#5112: #5058: A Remarkable Coincidence: Chamberlain comments [Response from Kathy S. Grey] (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Racine125@aol.com

Greg, remember that a lot of those "non-Lavalas groups and Haitian intellectuals" you claim are turning against Aristide are the same people who supported the coup d'etat of 1991!  What kind of credibility do you give them when they proclaim a comittment to democracy?  Puh-LEASE.  If they are all charged up about a second round of voting that didn't happen, where on earth were their voices when the whole legislative and executive branches of the Haitian government were arbitrarily contravened by a mutinous military funded by a corrupt plutocracy?

You write:

<<By the same logic, all vaudou is foreign-controlled, bogus etc. because mambo Kathy is a pass-for-white foreigner brought up outside Haiti.>>

Let me get this personal stuff out of the way before I go on to discuss the topic of the thread.  Excuse me, folks.

Greg, that kind of snotty personal attack is beneath you.  I don't care if you don't like light-skinned mixed race people, and I object to your characterization as "bogus".  Vodou is a religion, not a nationality. I have for more than ten years been an ordained clergy person of that religion, a Mambo (which is written with a capital letter just like "Rabbi" or "Bishop" especially when it precedes a personal name, as in "Mambo Racine").  Furthermore, Vodou is an international religion, and and I am not the only non-black or non-Haitian Vodouisant, by a long shot. If you knew more about Vodou you would know this. But beyond that, Greg, I would never attack your professional competence (or your skin tone) because I disagree with you politically.  SHAME!

Okay, back to the actual topic of the thread.  Listen up, now.  When the right wing was in power, they organized the machinery of the state to do violence against the Haitian people.  During the military regime over 5,000 Haitians were murdered by agents of the state. This is NOT THE SAME as common crime, it is NOT THE SAME as vagabondage and window-smashing.  A society where there is some violence associated with demonstrations is DIFFERENT from a society where people are murdered by their own government for demonstrating!

The situation in Port-au-Prince is NOT THE SAME as it was in, say 1993, when mutilated corpses turned up on street corners and garbage heaps daily!  The vast majority of those cadavers were the former earthly vessels of pro-democracy political activists, not "victims of malnutrition" as the right wing tried to assert.

And even today, when abuses are perpetrated by the HNP, one generally finds that the perpetrators are former FAd'H.  Who is surprised?  They are habituated to the use of arms, they are desensitized to killing and torture.  Look at Jean-Cols Rameau, who just got a piddling three years for eleven deaths!  You know where he used to serve in the Army?  Right here in Jacmel, where Commandant Jeune used to beat the beejeezus out of people he thought were pro-Aristide.

It is dishonest, fundamentally dishonest, to attempt to compare the hurley-burley of Port-au-Prince politics today with the murderous repression of 1991 - 1994.  You know what Port-au-Prince reminds me of?  The "Hell's Kitchen" area of New York City prior to Tammany, during, and after.  It's an instructive comparison.

These "protesting" political parties make me laugh - they do exactly the same magouj as the major candidates, they just can't WIN, that's all, so they protest!  If they won, they would be perfectly happy, and the losers would be protesting the winner's magouj.  What do they think they look like, these "house parties" (because all of the members could fit in one house and are usually biologically related) , trying to claim anything like "moral high ground"?  It's ridiculous.

It bothers me that the "second round" Senatorial voting didn't take place.  It should have.  But it wouldn't have made a bit of difference to the outcome.  Do a third round!  Do a fourth!  A fifth!  Lavalas will win in any case.  That is because the majority of the people in Haiti want it that way!  How about a little respect for that fact?

If the International Republican Institute wants to promote it's dishonest, repressive agenda in Haiti, they have freedom of speech, they can say what they want.  But from my government, composed in part of Democrats for some of whom I voted, I expect recognition of the facts, not denial; and objectivity, not obfuscation.

Peace and love,

Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen
(Kathy S. Grey, M.S.)

"Se bon ki ra", 
     Good is rare - Haitian Proverb

The VODOU Page - http://members.aol.com/racine125/index.html

(Posting from Jacmel, Haiti)