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Ezili Dantò’s note: Bwa Kayiman 2007 and the case of Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, by Ezili Dantò Haitian Perspectives, August 23, 2007 for the FreeHaitiMovement Forwarded by the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
Bwa Kayiman 2007 and the case of Lovinsky Pierre Antoine I was just reading news articles on Haiti as I do every morning and came across an article about some Tallahassee students from Florida, who got stranded in Haiti because of Hurricane Dean. Here are some of the major points made in the article: “They sent relief flights to other Caribbean countries. They wouldn’t send any to Haiti due to so-called ‘civil unrest,’ Shamair Coward, an FSU student, said about the airlines. “Even though (the five U.S. students) didn’t see any civil unrest in the country where they had been offering medical assistance, they were stranded…But, their experience changed them and each said they will return. Lewin, Coward and Ruscher said they couldn’t adequately convey the level of poverty they witnessed. “The vast majority of the people were just trying to get through the day,” Lewin said. “You can never judge people by your perceptions or the reality of your life. Most people are exactly like you.” “The Rotary-sponsored Rotaract Club went to Haiti as part of Project Medishare – a nonprofit organization serving Haiti’s Central Plateau region with basic health-care needs. The trip was Rotaract Club’s first service project. Haiti’s mountains saved them from Hurricane Dean. “Thank God the hurricane didn’t hit Haiti,” Ruscher said. She said she felt bad for areas that got hit. She didn’t see how Haiti’s village of Thomonde with its stick-like houses and no doors could weather a Category 5 hurricane. “They didn’t have anything but they were proud of what they have,” Ruscher said. “In a world where there’s so much advancement and technology, people are still just looking for food to eat,” she said.” (See, “Trip to Haiti changes students” By Angeline Taylor) There are perhaps two common stories about Haiti that are retold ad nausea: One is, the “fighting Haitians” with the “winner take all politics and attitudes” who won’t allow Western countries to help them modernized and who are continually killing each other in “civil unrest” and who simply cannot absorb foreign aid or use effectively the help provided by the generous, benevolent and wealthier United States. The Tallahassee students article (”Trip to Haiti changes students”) is a good example of the second common news story on the “needy (and pitiful but proud) Haitians” of Haiti. That article tells the perpetual story of the poor, pitiful, proud and victimized Haitians and of the young, innocent, compassionate white American come to “do good” in Haiti. It’s a true article and I’ve read a thousands of them with different faces, same storyline on Haiti. One group is heroic, one group is helpless and proud victim and forever shall that be, as is intended, by the powers always not allowing there to be any relief from these pre-ordained roles and the racists and cultural biases it extends about Haitians from the time Haitians chose Africa instead of Europe at Bwa Kayiman, on August 14, 1791. What such stories don’t tell, is most important. Why didn’t American Airlines send relief flights to Haiti? Why didn’t the journalist question American Airlines on this “civil unrest” their claiming, which the eyewitness – the students in the story – say they “didn’t see any civil unrest in the country.” Because such inquiries wouldn’t assist the feel-good for-one-group point of the story; because the truth about Haiti’s pain and the profit-over-people-white-folks, the poverty pimps and their black overseers, who masturbate on Haiti’s Black pain is not what these stories want to convey. (9 Haitians dead, one disappearance, 25 injured in Hurricane Dean.) Moreover, these stories won’t convey this: how the poverty in Haiti is induced by their own mean-spirited powerful Western governments; how there are more “compassionate” NGO’s in Haiti then anywhere else in the world, how this aid has never changed the storylines for Haiti. For there are constant stories such as this, where compassionate Westerners go to Haiti for the first time, are “changed,” become “more compassionate” and are compelled to “return to Haiti to-do-more-good.” Yet, Haiti’s containment in poverty has gone on, for the majority of Haitians, for over two hundred years. And as the article points out: “In a world where there’s so much advancement and technology, people are still just looking for food to eat.” What is going on? Why, if there are more NGO’s and such charitable non-profit organizations concentrated in Haiti than anywhere else in the world? Why, if these compassionate Westerners are continually returning to do “good” in Haiti, for over 200-years, have there not been any significant advancements made and the vast majority of Haitians in Haiti are poor and still just looking for food to eat? Because the same “civilized