We will fight from one generation to the next: Remembering Genevieve “Kòkòt Laguerre, her living legacy, remembering a proud Haitian continuum

Date: 10 September 2006

We will fight from one generation to the next:
Remembering Genevieve 'Kòkòt' Laguerre her living legacy, remembering a proud Haitian continuum

by Marguerite Laurent, Haitian Perspectives,
September 8. 2006

I didn't want to write this.

Deep sadness, banking on the shores of desperation, seems our permanent Haitian way of being these days – a reflex programmed by absorbing too many deliberate imperial cruelties metered out on Haiti's defenseless poor since Bush's horrific regime change landed its 'shock and awe' misadventure on Feb. 29, 2004 on a terrorist-free Haiti with a democratically elected and popularly-supported president.

But the injustices inhumanely metered out on Haiti's poor by the Western powers – the Kolon and their Blan-peyi, doesn't breed terrorism. It breeds and animates a legacy of Haitian struggle that endures pain, maintaining a proud dignity one generation to the next. In the Western Hemisphere, it creates the greatest of freedom fighters. It created Dessalines. It creates Haitian men like Kamarad Weber who passed away last year (May 30, 2005) and Haitian women like Genevieve 'Kòkòt' Laguerre.

How did I hear the news'

Over the Labor Day weekend, I was telling a friend, that for the majority of Haitians, and for me personally and for HLLN, these last years since the rabid Haitian elite's 2004 coup d'etat rage, have been about death, darkness and desperation. That so many innocent Haitians have been slaughtered by the most powerful and resourceful of peoples, it's impossible to handle the trauma. Then, on Tuesday, on a stop-over at San Juan returning from a Labor Day weekend vacation, when I was able to listen to the voicemail messages on my U.S. cell phone, there were four messages from different Haitian veteran activist in New York, who themselves will probably never be known, telling HLLN that Kòkòt had died over the long holiday weekend. Jean-Bertrand of Brooklyn left me two messages about Kòkòt's passing.

**

I didn't want to write this. For lately, I've been trying, by design, to look away for a minute. Do something else. See and feed my mind only with beauty and life. I was going to take a break from Haiti work. Not write for a while. For, to write honestly about Haiti these days, is to delve, again and again, into the senselessness of inflicted Haitian pain, slaughter and torment. But Kòkòt deserves more than to be remembered and written about by Ezili Dantò and HLLN. Kòkòt is our Porto Mitan. She represents the many Haitian spines holding up a proud Haitian continuum.

No one beyond Haitian activists from New York and Haiti know her name. But she's passing the torch to the next generation of Haitians. We know her by the work she's done.

The Lavalas Movement didn't spring up from nowhere.

It sprung up from the bowels of women like Kòkòt, who have had to endure a lifetime of imposed pain and injustices simply for being Dessalines' descendant.

**

Who was Kòkòt (1935 to 2006) and why is this small Haitian woman, who lived in New York for over thirty years, critically important to Haitians in the Diaspora and in Haiti involved in promoting Haitian rights, dignity and sovereignty' What does her generation's leave to my generation of Haitians' Why is it extra-extra-difficult to absorb these deaths today, instead of taking them as a natural part of the life cycle'

Because Kòkòt, this Haitian woman who is unknown outside her community, fought so that Haiti would not be where it is today ' with a defacto U.N. protectorate propped-up by France, the U.S. and Canada and making a figurehead out of the duly elected Haitian president.

Kòkò lived so that these foreign governments would respect Haitian life and dignity and not ever again allow known assassins and military henchmen such as Guy Philippe, Louis Jodel Chamblain, Jean Tatoune, Prosper Avril and their paramilitary forces, like Lame Timanchet, to ever roam free in Haiti, ever again, slaughtering the people with complete impunity while thousands of pro-democracy activists languish in foreign supported jails in Haiti.

For decades during the Duvalier rule, during the first coup d'etat, oceans of Haitian blood was spilled so the rule of law, not force, would sprout forth in Haiti. Kòkòt fought for the bloodletting and elite and imperial oppression of Haiti to stop.

For years she was amongst the first on the buses in Brooklyn, in the wee hours of the mornings, heading to Washington for demonstrations demanding the U.S. stop supporting dictatorship and oppression and let Haiti's elected p resident freely serve out his term. Not long ago she went to Haiti to visit So Ann in jail, even though she's now retired, lives on a fixed income, and was incapacitated by great health problems. Kòkot had to wear a voice box and couldn't speak without the contraption. But still, she always managed to show up for demonstrations as late as those held in New York in July, 2006.

