Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Friday, November 30, 2012
Letter from Haiti
Letter from Haiti
By Michael Deibert
The Huffington Post
(Please read the original article here)
During late November, the clouds hung low over Port-au-Prince, pregnant with the threat of rain. When it did issue forth, life in Haiti's overpopulated capital, partially destroyed in a January 2010 earthquake but still vibrant between the Caribbean Sea and looming mountains, continued irrepressibly on. Moto-taxi drivers plied the streets in their jaunty raincoats, and people continued hawking anything there was to sell under any surface providing shelter from the deluge.
In the middle of one Saturday afternoon, with clouds rumbling down from the mountainside, a group of about 200 young men commandeered the central Place St. Pierre square in the tony suburb of Petionville, halting traffic and periodically hurling bottles in various directions (one of which shattered at my feet). The lads thumped their chests for about three hours before moving on. Their message was that life was too expensive for people in Haiti and that Haiti's President Michel Martelly, whom they said they had previously supported, wasn't doing enough to ameliorate the situation.
Martelly, in his previous life perhaps the most well-known (and most frequently cross-dressing) purveyor of the sinuous Haitian music known as konpa and popularly known as Sweet Micky or Tèt Kale (Bald Head), was not even in the country at the time, a fact not lost on the protesters.
In office since May 2011, Martelly was winding up a long trip to Europe during which he addressed the European Parliament, attended the Ibero-American Summit in Spain and met with the Pope at the Vatican. He was even absent from Haiti during the must-attend 18 November anniversary of the Battle of Vertières, the 1803 clash during which the rebel Haitian army defeated the French near the northern city of Cap-Haïtien and thus paved the way for Haiti's declaration of independence soon thereafter.
"He wants to work well for the people," said a middle-aged taxi driver named Jackson plying the road near the airport, summing up popular sentiment. "But the problem is his entourage."
Elected to succeed René Préval, the only democratically-elected president in Haiti's 208 year history to finish his term in office (a feat the wily, white-bearded Préval managed twice), the political novice Martelly inherited a to-do list that would have daunted even the most skilled politico.
Much of the country's capital was leveled and some 200,000 people believed killed in the January 2010 earthquake, which at one point had left at least 1.5 million people homeless. Tent encampments dotted the capital and its environs and a cholera epidemic, almost certainly brought to the country by the rather-unloved UN peacekeeping mission in place since the 2004 ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has thus far killed more than 7,500 people.
The most basic services and healthcare remain out of reach of much of the nation's 10 million inhabitants, scattered in far-off provincial districts reached by badly decayed roads. A gradual diminution of Haiti's security situation since the tumultuous ballot that led to Martelly's election culminated last month with the spectacular arrest of Clifford Brandt, scion of one of Haiti's wealthiest families, as the alleged mastermind behind a long-running kidnapping ring.
Also arrested as part of the gang was the commander of a security unit from Martelly's National Palace (there has been no suggestion the president himself was involved), who entered prison as Calixte Valentin, a Martelly advisor accused of murder, exited it. Former members of the country's army, demobilized but not constitutionally disbanded by Aristide in 1995, continue to agitate for the force's reinstatement despite the existence of a police force - the Police Nationale d'Haïti or PNH - currently numbering some 10,000 recruits. A battle over the composition of the country's electoral council has raged for months.
"A stabilization process is taking place albeit a fragile one," says Mariano Fernández, the Chilean diplomat who heads the UN's peacekeeping mission, known by its acronym MINUSTAH, which is envisioned to be scaled back to around 6,300 military personnel in coming months. "We continue planning to reduce and reconfigure MINUSTAH in the coming years depending on the stability of the conditions."
The last caveat is an important one. Haiti's security forces have enjoyed a steadily-improving reputation since the 2006 inauguration of Martelly's predecessor Préval. It has been a marked change from Aristide's 2001-2004 tenure, when politically-connected partisans were inserted into the PNH regardless of their competency or culpability in various crimes, or that of a 2004-2006 interim government when police often made little distinction between armed pro-Aristide gangs and ordinary residents of the capital's poorer neighborhoods.
Until recently, the PNH were headed by Mario Andrésol, widely regarded as one of the most honest and competent officials in the country and who was replaced by Gotson Aurélus in August. Since then, something of a delicate realignment has been taking place. It is widely believed that Secretary of State for Public Security Reginald Delva exercises more operational control over the PNH than Minister of Justice Jean Renel Sanon, his nominal boss. A former senator, Joseph Lambert, now a Martelly advisor, is also spoken of as wielding influence beyond what one would expect.
Though the Brandt arrest was greeted with a gasp in much of the international community (this is, after all, the strata of society most international actors interact with) in Haiti the view was more circumspect.
"The bourgeois control the police with their money, and a lot of police officers also provide security for businesses and the private sector because there is no control, and they can receive more money for their work," says Pierre Espérance, the Executive Director of the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains, Haiti's most prominent human rights organization. "Each kidnapping gang has its connection with the police."
Despite such realities, one of Martelly's chief plans of attack appears to be an attempt to re-band Haiti and change its relentlessly negative image from a place solely of natural disaster, coups, misery and death to one of a place open to investment and boasting a vibrant and tourist-friendly culture.
Though this approach has been rather too smugly sneered at by the international chattering class that comments on Haiti, most people I spoke with in the country actually saw its value and supported it in principle, even if they didn't quite understand why the president was spending so much time abroad.
There is some evidence that Martelly's approach may be succeeding. The president, ever the extrovert natural showman, would seem a perfect fit for such a campaign. In July, the president even declared a three day out-of-season Carnaval des fleurs (Carnival of Flowers) designed to highlight the country's flair for music and pageantry. The camps from the central part of the capital have mostly been cleared, but with some to their inhabitants relocated to a windswept moonscape situated on denuded land on a road leading north out of the city
A new industrial park in the country's north - which itself has hardly been free from controversy - was opened in October, with, among others, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and British billionaire Richard Branson in attendance. The lure of potential gold reserves in northern Haiti has brought a number of international mining companies, some with questionable records, to stake claims on huge swathes of land, creating economic potential but only of the most fraught kind.
