Ezili Danto’s Response to Lionel's Questions and on re-creating and adapting the Ancestors' Vodun Psychology

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http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pre...ey.html#hubris
Marguerite Laurent.com | Breaking Chains

Hello Lionel,

Your questions are so appropriate. So in tune with what I was working on writing. I've answered them in more detailed and may share them with the Network. Your e-mail information will not show.

Thank you. ED
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Lionel wrote, inter alia, to Ezili Dantò on April 14, 2008:

"..It just seems to me that the people stand to gain nothing from politics, but that politics, uses the people as a way to move forward. The gap widens...."



Ezili Danto's Note:
Yes Lionel, the people in Haiti gain nothing from politics or from the guy sitting in the National Palace right now presiding over massive free-trade policies and globalization policies serving the global elites. The Haitian people just exist, it seems, as an excuse to keep these folks in a job. It's tragic and you're so right. For, "politics uses the people as a way to move forward." But this phenomenon is not exclusive to Haiti.

Moreover, you're right again, there is ABSOLUTELY no connection between the removal of Prime Minister Alexis of Haiti and the people eating. None whatsoever. In fact, the firing of Alexis and his government in turn, leaves a vacuum and no one, in the short term, to point to for implementing subsidy programs that will put food on Haitian tables and social programs for more jobs for the population. It seems, Preval (willingly or unwillingly) got together with his US-bosses and the International community and, along with the 16 Senators (who were put in a hotel to wait for the time to cast their vote), they sacrificed Alexis in order to buy time to calm down the Haitian people's cry for life, justice, food and change; to slow down the momentum against the Preval government (which had not met the needs of the masses since taking office in 2006) and institute the silence of the cemetery back.

Alexis was sacrificed not because he didn't implement viable social programs to help alleviate the suffering of the Haitian people. For, the truth of the matter is both President Rene Preval and Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis, since they came into office in 2006 have been IMPLEMENTING the neo-liberal and privatization programs dictated by the international community. A trade and economic program, known to Haitians as "the death plan" that Washington militarily ousted democratically elected President Aristide for not implementing to their satisfaction. Yes. The IMF structural adjustment, free-trade policies that destroys Haiti's domestic economy and supports foreign companies bleeding Haiti dry, undermining Haitian production, consumption, investment and wealth. Those programs mirror failed globalization programs all over the world. (Food riots have erupted in Niger, Senegal, Cameroon and Burkina Faso, and protests have flared in Morocco, Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Mexico and Yemen.) No, the international community has thrown us a bone, I suppose because our politicians are so stupid and pathetic any ways, they are always getting played like this.

For the Internationals may invariably depend on the spineless Haitian imperialist collaborators to sell their soul for the mere promise and pledge of a U.S. dollar and approval, dollars and approvals that are enticingly held out but never fully given to Haiti by said Internationals. (Before the riots, the U.N. World Food Program had collected only 15% of its $96-million required food budget goals for Haiti.) So, expect a long drag out search for a new Prime Minister, one that will please these foreigners not the people of Haiti, and then hearings and procedure to confirm the replacement and his new cabinet. The people will continue to starve, eat dirt cookies for palliative relief, double over in burning hunger as if they've swallowed Clorox, while the UN pays itself $600 million per year to secure the safety of our corpses and zombified population. A population that knows the UN occupation forces came to Haiti to help ouster of their popularly elected leaders, not to safeguard Haiti's democracy and security. A population these UN soldiers and their bosses shall continue to psychologically hammer, ravage and frustrate as they strut and parade - on our streets, at our beaches - the health and wealth that they've garnered in our Haitian names, eating heartily from their private UN food commissariats and fully equipped barracks in empoverished Haiti, all the while and not very far below radar, entertaining themselves sexually abusing powerless and shelterless Haitian minors, men and women.

