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.
Category Archives: Haiti
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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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
FEBRUARY 6th, Baldwin Auditorium, Duke University East Campus, 8 p.m.
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.
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.
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.
She also has published a good essay on responses to the earthquake among Vodou practitioners.
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.
