by Amy Wilentz | Feb 20, 2013
Filibert Waldeck (see photo above) was one of Father Aristide’s orphan boys, back before Aristide became president of Haiti — although the orphans in what was called Lafanmi Selavi were not always actual orphans. I seem to recall that for a while, Filibert would talk about a mother up north. In any case, he’s someone I’ve known since my first days in Haiti. He is a character in The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier, my first book on Haiti, and also in Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti, which I just published.
by Amy Wilentz | Feb 19, 2013
Here’s what happens in a country without a functioning judicial system. This man, above, was stealing motorcycles, apparently, down near rue Capois in Port-au-Prince two days ago. He was allegedly working with a ring of thieves. But he was the one who got caught, and the people in the zone took justice into their own hands and lynched him. Of course such behavior is unacceptable. But there’s a reason for it.
People in Haiti know that malefactors will not be brought to justice. At best, a man like this, arrested, will spend years and years in penitentiary, uncharged, awaiting a trial that may never come.
by Amy Wilentz | Jan 21, 2013
I was just cleaning out my Haiti memorabilia, notebooks, newspapers, and sheer masses of stuff and index cards with notes on them like: “Gold!” when I found the notebook I used the last time I saw Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in July, 2000, a few months before his re-election to the presidency of Haiti. While I waited outside his office for our interview, I met a man who was then chief warden of Haiti’s prisons. He gave me his number so I could call him to make an appointment to discuss the assassination of Jean Dominique, one of Haiti’s most outspoken journalists, some four months earlier. He was most delighted that I would be calling him, and, he said, very eager to give me all the facts.
by Amy Wilentz | Jan 17, 2013
I visited In Extremis: Death and Life in Haitian Art when this fascinating exhibit opened at the Fowler Museum a few months ago. (It closes on January 20th.) It’s truly a show worth seeing, so if you haven’t seen it yet, go now!!
But don’t expect to see Haiti as Haitians see it, here.
The exhibit features the rough, sexualized, scabrous, naughty and death-loving world of the Gede, diabolical little childish fiends who are offspring of the darkest of the Vodou spirits.
by Amy Wilentz | Jan 9, 2013
I was thinking today about my post of yesterday (see below: “Globalization and the Little Haitian Chair”), about the chubby little rough-hewn Haitian chair and its cheap, comfortable smooth plastic Chinese replacement. Even more, I was thinking about secondhand U.S. clothing that comes in to Haiti.
And I was thinking, in sharp contradistinction to what I wrote yesterday, that maybe Haitians, especially young people, prefer the secondhand clothes from the U.S. to the handmade stuff of the homeland.
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