After I land at Kennedy Airport
My eyes bug out of my head
That is it, man! A fantastic nation!
However after I get to Jamaica Ave.
The place are the cash bushes?
After I get to Flatbush
Oh, oh, what did I get myself into?
Appears like they offered me a nasty ticket.
From “New York Metropolis” by Daniel Simidor, revealed in The Moveable Decrease East Aspect (quantity 6, number one, 1989)
This text grew out of a dialogue between Haitian-American artists Vladimir Cybil Charlier and Rejin Leys concerning the present wave of anti-Haitian and anti-immigrant sentiment in components of the USA. The socio-political scenario of Haiti inserted itself into our work early on. And right here we’re, years later, serious about how one can contextualize this disaster from the vantage level of our artwork follow.
For such a small nation, with a fraction of the inhabitants of the USA, Haiti occupies an outsized house within the minds of presidential and vice presidential candidates Donald Trump and JD Vance. We all know they hate immigrants and imagine immigration must be restricted solely to individuals who seem like them (and, in Vance’s case, a choose few Brown individuals who tolerate him.) However Haiti particularly has terrified White People for greater than two centuries, so her folks make a very enticing goal.
It’s ironic that Haitian immigration, largely pushed by a long time of US coverage, stirs a lot anger amongst People. Malcolm X spoke of “chickens coming residence to roost” when he described the local weather of hate that led to the assassination of John F. Kennedy greater than 60 years in the past, but the lesson nonetheless hasn’t sunk in.
Vladimir Cybil Charlier: My very own place on this fraught transnational legacy has profoundly formed my artwork. My lifelong creative journey, considering of a visible language to precise a diasporic id, has been molded by my place as what I name “a half era.” My mother and father arrived in New York within the Nineteen Sixties. My great-uncle Lucas Premice’s home in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, the place he had settled in the course of the Harlem Renaissance, turned the gateway for a lot of new Haitian arrivals. His home was a gathering level not just for Haitians but in addition for the African-American mental and creative group.
Though I used to be born in Elmhurst, Queens, what was meant to be a quick go to to Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince after I was 4 months previous changed into a 12 months of hiding. After the disappearance of my maternal uncle and three cousins, my great-aunt Marie Chauvet sheltered me and my grandmother for a number of months. Ultimately, she fled to New York to publish her guide, Love, Anger, and Insanity (1968), which denounced the autocratic regime of Jean-Claude Duvalier (nicknamed “Papa Doc”) that was chargeable for the disappearance of her nephews.
In hindsight, works from my Indigo Blues collection (largely from 2023), which use denim as a illustration of the Vodou deity of agriculture Zaka, additionally evoke the uniforms of the Tonton Macoutes, Papa Doc’s brutal non-public militia — ghosts of a not-so-distant previous.
Rejin Leys: My household’s immigration to the States coincides with one other one of many many crises within the pages of the Haitian-American story. My mother and father arrived greater than 50 years in the past, in the course of the time when the US was propping up Papa Doc as a result of a minimum of he wasn’t a communist.
Although I used to be born right here, listening to tales of Haiti’s “good previous days” was the narrative of my childhood. It was solely a lot later that I discovered the main points of individuals’s arrival, just like the aunt who arrived at JFK Airport late one evening, with solely her 4 little kids and no baggage. And the way my godmother had taken the bus to go choose them up and convey them to her Brooklyn condominium, the place they waited and hoped that my uncle had made it out safely. Or that my father left in a rush, with no visa, after the tried assassination of his boss on the Census Bureau in Port-au-Prince. Although half a century separates these tales from these of many Haitian residents in Springfield, Illinois, at present, all of us share the identical need for peace and security — no totally different from some other immigrant group.
And but, imagined tales of Haitians feasting on pets make the entrance web page of reports retailers, serving as periodic reminders that, after two centuries, the Western world has but to completely settle for the nation that defeated Napoleon and helped finance José Martí and Simón Bolívar. Haiti stays a problem to what bell hooks known as the “white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.”
Haiti’s combat for independence holds a significance on par with the Tulsa bloodbath of 1921; the genocide of a whole bunch of hundreds of Taíno folks by Christopher Columbus attracts parallels to the Path of Tears. The influence of Papa Doc’s regime in Haiti echoes in modern US politics, reminding us how deeply historic and present occasions are interconnected.
VCC: As Haiti is persistently held up as a cautionary story by the Western world. I’m reminded of my father’s enigmatic final phrases: “Haiti is just not the previous, however the future.” His assertion means that Haiti’s significance transcends its historic struggles and prompts reflection on the enduring challenges confronted by African-American and Indigenous communities throughout the US.
Regardless of the venom Trump and Vance direct towards our group, Haitians will not be the impoverished, alien invaders they need us to be. Haitians have lengthy been woven into the historic material of America.
RL: “Mud-eaters,” “AIDS-carriers,” ” pet-eaters,” “boat folks” — these slurs vilify Haitians. Within the ’90s, throughout a earlier disaster in Haiti and a wave of individuals migrating away from hazard again residence, I assumed rather a lot concerning the time period “boat folks.” It was used to dehumanize susceptible folks. Not actual folks, not human. Savages. Aliens. Traditionally and at the moment, such language and accusations have been precursors to violence by indignant mobs, to the bomb threats and hostility that Springfield’s Haitian group is now dealing with.
Right here we’re as soon as once more, enduring one other disaster on the island, this time worsened by weapons illegally exported from the USA. But, these fleeing the violence are met with extra hostility and violence.
The brutal plantation system of Saint-Domingue was designed to interrupt newly enslaved individuals who have been then despatched to the American South. The tradition they introduced from the Antilles left its mark on the whole lot — from blues music to structure, from Louisiana’s Creole delicacies to Martha Graham’s fashionable dance. Our youngsters will come to see Malcolm X because the warrior god Ogou, Billie Vacation because the goddess of affection Ezili.
The border as we all know it’s a fashionable invention. The youngsters of Anacaona, of Dutty Boukman, of Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, have at all times been right here — and are right here to remain.