Though the vast overpopulation of the capital - a consequence in part of international economic policies inflicted upon Haiti - helped lead to the vast death toll from the earthquake, the decentralization of economic and political power from Port-au-Prince still remains an agonizingly slow and complex process. Privately, many in Haiti's business community, intensely nationalistic at heart despite their comfortable economic status, complain the country has been "invaded" by foreign companies and non-governmental organizations.
In some economically struggling communities, the feeling is one of hopes delayed if not dashed entirely.
"We liked Martelly and we thought he would help a lot of people," says Pè Nico, a diminutive young man whose moniker ("Father Nico") belies his youthful appearance. "But this neighborhood has always been forgotten."
Pushing 30 years old but looking barely into his 20s and resplendent in a Miami Heat baseball cap, Pè Nico leads an armed faction in the capital's quartier populaire of St. Martin, an area of deeply-rutted roads and at times precarious-looking structures from which the PNH and MINUSTAH appear completely absent.
Pè Nico's baz say they voted - "99%" in their words - for Martelly. In their neighborhood, once a war zone and still subject to occasional bouts of violence, residents have been tending to the Partnership for Peace and Prosperity in Saint Martin, under whose aegis members of the private sector operating in the zone and local community leaders have sought dialogue and improvement in living conditions there. The two sides began talking in 2007 and, even through the earthquake and after, they are still talking. It is perhaps a hopeful sign.
I had known Martelly very slightly in his previous life as Sweet Micky. We spent a memorable evening more than a decade ago cruising through Port-au-Prince in his SUV with a loaded pistol between us as he bemoaned the state of Haiti and the irresponsibility of its leaders both political and economic, a scene depicted in a book I later wrote about the country.
When I visited Haiti in August 2011, just after Martelly's election, I found popular support for the colorful, eccentric president among the pep la, as Haiti's struggling class (which is to say almost everybody) is known, still high.
Despite the eroding of that hope when confronted with the immense challenge of governing Haiti and his own missteps, Haitians still seem to be giving Martelly the benefit of the doubt.
So many factors - rising food prices, civil unrest underwritten by various malefactors, another natural calamity - could change that. But in a country whose leaders have often promoted themselves through terror and abuse, Martelly - whose signature colour is pink - has offered something of a change of tone, however unorthodox.
On my last day in Haiti, purely by chance, my path overlapped with that of Michel Martelly.
Waiting at the airport to board my flight home, I saw Martelly's American Airlines plane fly in from Miami. As if on cue and so apt for a showman, the cloudy gloom that had plagued the capital for days broke and rays of brilliant golden sunshine spilled out of a blue sky. Diplomats, Haitian police officers in their crisp khaki uniforms and every airport worker that could sneak away from their job were standing there to greet him. He was going to be inaugurating a new arrival hall, they told me, then this week he would be leaving again, this time for Cuba.
Martelly disembarked from the plane, his bald head and smiling visage visible among the mostly smaller Haitians.
They cheered.
Michael Deibert's forthcoming book, Democratic Republic of Congo: Between Hope and Despair, will be published by Zed Books in cooperation with the Royal African Society, the International African Institute and the Social Science Research Council. His previous book, Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories Press, 2005), was praised by the Miami Herald as "a powerfully documented exposé" and by the San Antonio Express-News as "a compelling mix of reportage, memoir and social criticism."
By Michael Deibert
The Huffington Post
(Please read the original article here)
During late November, the clouds hung low over Port-au-Prince, pregnant with the threat of rain. When it did issue forth, life in Haiti's overpopulated capital, partially destroyed in a January 2010 earthquake but still vibrant between the Caribbean Sea and looming mountains, continued irrepressibly on. Moto-taxi drivers plied the streets in their jaunty raincoats, and people continued hawking anything there was to sell under any surface providing shelter from the deluge.
In the middle of one Saturday afternoon, with clouds rumbling down from the mountainside, a group of about 200 young men commandeered the central Place St. Pierre square in the tony suburb of Petionville, halting traffic and periodically hurling bottles in various directions (one of which shattered at my feet). The lads thumped their chests for about three hours before moving on. Their message was that life was too expensive for people in Haiti and that Haiti's President Michel Martelly, whom they said they had previously supported, wasn't doing enough to ameliorate the situation.
Martelly, in his previous life perhaps the most well-known (and most frequently cross-dressing) purveyor of the sinuous Haitian music known as konpa and popularly known as Sweet Micky or Tèt Kale (Bald Head), was not even in the country at the time, a fact not lost on the protesters.
In office since May 2011, Martelly was winding up a long trip to Europe during which he addressed the European Parliament, attended the Ibero-American Summit in Spain and met with the Pope at the Vatican. He was even absent from Haiti during the must-attend 18 November anniversary of the Battle of Vertières, the 1803 clash during which the rebel Haitian army defeated the French near the northern city of Cap-Haïtien and thus paved the way for Haiti's declaration of independence soon thereafter.
"He wants to work well for the people," said a middle-aged taxi driver named Jackson plying the road near the airport, summing up popular sentiment. "But the problem is his entourage."
Elected to succeed René Préval, the only democratically-elected president in Haiti's 208 year history to finish his term in office (a feat the wily, white-bearded Préval managed twice), the political novice Martelly inherited a to-do list that would have daunted even the most skilled politico.
Much of the country's capital was leveled and some 200,000 people believed killed in the January 2010 earthquake, which at one point had left at least 1.5 million people homeless. Tent encampments dotted the capital and its environs and a cholera epidemic, almost certainly brought to the country by the rather-unloved UN peacekeeping mission in place since the 2004 ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has thus far killed more than 7,500 people.
The most basic services and healthcare remain out of reach of much of the nation's 10 million inhabitants, scattered in far-off provincial districts reached by badly decayed roads. A gradual diminution of Haiti's security situation since the tumultuous ballot that led to Martelly's election culminated last month with the spectacular arrest of Clifford Brandt, scion of one of Haiti's wealthiest families, as the alleged mastermind behind a long-running kidnapping ring.
Also arrested as part of the gang was the commander of a security unit from Martelly's National Palace (there has been no suggestion the president himself was involved), who entered prison as Calixte Valentin, a Martelly advisor accused of murder, exited it. Former members of the country's army, demobilized but not constitutionally disbanded by Aristide in 1995, continue to agitate for the force's reinstatement despite the existence of a police force - the Police Nationale d'Haïti or PNH - currently numbering some 10,000 recruits. A battle over the composition of the country's electoral council has raged for months.
