Posted on 03/12/2024 4:41:50 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Anyone who has been to Haiti does not forget the experience. It is a beautiful, fascinating, tragic, and horrible place. The American writer, Herbert Gold, who lived there for part of his life, wrote a marvelous memoir, calling Haiti “the best nightmare on earth.” Haiti is the only country I have been to where starveling children have tried to snatch food from my plate, insinuating their stick-thin wrists through the grille that supposedly protected the restaurant’s customers.
And that was in the good old days, before the armed gangs took over Port-au-Prince, as they have now done. The city was always a deteriorating mess, with noisome slums and blackening garbage rotting uncollected (except by the vultures) in the middle of the streets. You thought it couldn’t get worse, but if Haitian history proves one thing, it is that things can always get worse and probably will. It is as if the Haitians were determined to show Gerard Manley Hopkins was right when he wrote, “No worst, there is none.”
Astonishing though it may seem, I remember the days when it was perfectly safe to change money in the streets of Port-au-Prince with open air money-changers. They gave you wads of notes in front of passersby, but you were not in danger of robbery. Back then, I went through the Cité Soleil, probably the worst slum in the Western hemisphere, without feeling endangered (a journey brilliantly captured by the Haitian writer, Gary Victor). Now it would be suicidal to undertake such a trip. Thanks to the takeover of the city by competing gangs, people do not go outside except under the direst necessity. It is said that 15,000 people have fled their homes in the last week.
It isn’t only Port-au-Prince that is affected. One of the most clearly demarcated borders in the world, that between the Dominican Republic and Haiti (green on one side and brown on the other), is under siege from fleeing Haitians numbering (so it is estimated) 200,000. There is no love lost between the two nations, and reports have surfaced of fleeing Haitians getting beaten back with cruelty and ferocity by the Dominican forces. This will raise the specter of the massacre in 1937, when the Dominican army, under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, killed some 15,000–30,000 Haitians living near the border on the Dominican side of the Dejabón River, known to Haitians as the Rivière du Massacre. With so much going on to distract the world’s attention, another massacre might be under preparation.
The downward spiral in Haiti toward a Hobbesian war of all against all seems endless. So terrible is the situation that even the days of Papa Doc, once the byword for bizarre tropical dictatorship, now seem almost halcyon by comparison. The history of no country on earth is more tragic than that of Haiti. One of the gang leaders, former policeman Jimmy Chérizier, has promised “genocide” if the notional and illegitimate prime minister, Ariel Henry—who cannot even land in his own country after having left it to seek military assistance from Kenya—does not resign. Who is to be genocided, exactly? Or was Cherizier merely misusing the word to mean general slaughter?
Haiti is Africa's REJECTS
Yep, if the French still ran it they would have to put up with tens of thousands of tourists and would have to work a full day with good pay and live in a nice home and have good schools for their kids.
Like most problems in the USA, they began with the Clintons
The Red Sox and Tampa Rays were there this past weekend through yesterday to play a couple Spring Training baseball games.
Keep in mind, baseball is the national pastime of the Dominican Republic. Several MLB teams have training/scouting facilities there. Every kid grows up playing. David Ortiz and Pedro Martinez are both basically national heros there. They have both spent a lot of their own money trying to improve the life on that island.
“Baseball has been very, very god to me.”
Regards,
Not just Haiti. It seems half of the Dominican Republic is in the USA as well. The entire island of Hispaniola is coming to America. Most Dominicans are half black themselves and they hate Haitians, go figure.
This is what the US is going to deal with, thanks to Biden and Mayorkas. All according to plan until the collapse, and then all bets are off. Those illegals (and millions of democrats) will wish they had never been here. /spit
Mogadishu in the Caribbean.
Since biden has a history of bringing disaster to our shores, I’m sure he will begin importing a million or so Haitians and put them on food stamps, give them loaded EBT cards, and a smartphone.
I thought walls didn’t work?
Freepers are pretty ignorant about Haiti
But not entirely wrong
Those of us know the place understand it’s very complicated
And it’s no doubt gotten worse
It rivals the worst of the Congo sans large scale armed conflict
Im in favor of helping
So blast away
If the slaughter escalates to historical levels
We were screwed up removing Cedras with our stupid State dept
A USA educated strong man with his nations best interest at heart
The people are friendlier than Jamaica
But the problems are insurmountable
2/3rds populations needs a managed diaspora around the world
Around 750,000 are here and they really go for naturalization
They like all blacks vote democrat but only around 60-80% depending the locale
Could the world take 6-7 million Haitian peasants?
I don’t see any other solution
The land mass as is cannot sustain 11 million people
Say it Ain’t so...
Haiti has been an s hole since its inception.
However. Haiti has never been allowed to grow. It is a money laundering machine for the “Big Poverty” industry.
Hoe much of those billions from the Clintons flowed back in to Clinton’s pockets?
And DR ain’t much better.
People of color disproportionately harmed by Haiti genocide.
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