Jean-Claude'Baby' Duvalier Editor's Note: Jean-Claude Duvalier died at age 63 on Oct. 3, 2014 in Port-au-Prince. This article by Patrick Sylvain was written in 2013. As the country rapidly disintegrated into institutionalized chaos, with Port-au-Prince, the epicenter of disorder, Haitians of a certain dispositions are always complaining about yesteryears of “order” that never were. Order is often confused with lawfulness. The nostalgia for “order” under the Duvalier regimes have always been a problematic reading, forgetting that the reign of terror that brought about fear, did not cultivate respect in an ethical way. I am referring to an ethic of civility for the nation, and for citizenship, one that would establish a sustainable order because the nation have had viable institutions that raised and sustained ethical beings, not predators. The order that the Duvalier regimes imprinted upon the land was one of sheer terror, a colossal madness unleashed like a ticking bomb. Each government since 1986, wired their own fuses and imploded the nation to the chaos that has Duvalier asking, “What have you done with my country?” Patrick SylvainMr. Duvalier, what they have done to “your” country is what your terror-obsessed father, and your narrow-minded macoutized self had done with it since 1957, a structural uprooting of institutions and of talents that left the country bare, diseased, vulnerable, and acrid. The distance past so often seems better than the present, especially when the past is never fully linked to the present. Mr. Duvalier, the corrupt and dictatorial President that we have today, or the inept President we had yesterday, or even the stubborn and one man presidency we had prior to that, is part of the same tumor, the malignant cancer your father had exacerbated. Of course, to be fair, your father was also a part of another cancer that’s been growing in Haiti since independence. You are “a son of a great nationalist” you boasted, forgetting that nationalism creates and have created phobias. The nationalistic version of your father, and yourself for that matter, was a monstrosity of the Macoutized state that created a schizophrenic nation that hacked itself as if confronted with external mortal enemies.

On March 23, 2013, the Boston Haiti community will have an opportunity to join and amplify the fight for justice for Haiti’s cholera victims by participating in an event organized by the Boston-based Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) from 5-7 p.m. at Mildred Avenue Middle School, 5 Mildred Avenue in Mattapan.