The World Cup and the Changing Psyche of the Haitian Diaspora
Is there a word more volatile than “humanization”? In the Haitian context, humanity was not granted to the people by the other; it was seized. I wouldn’t say that Haitians are a supplicant people; we have not enjoyed bending and folding to court the exploitative beneficence of the States. But I am using “we” too freely, given the political, linguistic, and geographic sprawl of the diaspora.
Jaspora has gone through its evolutions. As Edwidge Danticat wrote, earlier this year, in The New Yorker, “The first documented arrival of Haitian refugees in South Florida dates to 1972, when a wooden sailboat, the Saint Sauveur, ran aground off of Pompano Beach, carrying sixty‑five asylum seekers fleeing the ruthless dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier.” In the nineties, the Haitian American, the child of this refugee generation, negotiated her status—proud at home, pariah outside—in cities like Montreal, Brooklyn, Miami, and Boston. The jaspora kid could seem pitiful, especially from the vantage of those back in Haiti, a kind of cultural mutt. As for this generation? Anti-Haitianness has never been more politically entrenched, with Trump’s virulent expulsion campaign against the population; and yet Haitianness has also never seemed more alluring. Little Haitis abound. Influencers ride Sunrise Airways to Cap-Haïtien, showing off the “real” Haiti that the media doesn’t want you to see. There is this correction of Haitian image for the foreigner and then for diasporic Haitians themselves.
The more inaccessible Haiti becomes, the more vividly it’s imagined, depicted, and reclaimed. Toussaint Louverture Airport, the international gateway in Port-au-Prince, remains suspended to commercial flights. The homesick anthem has become a staple for Haitian artists. The band Zenglen made the phrase “Ouvè Peyi a,” Kreyòl for “open up the country,” into a song of mother-country longing; Ayiiti, a young Haitian singer, collaborated with Boukman Eksperyans, a legendary Haitian band; and their founder’s son, Paul Beaubrun, retooled their populist carnival song released in 1990, “Ke’m Pa Sote”—translating, idiomatically, to “ I Am Not Afraid”—into a new piece of protest music, “Ayiti Nan Batay,” meaning “Haiti Is Embattled.”
What is fascinating about the current roster of Les Grenadiers is that it doubles as a microcosm of the demographic, a schistic one, its identity forged through the realities of diaspora diffusion. It is only Woodensky Pierre who plays for a Haitian club; Markhus (Duke) Lacroix and Derrick Etienne, Jr., are American-born; the majority is Franco-Haitian. Many of our players who were born in Haiti—there are ten—have left in childhood and in adolescence, pursuing opportunities with European clubs.
