Recent short video feature members of our team: Nelis, Madam K. and CEO (Chief Eternal Optimist) Mesye Toma, sending words of appreciation to you, the reader.
Haiti Direkt from the Mountain:
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| The initial construction, assembling PVC piping. Watch out for wandering cows... |
Might Did Not Make It Right
Part 1
by Marie-Josée Mont-Reynaud, March 2002
The author, age 15, in rural Haiti, learning from and with the youth of Mon Bouton
American Marines entered Haiti in 1915 in order to maintain peace and help stabilize the Haitian government. They occupied Haiti until 1934, controlling the Republic through a puppet Haitian government. This Occupation failed to achieve its goal of building a democratic government that would last after its forces departed. This paper ascribes this failure to the predominantly military character of the occupation, which undermined the sovereignty of the Haitian Republic and the development of democracy.
Many American officials involved in the Occupation believed their efforts were to aid in the peaceful governance of the country because Haitians were deemed incapable of such. American attitudes toward Haitians were typically paternalistic, claiming, for example “these people had never heard of democracy and couldn’t have comprehended it had they heard.”[1]
This paper maintains that Haitians did not want foreign intervention; Americans were in Haiti because they wanted to be there, not because they had been invited, and they remained there only by military force. The will of the Haitian people was not expressed because Haitian political sovereignty was constrained by the American military. This survey of the literature shows that military force was used to impose a democracy by undemocratic means. Elections under the Occupation were rigged; a treaty was passed by force; martial law was declared; military tribunals were held; the press was censored; the Haitian Senate was dissolved; the constitution was changed by an unconstitutional plebiscite, and opposition was violently repressed.
These procedures reveal the ideology of the Occupation forces that "Might could Make Right" in Haiti.
(Part 2, in forthcoming Blog post)
Food doesn’t grow on trees…
Food doesn’t grow on trees here. It must be coaxed, nurtured, wheedled, and cajoled out of the dry earth.
Mostly, if you try to grow carrots, the piglets will dig them up; mostly carrots, like mostly everything else, has to be purchased up at the weekly market at the site of old Fort Kampon.
This market, “upstairs," as I quipped, is an hours' hike, depending on if you are Haitian or blan and the time of day. My neighbors are out the door with laden baskets on their heads by 4 a.m. If I make it out before 7, the hike will go faster before the sun gets strong.
Yes, it can take me 2 hours.
The Fort Kampon market is where Madame Andre taught me how to sell rice by the tin can, yon gwo marmite, yon ti mamite.
It was one of those cans from Maxwell House coffee — yes they used small tomato sauce cans, and Maxwell House, coffee tins, precious containers.
And no, you would never, ever throw away a plastic bag!
