Category: haiti

macandal

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Cameron Rowland, macandal, 2023 Oxalic acid 37.5 x 30.5 x 67 cm Packets of materials that could invoke spirits, protect against punishment, and poison slave masters were called macandals. They were at the center of a plot in 1757 to poison all the white people in Haiti. The plot was organized by hundreds of enslaved and free black people. All macandals were subsequently outlawed. Their trade and use continued despite their criminalization. Enslaved people throughout the Atlantic world used arsenic, manioc juice, ground glass, and oxalic acid to poison overseers, masters, masters’ children, and livestock. Oxalic acid is a stain remover and household cleaner.

Cameron Rowland: Amt 45 i

Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany
10 February 2023 – 15 October 2023

Negations of accumulation manifested in theft, fugitivity, praise meetings, and plots.[53] Stealing the crops, eating the livestock, and refusing to work diminished the output of the plantation.[54] The formation of fugitive communities emptied the plantation of its value.[55] Sharing information evaded supervisory control.[56] Coordinated poisonings of masters and overseers instilled fear of the slave population.[57] Arson destroyed sugar mills, masters’ houses, and entire fields, inflicting property damage and halting production.[58] These black negations are unwritten losses. They are neither failed nor successful. Their impact is incalculable. They operate beyond the rubrics of value and production. Rather they were grounded in “the shared sense of obligation to preserve the collective being, the ontological totality” of blackness.[59]

Cameron Rowland: Amt 45 i

Maxwell Graham / Essex Street. Image via C&.

NPR on Haiti

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Crisis!

The constitutional mandate of Haiti’s de facto ruler, Prime Minister Ariel Henry — which some viewed as questionable from the start, as he was never technically sworn in — ended more than a year ago.

The country has had no president since its last one, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in 2021. Its Senate is supposed to have 30 members, and its lower legislative chamber should have 119; all of those seats are unfilled. Haiti’s elected mayors were all reappointed or replaced in 2020.

And last week, its 10 remaining senators departed office after their terms ended, leaving behind a nation’s worth of elected offices that now sit empty after years of canceled elections.

The country of 12 million people last held national elections in 2016.

Rampant inflation has sent the cost of food and gas spiraling; food insecurity is so widespread that about 40% of the population do not have enough to eat. And the disasters have combined to keep thousands of the country’s schools closed, meaning millions of Haitian children have lacked steady education and meals since the beginning of the pandemic.

via NPR.

Haiti, history, nytimes

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https://haitianhistory.tumblr.com/post/685429462394880000/the-new-york-times-covers-the-1825-haitian

Related : Haïti-France, les chaînes de la dette. Le rapport Mackau (1825) édition intégrale annotée et commentée par Marcel Dorigny†, Jean-Marie Théodat, Gusti-Klara Gaillard et Jean-Claude Bruffaerts chez Maisonneuve & Larose / Hémisphères éditions, 2021, 201 p. ISBN : 9782377011179 http://www.sfhom.com/spip.php?article3915

040315 or element in this field guide

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Aquin, Haiti. April 2015.

quoique d’origine rurale, … la manifestation des bandes de Rara est loin d’être quelque chose d’exclusivement champêtre. En effet, de la campagne à la ville comme dans la capitale d’Haïti, c’est une période rythmée, entre autres, par les tambours et les vaksin.

Abimaël Lindor, Palmes Magazine, 13 Août 2021.

De son site ou lakou (espace comprenant plusieurs unités de logement, souvent un lieu de culte vodou), une bande se déplace avec quelques dizaines de personnes et augmente en cours de route

[…]

Les déplacements des bandes avaient surtout lieu la nuit et se déroulaient dans les sites vodou et leur périphérie. L’activité d’une bande de rara était comparable à celle d’une petite armée appelée à défendre un territoire. La dénomination de plusieurs bandes à Léogâne en témoigne : «Chien méchant», «Renommée», «Taureau lakou», «Tirailleurs», ce dernier étant le nom d’une ancienne unité d’élite de l’armée d’Haïti. L’effectif d’une bande de rara ne dépassait pas une cinquantaine de personnes, souvent des adeptes du vodou. Les musiciens jouaient de petits instruments traditionnels : coquille de lambi, vaksin, râpe en fer blanc, tige de fer et tambour.

Avec l’organisation du festival de rara à partir de 1992 et l’arrivée de nouveaux dirigeants scolarisés et/ou issus de la diaspora, le rara s’est transformé totalement. Il est devenu, lors des fêtes de Pâques, le rendez-vous de plusieurs milliers d’Haïtiens.

Joseph Ronald Dautruche, l’Inventaire du patrimoine immatériel d’Haïti

One thing you find running through Haitian music throughout its history is a focus on
Haitian identity. Haitians are really keenly aware that they are a small nation, a particular
people, with a very singular identity.

[…]

Haitians are always aware that they’re in a transnational, global order, in a hemisphere full of other
nations.

Elizabeth McAlister

Transcript of podcast. More in archived page rara.wesleyan.edu

Related : obscénités et vulgarités–catharsis pour les Haïtiens de toutes les classes sociales

Vini kouzen, map mennen w

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Aquin, Haiti. April 2015.

À la fin du parcours, Mawoule et ses pairs ont remis un drapeau hautement symbolique aux autorités municipales. Avec le soleil au milieu, « ce drapeau traduit la tradition des Tainos et la culture de la canne à sucre tendant à disparaitre de la commune », expliquent-ils, espérant que l’étendard sera pris en considération et hissé.

Emmanuel Saintus, Journal Haïti Progrès

ARTISTS FOR HAITI : RAGGA NYC campaigns for KOURAJ

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ARTISTS FOR HAITI : RELIEF AND LOVE TO OUR HAITIAN FAMILY

We, Christopher Udemezue and Carolyn Lazard of RAGGA NYC, are raising funds for LGBTQ+ Haitians who have been affected by the August 14th earthquake. 

Through crowdsourcing our extended communities and offering a print sale from RAGGA NYC’s chosen family of Caribbean diaspora artists, we aim to raise $10,000 for KOURAJ, an LGBTQ+ Haitian organization providing hygiene and food kits to the 1200+ LGBTQ+ Haitians affected by the earthquake.  

RAGGA NYC, a platform and network for queer Caribbean artists, has set up a GoFundMe campaign and is offering prints to the first 30 people who donate over $200, the amount needed to fund a hygiene and food kit from KOURAJ for each of Haiti’s 1200+ LGBTQ+ people who have been displaced by the August 15th earthquake.

Gofundme!!!!!!

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Untitled (Gathered in the fold — for plenitude and a regimen fortifying courage)

Allons! […] We convince by our presence.