The national chatter revolves around the sanctions that are hitting a former president. Those who elected or appointed him, pampered him, protected him, are now denouncing him and cornering him
Misfortune runs so fast that they quickly forgot those forty anonymous people who died in a mixture of water and fire, while they were trying to migrate to improbable places to find a life. Death has become that sad routine that the poet spoke of, except that social injustice does not even offer the poor the luxury of a cemetery.
The national chatter revolves around the sanctions that are hitting a former president. Those who elected or appointed him, pampered him, protected him, are now denouncing him and cornering him.
Who changed?
Neither him nor them. Everything we pretend to discover today, everyone knew for a long time.
The corruption of some, the cynicism of others. Nothing new under the sun. You serve me, I cover you. You no longer serve me, I no longer cover you.
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Solino. The gangs want to settle. The population protests, demonstrates. It is the only weapon they have left against laxity and weapons. They lose their homes, their meager income. They only have their voice left. A meager hope: to be heard.
The police charge with tear gas. While the presidential council and the government are not able (yet?) to convince that they are really committed to fighting crime. This is the worst negative sign that the institutions, the police and the political power have given to the population, this repression of a demonstration, more than legitimate.
Should the people suffer without having the right to anger? What genius thinks of this kind of stupidity and how can the population not think that the government is against them after such acts! Jovenel Moïse had done the same. Ariel Henry had done the same. Is this the image of continuity in the repression against the population and the impotence against the gangs that the current government wants to give?
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Electoral council in perpetual gestation, designations and disputes… Dignitaries of the Ariel debacle who dare to claim positions… Political leaders who are busy, others who seem to suffer from drowsiness… On the social level, the sinking of some in the defense of their privilege, others who try to survive, still others who try by all means to obtain some privilege. Never, in this country, have we been so afraid of the other. Never have we been so far from an “us”.
In Port-au-Prince and probably in other cities, we are nothing more than the places we do not go, the things we do not do, the people we do not meet, because by losing ours in prohibitions and mistrust, we cannot assume humanity in others.
There would remain art. Not to distance ourselves from our civic obligations, but to give them an expression that attests to them and goes beyond them. But there again, the roads are blocked, the gaps too great, the ugly reflexes too powerful.
The Haitian landscape today, a country that risks losing its way and its song.
Par Lyonel Trouillot
Cover image edited by AyiboPost.
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Poet, novelist, literary critic and screenwriter, Lyonel Trouillot studied law.