"A stabilization process is taking place albeit a fragile one," says Mariano Fernández, the Chilean diplomat who heads the UN's peacekeeping mission, known by its acronym MINUSTAH, which is envisioned to be scaled back to around 6,300 military personnel in coming months. "We continue planning to reduce and reconfigure MINUSTAH in the coming years depending on the stability of the conditions."
The last caveat is an important one. Haiti's security forces have enjoyed a steadily-improving reputation since the 2006 inauguration of Martelly's predecessor Préval. It has been a marked change from Aristide's 2001-2004 tenure, when politically-connected partisans were inserted into the PNH regardless of their competency or culpability in various crimes, or that of a 2004-2006 interim government when police often made little distinction between armed pro-Aristide gangs and ordinary residents of the capital's poorer neighborhoods.
Until recently, the PNH were headed by Mario Andrésol, widely regarded as one of the most honest and competent officials in the country and who was replaced by Gotson Aurélus in August. Since then, something of a delicate realignment has been taking place. It is widely believed that Secretary of State for Public Security Reginald Delva exercises more operational control over the PNH than Minister of Justice Jean Renel Sanon, his nominal boss. A former senator, Joseph Lambert, now a Martelly advisor, is also spoken of as wielding influence beyond what one would expect.
Though the Brandt arrest was greeted with a gasp in much of the international community (this is, after all, the strata of society most international actors interact with) in Haiti the view was more circumspect.
"The bourgeois control the police with their money, and a lot of police officers also provide security for businesses and the private sector because there is no control, and they can receive more money for their work," says Pierre Espérance, the Executive Director of the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains, Haiti's most prominent human rights organization. "Each kidnapping gang has its connection with the police."
Despite such realities, one of Martelly's chief plans of attack appears to be an attempt to re-band Haiti and change its relentlessly negative image from a place solely of natural disaster, coups, misery and death to one of a place open to investment and boasting a vibrant and tourist-friendly culture.
Though this approach has been rather too smugly sneered at by the international chattering class that comments on Haiti, most people I spoke with in the country actually saw its value and supported it in principle, even if they didn't quite understand why the president was spending so much time abroad.
There is some evidence that Martelly's approach may be succeeding. The president, ever the extrovert natural showman, would seem a perfect fit for such a campaign. In July, the president even declared a three day out-of-season Carnaval des fleurs (Carnival of Flowers) designed to highlight the country's flair for music and pageantry. The camps from the central part of the capital have mostly been cleared, but with some to their inhabitants relocated to a windswept moonscape situated on denuded land on a road leading north out of the city
A new industrial park in the country's north - which itself has hardly been free from controversy - was opened in October, with, among others, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and British billionaire Richard Branson in attendance. The lure of potential gold reserves in northern Haiti has brought a number of international mining companies, some with questionable records, to stake claims on huge swathes of land, creating economic potential but only of the most fraught kind.
Though the vast overpopulation of the capital - a consequence in part of international economic policies inflicted upon Haiti - helped lead to the vast death toll from the earthquake, the decentralization of economic and political power from Port-au-Prince still remains an agonizingly slow and complex process. Privately, many in Haiti's business community, intensely nationalistic at heart despite their comfortable economic status, complain the country has been "invaded" by foreign companies and non-governmental organizations.
In some economically struggling communities, the feeling is one of hopes delayed if not dashed entirely.
"We liked Martelly and we thought he would help a lot of people," says Pè Nico, a diminutive young man whose moniker ("Father Nico") belies his youthful appearance. "But this neighborhood has always been forgotten."
Pushing 30 years old but looking barely into his 20s and resplendent in a Miami Heat baseball cap, Pè Nico leads an armed faction in the capital's quartier populaire of St. Martin, an area of deeply-rutted roads and at times precarious-looking structures from which the PNH and MINUSTAH appear completely absent.
Pè Nico's baz say they voted - "99%" in their words - for Martelly. In their neighborhood, once a war zone and still subject to occasional bouts of violence, residents have been tending to the Partnership for Peace and Prosperity in Saint Martin, under whose aegis members of the private sector operating in the zone and local community leaders have sought dialogue and improvement in living conditions there. The two sides began talking in 2007 and, even through the earthquake and after, they are still talking. It is perhaps a hopeful sign.
I had known Martelly very slightly in his previous life as Sweet Micky. We spent a memorable evening more than a decade ago cruising through Port-au-Prince in his SUV with a loaded pistol between us as he bemoaned the state of Haiti and the irresponsibility of its leaders both political and economic, a scene depicted in a book I later wrote about the country.
When I visited Haiti in August 2011, just after Martelly's election, I found popular support for the colorful, eccentric president among the pep la, as Haiti's struggling class (which is to say almost everybody) is known, still high.
Despite the eroding of that hope when confronted with the immense challenge of governing Haiti and his own missteps, Haitians still seem to be giving Martelly the benefit of the doubt.
So many factors - rising food prices, civil unrest underwritten by various malefactors, another natural calamity - could change that. But in a country whose leaders have often promoted themselves through terror and abuse, Martelly - whose signature colour is pink - has offered something of a change of tone, however unorthodox.
On my last day in Haiti, purely by chance, my path overlapped with that of Michel Martelly.
Waiting at the airport to board my flight home, I saw Martelly's American Airlines plane fly in from Miami. As if on cue and so apt for a showman, the cloudy gloom that had plagued the capital for days broke and rays of brilliant golden sunshine spilled out of a blue sky. Diplomats, Haitian police officers in their crisp khaki uniforms and every airport worker that could sneak away from their job were standing there to greet him. He was going to be inaugurating a new arrival hall, they told me, then this week he would be leaving again, this time for Cuba.
Martelly disembarked from the plane, his bald head and smiling visage visible among the mostly smaller Haitians.
They cheered.