Unfortunately, Haiti’s politicians - and notably these particular post-2004 coup d'etat collaborators and puppets in power - depend on these foreign aid folks and their UN gun power to stay in their political jobs and get paid at least their wages. Do they flinch at begging and receiving part of their wages and food handouts for Haiti from the same people putting guns to our head and abusing our children? No. Haitian governance these days and more particularly since Bush Regime change in 2004 and its UN occupation, is not, by any stretch, about the dignity and domestic interests of the people of Haiti. It's about containment-in-poverty through UN occupation that enforces the Washington neo-liberal economic squads' endless (IMF/Word Bank/IDB) debts, privatization, cutting of tariffs for imports, exporting all capital out of Haiti; strumming continuous dependency and foreign domination through UN troops and restructuring a new Haitian police force loyal to foreign, not domestic interests and protection. (See October 17, 2007 - Ezili Dantò's Note on the current situation in Haiti ; January 1, 2008 - Another Haitian independence day under occupation ).

This firing of Prime Minister Alexis is simply to buy time for the repugnant internationals to resume their globalization strip-mining of Haiti, for the media to go away, and for the repression and massive privatization and international pillaging unfolding in Haiti since 2004 to continue with no media scrutiny. It's not news that the people resort to eating cookies made of dirt, salt and butter. Or, that their hunger pains are so severe they say their stomachs burn like they've swallowed Clorox. But this firing of Alexis is not about assuaging the burning hunger in their guts.

The realities may have pushed President Preval to cut $8 off the price of imported Miami rice, when just two days before he had announced he would start subsidizing domestic production and consumption, not imported US rice. Though this announcement didn't sit well with most Haitians who felt President Preval had just indicted his own government for malfeasance against the Haitian people as the natural choice would have been for the president of Haiti to have been promoting Haitian production and Haitian consumption from his very first day in office, not two years later and only after the people had to take to the streets in riots to pressure his government to listen to their hungry and desperate voices. This firing and the sleuth of "pledges" of food aid that shall follow from the Internationals, along with the Preval $8 price cut on imported Miami rice, (with a start date no one seems to know), are not long term solutions, but is so that the US, France, UN, Canada and their wretched NGO's may continue their "benevolence" - masturbating on Black pains in Haiti, this drinking the blood of Haitians in the name of "humanitarian aid" while committing crimes against humanity so atrocious, so harrowing, six year old Haitian children find no safety in their own beds from the abuses of UN soldiers or evangelizing missionaries and while the young men in the poor areas are preyed on by the white liberals and over-sexed Lèlès, male and female, from France, US, Canada, et al.

Long term solution is for Haiti to get its sovereignty back. The UN occupation to end and Haitians allowed to invest in Haitianist domestic development, self-reliance, non-Pepe education and our own indigenous culture and sources. Handouts may be necessary in the short term because of these Western "free trade" impositions and the 2004 annihilation of Haiti's democracy and its achievements. But in the long term, this charity just breeds further dependency. (Haiti: world reacts to protests).
Somehow Haiti came into World news again because the economic recession caused by the world powers' unsound economic policies, the Iraq war, high fuel prices and the uses of food crops for biofuels is being felt worldwide. But nowhere more acutely than in Haiti and the developing countries where structural adjustment policies of the IMF/World Bank are imposed by US/Euro-supported dictators/puppets or their proxies, UN occupation and tutelage. But the Neocons, must stop this coverage, this media airing the unity of problems heralding from the same source. Thus, quickly Alexis is fired so that the Haitian mafia families may continue their profit-over-people tendencies and continue flying off to Miami, Paris, Ottowa to meetings upon meetings on the dime of the State along with their foreign Euro-American bosses on how best to keep this "IMPROVED-since-2004" status quo in tact.

No Lionel, the resident of the (Haitian) palace in Port au Prince cannot make any difference as long as he depends on foreign aid to pay his cabinet members and IMF and World Bank credit to run the state offices and keep in jobs the Haitian men making up these posts all over the world.

Yes, their "politics today divide and distract us more than they unite and harness our efforts." Yes, we are "better off focusing directly on those who need us most." By their acts, these Haitian politicians show they know nothing about Haiti's empowering Vodun psychology and consciousness. Nor, the allegory of the Zombie. For they are the zombie puppets of our former enslavers.

