I feel a special connection to Haiti and the Haitian people.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.
They gave me six weeks to do a campaign, and I did all of Haiti in six weeks.
By most accounts, Aristide is the most popular figure in Haiti.
We are all Haitians, and we will build one Haiti for all Haitians.
I have heard the screams of the people. I have heard and felt your desperation. Haiti will not perish. Haiti must not perish.
It’s very important to say that French doesn’t belong to France and to French people. Now you have very wonderful poets and writers in French who are not French or Algerian – who are from Senegal, from Haiti, from Canada, a lot of parts of the world.
I want to see Haiti do better. We have the sun everywhere: that’s a big asset. We have wonderful coasts, beautiful islands, mountains. Other countries that have that are known for it, but Haiti has been so focused inwards, on its problems.
The State should have made sure the money given to the NGOs was used according to a global plan for Haiti; not doing whatever they want. They should be supervised and have to report and make sure the money is being used properly. They are here, but we are seeing no results.
The last five – six presidents of Haiti have failed miserably. And I don’t think it would be an honor for me to say I want to be the next ‘president.’ I want to be the man by with whom change arrives.
It’s funny… you can make fun of AIDS or Haiti, but if you make fun of some starlet in Hollywood’s looks? That’s like the one thing… the line you are not to cross.
I am an abolitionist. What does this mean? Abolitionist resistance and resilience draws from a legacy of black-led anti-colonial struggle in the United States and throughout the Americas, including places like Haiti, the first black republic founded on the principles of anti-colonialism and black liberation.
Haiti is my country. The same way the Beatles are received in England – that’s how Wyclef Jean is received in Haiti, do you know what I mean?
Haiti is always talking about decentralization and nothing has been so obvious, perhaps a weakness, as the centralized nature of Haitian society as being revealed by the earthquake. I mean, they lost all these medical training programs because they didn’t have them anywhere else.
I’ve been working in Haiti 28 years – I thought I’d sort of seen it… I’ve gone through a number of coups, the storms of 2008, I thought, you know, that I’d seen things as bad as they were going to get, and I was wrong.
We want to show the world Haiti can endure.
In Haiti you had the Duvaliers for 29 years and they were very well supported by the United States.
I covered Katrina, I’ve covered the tsunamis, all of them, the Haiti earthquake… you get to a certain point in your career where you say, ‘I want to now cover what I want to cover.’
It is the destiny of the people of Haiti to suffer.
I got quite annoyed after the Haiti earthquake. A baby was taken from the wreckage and people said it was a miracle. It would have been a miracle had God stopped the earthquake. More wonderful was that a load of evolved monkeys got together to save the life of a child that wasn’t theirs.
We’re learning how infections are travelling around the world and, sadly, how cholera in Haiti was brought in by U.N. peacekeeping forces from south Asia.
And the fact that Haiti was occupied for 19 years by the United States, from 1915 to 1934.
I’ve wept for Haiti a thousand times over the years since my first trip during the Duvalier reign.
The structure of apartheid is still rooted in the Haitian society. When you have apartheid, you don’t see those behind the walls. That is the reality of Haiti.
I’ve given myself 18 to 24 months for Haiti to have electricity 24 hours around the clock.
Two hundred years ago, our precursors in Haiti struck a blow for freedom, which was heard around the world, and across centuries.
In the harrowing aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake, one of the greatest needs became desperately clear: safe water.
When you step off a plane into a place like Haiti, you’re just surrounded by overwhelming stimulus: the people selling you things, asking you to engage.
The reason there’s not a dictatorship in Chile and that there’s a democracy in South Africa and Portugal today – and that Haiti has a nascent democracy – is that the world community as a whole felt outraged. This is the reason Milosevic sits in a jail in The Hague. It’s because the world has said, ‘Enough.’
The work that Partners in Health do in Haiti benefits the whole world.
I actually happened to be in Haiti right before the earthquake in 2010. I was there already with the organization I work with now, Artists for Peace and Justice, visiting the primary school that I had adopted, the Academy for Peace and Justice in Port-au-Prince. I came back, and within days, the earthquake happened.
It’s so hard to write about countries like Haiti because there’s truths behind the misperceptions people have. But there’s so much more. There are multiple truths.
The outpouring of support from millions of people in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti has been impressive.
Also, people are not often aware of the way the United States’ policies influence what happens in places like Haiti or El Salvador or Nicaragua. Or in Columbia right now.
If you look just at the decades after 1934, you know it’s hard to point to really inspired and positive support from outside of Haiti, to Haiti, and much easier to point to either small-minded or downright mean-spirited policies.
In my work in Haiti, I’ve seen the hugely positive effects that happen when people come together to build something in the middle of the most desperate situations.
I am currently in Haiti to help the Haitian people in their reconstruction.
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