Michael Deibert's forthcoming book, Democratic Republic of Congo: Between Hope and Despair, will be published by Zed Books in cooperation with the Royal African Society, the International African Institute and the Social Science Research Council. His previous book, Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories Press, 2005), was praised by the Miami Herald as "a powerfully documented exposé" and by the San Antonio Express-News as "a compelling mix of reportage, memoir and social criticism."
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Hommage a Préfète Duffaut
Hommage a Préfète Duffaut
Dr Frantz Large
Tous ceux qui se rendent a la ville de Jacmel connaissent cet endroit précis de le route ou, tel un flash leur est donnée une première vue du lieu ou ils se rendent : Jacmel.
Oui c’est bien cela, un flash. Baignés de soleil, les collines, les pâtés de maison, et, bien évidemment ce qui baigne tout, ce qui explique tout : la Mer
« Un peuple prisonnier de la mer » disait Barthes au sujet de l’Iphigénie de Racine.
A Jacmel, la ville natale de Préfète, tout est prisonnier de la Mer : on l’entend gronder la nuit, lorsque tos les autres bruits se sont tus. C’est d’elle que vient la vie, mais c’est d’elle également que peut venir la mort.
Les figures architecturales de la Mer, aussi impressionnantes que fugaces, auront laissé peut être leur empreinte a la ville, traversée d’invraisemblables rues en escaliers, s’efforçant par deux bras de ceinturer la mer, et ne réussissant qu’a rendre cette dernière encore plus bouillonnante, encore pus incontrôlable.
Tout dans la vie du peintre jacmeilien Préfète Duffaut, gravite autour de la mer.
Il vient comme moi de Cyvadier, ou l’air est saturé du sel de la mer, et ou un escalier construit par mon oncle Felder Large ( parrain du mariage de l’artiste ) permet d’avoir accès a la mer toute proche. C’est d’ailleurs l’un des fils de Felder , Michel, qui , aux dires de Préfète, lui aura donné, tout petit , sa première leçon de dessin.
Il a perdu sa mère très tôt. Comme tout le monde à Cyvadier vit de la mer, on lui a appris à faire des bateaux.
L’expérience aidant, le groupe dont il fait partie reçoit davantage de commandes, et il se retrouve, par la force des choses , à l’ ile de la Gonâve pour satisfaire à l’une d’ elles.
Et c’est la que l’histoire commence
L’histoire ou la Légende ? Qu’’est ce qui est l’un et qu’est ce qui est l’autre ?
Apres tout qu’importe ?
Un soir à l’ile de la Gonâve, une belle dame lui est apparue, et lui a demandé de lui peindre un autel à son Eglise.
Oui….il sait peindre. S’est il souvenu des leçons de Michel ? Sont-ce les illustrations qu’il trouve dans les livres ? La vérité est qu’il passe tous les moments de liberté que lui laisse la construction des tableaux à couvrir de dessins ses cahiers. Ceux qu’il trouve bien, il les colle sur les murs de sa cahute.
Oui il sait peindre, et à la Belle Dame il peindra son autel. Lors de mon dernier voyage pour une journée de consultations a l’Anse a Galets, je l’ai cherché cet autel. Je promets de le faire avec plus d’attention la prochaine fois.
Préfète a répondu sans arrière pensée à la demande de la Belle dame, mais celle-ci n’oubliera pas ce geste.
A son retour a Cyvadier, Préfète apprendra que des étrangers lui ont acheté ses petits dessins.
A coté des billets , il y a une enveloppe avec la dedans une adresse à PAP : le Centre d’Art.
On est en 1944 : Préfète vient d’avoir 21 ans.
La fantastique aventure vient juste de débuter.
Deux théories s’affrontent alors au Centre d’Art, une école d’art fondée par Dewitt Peters , un objecteur de conscience d’origine hollandaise envoyé par le gouvernement américain pour apprendre la peinture aux haïtiens
D’abord la thèse originale de Dewitt , qui semble être celle d’artistes haïtiens comme Maurice Borno : apprendre aux haïtiens intéressés aux arts plastiques à discipliner leur talent a l’intérieur des limites rigides de l’art classique.
Et puis , il y a la thèse de Selden Rodman, vice président du Centre d’Art : n’imposer aucune limite à l’imagination des artistes, leur fournir uniquement les voies et moyens de s’exprimer totalement.
Bien heureusement c’est a Selden Rodman que va être confié le soin de la décoration des murs de Cathédrale Sainte Trinité.
Pourquoi les murs de l’église épiscopale ? A ce que m’a rapporté Selden Rodman, on aurait eu d’abord le projet de décorer les murs de la cathédrale de PAP. L’idée- qui aura constitué toute sa vie l’obsession de Selden Rodman- était d’avoir un nouveau Rinascimento , de faire de la cathédrale de PAP l’équivalent de la Santa Maria della Rovere de Florence, des Obin Benoit Bazile Duffaut les nouveaux Giotto della Francesca, Ghirlandajo et Botticelli.
Ceci dit le père Froisset ne l’entendait pas de cette oreille ; que voulez vous mettre sur les murs de ma cathédrale ? Vociféra ce prélat que les signes avant coureurs de Vatican 2 n’avaient en apparence pas effleuré.
On se tourna vers l’église anglicane dont l’évêque Voegeli accueillit l’idée avec enthousiasme.
Se mirent alors au travail des hommes qu’on se serait davantage attendu à voir décharger des sacs de marchandise qu’à manier des pinceaux. Ces noms se sont déjà imposés parmi les grands noms de l’art mondial : Obin Bazile Benoit Bigaud, Leveque, Jasmin Joseph.
Parmi eux un jacmelien de 21 ans : Préfète Duffaut.
Préfète va avoir deux commandes : la Tentation du Christ et la Procession de la Croix.
Ces deux fresques, peintes avec du jaune d’œuf comme liant, et qui se trouvent Dieu seul sait dans quel état actuellement ne vont pas seulement constituer deux chefs d’œuvre
Elles vont complètement révolutionner l’écriture picturale
Prenons d’abord la Tentation du Christ.
Jouant sur les contraintes de l’ouverture de la fenêtre, Duffaut va avoir l’idée géniale de dresser l’une en face de l’autre les deux tours de la Cathédrale de sa ville de Jacmel.
