5850: Re: 5847: Re: Violence against foreigners; Simidor comments (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Racine125@aol.com

In a message dated 11/19/2000 3:25:22 PM Eastern Standard Time, Daniel 
Simidor writes:

<< I sympathize with Manbo Rasin San Bout -- what happened to her and her 
 clients shouldn't happen to a dog.  All the same, I can't help notice:
 
 1)  How that one incident dramatically affected her recent gushing embrace 
of 
 Lavalas.  How quickly she associates that one incident to "a sort of 
`politik 
 anti-blan' apparently being promoted by the Lavalas party nowadays."  >>

Whoa, NELLIE!  This particular incident in and of itself merely illustrates 
the "politik anti-blan", it didn't make me suddenly aware of it.  I still 
support Aristide, although I think that the Lavalas decision to refuse to 
follow the election rules in the legislative elections was unwise.

And there is no doubt in my mind that this "politik anti-blan" is 
Lavalas-originated.  It's so much easier to point the finger at those nasty 
"blans" when they don't want to accept the election results, than it is to 
differentiate between progressive whites and reactionary whites.  It's just 
pure intellectual laziness, as I said before.

 <<2)  Sorry to say, but Manbo's attackers don't come across as  the regular 
 type of zenglendos, deportees or chimeres.  Could this be a challenge among 
 initiates?  Perhaps a local secret society, hostile to the commercialization 
 of Vodou by clever outsiders? >>

NAH!  Those jerks were not initiates, they were hoodlums, that's all.  If 
they were initiates they would have respected Houngans and Mambos.  And if 
they were Sanpwel I would have been just fine with them, since I myself am a 
Reine Sanpwel.  These louts didn't care a hoot about the service of the lwa, 
all they cared about was feeling like big shots by being disgusting to 
defenseless people.  That's the old Macoute tradition at work in this 
generation.

 3) A handful of people in a very particular situation attacks Manbo Rasin 
San 
 Bout, and how quickly she generalizes about all Haitians!  "...the real 
flaws 
 in Haitian society," she writes, "namely a culture which does not condemn 
 stealing and lying as long as the victims are outsiders, including `blans'." 

I have been saying this for a long time, Simidor!  I've said so over and over 
on this list, in fact.  Do you delete my posts?  Remember that the first time 
I said this it created a big rhubarb on this list?

 4)   Contrary to what Manbo writes, Haitian culture has suffered until now 
 from a bias toward foreigners.  Haitians throughout the 19th century 
couldn't 
 harm a foreigner or his possessions without the whole country being 
penalized 
 with huge money claims, enforced at gun point by the major imperialist 
powers 
 (the US, France, Germany, Spain, etc).

That's true.  But at the same time, Haitian schoolchildren are still taught 
until this day that "the blans made us slaves".  Not, "white French men in 
the colonial period", but "the blans".  Again, it's this intellectual 
laziness at work.

Pointing out these phenomena is not "playing the victim", Simidor, any more 
than African-Americans active in the civil rights movement were "playing the 
victim".

Peace and love,

Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen

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

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