#3378: Clements shares letter and comments: a reply

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From:Jepiem@aol.com

I believe this behavior might be due to the current political climate in 
Haiti, where people instigate this kind of things just to create problems and 
exploit the situation for their own benefit. As they have nothing to offer to 
the population or the country, they try to create an athmosphere of chaos, as 
if what already exists weren't enough,  so to be able to submerge out of the 
dark waters they have stirred. Not being very inventive, the anti foreigner 
or antiblanc sentiment is an easy tool. That same attitude is encountered 
among many of our politicians from whom nobody hears nothing except their 
deafening silence or perhaps their loud supplications for a government job 
during non election times. Come election times, they brandish newly 
refurbished noirism and/or antimulatto or antiblan diatribes in order to one 
more time fool the gullible populace.
I never thought this had gotten to this point of violence, but I guess I was 
being optimistic, even though events from the last few years were there to 
prove otherwise. With sadness, I have to agree with one of the posters who 
two weeks ago or so in response to a similar but non physically violent 
situation advised any white skin foreigner to step gingerly when venturing in 
some remote cities of the country. Incidentally, this situation of inflamed 
passion fed by ignorance and leading to violence is not unique to Haiti. Just 
look at the recent events in Miami surrounding the saga of the kid named 
Elian Gonzalez. You simply don't tell some latins and almost any cuban in 
Miami that little Elian will stand a better chance of being raised as a 
normal child with his father than as a trophy of the cuban exile community. 
What the father decides to do about staying here or not is something that 
should be left to himself and kept separate from the issue that the kid is 
better off removed from the circus stage where circumstances had placed him. 
And look at our politicians in Miami and in Washington. Miami is a very 
important state for the forthcoming elections. "There are some votes to be 
gotten out of this" seems to be the oil that greases the motor of all these 
mechanical puppets we the people have elected to represent us. That's Haiti 
on a larger scale. So tell your son to be careful and not go alone where he 
is not familiar, particularly at night.