Au dessus de chacune des tours, les deux forces primordiales de la création : jésus et Satan
Jésus est vêtu de la robe rouge d’Ogoun le dieu de la guerre. Le diable est en noir, les murs de là cathédrale en blanc, les couleurs sont d’une formidable intensité , en diapason avec celle du drame qui se joue, oui d’une intensité insoutenable , même lorsqu’on les compare à celles de l’autre jacmélien de Sainte Trinité, Castera Bazille.
Mais il y a plus : sur les murs de la cathédrale se trouvent des symboles étranges , issus d’on ne sait quel grimoire de conjurations : araignées , images d’embarcation d’autres carrément indefinisssslbes.
Jamais l’imagination ne s’était libérée avec une telle puissance.
Sur le mur d’en face une autre composition de Duffaut : la Procession de la Croix. La seule composition qui de prés ou de loin me rappelle l’œuvre de Duffaut est « L’Entrée du Christ à Bruxelles » d’Ensor.
Mais cette toile que Duffaut n’a évidemment pu avoir sous les yeux est loin d’avoir la puissance de celle du peintre jacmélien :
Cette dernière, même lorsqu’on l a compare aux autres œuvres de la Cathédrale Sainte Trinite, s’inscrit dans une logique de rupture.
Elle est la seule ou aucune mention n’est faite du sujet : dans la pièce en question, il n’est, du Christ et de son supplice, pas une trace
Il y a par contre autre chose, quelque chose de puissant , quelque chose qui explique tout :
La Route.
La route qui se tourne et qui se retourne
Sur la route les promeneurs et de chaque cote de la route, les points ou l’on s’arrête pour des motifs divers : il ya des boutiques le bureau de police, le télégraphe.
Et puis la route s’élève, et s’élève et s’approche du ciel. Au dessus , pour tous ceux qui connaissent ma ville , il y a le cimetière de Jacmel
Et de ce cimetière une vue de ce qui ceinture et qui explique notre ville : la mer.
Avec cette œuvre, un constructeur d’embarcations agrandit la thématique des arts plastiques d’un nouveau titre : celui des villes imaginaires
Oh oui ces villes : on les a vues et revues et encore vues
Elles prennent corps dans notre âme comme les murs de la Citadelle prennent corps dans notre sol, comme la voix prenante de ti Paris et le tambour d'Azor pr4nnent corps dans nos tripes.
Elles sont bien sur, comme on l’a dit sa ville , c'est-à-dire ma ville, Jacmel imprévisible Jacmel de tous les héroïsmes et de toues les douleurs, Jacmel a chaque instant ouvert sur la mer, mais elles sont également notre vie.
Parce que dans ces constructions qui défient les lois de l’équilibre, dans ces routes sans début ni fin, ces routes qui serpentent a l’infini, réveil de Damballah- Kundalini ou préfiguration du spiralisme que Franketienne nous donne comme la réponse dialectique a l’affrontement entre la ligne et le cercle, entre la progression et le statisme, a travers cette route qui ne s’arrête jamais, c’est nous , c’est notre Destinée qui est représentée dans un instantané saisissant de nos multiples moi, c’est l’expression saisissante de l’aphorisme de Patanjali : tout arrive en même temps, c’est la traque impitoyable de l’Etre a travers ses catégories identitaires, et puis…
Et puis enfin, et puis surtout, c’est la mise a nu, en nous , d’une puissance inimaginable de rêve et de tendresse.
Il aura fallu attendre Jacques Derrida et les post structuralistes pour nous entendre dire ce qu’ ici nous savions depuis longtemps : que l’œuvre d’art dessine le spectateur.
C’est vrai.
En nous laissant capter par le recourbement infini de ces rues et de ces ruelles, par l’éclat de la mer et la pureté immaculée du ciel, c’est un nouveau moi qui se découvre un moi plus en phase avec ce qui l’entoure, un moi plus libre et plus serein.
Ne nous y laissons pas tromper : si les constructions de Duffaut défient toutes les lois physiques, si la mer par moments semble plus haute que la terre et rejoint le ciel, à aucun moment tout cela ne nous choque.
C’est que celui qui savait construire des embarcations capables de résister a la fureur des flots sait comment mettre à jour d’autres embarcations, qui naviguent dans les méandres du rêve avec la même assurance que les autres se frayaient un chemin au sein des ouragans
C’est que – par delà l’apparente anarchie de la composition- il y a tout un jeu subtil d’équilibres, un maniement instinctif de la perspective chromatique qui s’opposant a la perspective linéaire emprisonne tout dans un espace fictif sans rapport avec l’espace réel, ( il s’agit de l’espace haïtien dont le Dr Lerebours a si heureusement dit la spécificité ) il y a , grâce au mouvement de la route , une multiplication des points de fuite, une superposition d’espaces , tout cela débouchant par le jeu d’audaces a la fois graphiques et chromatiques , a la mise en place de l’ un des univers les plus achevés de la peinture moderne
Cet univers, et le message qu’il porte : un message d’affranchissement de purification, sont l’un des legs les plus merveilleux qu’un artiste ait pu faire a son pays, et que notre pays au sein d’autres merveilles ait pu faire a l’Humanité
C’est pourquoi a cet homme a ce concitadin que j’ai connu toute mon existence, avec qui je travaille depuis quarante ans, avec lequel j’aurai réalisé une vingtaine d’interviews, je dis aujourd’hui ;
Dors de ton dernier sommeil, mon ami, mon frère, et en quelque sorte mon moi.
Dans un pays ravagé et humilié, entre droit dans l’histoire avec rayonnant autour de ta personne l’éclat resplendissant qui est celui de nos plus grands héros.
C’est désormais dans tout ce qui nous reste de toi : ton œuvre, qu’il nous faudra rechercher ce qui m’attirait le plus en toi : ce sourire de triomphe ce sourire merveilleux que seuls arborent les vainqueurs que seuls arborent les gagnants
Ton corps s’est peut être éteint un triste 6 octobre, mais nous savons tous que , tant qu’il y aura des âmes pour rêver et des cœurs pour contempler, subsistera quelque chose qu’aucune hémorragie cérébrale ne saurait éteindre :
La palpitation immense de ton art et de ton génie
Ce 12 octobre 2012-
Dr Frantz Large
Membre de ‘association internationale des critiques d’art
Vice président de l’Association Haïtienne en Histoire de l’Art et en Esthétique.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
A view on the Haiti protests
With dueling protests in favour and against the government of Haitian president Michel Martelly occurring in the historic city of Gonaïves and eslewhere, a few people have asked me what my take on Haiti's latest chapter of unrest is.
