Bwa Kayiman 2007 and the case of Lovinsky Pierre Antoine:
The Two Most Common Neocolonial Storylines about Haiti

by Ezili Danto
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.

 

 

 

[Students] Lewin, Coward and Ruscher said they couldn't adequately convey the level of poverty they witnessed.

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 convenient black-on-black crime dismissal where the manipulated Haiti image displays the fighting "troubled" 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 generous help provided by the benevolent, heroic and wealthier U.S./Euro white world.

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 thousand of them with different faces, same storyline on Haiti.

One group is heroic and self-less, 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, when the eyewitness - the students in the story - say, they "didn't see any civil unrest in the country."?

 

Why didn't the journalist report on the hundreds of Haitians with tickets from American Airlines, living abroad, who were stranded with no way of getting back to their families, children, work and livelihoods abroad and who, as a result of American Airlines' failure to send relief flights to Haiti, lost their jobs, suffered unendurably and were irreversibly affected by American Airlines' malevolence? (9 Haitians dead, one disappearance, 25 injured in Hurricane Dean; No other national group anywhere in the world sends money home in higher proportion than Haitians living abroad).

 

 

Why isn't there even one line to mention those Haitians living abroad, also visiting Haiti, come to serve their own sister, brothers, friends and relatives, but who, having no money or Rotary Club to help defray their extra expenses, suffered comparatively much, much more from the ravages of Hurricane Dean, but who will be back again, next month, regardless of American Airlines' humiliating them year after year, voyage after voyage while always taking their monies, always providing racist and unprofessional service to Black Haiti and Haitians?

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.

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 than 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."

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 only the wilfully blind or naive believe that whitefolks agenda in Haiti has anything to do with promoting democracy, development, compassion, freedom of expression and good governance.

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 extend 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).

The neocolonial storylines serve and reinforce the white settlers' Tarzan/Superman mythical compassion, sacrifice and heroism towards needy Black Haitians/Africans and to blunt and obfuscate the truth of U.S./Euro corporate, governmental and imperial bullying, injustice and barbarity in Haiti.

 

These storylines extend white hypocrisy to the nth degree, fostering the "godliness" of the Westerner convincing himself he bore the brunt of the ravages of Haiti's struggles and "helped" the needy Haitians. When the uncomplicated truth is that it's white systemic tyranny, ethnocentricity and neocolonialism and its consequences of underdevelopment in Haiti that leaves Haitians without access, opportunity and the material structures to protect themselves against acts of nature such as Hurricane Dean.

 

Nowhere in these storylines will you learn how the U.S. citizen's individual compassion (sincere as it may well be for some) extends dependency, paternalism and co-exists and is vastly overwhelmed by the white settlers' official and systemic, political, military, diplomatic, media and corporate tyranny and economic exploitation of Haiti and Haitians.

But Haitians are not as pitiful as being trumpeted by these neocolonial storylines. For, it may be observed that Haitians are so powerful that the greatest superpowers on earth and their mainstream medias spend their printing space spreading these two storylines and half truths on Haiti, in willing efforts, to ignore, diminish and re-cast Haiti's noble 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.
(https://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/ezilidanto
/2006-08/msg00001.html)

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.

Bwa Kayiman

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, http://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 Red, Black & Moonlight: Memoir of a Poet (Special Edition) - A Burnt Offering to the Ancestors ).
Nou lèd, nou la - we are ugly to the white settlers, but we are still here.

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, Charlemagne Peralte, Dred Wilmè... and all Haitians who rescue themselves, paid and are paying the ultimate price to rescue the dignity of the Africans in Haiti from the systemic brutality, tyranny and even "good intentions" of the white settlers.

One day, today Rochambeaus shall bow and recognize.

But Haitians don't live for that day. No. In this season, like Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, we are disappeared, ostracized, kidnapped*, belittled or summarily executed as "bandits" and "gangsters" by the Western authorities and their black overseers for claiming our humanity, right to self-reliance, self-defense, self-determination, equitable economic distribution and freedom from Western definitions, development and "rescue". If the Vodun Lwas - irreducible human essences - could be disappeared, ostracized, kidnapped, belittled or summarily executed as bandits and gangsters, Dessalines Haitians would, in this unendurably cruel season in time, have good cause to be worried.

