Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
We air news review excerpts covering historic political transitions in Honduras, Colombia, and Haiti with members of the No Alibi Collective from UCSB. Hosted by Elizabeth Robinson, commentators are Jack Eidt, Santa Barbara Professors Gerard Pigeon and Katia McClain, and Hector Javkin.
Today’s attempts to malign Haiti stand as only the latest in a long line of hegemony and oppression against this Caribbean island nation. January 1, 1804 is Haitian Independence Day, and Haitian attorney Ezili Dantò honors and remembers Janjak Desalin (Jean Jacques Dessalines), Haiti’s Liberator and founding father, as well as the indigenous army, and women who influenced him. Janjak’s ideals and legacy lives on – Nou la!
Haiti now faces an unmitigated human disaster from the destruction of Hurricane Matthew. With extreme reports of death tolls, Dady Cherry examines the misinformation common in mainstream media reports of the destruction that reinforce the gringo-savior mentality, backed by western governments and their compromised and ineffectual non-governmental organizations like the Red Cross. The failures from the 2010 earthquake loom large.
What kind of President would Hillary Clinton be? According to her record, she has consistently favored big business, multinational billionaires and the national security state, at the expense of the “everyday Americans” she claims to “champion.” Not in the least progressive.
While Ile à Vache, a 20-square mile island off of Haiti’s southern coast, has been promoted as a jewel of Caribbean ecotourism, the subsistence fishermen and farmers of the island have been ignored. As the government moves forward with development plans, the people have responded with a series of protests.
On the Caribbean island of the Dominican Republic, tourists flock to pristine beaches, with little knowledge that a few miles away thousands of dispossessed Haitians are under armed guard on plantations harvesting sugarcane, most of which ends up in US kitchens. Watch the documentary film, “The Price of Sugar.”
Like several West African religions, Vodouisants believe in a supreme being called Bondyè, from bon “good” + dyè “God.” Because Bondyè is unreachable, Vodouisants aim their prayers to lesser entities, the spirits known as Lwa (Loa), contacted and served through possession. In turn, the Lwa confer material blessings, physical well-being, protection, abundance.