Kòkòt is representative of the Haitians I know who's name will never be known, who have no notoriety. But who, as the footsoldiers, struggled in the periphery, making tremendous sacrifices. Her generation was the generations that mobilized themselves in a foreign country to fight the Haitian elite's tyranny. Her generation was the first in New York to take part in massive public demonstrations against the U.S. role in supporting dictatorship and oppression in Haiti. Her generation lifted up and supported the works of the many Haitian generation that came after her. Those Haitians who, with more resources and better education were struggling for bi-lingual education in New York schools for Haitian children. Her generation supported the New York Movement for Kreyol to be spoken, fought for Haitian cultural consciousness and women rights; fought for political asylum for Haitian asylum seekers in the 1970s, 80s and 90s and demanded freedom for political refugees wasting in New York prisons.

The corporate media hardly ever covered the work of these ordinary Haitian women and men. But her legacy is made no less important.

The work of the generations of Haitians, who left Haiti under Duvalier, from Kòkòt to the present day, molds the current Haitian resistance movement abroad and filtering back to Haiti.

*

I am told there was once a time in New York when Haitian women were told: 'fanm pa fè politik' ' ' women shouldn't be involved in politics.' Kòkòt did politics and was on the front lines. She was part of the rank and file in the New York-Tri-State area, who made Haitian activism ordinary so that by the time Ezili Dantò and HLLN came along, I didn't even know there had once been a women's struggle in New York to change the lyrics of traditional Haitian songs, telling women their only role was to learn how to cook, iron and wash in order to land a husband.

One such folkloric Haitian song was called 'Anjelina.'

Basically in the song, the woman, 'Angelina' was told that ' if you don't know how to cook, wash and iron. Don't even trying to find a husband. Just stay at home with your mother.

The song went like this: 'Anjelina, Anjelina chita kay manman w. Ti fi ki pa kònn lave, pase, chita kay manman w. Ti fi ki pa kòn mete men lan gaz, chita kay manman w. Ti fi ki pa kon fè yon bon bouyon, chita kay manman.'

In preparing to write this piece about Kòkòt, the Haitians I spoke with say 'the Haitian women's movement in the Diaspora in the 70s and 80s changed this song. So that it became 'Yon fanm ki kòn lave, pase selman, sa pa rele fanm' ' 'A woman who only knows how to wash and iron is not a real Haitian woman.'

They made it normal, insisted, for 'Fanm pou fè politik ' ' for Haitian women who didn't have to, to become involved in politics.

One song went: 'Yo tojou di fanm pa dwe fè politik, pou nou pa janm kapab reklame dwa n. ' 'They always say that women are not supposed to be involved in politics, so we can never demand our rights.'

'Fanm vayan di fò tout fanm fè politik. Manche fizi n pou n sove lanasyon.' – 'Strong woman say Haitian women must do politics. Grab your rifle to save the nation.'

There was a bunch of such songs. Many of which, I'm told, came out of New York. Songs that paid tribute to Haitian women, their courage, and urged them to not be just decorations,,, '..Ou gen lè w konprann oh, fanm se bèl biblo pou salon..' Songs that urged Haitian women not to wait, stand up, because your country is in danger: '

Pa rete tan Fanm Ayisyen pou nou kampe. Fann Ayisyen, peyi nou an danje. '

These songs were sung, I'm informed, on Haitian radio in New York and at various community mobilizing events and would filter back to Haiti through Haitian radio.

Kòkòt, Alina Sixto, Miriam Dorisme, Sò Ann, Gladys, Minouche, Marlene, Gina, Marie Claude, Monique, they make up part of the women in New York who took part, at various levels, of this movement to mobilize Haitians to support Haitian democracy and rights. The artist who sung the songs fed off their street movement and local activism events. The street movement fed off the electric mobilization of the artist's inspiring and redemptive lyrics.

The Lavalas Movement abroad didn't spring up from nowhere.

*

Kòkòt's generation supported these movements for Haitian rights, culture, sovereignty and justice. She wasn't the leadership. She was the foot soldier attending the Haitian plays. She was a face in the crowd supporting the conscious Haitian artists who came to Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn on Sunday afternoons. Elderly Kòkòt was the Haitian woman who cooked and sold the food, beverages and pastries that folks enjoyed at these community gatherings.

Unfortunately many, from that 'educated' realm, including some of those artist, didn't stay the course that Kòkòt held until the very end. Many became too 'educated,' or too vested in assimilation, or too 'intellectual' or 'radical' to respect the 'small works' of women like Kòkòt. But the achievement of Kòkòt's generation is more than noteworthy. Her generation held on. Kept the Haitian radio stations involved. Inspired me, who came later. Inspired and informed HLLN's work.

For, it is what's left of Kòkòt's generation in New York and their constant hell raising that has brought us to where we are today. To where no matter what coup d’etat is made against Haitians, tyranny is forced to retreat.

