL

 

Harlem Book Fair

Former fellows in the Schomburg Center’s Scholar-in-Residence program talked about the problem of presenting a balanced view of black history in their books. Professor Miller included images in her presentation. There was no time for questions from members of the audience. Howard Dodson moderated. The authors were: Monica L. Miller, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity (Duke University Press); Frank A. Guridy, Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African-Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow (University of North Carolina Press); and Stephen Gillroy Hall, A Faithful Account of the Race: African American Historical Writing in Nineteenth Century America (University of North Carolina Press). "Can We Tell the Truth About the Black Past?" was a panel of the 12th annual Harlem Book Fair from the Langston Hughes Auditorium in the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

 

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If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the list discussion logs at: http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl.

Citation: Jeff Donnelly. Review of Guridy, Frank Andre, Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow. H-Florida, H-Net Reviews. November, 2010.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=30845