white” folks who wouldn’t send relief flights to Haiti so these U.S. students could get home are the same mindsets of peoples who own the countries Haiti had beat in combat and who still extends their wrath on Haitians whether it is to refuse to send relief flights after a hurricane or by their 33 negative foreign interventions to destroy whatever structures Haitians had built, sponsoring themselves those civil unrest/coup d’etats on Haiti to continue to punish Haitians in all sorts of ways and thereby maintain those two storylines intact, until eternity comes. Haiti is always being belittled and ostracized by those powers. (See, Media Lies and Real Haiti News). But Haitians are not as pitiful as being trumpeted by these neocolonial storylines. We-haitians are not pitiful but so powerful that the greatest superpowers on earth and their mainstream media spent all their time spreading lies and half truths about Haiti’s David-against-Goliath-Herculean struggle. This reality also brings to mind that we are in the month of August and that August 14, 2007 marked the anniversary of the ceremony that began the Haitian revolution where Haitians forever changed world history, annihilated (for a time) those two storylines and broke their chains themselves, found “relief flights” for themselves. It reminds me that though Haiti still suffers for that great feat everyday, and in a myriad of ways, it can never actually be undone. Remembering the price Haitians pay for saving themselves-Remembering Lovinsky Pierre Antoine and Boukman’s Prayer To remember why these Western storylines still exist, why tiny Haiti is under such a brutal Western occupation today…and, to recall and celebrate it is because we Dessalines-Haitians are STILL who we are, every August, Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (”HLLN”) re-post Boukman’s Prayer at Bwa Kayiman and commemorates Bwa Kayiman for the FreeHaitiMovement. This August, we also take the opportunity to thank all those who are standing up for Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, a tireless Haitian human rights advocate who went missing on August 12, 2007. (Who benefits from silencing and eliminating Lovinsky Pierre Antoine? – HLLN continues its coverage and analysis of the abduction of Lovinksy Pierre Antoine in Haiti.; It’s Neither Hope nor Progress When the International Community is Running Haiti.) As it happens, this past August 14, 2007, HLLN was busy working on getting information to share with the Network on Lovinsky’s disappearance. Today we catch up by featuring both Lovinsky Pierre Antoine and Ceremony Bwa Kayiman in this annual HLLN post. And ask, once again, for all of you receiving this email to write, fax, call, insist, tell whoever it is that is trying to silence this Haitian voice, tell whoever it is who has taken Lovinsky Pierre Antoine that an international audience deeply concerned about the fate of Lovinsky Pierre Antoine is witnessing their actions. Help HLLN raise the international concern and visibility of this human rights violation case. Help save the life of Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, stop his torture, prevent his execution by the traditional imperialist powers so fearful of Black sovereignty and authentic Haitianist development. On August 14, 1791, a Vodun ceremony was held in Haiti at Bwa Kayiman that began the successful Haitian revolution and got rid of both European enslavement of Africans in Haiti and colonialism. The word “Vodun” means “sacred energies” in the Fon African language. It was at Bwa Kayiman that a “lwa,” meaning “an irreducible essence,” called “Ezili Dantò” and known in Haitian mythology and in the Vodun living religion, as the mother warrior/love goddess, danced in the head of a Haitian priestess named Cecile Fatiman who presided at that great gathering of the amalgamated African tribes in Haiti. ( “Ezili Danto’s biography, www.margueritelaurent.com/ezilidanto_bio.html) Below, after Boukman’s Prayer, are monologues on Bwa Kayiman, written by Marguerite “Ezili Danto” Laurent, Chair of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network and an award winning performance poet. (Carnegie Hall clip; Red, Black & Moonlight video reel; and and Red, Black & Moonlight: Memoir of a Poet (Special Edition) – A Burnt Offering to the Ancestors ). Nou La! Lovinsky Pierre Antoine’s work shall be taken up by a thousand other Haitians. No compassionate white settler (no matter how sincere, aware/unaware); no poverty-NGO-or-Western-governmental-pimps may ever supplant the noble life force of Haitians like Makandal, Boukman, Kapwa Lamò, Dessalines, Defile, Mari Jann, Toya, Fatiman, Charlemagne Peralte, Dred Wilmè… who paid the ultimate price to rescue the dignity of the Africans in Haiti from the brutality of the white settlers. One day, today Rochambeaus shall bow and recognize. BOUKMAN’S PRAYER CEREMONY BWA KAYIMAN, PART 1 BEYOND 2004: CEREMONY BWA KAYIMAN, PART 2 Forwarded by the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network |
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