Folks like Kòkòt, Alina Sixto, Gina and Kamarad Weber made mostly all the protests demonstrations. They spread the word. They help gel a fragmented immigrant community. Helped unify it against the reign of Duvalier. They supported those who organized passive protests against Duvalier even if they then had to put masks on their faces in the streets of New York. Then, when the time came, they stood up behind the Lavalas Movement. They are the faceless fighters, the backbone of the Haitian resistance in the New York Tri-State area.

We know them by the work they've done. The lives they've touched and made better.

The Lavalas Movement didn't spring up from nowhere.

It spring up from the bowels of strong, but almost self-effacing, Haitian women like Kòkot and Haitian men like Kamarad Weber. From one generation to the next, the fight for liberty, dignity, sovereignty and against imperialism and tyranny in Haiti continues through them. Kòkòt is part of the continuum of our movement. Like thousands of Haitians, her wish was not to die in exile, but to return to a peaceful and sovereign Haiti.

Komite Beton Devan Loni

I will always remember Kòkòt as part of Komite Beton Devan Loni. For Kòkòt's street smarts and courage has provided me with the courage to represent Haitians at some very high level meetings throughout the years. In 1998 and again in 2000, in writing about what inspired me to step into the Haitian struggle for dignity and human rights, I wrote this about Kòkòt:

'..there, in Haiti,

during my war with USAID, whenever i got anxious, i remembered this one old Haitian lady, named Genevieve “Kòkòt” Laguerre, and fifteen others, living in New York, who had, for three years during the Aristide exile, sat continuously outside the UN, protesting the coup against President Aristide and U.S. complicity in it.

Kòkòt was frail, small and spoke in a whispery gravely voice. She once told me that people used to step over her thinking she was a homeless beggar while she froze out there in the American rain, sleet and snow in front of the United Nations building between 42nd and First Avenue. Kòkòt (or, “Coquote,” if written in French) would, in one hand, waive her “We want Aristide back” placard, and in the other hand, be waiving her little blue and red Haitian flag. Sometimes she would simply wrapped herself up in a huge Haitian flag and just walk around at the picket lines, vigils and demonstrations. Kòkòt was a true patriot. She lived her talk.

Old Kòkòt and the other Haitian women with her, brought their rice and beans and fried plantain lunches and went everyday into the New York cold. Never missing not one day, whether it was Christmas, Thanksgiving or whatever holiday. They were there in front of the U.N. to demonstrate for Haitian sovereignty and to demand an end the suffering of over ten million Haitian folks. They, not the twenty thousand U.S. soldiers had brought Aristide back to office in 1994.

Here i am now in Haiti to do my part. My English was not broken. i had an aunt, a relative, a surrogate mother who reminded me of Kòkòt.

Old fearless Kòkòt, she would always give me big hugs at the demonstrations. Happy, she said to see a young Haitian-American person there. No one ever wrote about old Kòkòt’s magnificent courage and sacrifices. She, Alina Sixto, Sò Ann, Miriam Dorisme and Farah Juste of Veye Yo when she came up to New York from Miami, where the Haitian women living in the U.S., the fanm vayan extroadinaire i came to know in the struggle for Haitian rights.

The more elderly amongst these Haitian women like Kòkòt and her other tireless makomeres – womenfriends – would suffer permanent health problems for their stentorian efforts in front of the U.N. between 1991 and 1994. Through rain, snow, storms and sleet, demonstration permit or no permit, for three years, between 1991 to 1994, these anonymous Haitian women in New York, these mothers, grandmothers and wives, these simple wage laborers – just ordinary Haitian women with no titles or great educational achievements; these Haitian women the world will never know, like Kòkòt, Gina, Claudette, Monique, Marie Claude along with Haitian men like, Yonel (who was shot dead in New York), all, were part of a group called “Diplomat de Beton.” A group petitioning the world’s most powerful to respect the Haitian majority’s democratic choice in Haiti.

They give us a glimpse of the Haitian footsoldiers doing the grind work that had to be done, showing the way. They were not in it for jobs, recognition or the photo opportunities. They were “Komite Beton (Devan Loni.)” Many of these women (and the men who stood with them) have passed away. They are Haitian women beholden to no one. Diplomat de Beton – the street diplomats of Haiti – whose Anacaona, Marie Jeanne and Cecile Fatiman-like passionate commitment and pure convictions, motivated me to go to Haiti. For, Kòkòt and her womenfriends, told me they couldn’t ever eat one meal in Brooklyn without feeling guilty about relatives in Haiti who were starving, dying and without hope. “We are their hope,” she would tell me. All those Haitian women and children who where raped, killed and mutilated during Haiti’s struggle for democracy since the fall of Baby Doc from 1986 to President Aristide’s return in 1994: “We are their hope.”