I haven't been on the ground in Haiti since last August (a state of affairs I am hoping to remedy in the near future if I can piece together funding for a trip) and, as such, I am hesitant to make pronouncements from afar. But it appears to me that the usual political actors are taking advantage of the Martelly government's missteps and the desperation of the population to attempt a lunge for power.
Alas, Haiti continues to have the lowest level analysis of it by outsiders of any country I've ever reported on, so don't look to the international press or most academics focusing on the place to provide you with any clues as to what's happening.
What we are witnessing is a dance that has been played out time and again in Haiti's history and one which unfortunately always seems to find willing dance partners both at home and abroad.
I haven't been on the ground in Haiti since last August (a state of affairs I am hoping to remedy in the near future if I can piece together funding for a trip) and, as such, I am hesitant to make pronouncements from afar. But it appears to me that the usual political actors are taking advantage of the Martelly government's missteps and the desperation of the population to attempt a lunge for power.
Alas, Haiti continues to have the lowest level analysis of it by outsiders of any country I've ever reported on, so don't look to the international press or most academics focusing on the place to provide you with any clues as to what's happening.
What we are witnessing is a dance that has been played out time and again in Haiti's history and one which unfortunately always seems to find willing dance partners both at home and abroad.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Aristide's Tinderbox
(Almost exactly 10 years ago, I wrote this article about the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Cité Soleil, which has since become a separate city. It proved to be sadly prescient. RIP James and all the others. MD)
Aristide's Tinderbox
Haitian Militants Losing Faith in President’s Promise of Reform
By Michael Deibert
published: August 27, 2002
(Read the original article here)
Pierre Fabienne cradles his baby in his arms as his girlfriend, a shy-eyed beauty, stands in the doorway of their home on a noisy lane in Port-au-Prince's impoverished Cite Soleil quarter. Fabienne, a gang leader and supporter of embattled Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was instrumental in organizing a cease-fire among most of the district's warring factions last February. He hasn't gotten much in return for his efforts at diplomacy.
"I've sat with Aristide many times and I still have nothing," says
Fabienne (not his real name). "I still have the same room that I pay
$300 for six months"—about U.S. $50—"no TV, no nothing, and Aristide
knows that I'm a militant for change. He knows I fight for him. When he
has something in Port-au-Prince, he calls us. When he wants people to go
to his rally in Leogane, he calls us. When he's afraid of a coup
d'état, he calls us. He wants us to stay in Cite Soleil, so no one hears
about Cite Soleil, so he can call on us whenever he needs us to do
something."
In Haiti's ramshackle and decaying capital of 2 million, where exuberantly colored tap-tap buses speed through congested streets blaring sinuous compas music and dark, mysterious mountains rise out of the bay, Cite Soleil's 200,000 residents have long formed the backbone of support for Aristide. Just north of Fort Dimanche—a former prison and torture center favored by former dictators Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier now turned into a squatter camp—and pinioned away from the rest of the city by dusty, potholed Route Nationale 1, Cite Soleil is a place where political activism and a criminal element born of desperate poverty exist side by side.
The tension between the two worlds exploded last month when Amiot Metayer, a political militant and gang leader, was freed by machine-gun-wielding members of his "Cannibal Army," who attacked the Gonaives jail he was being held in with a bulldozer. Metayer had been arrested on suspicion of ordering buildings torched during an outbreak of violence with a rival gang leader. Upon his release, he denounced Aristide, vowing to "fight to the death" any attempt to put him back in prison.
Once, people like Metayer and Fabienne celebrated Aristide. After his first election in 1990, it was the people of the slums who danced in the streets, carrying Aristide's picture and rejoicing at the ouster of the military dictatorship. When Aristide was himself ousted in a bloody coup d'état the next year, the residents of Cite Soleil fought for his return. They endured the nighttime terror of raids by the FRAPH (Front Révolutionnaire Pour l'Avancement et le Progrès d'Haiti) death squads, and often turned up tortured on narrow muddy lanes for uttering the deposed president's name.
Today, however, it is these same militants, claiming they feel forgotten and betrayed, who have begun to call for Aristide's removal, and for the dismissal of both his ruling Lavalas Family political party and Haiti's roundly loathed political opposition, the Convergence Democratique coalition. They argue it's the only way to restore the hope of a just nation that people in the district had fought for for so long. This is no polite debate.
In May, three local activists were shot dead by police, who later claimed to have been attacked by gangs. Local residents, for their part, charged the activists were shot while arriving at an arranged meeting with police. The killings triggered two days of shooting between police and gangs, leaving a pervasive suspicion among locals that, having outlived their usefulness, the militants have become targets.
When asked about the situation at a recent press conference, Aristide replied: "The people of Cite Soleil are the sons and daughters of the country. Their rights are violated when they cannot eat; their rights are violated when they cannot go to school. We must work with all sectors, the opposition and the elite, to improve their lives. We are committed to working with them and we will not rest until we do that."
"We have to protect the rights of every citizen," Aristide added, "but we must also protect those who are visiting Haiti and who live in Haiti."
In Cite Soleil, people are preparing to protect themselves. "I don't think that this government will change, and I don't think that the opposition will change, either," says Dessalines Jacques, a muscular man who takes his name from Haiti's greatest hero, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, creator of the national flag and victor over the colonizing French. This Dessalines, clad in a blue tank top, has just finished inspecting bags of weapons—9mms, shotguns, and M-1s—that Cite Soleil has held in its grasp to ensure it will never again be defenseless.
He says the people need a rache manyok, a peasant expression that literally means to "pull up your manioc"—a root vegetable—but is used by militants to mean getting rid of something tainted or corrupt. "We could form a new political movement, but we cannot do it on our own," he says. "We need all of Haiti's nine departments, plus the Tenth Department"—the name Aristide gave to the estimated 1 million Haitians living abroad—"because we are the children of the Tenth Department. And they know that their children are suffering here."
