7196: Lauture - Re #7175:Toussaint Purchase of House (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Please post this anonymously, as it is a response to an anonymous post.


Re: Gladys Lauture, a Response to #7175: Toussaint, Purchase of House

After reading that post, I was left with, at least, two overriding questions. 
Where are the facts to support the lavished criticisms of Ms. Lauture and, as 
Haitians, can't we be more constructive and positive? I have asked Corbett to 
post this response anonymously because I am responding to an anonymous post.

I don't know Ms. Lauture and I am not sure I ever met her. I do know that she 
had that medical lab on the Champs-de-Mars a few offices away from The 
Institut Haitiano Americain in the late 70s, and I knew someone - that I have 
not seen for at least 15 years - who worked in the lab as a technician. It is 
possible that Ms. Lauture may have personally extracted blood from my arm for 
a test, a few times. I have been to the lab for blood or other tests during 
more than a ten-year period. By Haitian standards, the business provided a 
valuable and highly demanded service in Haiti at the times. One of the assets 
of the lab was its proximity to numerous medical clinics in the area 
surrounding the Champ-de-Mars. And, as far as I can remember, the lab was 
reliable on the punctuality in providing the results and their accuracy. 

Clearly, what Haiti is sorely missing are entrepreneurs like Ms. Lauture who 
learned a profession, then establish a business that provides badly needed 
services and products for the consumption of the country's residents. If in 
the process their business make them richer, so be it because they also 
enrich the country. Even if I don't like Ms. Lauture's politics - which the 
writer of the #1775 post failed to make a good argument against - I would 
argue that her contributions to Haitian society overshadow the damages she is 
causing to the country by her association with Michele Duvalier and Aristide. 
Don't get me wrong. I have not heard of or been an observer of Ms. Lauture's 
public actions since 1982. She may have caused major wrongs to the country 
since that time. I plead with the writer of the #1775 post to enlighten us 
about that. But don't use personal vendetta for character assassination of 
hard working Haitian entrepreneurs that the country is in a dire need for. 
Our actions should not discourage them but honor their contributions to our 
society. It is time we stop the bickering, the finger pointing, to name just 
a few, and start rolling up our sleeves and make the country the jewel it 
used to be before independence.

Here is a sample of the anonymous writer's posts followed by some of my 
comments:

1. <<A throwback from the dread days when the voracious greed of Michele 
Duvalier 
crippled an already lame country, Lauture operates with ruthless tactics 
that can only be described as dramatically familiar, mired in the pits of 
extreme remines as sick as the Third Reich.>>

It is not clear that I fully understand that paragraph. But, I have heard 
American politicians accusing each other of abuses of hyperbole, I wonder 
what they would have said if their opposition was making uses of samples like 
the one the anonymous writer posted.

2. <<This woman is feared by all.  She is a partner in crime.  Her house 
became 
"the place to go", for the foreign community as well as the Haitian.  
Everyone is afraid of this woman, as she insists she is included in all 
business deals inside of the regime.  If there is a deal that excludes her, 
the person or persons involved may simply disappear.>>

The #1775 post was anonymous, therefore we could have been supplied with some 
facts here with no fear of retribution. What are the names of the persons Ms. 
Lauture is accused of being involved in their disappearance?  What is the 
evidence to support her involvement? Is there anything wrong with being 
socially affluent? If so, why? What are the deals she was involved in that 
are referred to in the post? 

3. <<How does it happen this unbelievably fierce, uneducated, mannerless, 
heartless woman is never mentioned when the unending problems of the 
political situation in Haiti are discussed and analyzed.  How does she get 
away with it?  How can she be stopped?  How can she be prosecuted for her 
crimes, as war criminals are?  How can she gain when so many lose so much?>>

<<A registered Laboratory Technician by profession, it is unclear how Michele 
Duvalier met Lauture, but they became immediately close, as Michele also 
identified with the rough woman's killer instincts.  They went into business 
together.>>

These two paragraphs seem contradictory to me, at best. Is a "Registered 
Laboratory Technician by profession" uneducated? Again, what are the 
committed crimes?  What is the evidence to support that claim? In a list like 
this, we should not take lightly accusations that defame a person's name 
without caring to provide support for it. I realize that during a debate on 
Creole, Corbett argued that we should not put us in a straight jacket by 
requiring all posted opinions be supported by empirical or scientific data - 
sorry Bob, if I did not paraphrase that right. But I don't think this was a 
license for unbridled accusations. Also, when the writer requires that Ms. 
Lauture be "prosecuted for her crimes, as war criminals are," what crimes is 
the writer talking about, and what war?