i remember thinking that Kòkòt herself, like the millions of Haitians in the Diaspora, also needed some relief so that she could have some peace of mind. So she could eat a meal without feeling guilty. Accept her blessings without the traumatizing guilt. Kòkòt wanted a new paradigm. She took a stand against the coup against President Aristide, back it up with three solid years of daily protests, even when all the “educated folks” said the return was impossible. Haitians like Kòkòt held their stand until the world caught up to them. They were the faces of the millions of unknown Haitian footsoldiers who helped turn around the U.S.-supported 1991 coup against the people of Haiti. ' ( Kenbe La!: Crossings of a Vodun-Roots Music, ©1998 and © 2000 by Marguerite Laurent. www.margueritelaurent.com/writings/kenbe_la_chapter3.html )

FAREWELL RECOLLECTIONS:

I remember Kokòt as the elderly Haitian woman who cooked food for sale to bring to demonstrations, mobilization events and the Clara Barton High School meetings in Brooklyn, New York.

If I had a presentation to make, Kòkòt would always save a hot plate of diri ak pwa she had cooked for when I got off stage. She made sure to put my plate aside.

At the demonstrations, during the first coup d'etat, Kòkòt liked me so much, she would always save me some of her mouth-watering, homemade Haitian candies – the sugary peanut or coconut cookies, – tablet pistach, tablet kokoye.

But Haitian women, like Kòkòt fed my generation more than plates of food at activist gatherings. They past to us a 500-year-old torch, made out of the blood, bones and will of generations upon generations, millions upon millions of Blacks in Haiti who had died so that an independent Haiti, ruled by a Haitian people's government, could start the process of building democracy, and social and economic justice in Haiti.

With the death of Miriam Dorisme, Kamarad Weber and now Kòkot, I feel a generation is passing.

A generation of Haiti's freedom fighters who did much of their work in New York.

A generation of footsoldiers, who are unknown outside of their Haitian communities, in Haiti and in the US, who died in exile in New York, still pushing, now for the second time, for the return of President Jean Bertrand Aristide, the release of the political prisoners, the respect for Haitian dignity, liberty and sovereignty.

Kòkot did not wish to see Haiti under foreign tutelage and the rabid Haitian elites' enjoying the positions they took, not by ethical behavior, but by force.

Today, September 8, 2006 is Kòkòt's funeral in New York.

Today, HLLN is remembering Kòkòt, her living legacy. To praise Kòkòt is to remember a proud Haitian continuum. It is to recall that like Toussaint Louverture and Rosalvo Bobo, President Jean Bertrand Aristide was also kidnapped by foreign troops out of Haiti because he represented the aspirations, hopes and dreams of the majority in Haiti, not that of the rabid Haitian elites and their macoutes.

No one beyond Haitian activists from New York and Haiti know her name. But she's passing the torch to the next generation of Haitians.

We know her by the work she's done. Like we know the unknown Maroons, unknown Cacos, and unknown Pikets; like we know all the unknown Lavalas men and women who follow the continuum starting way back from Queen Caonabo, to Makandal, Boukman, Kapwa Lamò, Cecil Fatiman, Mari Jeanne, Dessalines, down to Goman (the Maroon who never stopped fighting even after independence and especially after Dessaline's assassination,) to Jean Jacques Acaau, the legendary leader of the Pikets.

We know Kòkòt like we know the unknown but greatly hunted legendary militants of Haiti.

The Lavalas Movement didn't spring up from nowhere.

It sprung up from the bowels of a five centuries old movement that has been betrayed by its own, many, many times over.

But we remember the life and work of Kòkòt today, as we lay her down to rest, because she never lost hope. Never stopped midway. Never was anything but Lavalas '- the flood of pain that rose up after the Duvalier reign in the form of Haiti's soulful cry for liberation, sovereignty and dignity.

Today, is Kòkot's funeral.

Today, we Haitian activists in New York, who held on through the darkest of nights after the 2004 coup d'etat are taking time to bury a relentless fighter for Haitian dignity.

We will fight from one generation to the next.

Thank you Kòkòt.

Well done my mother. You deserve your rest Kòkot. Because you have done it, so shall we follow your example and stay the course until the end, never betraying the Haitian people's movement, never giving any notice to the dream destroyers.

Kòkòt, we are in this for the duration. No coup d'etat held you down. So, no coup d'etat will hold us down. No slaughter, no cruelties, no sadness, no desperation imposed on Haiti, will stop us. For, none stopped you.

We will fight from one generation to the next.

Marguerite 'Ezili Danto' Laurent, Esq.
Founder and Chair,
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
September 8, 2006

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Forwarded by the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
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