However shakily, Aristide remains in control; he was re-elected in November 2000 with little opposition. That would have come from the Convergence Démocratique coalition, a motley group of social democrats and ex-authoritarian functionaries with scant public support and pronounced distaste for the Haitian masses. But Convergence members contended the parliamentary elections held earlier were tabulated to favor Aristide's Lavalas party, so they sat out the presidential round.
The Organization of American States has been attempting to broker a deal ever since. Following a mysterious attack on the National Palace by nearly two dozen gunmen last December 17, thousands of armed Aristide partisans, including the youth of Cite Soleil, took to the streets, burning down headquarters and private homes affiliated with the Convergence and, in their words, "defending our palace and defending our president."
Accusations of electoral rigging from Convergence have led to the suspension of $500 million of desperately needed international aid. The group is further demanding that the government not only pay reparations but also disarm militant government supporters. In the meantime, capital residents witness daily scenes of armed convoys of Lavalas officials—who have been continually embroiled in scandal—speeding by in bulletproof SUVs as street children wash their faces in puddles of rainwater.
Some in the slums say they're not ready to abandon faith in their president's promise of reform. "We cannot forget what Aristide has been for us, and we will always be on his side when we see things being done," says Wily Sauvenur, a studious, bearded young man. Sauvenur (not his real name) is carrying a manila envelope containing the freshly printed stationery of a new political movement, the Organizasyon Revolisyone Chalo Jaklen, named after a murdered pro-democracy activist and founded the day militants stormed the National Palace. "But we will not support this or any government when we see nothing being done, and right now we see him sitting with the gwo manje—"high-living political types"—and living like them. Now is not like the days of the coup d'état. We're armed and we're very determined to change this country and they know that, and they will have to deal with us."
Haiti's poor have always had to fight. "In 1991, when the military made Aristide go and began killing our families, we were 10, 12—we were small kids," says Labanier, another self-described political activist. "We are not militants out of the blue. Our fathers and mothers were already militants, against Duvalier, against the military, because it was always bad here and people here always cling onto the dream that things can change."
The chimere, as the largely male and jobless contingent of Haitian society is often called, have been used as a political tool in Haiti for many years. Government and opposition leaders alike draw on the clannish—but not necessarily criminal—gang culture powered by the very real threats young men face in the slums.
"My mother died in '91 when FRAPH came and killed her in Cite Soleil, then they kidnapped my father in 1994 and killed him, too," says Pierre Fabienne, who rallied government partisans on the streets after being contacted by Haitian National Police forces in the early morning hours of December 17. "One day I think the people will stand up to defend their rights. If they keep doing this, if Aristide kills me, if he kills Labanier, all the gangs will come out and he will lose his power. We'll have a rache manyok again."
In the surreal landscape that can be Haiti today—pro-bin Laden graffiti scrawled on crumbling walls, former comedians rallying pro-government partisans with apocalyptic anti-foreign rhetoric—the situation of the militants of Cite Soleil and other neighborhoods is perhaps the clearest sign of just how grave things can become. "One day, man, I'd like to be able to give up this politics," says Fabienne, looking down the hill at the shacks and the naked, laughing children. "If not, I'll die and I couldn't do anything for myself."
Fabienne remembers the days of the U.S. invasion that returned Aristide to power. Ten years old then, he became something of a mascot to the visiting American soldiers and the journalists who accompanied them. He shined the boots of General Henry Shelton, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, "so they looked like mirrors," he says, and one American photographer even bought him some basic photo equipment, which he wore strung around his neck with obvious pride.
"I've done too much work for politics," Fabienne says, though he refuses to give up hope that Haiti can change. "Now, too many people hate me, and they hate what I say. But it's for this I try to help my little son, so we can arrive at a new place."
In Haiti's ramshackle and decaying capital of 2 million, where exuberantly colored tap-tap buses speed through congested streets blaring sinuous compas music and dark, mysterious mountains rise out of the bay, Cite Soleil's 200,000 residents have long formed the backbone of support for Aristide. Just north of Fort Dimanche—a former prison and torture center favored by former dictators Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier now turned into a squatter camp—and pinioned away from the rest of the city by dusty, potholed Route Nationale 1, Cite Soleil is a place where political activism and a criminal element born of desperate poverty exist side by side.
The tension between the two worlds exploded last month when Amiot Metayer, a political militant and gang leader, was freed by machine-gun-wielding members of his "Cannibal Army," who attacked the Gonaives jail he was being held in with a bulldozer. Metayer had been arrested on suspicion of ordering buildings torched during an outbreak of violence with a rival gang leader. Upon his release, he denounced Aristide, vowing to "fight to the death" any attempt to put him back in prison.
Once, people like Metayer and Fabienne celebrated Aristide. After his first election in 1990, it was the people of the slums who danced in the streets, carrying Aristide's picture and rejoicing at the ouster of the military dictatorship. When Aristide was himself ousted in a bloody coup d'état the next year, the residents of Cite Soleil fought for his return. They endured the nighttime terror of raids by the FRAPH (Front Révolutionnaire Pour l'Avancement et le Progrès d'Haiti) death squads, and often turned up tortured on narrow muddy lanes for uttering the deposed president's name.
Today, however, it is these same militants, claiming they feel forgotten and betrayed, who have begun to call for Aristide's removal, and for the dismissal of both his ruling Lavalas Family political party and Haiti's roundly loathed political opposition, the Convergence Democratique coalition. They argue it's the only way to restore the hope of a just nation that people in the district had fought for for so long. This is no polite debate.
In May, three local activists were shot dead by police, who later claimed to have been attacked by gangs. Local residents, for their part, charged the activists were shot while arriving at an arranged meeting with police. The killings triggered two days of shooting between police and gangs, leaving a pervasive suspicion among locals that, having outlived their usefulness, the militants have become targets.
When asked about the situation at a recent press conference, Aristide replied: "The people of Cite Soleil are the sons and daughters of the country. Their rights are violated when they cannot eat; their rights are violated when they cannot go to school. We must work with all sectors, the opposition and the elite, to improve their lives. We are committed to working with them and we will not rest until we do that."
"We have to protect the rights of every citizen," Aristide added, "but we must also protect those who are visiting Haiti and who live in Haiti."