Contradictions, paradoxes, dichotomies, the non-linear and serpentine path are our forte, don't immobilize most Haitians and give us an aneurysm as it seems to give the white settlers; putting forward these facile, self-serving, un-nuance ejaculations on Haiti and on the American narratives about the Westerners' shadow-less, un-bias and compassionate interactions with Black Haiti.

 

Generally Haitians have always seen how liberty, fraternity and democracy exist in the U.S. alongside slavery, genocide, exploitation, intolerance and tyranny - notably Black enslavement, exploitation and disenfranchisement in the Americas. And, from Bwa Kayiman to now, Haitians have rejected this structure of human interaction, governance and communication.

 

Haitians, as a people, struggle to transform this below, knowing no matter the misery, loss and suffering in time, that out of time, Nan Ginen, our safety lies - lives- wholly unformed by any storylines, (even our own), since before this "New World's" time began.

 

Handling the contradictions, issuing from source and traveling the serpentine path, that road less traveled, it is our own disinherited ancestors, both literally and allegorically, own gods and goddesses, brothers, sisters, our own umbilical chords to pre-colonial Africa and living Vodun deities - irreducible spirits and natural elements - that Haitians depend on for inspiration, comfort, rescue and salvation from the ravages of the U.S./Euros' "New World" and merciless narratives.

Haiti's founding father, General Jean Jacques Dessalines did what Spartacus couldn't, and no real Haitian will ever be stripped of that knowledge. Climbing misery's cliffs, is what Haitians are good at, and while this daily live-or-die struggle against white officialdom's inhumanity and hypocrysy - mouths speaking peace, hands conducting oppression and exploitation - uses all of a Haitian's skill and energy, it also paradoxically renders Haitians more compassionate towards white fear of losing dominance even in tiny Haiti, restores our strength - our belief in ourselves as white officialdom's most fearless survivors and living opponents.

 

Ezili Danto
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network ("HLLN")
August 23, 2007 (Revised Sept. 2007)
erzilidanto@yahoo.com

 

Djab la di l ap manje m, se pa vre
( from the Haitian spiritual: "Ogou oooo, wa dèzanj, djab la di la manje mwen se pa vre. Se pa vre Timoun yo, se pa vre. Sa se blag Timoun yo, sa se jwet. Gen Bondye, geyen lè sen yo. Djab la di l ap manje nou, se pa vre.....")
*******************

BOUKMAN'S PRAYER

CEREMONY BWA KAYIMAN, PART 1


BEYOND 2004: CEREMONY BWA KAYIMAN, PART 2
by Marguerite Laurent, (c) 2000 Marguerite Laurent

*Kidnapped - S'il s'agissait d’une disparution politique. La mort de Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine serait une declaration de guerre contre tous ceux qui luttent pour la democracie participative…......Le 29 Fevrier 2004, a ouvert la voix au kidnapping en Ayiti, comme en 1441 le Portugal avait ouvert - pour la premiere fois - le commerce de la traite des noires.” Commentaire de Franklin Ulysse, editorialiste : Ou est passe Lovinsky Pierre Antoine et qui est le serpent aux lunettes noires? |(mp3/ 6:29 - Emission Fanmi Lavalas, New York, Sept. 23, 2007)

Ezili Danto's Note: Bwa Kayiman 2007 and the case of Lovinsky Pierre Antoine Pierre by Ezili Dantò, For Haitian Perspective, and The FreeHaitiMovement, August 23, 2007
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/campaigns/campaignone/presswork/lovinsky2.html#kym07

 

Ezili Danto's note: Bwa Kayiman 2007 and the case of Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, by Ezili Dantò, Haitian Perspectives, August 23, 2007 for the FreeHaitiMovement

"...Black suffering and death (in Haiti) meant white profits and sweets...an axiom commonly used in France at the time of the French Revolution: "The Ivory Coast is a good mother."

- The Power of History: Haiti |Recorded, August 19, 2007 - MP3-3:34

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