Category Archives: Haiti

La justice haïtienne enquête le trafic d’enfants

Après la catastrophe en Haïti, beaucoup de pays ont envoyé des délégations pour aider aux blessés et pour améliorer la situation ravageure. Mais peut-être que quelques délégations ne respectent pas des droits des Haïtiens. Actuellement il y a une enquête sur les activités de dix Américains, qui sont membres d’une association chrétienne. Ces Américains ont été arrêtés pour “trafic d’enfants, enlèvement de mineurs et association de malfaiteurs.” Cet événement est assez inquiétant, et j’espère que ces accusations sont fausses.

Egalite for All: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution

I worked as the historical consultant for a PBS special on the Haitian Revolution which aired last year called Egalite for All: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution. Here (if you can stand seeing your Professor being interviewed) is a short clip from the film describing the story of Toussaint Louverture, whose remarkable life we will discuss during the lecture on Tuesday.

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I also did a short segment on the Haitian Revolution as part of a longer show on Haiti on PRI’s radio show “The World.”

February 6th Benefit Concert for Haiti at Duke

Please spread the word and join us for this Benefit concert

PELERINAJ * PELERINAGE * PILGRIMAGE

BENEFIT CONCERT for HAITI by Erol Josue

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FEBRUARY 6th, Baldwin Auditorium, Duke University East Campus, 8 p.m.

Map and Parking Information

Download Concert Flyer

benefitposter

Click here to listen to a new song composed by Josue in response to the earthquake, which will be part of his performance here

Listen to Yege Dahomen by Erol Josue

The New York Times has described Josue’s music in this way: “A Haitian singer-songwriter and a recent arrival to New York, Erol Josué has an obsession similar to that of some of his best Brazilian and Cuban contemporaries: connecting the ancient and the future, urban and country, the old and new world in one ball of modernity. On ”Régléman”(Mi5), his first album, Mr. Josué engages in what he calls ”electro-vodou,” which means juxtaposing voodoo-ritual chants with synthesizer tones, overdriven thumb-piano riffs, Afro-funk guitar rhythm, echoey textures. And yet these tracks are all sturdy at the center, folk songs with messages about exile, ecology and the persistence of cultural memory.”

President of Senegal Offers Haitians a Return to their “Homeland”

Among the many reactions to the earthquake in Haiti has been the fascinating offer on the part of the President of Senegal to welcome any Haitians who wished to return to Africa, which he referred to as their “terre natale,” or homeland. He said that if a few came, he would offer them land and a house. If many were to come, he would offer them an entire region of the country. Click here to read more about this.

Aftershocks of History in Haiti

Several days after the earthquake in Haiti, our understanding of the losses are steadily mounting. Among the tens of thousands dead are the writer George Anglade, and Mamadou Bah, a member of the U.N. team who had been doing work to improve libraries in Haiti, and the city of Port-au-Prince has been irreparably transformed. The aftershocks of this event will certainly be multiple and ongoing.

For insightful updates on what is going on the ground in Haiti, I highly recommend the Twitter feed of Richard Morse from Haiti, which gives a sense of how people have been coping with the events.

I did a short segment on the political history of Haiti on “All Things Considered,” which is available here.

Here, courtesy of Haitian historian Gusti Pourchet-Gaillard, are some photos of the earthquake hitting the downtown area of Port-au-Prince, the Champs de Mars, where the National Palace, Ministries, and many schools and cultural institutions are located. Other colleagues in Haiti share the horrifying news that the Ecole Normale Superieure, one of Haiti’s universities, collapsed with perhaps 1,000 students within it taking examinations.

I recommend this interview with Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat on Cnn.com, in which she recalls the way in which Haiti was born out of slave revolution. You can also see a remarkable interview of a now homeless President Preval, and images of the destroyed National Palace, at cnn.com.

For those of you who read French, the newspaper Liberation has an excellent report and chronology of the events here.

It’s also worth being aware, though, of some of the very curious ways in which Haitian history is narrated, as this now famous clip of Pat Robertson speaking about the earthquake yesterday shows.

Here is a nice response to Robertson’s statement from a specialist on Haitian music and culture, Elizabeth McAlister.

She also has published a good essay on responses to the earthquake among Vodou practitioners.

A Ph.D. candidate in History at Duke has also published this opinion piece about disaster aid to Haiti.

And here is a critical piece about the I.M.F. approach to the crisis, which argues that much of the world actually owes Haiti.

If you read interesting pieces about the events, or find photographs of videos you would like to share, you can do so in the comment section below this post.