SAN FRANCISCO, CA — On the eve of the 3rd anniversary of one of the most horrific earthquakes in modern times, in which more that 220,000 Haitians lost their lives, the Revolutionary Poets Brigade of San Francisco held a fundraising event of poetry and music and featuring the Haitian speaker Max Blanchet, at the Art Internationale, the Brigade’s center, on January 11.
Entitled “Once More, Ayibobo!” (Ayibobo means “Amen” in Haitian, but can be used as a form of emphatic determination and even exhilaration). Batay Ouvriye (Workers Struggle), an important group in Haiti which fights for wage-justice for factory workers, teachers and the general new class, was the beneficiary of the event.
Another feature of the event was the publication, by CC. Marimbo Books, of Denizens of Hope, by Haitian poet Denize Lotu (Denize Lauture), part of whose powerful poem on the earthquake was read by two of the three translators (Denize himself translated some of the poems), Haitian poet Boadiba and I. Other poems featured Agneta Falk, Yolanda Catzalco, Karen Melander Magoon and Barbara Paschke, who read her French translation of a poem by Georges Castera, the noted Haitian poet. George Long provided the music on his ever receptive saxophone.
But it was speaker Max Blanchet who put into clear perspective the situation in Haiti. We know from reports recently published that Haiti has been the victim of another catastrophe after the quake. Billions of dollars in donations from people and governments all over the world have been either lost, misspent or stolen. Three years after the disaster, more than 300,000—some say as many as 500,000—Haitians live in hundreds of camps around the country. A well-known observer of Haiti, Amy Wilentz, in her latest book on the current aftermath, describes the camps as similar to the Occupy camps in the U.S.
There’s an element of truth in that image since Haitians are the poorest, most exploited people in the Americas. If ever there was an objective example of the New Class that the League of Revolutionaries for a New America has been writing about for years, it is the Haitian population, whose people have been more exploited by western capitalist systems than any country on earth.
What Max Blanchet brought to the evening was a clarity and understanding that many had not encountered before. Decrying the corruption before and after the quake, Blanchet bid his audience begin to understand that the earthquake, with its myriad deaths, represents but one of a series of disasters that have visited Haiti since the people rose up at the beginning of the 19th century and effected the only successful slave rebellion in the history of the earth, against no less than the army of Napoleon himself!
Blanchet, a member of the Lambi Fund, a Haitian group that raises money for irrigation projects in the Haitian countryside, left the audience with a sense of the post-quake new class Haitian as a resilient force working—no matter what regime is in power—for the better tomorrow.