In Cite Soleil, people are preparing to protect themselves. "I don't think that this government will change, and I don't think that the opposition will change, either," says Dessalines Jacques, a muscular man who takes his name from Haiti's greatest hero, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, creator of the national flag and victor over the colonizing French. This Dessalines, clad in a blue tank top, has just finished inspecting bags of weapons—9mms, shotguns, and M-1s—that Cite Soleil has held in its grasp to ensure it will never again be defenseless.
He says the people need a rache manyok, a peasant expression that literally means to "pull up your manioc"—a root vegetable—but is used by militants to mean getting rid of something tainted or corrupt. "We could form a new political movement, but we cannot do it on our own," he says. "We need all of Haiti's nine departments, plus the Tenth Department"—the name Aristide gave to the estimated 1 million Haitians living abroad—"because we are the children of the Tenth Department. And they know that their children are suffering here."
However shakily, Aristide remains in control; he was re-elected in November 2000 with little opposition. That would have come from the Convergence Démocratique coalition, a motley group of social democrats and ex-authoritarian functionaries with scant public support and pronounced distaste for the Haitian masses. But Convergence members contended the parliamentary elections held earlier were tabulated to favor Aristide's Lavalas party, so they sat out the presidential round.
The Organization of American States has been attempting to broker a deal ever since. Following a mysterious attack on the National Palace by nearly two dozen gunmen last December 17, thousands of armed Aristide partisans, including the youth of Cite Soleil, took to the streets, burning down headquarters and private homes affiliated with the Convergence and, in their words, "defending our palace and defending our president."
Accusations of electoral rigging from Convergence have led to the suspension of $500 million of desperately needed international aid. The group is further demanding that the government not only pay reparations but also disarm militant government supporters. In the meantime, capital residents witness daily scenes of armed convoys of Lavalas officials—who have been continually embroiled in scandal—speeding by in bulletproof SUVs as street children wash their faces in puddles of rainwater.
Some in the slums say they're not ready to abandon faith in their president's promise of reform. "We cannot forget what Aristide has been for us, and we will always be on his side when we see things being done," says Wily Sauvenur, a studious, bearded young man. Sauvenur (not his real name) is carrying a manila envelope containing the freshly printed stationery of a new political movement, the Organizasyon Revolisyone Chalo Jaklen, named after a murdered pro-democracy activist and founded the day militants stormed the National Palace. "But we will not support this or any government when we see nothing being done, and right now we see him sitting with the gwo manje—"high-living political types"—and living like them. Now is not like the days of the coup d'état. We're armed and we're very determined to change this country and they know that, and they will have to deal with us."
Haiti's poor have always had to fight. "In 1991, when the military made Aristide go and began killing our families, we were 10, 12—we were small kids," says Labanier, another self-described political activist. "We are not militants out of the blue. Our fathers and mothers were already militants, against Duvalier, against the military, because it was always bad here and people here always cling onto the dream that things can change."
The chimere, as the largely male and jobless contingent of Haitian society is often called, have been used as a political tool in Haiti for many years. Government and opposition leaders alike draw on the clannish—but not necessarily criminal—gang culture powered by the very real threats young men face in the slums.
"My mother died in '91 when FRAPH came and killed her in Cite Soleil, then they kidnapped my father in 1994 and killed him, too," says Pierre Fabienne, who rallied government partisans on the streets after being contacted by Haitian National Police forces in the early morning hours of December 17. "One day I think the people will stand up to defend their rights. If they keep doing this, if Aristide kills me, if he kills Labanier, all the gangs will come out and he will lose his power. We'll have a rache manyok again."
In the surreal landscape that can be Haiti today—pro-bin Laden graffiti scrawled on crumbling walls, former comedians rallying pro-government partisans with apocalyptic anti-foreign rhetoric—the situation of the militants of Cite Soleil and other neighborhoods is perhaps the clearest sign of just how grave things can become. "One day, man, I'd like to be able to give up this politics," says Fabienne, looking down the hill at the shacks and the naked, laughing children. "If not, I'll die and I couldn't do anything for myself."
Fabienne remembers the days of the U.S. invasion that returned Aristide to power. Ten years old then, he became something of a mascot to the visiting American soldiers and the journalists who accompanied them. He shined the boots of General Henry Shelton, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, "so they looked like mirrors," he says, and one American photographer even bought him some basic photo equipment, which he wore strung around his neck with obvious pride.
"I've done too much work for politics," Fabienne says, though he refuses to give up hope that Haiti can change. "Now, too many people hate me, and they hate what I say. But it's for this I try to help my little son, so we can arrive at a new place."
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Thoughts on Haiti's National Palace
I have heard reports that they have started tearing down Haiti's quake-ravaged National Palace today. It was a powerful symbol for the country (not to mention an architectural gem). At the same time, I know a number of Haitians who have told me nothing good ever came out of there. For me, very mixed feelings. I remember walking past there for the first time in 1997, watching U.S. ambassador Brian Dean Curran present his credentials to René Préval there in 2000, watching Jean-Bertrand Aristide glower down at people from a golden chair with his white American bodyguards behind him from 2001 to 2004, saw Boniface Alexandre and Gérard Latortue there 2004-2006 and then Préval again 2006 to 2011. One of my most poignant memories was, after I watched Préval and Kofi Annan hold a press conference in 2006, walking to the front balcony as a band played a slightly off-key rendition of La Dessalinienne and gazing across the Champs de Mars towards the slums of Bel Air rising just beyond, wondering when the day for those people would come.
Photo © Michael Deibert
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Note on the passing of J. David Lyall
I was saddened to wake up this morning and learn from Thor Burnham of the passing of old Haiti hand and New Orleans acquaintance J. David Lyall. I was fortunate enough to chat with with David about Haiti-related matters in New Orleans from time to time. Having lived among the Haitian people in the manner in which he had, David had an impressive and lucid grasp of the political realities on the ground, and I always enjoyed the insight that he brought to our discussions. Many "experts" on Haiti could have learned a thing or two from him. Rest in peace, David, and I hope you are back
strolling the cool hills of Kenscoff in peace once more.
strolling the cool hills of Kenscoff in peace once more.
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