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A NEW GENERATION OF HAITIANS
Since after Haiti became the only country in the world where its population is being decreased on the inside and increased on the outside ,no matter what happened over there for the last decade it seems that the country is being revolutionized in a way that not too many people understand.
And for that , I feel that is very important to elaborate on the matter. After many years of instability and confusion, Haiti became today the poorest country in the Northern Hemisphere and many of us has decided to leave it and go elsewhere . Then in the years of 1970 numerous Haitians had reached the coast of Florida by boat and became soon after the Florida Haitian workforce of of the agricultural development.
THE CRAETION OF THE DIASPORA.
In 1974. Haiti was for the first time in the Soccer world Cup. And to share these great times with all Haitians in the Island. The Duvalier's government had put on the public plarks, a big screen of TV for people to watch the evolution of the Haitian national soccer team ..This also And brought to all of us the first view of the international exposition ( countries that we never thought existed )Then gave us also the will to visit them .
, The first. category of people who leaved from Haiti to Nassau Bahamas are those who lived in the north eastern region of Haiti such as Port- de –paix, and Mole St Nicolas ect…For many of them it was more practical to go shoping at Nassau Bahamas then going to the capital of Haiti itself. They would come back faster from there then from Port Au Prince. And this is the reason why statistic reveals that Port de paix is the first city in the island where the electrical materials things such as stoves, refrigerators, washers ect have took their evolution in Haiti.
In the 70’s when we first went to the Bahamas we were not well accepted because of who we were. We got mistreated. punished and captured. And Even today Haitians in the Bahamas are not as well as those living in the USA.
Because of the abuses and lacks of treatments from the people of Bahamas, we were forced to continue our voyage to an unknown destination. And our destiny, our episode continue until we discover the coast of Florida.
In the beginning of the eighty’s ,Haitians arrived in Miami by thousands and rapidly became the workforce of Florida …I remember back then when we first arrived , we use to cross bushes and bushes to go from East Side to the West side ,the country was built only with the one story houses, ours roads were not paved, Higher stories were not yet builded. We did not have big shopping malls like the ones we have today. Attraction places and big buildings for school were not yet brought to our community ect.. .After sharing the beauty of our new hometown, we then direct ourselves to other places ,looking for, jobs and opportunities .At the same time we discovered one of the most important town of Florida : ‘Belle Glade ‘who became the most industrialized city on that time due to its rich and agricultural commerce of sugar and tomatoes and water melon ect.
While its industry grows, Belle Glade become the blooming work force for Haitians and Janaicans specially those who specialized in agricultural work.
There used to be many of buses that came from Belle Glade to pick up thousands of Haitian workers for a weekly contract with a company named Thallismam.
The 62 nd street by Cayard Market used to be the turning point where most Haitian living in Miami called ‘ THE LITTLE HAITI ‘’ .
In the huge champ of sugar canes ,on the hills of the Glades born the Industrialize revolution of America, were the Americans had used a different strategy then the 1800. At least we got pay for the work we do, But with an opening schedule where an employer could work as many hours as possible and as may days as possible .We became competitors of ourselves by wanting to earn as much money as we wanted. We became so greedy we were counting the minutes even when we go to the John. The obsession of making money drove us to accept any poor conditions that our life is driven to a such as non social environment, no school , no church on Sundays or no time to have fun. We became the machine itself that make our own money. Many of us live under one small apartment where we sleep by intermittence.
The trains are always running and we ran ,we ran and sometimes at the same speed to fill them with whatever we have produced or picked .For some of us it was only for the money. The work was hard as the eighteen century of slavery, but the money was good as ten to fourteen dollars an hour. Back then in the eighty’s the national wage of salary use to be $2.85 0r $3.35.
So you can easily imagine what or how much some one can do with a such pay check. You can easily do the math after only five years of hard work, five years of being that money machine. To an economical stand point, we became the first group of Diaspora we dream to go back to Haiti for our own show just to to prove the people of Haiti that we have discovered the paradise itself.
From Belle Glade to the 20 th Street ,where we do our first time shopping. We fill up our malettes with only new clothes , new shirts, jeans , facial product and with our curly air, we decided to return to our native country just to show the rest of them how different we quickly became.
For some of us we though that our dream came true ,but we never realized, at the same time we have sent the wrong message to our country by not telling them how, at the beginning we made our money. We only show them the bright side our history. We made every single Haitian believe that America was the golden nation where money is always falling from the trees .And until today everyone hopes to come in to find his golden tree.. After so many years of sending the wrong message, we have killed without noticing it the future of Haiti by promoting only the good side of America.
In Miami where I lived, I witness the founding of the Haitian Diaspora, with all the toughness, the fights ,the abuses ,the mistreats and the war of words against us . All these made us as resilient as a black community that always fight for its right. And from all these tribulations, we became today the most productively and well known black community in the USA. And the reality today is for every major State in the US ,there is a Haitian community. And when you add us all up around the world, statistics reveals that we are closely to 4 millions.
It has been thirty years since this evolution took place, no matter where we live as Haitian, some of us fulfill our dreams and others might think that they don’t. But let me remind you all, that we are winners because, with a such long period of time, our kids are accomplishing today things that we could never accomplished for ourselves and as citizen of the world, they have all the privileges that other countries had offered them ,better life, better school, healthcare ect…and even better views of Haiti’s political situation . Now is the time , as citizen born Haitian or Haiti’s world wide citizen ,to ask ourselves not what Haiti can offer us, but what can we together offer Haiti for being our first Black Republic and Independent of the world . If we think that we are Haitians enough, we need to look at Haiti and ourselves with a different perspective, where we definitely would offer a better chance for a better change in Haiti. We also need to re define ourselves as Haitians and as Diaspora so we could come up together with a program where any Haitian around the world could invest in a SOCIAL FUNDS for Haiti’s reconstruction for the 21 rst century. This is one of the most important way that we as Diaspora would socially impact our Nation.
Now let use our common sense and repeat like those who always said The Diaspora economically supported Haiti for the last twenty years ,by sending billions to Haiti’s economy. This statement is not supported by the facts when we look at the reality and the conditions of Haiti even before the catastrophe of January 12 th 2010. This is for me a marketing propaganda to keep us far from the reality and to make us believe as long as we keep sending money to our relatives, we are helping Haiti. If this was the case, Haiti today would have been the Pearl of Antilles ,it used to be.
This is one of the wrong aspect of looking at Haiti, helping a relative in Haiti, by sending him or her money has nothing to do with helping a country reaching . its level of development . This is dead wrong, these money were not well spent for Haiti were not spent to make the changes we dream of.
Now if we want to make an impact to our country, we need another alternative and I personally propose two of my best ideas that will give a positive result.
- An International Social Funds For Haiti
- An International organization for our Superstars promoting Haiti and its culture.
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