Please brother, do what you can for the people DIRECTLY.

Besides, the concept of nation-state for Haitians, in light of the fact we have no great military, economic and diplomatic allies that could face the Euro-US superpowers head-on, is fairly non-existent anyways. Always has been. Haitian who have survived, and remained authentic, self-reliant Haitians, by-passed Port au-Prince a long time ago. Port-au-Prince is where the Kolon-missionaries' tentacles are the deepest. That's always been a failure. The majority of our people live life outside that hornets' nets. Our grandparents, Lionel, survived so you and I may be here today, because they by-passed that seat of the State that has been rendered simply PREDATORY. It's a failure and will always be a failure as long as Haitian politicians depend on foreign aid and "investments", instead of the ingenuity of their own masses. People-to-people that's our motto here at Ezili's HLLN.

Yes we get tired, disheartened. I too have asked all your questions, Lionel. We've trudged through much Haitian blood and agony these last four years of occupation in Haiti. But I think at the end, you've answered your own questions.

Lionel, you write:
"Globalization has left us behind.
We toil and play politics.
A failed state does not mean failed people,
not failed hopes,
not failed culture,
just failed politics. "

Yes, Haiti's politicians continue to fail because they continue to trust more in the white men and his false promises of "development" than in their own peoples' creativity.

The hard question they ask but fail to find the right answer to is: How does a country take back its sovereignty, freedom, without money, credit, self-sufficiency??? Credit, the issuance of which is dependent on an International Community that's vowed to enslave or decimate your people and what it stands for.

You ask me Lionel: "...don't you sometimes feel like (your passion, your words) they are wasted? Getting and keeping people motivated enough to act ... And do what? What keeps you going? Do you see results? "

Yes, most of the time I feel that my life-force has been squandered and spilled meaninglessly landing on deaf ears and hard ground. But, "What keeps me going" you ask Lionel. Do I see result?"

First, I am the result. My consciousness exists because African folks who came before me spilled their life-force so I would know of Dessalines' legacy, strength and vision. What keeps me going? Knowing mistè yo live in me and that time is finite. That because of our culture, our faith, our Vodun way of being, we cannot lose. That yes, we want material wealth, clean drinking water, food and tangible freedoms. But that will come only if I struggle. Will Haitians ever stop suffering? That question was answered already after 300 years of US-Euro barbarity, at Bwa Kayiman on August 14, 1791. Rooted in our psychology and cosmology, freedom will come again, from our bodies, psyches, soul and sweat.

The alternative cannot be to leave the field to the inbreeded parasites sucking dry Dessalines' legacy. No. I am Ayiti and that means what?....with this Western bought education, or my own limitations, sometimes I simply can't articulate what the whole fabric of that is.... but I do know others have choices. But I, my brother and the masses we give voice to, I am what I stand for. I, cannot be outside and separated, divided or torn asunder from the fear we drown in, the hopelessness we swallow, the humiliation we bear, OR, from the power, beauty, psychology and wisdom of Dantò e Zanset yo e Timoun yo. I even resent the cost for giving life to this consciousness. Still, I am that without end and since lè marasa yo.
We don't own a failed culture and when Haiti's leaders are well rooted in our own Vodun psychology and cosmology, in our own history and legacy to the world, then that power shall shine and issue forth from restored and re-educated psyches and form new paradigms. How exciting will it then be when all Haitians are taught and encouraged to use a Vodun lexicon adapted and re-created to be understood in these modern times, but founded and based on the Ancestors' Vodun archetypal psychology so that when untenable choices are forced down our throats by the powers-that- be, the NATURAL FIRST ANSWER is to follow policies that assure Haiti's independence in all realms and that respects our revolutionary history and national motto of Haitians united to live free or die.

Our freedom comes from what we are. From what we stand for and speak out against. Dessaline's legacy, keeps me going my brother. It's what makes my people invincible in the face of all the agony of being Ayisyen in the "New World."

Ezili Dantò
April 14, 2008
(Black is the Color of Liberty
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