Haiti Quake First Year Anniversary-Haitian-Americans Pay Tribute To Fallen Say Thanks To America

Jan. 13, 2011 - PRLog -- Miami-Florida

A year ago today, as Haiti grappled with its own Armageddon, the world transfixed, in live broadcast, lived moment by moment the collective tragedy of a nation.  A race against time ensued to save those buried under the rubbles.  Urban Rescue teams from the United States, and from all over were dispatched to the disaster area and saved 150 people who were buried under the rubles.  Haiti's saga of a series of man-made and natural disasters is not a curse, it is a test, said eloquently Marleine Bastien, Vice-Chairperson of the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition (HAGC) during her sermon at the Haiti-Quake January 12, 2011 Task-Force memorial held yesterday at the City of Miami Manno Stadium in Little Haiti.

Haiti and its people, including the Haitian Diaspora in the United States, have certainly a debt of gratitude towards the American people and the Obama Administration for their overwhelm response to the quake victims.  If Haiti today is in a worst condition than a year ago, it is certainly not due to indifference or negligence of its  neighbors.  With half of America's household having contributed money donations to the relief effort, and the international community having made commitment last March at the United Nations Donors Conference in the amount of nearly 10 billion dollars in pledge, the island nation in a very rare occasion has been embraced by the global community.  Although fragile, this embrace comes with a price: it is the golden rule, the one with the gold makes the rule.  The idea of Haiti being built by Haitians is still an empty concept since the current reconstruction process is driven by the international community wanting to recreate Haiti to their own liking, values, and experience.  If Haiti has to become stable and self-sustainable, it must be able to have visionary leadership that is willing to use Haitian resources at home and abroad.

Having lost 20,000 of its public employees during the seismic tragedy, and weak institutions, Haiti presents both challenges and opportunities for those entrepreneurs bold enough to engage themselves in the business of reconstruction.   In a recent meeting at the White House with Haitian-Americans, U.S Ambassador Thomas Adams, the USAID point-man for Haiti Reconstruction, expressed that the country (Haiti) presents golden and unique opportunities for businessmen willing to take a higher risk.    

Addressing reporters this week in Port-au-Prince, President Rene Preval stated that in the next six months, Haiti will experience some 400,000 new cases of cholera infections.  What a tragedy for those victims who managed to survive days, weeks, and even over one month under the rubbles are now being threaten by an advancing cholera outbreak that has already reached all the national territory.  

The Archbishop of Miami Thomas Wenski, in his sermon delivered in a fluid Haitian Creole, expressed that in Haiti Pre-Quake era, Haitians were united by the annual carnival but in post-Quake Haiti, Haitians are united by collective sufferings experienced equally by the poor and the rich, by those living in urban settings and those in the provinces, and those with education and others without.  Archbishop Wenski hopes that collective suffering may end up contributing to fill the gap among all of those disparate groups and generate some hope for Haitians to learn to live with each other for, Haiti is a society that is separated in several little pieces.  Hope and faith will propel Haitians to transcend their current conditions, concluded the Archbishop.

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The Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition is a leading Human Rights and Civil Rights Group advocating for the rights of Haitian Nationals seeking safe haven in countries such as the United States and the Caribbean. It pursues fair and equal treatment.