HAITI YOU' VE NEVER SEEN

THAT'S  BEEN HAPPENING  IN THE HAITIAN COUNTRYSIDE..

V

icky Riva saw tears streaming down the pilot’s cheek . She also was crying when looking at the virgin   and paradisiacal beaches. Sat west to the helicopter’s pilot, a still young man, Vicky could barely understand what has touched so deeply the 4-people crew, landing and flying across the apparently never explored Haitian Southern landscape.

Viewed from above, the Haitian countryside seem to have  been  frozen  back to  Columbus times.  Hence its  so moving panorama. But, by the  early 2000s, a kind of  rush had started shaking these sleeping areas.

Local tourism had triggered the move. More than that, however, new life styles can explain this booming endeavor. Peoples had become tired of living in crowded and ghetto like neighborhoods. They long for better and more quiet places.

Old southern cities like Jacmel got setting up infrastructures on their own. Jacmel still has hidden attractions, far from different from the traditional Northern monuments, back to the 50s and 60s. But, far away from Pt-au-Prince, Pt Salut is getting a new look . Mie Antoinette Buteau and his husband have seized these opportunities  to launch a cellular phone business. Even in its deep hinterland, Manolo Pressoir continue to run a country hotel offering hot water, and internet. Mr Pressoir  had never thought  about leaving his native country.

Better be back home, whisper consequently  with a relief, Haitians residents living outside and eager to share this kind of wake-up call. Now,  one can understand why the returning vague is so catching .

The move has something to do with set-up wharfs and piers, open now to goods arrival such as cars, commodities and domestic furniture. Never mind going any longer to P-au-P for everything. Cities, small towns and  counties can have utilities and facilities on their own, let alone professionals and entrepreneurs who want to do businesses at home, within their native places.

But, what  matters most, is the  countryside coming  to new life styles as that happened with cane cutters coming back from Cuba , early in the 20 th century. Camp Perrin houses in the South LI building like design. The same goes at Jacmel downtown where American way  would take the lead. In total, foreign interference is everywhere, whether at Leogane or St Marc. Furthermore,  in the process  of reinventing itself, Haiti is living up to  new expectations longtime heralded  by the booming phone business. Any place  you go deep in the country, quietness continue to lure travelers and vacationers tired of the American beat. A momentum that cannot stop cellular phone from ringing. 

That’s the new Haitian life style.

HUGO CHAVEZ

HUGO R. CHAVEZ, THE MORNING AFTER

A

lthough regarded as  an epicenter for Cuban politics and subsequently  their Latin American counterparts, the forty-old Cuban rendezvous, Versailles Café was not as usual  attended on this morning of  6 March by the crowd of hot times, when something was boiling in the Caribbean island.  Few peoples were talking about the passing of the Castroist ally, the Venezuelan Hugo Rafael  Chavez.  Pronounced dead at the age of 58, a few days after undergoing surgery in Cuba, Hugo R. Chavez passed away at the eve of being sworn in for a new 6-year term. Having fought death unsuccessfully, Chavez seemed to have not survived his anti-imperialism battle to which he has dedicated his life.

“That’s the passing of a human being” mourned  an Italian woman , Claudia Sevenini, living in los Angeles.  Roberto Sanchez, a 30-year-old lawyer from Miami, thinks the wind of change is bowling, and anyone has to wait before any commitment. Inside Versailles which starts to gather clients and acquainted people coming for news, there is a kind of eerie silence as if something would soon show up. A 72-year old Cuban whispers  that it is better to wait, but outside, an old engineer apparently from Batista’s time carries a  pancarte reading:  murio Chavez.. le toca a Raoulito. Santiago Portal involved in environment policy, is angry even after the Venezuelan leader’ passing  who was plotting with Iran terrorist action against America, M. Portal concludes.

But, overseas, the death of Chavez triggered emotion and anger. In Santo Domingo, told Pouchy Mathieu  Durandis, a  Haitian student, Dominicans were crying. The same went somewhere in LA where Chavez was as well loved and disliked. Chavez had  emerged in the late 90s  as a leader coming from darkness , like  Alejandro Toledo in Peru, Evo Morales  from Bolivia and Lula from Brazil. Most of  these leaders were lured by socialism going as  far as mixing romantic ideals  and politics.  Unfortunately since Zapata times, this   dreamy anti-Americanism  had  vanished  not without permeating  the ambiguous relationship between  America and  Latin countries south to the Rio Grande.

Such uncertainties still persist even when the Hispanic vote were so  instrumental in the victory of Barrack Obama for a second term in last November. The late Chavez is gone now, gone probably with the wind as in the novel of Margaret Mitchel  despite a better life for the marginalized and needy for which a dying Chavez affirms to have scarified his life.

 His legacy of anti-imperialism remains however  mixed  with the Venezuelan’s quality of life having been improved at the third-fastest pace in the world, according to a UN index.