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Will the arrival of Aristide signify new hope for this little guy, whose village in the mountains doesn't even have electricity and running water? (all photos copyrighted by Mac McKinney)
Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned to Haiti yesterday, Friday, March 18, just a few days before the arrival of Spring and the Vernal Equinox, both events designated for March 20 this year. The Vernal Equinox, of course, has been celebrated since time memorial as the day in which the length of day and night are equal in the Northern Hemisphere, with the daylight in ascendancy. And, more importantly, it has been regarded spiritually by many as that annual day in which new energies of transformation flood the Earth, presaging renewal and rebirth around the world.
Is it mere coincidence then that Jean-Bertrand Aristide, after much international wrangling, finally returned to Port-au-Prince just before the Spring Equinox, seven years after his forced exile? Coincidence, or, as the astrologers and Occult scholars say, AS ABOVE, SO AS BELOW , by which is meant that events on earth happen in harmony with the cycles of cosmic time and the movements of the planets and stars in the Heavens. Thus, for those so inclined, must we ask, is Aristide part of that transformative energy now entering the Northern Hemisphere, promising spiritual, even physical renewal and rebirth in Haiti? Moreover, does not the arrival of Aristide in Haiti now counterbalance the recent January return of Baby Doc Duvalier, in the Winter, to the very country that he and his father, Pap Doc, ruled with ghastly brutality for decades, until a mass upheaval led to his retreat to France and an expatriate life filled with luxury.
Using Aristide and Duvalier as crude metaphors for the day and night, might we not now say that in Haiti, the power of each is now equal, but, because the sun is lengthening its daylight, is it not also inevitable that the social forces that Jean-Bertrand Aristide represents are strengthening likewise? We would like to think so, so long as those forces still hold steadfast to the principles of liberty, equality, freedom, justice, dignity and economic opportunity for all. This was what Aristide first stood for when he began to speak out from the pulpit and the public podium back in the 1980s and the great mass of the suffering Haitian people listened hopefully.
Of course there are his detractors, just as Duvalier has his detractors. But for better or worse, Aristide represents the hopes of the poor in Haiti, which is the vast, vast majority of all Haitians, while Duvalier largely represents the interests of the oligarchy, although, ironically, Papa Doc, his father, originally led a populist uprising characterized by black ethnic nationalism against the mulatto or "gens de couleur" ruling class. But over time the Duvalier dynasty drifted into an alliance of convenience with monied interests, period, creating their own oligarchy to co-opt and supplant the earlier mulatto oligarchy.
The return of Aristide has already brought street euphoria to many in Haiti, as you can see from this short video of Port-au-Prince after his arrival:
Does the return of Aristide, therefore, signify the rebirth of Haiti's struggle for unity, true independence, and dignity. Can the people of Haiti, after so many horrors and disasters afflicting upon them for centuries on up to the present, now find the national will to forge their place in the sun?
I sincerely hope so, for I can think of no one who deserves this more than everyday, down-to-earth Haitians, such as the simple, almost all poor, yet fascinating men, women and children whose following photographs I captured on my last trip. Look into their eyes and ask yourself, what can I do, in solidarity, to help them achieve their "Place au Soleil?"
