One of the things attracting tourists has taught us is to value the habit of preservation. We have to depend on devoted scholars and archeology diggers and always, tenacious individuals like Dr. Walter Roth. He was a medical man of German stock who moved to Guyana by way of Australia and was the moving spirit in the rise of Georgetown's museum of natural history. As a youth I made many trips to this museum and was fascinated by its presentation and displays; for instance the diorama of gold-digging operations in the far interior, the lighted fish tanks with fish such as the blood-thirsty pirai, a lifelike representation on the wall of the world's biggest freshwater fish, the arapaima, caught in Guyana. A huge live anaconda pans have all but vanished.
The last week of January 2005, the Fifth Annual World Social Forum was held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, bringing together 150,000 grassroots leaders, intellectuals and activists to discuss how the world can be made more free and more just. The conference's theme was "Another World Is Possible," and the speakers and participants showed that another, more fair treatment of Haiti is possible. The conference's keynote speaker, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, discussed the debt that the world owes Haiti in a press conference. He acknowledged that Haiti's Constitutional President had been kidnapped, and declared that he and other Latin American Presidents understood that there could be no solution to Haiti's crisis without President Aristide. At a workshop in Porto Alegre, called "Haiti, the International Community's Dictatorship," speakers from Haiti, the U.S. and the Caribbean led a discussion of the human rights crisis in Haiti, and explored ways that people from outside Haiti could promote the country's sovereignty and the return of its democracy.
Burlington, Ont.: TannerRitchie Pub. in collaboration with the Library and Information Services of the University of St. Andrews
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Other Titles: America and West Indies, 1699. Originally published in print: London : Printed for H.M.S.O., by Mackie and Co., 1908., 1 online resource., This book discusses the original state paper of the British colonies; Editors: [v. 1-10] W.N. Sainsbury (with J.W. Fortescue, [v. 10])-- [v. 11-16] J.W. Fortescue.-- [v. 17-] Cecil Headlam (with A.P. Newton, [v. 38-])./ Eastern series continued in the calendars published by the India office
The political awareness of Afro Cubans remains exclusively tied to the Revolution. "And [Fidel Castro] is the one sustaining the Revolution: the reason Cuba is so strong is because of Fidel," said a prominent U.S.-based Afro Latino journalist who preferred not to be named. "After Fidel, the Cubans in Miami will simply pounce on the island," this journalist contends. "They have connections in Cuba; they have their people in place in Cuba already. When they take over they're going to be opening up the political arena to the U.S. again. Cuba has ostensibly been "independent" since Dec. 10, 1898, following decades of fighting between the nation's independence army, the Cuba Libre, and Spain. By 1898, the war was between Spain and the United States, but Cubans had declared their independence as early as Oct. 10, 1868. At that time, they'd also called for the island to end its enslavement of Black people, but emancipation from slavery was not made law until Oct. 7, 1886.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
365 p., As Louisiana and Cuba emerged from slavery in the late 19th Century, each faced the question of what rights former slaves could claim. Observes the people, places, legislation and leadership that shaped how these societies adjusted to the abolition of slavery. The two distinctive worlds also come together, as Cuban exiles take refuge in New Orleans in the 1880s, and black soldiers from Louisiana garrison small towns in eastern Cuba during the 1899 U.S. military occupation.
"The U.S. government would prefer to tell Haiti what to do and when and how to do it," said Eugenia Charles, the Haitian-born director of Fondasyon Mapou, a Washingtonbased group that seeks to improve the quality of life for Haitians. The group sponsors weekly demonstrations in front of the Haitian Embassy demanding that political prisoners be freed and democracy be restored in Haiti. Thomas Griffin, a Philadelphia attorney and human rights advocate who traveled to Haiti last year, presented details of his findings to members of the Congressional Black Caucus on March 2. His report, released by the Center for the Study of Human Rights at the University of Miami School of Law, found that "Haiti's security and justice institutions fuel the cycle of violence. Summary executions are a police tactic, and even wellmeaning officers treat poor neighborhoods seeking a democratic voice as enemy territory where they must kill or be killed." [Barbara Lee]'s Haiti TRUTH (The Responsibility to Uncover the Tuth about Haiti) Act would form a TRUTH commission to investigate United States involvement in [JeanBertrand Aristide]'s removal.
As I reflect on last year's political, social, and ecological events in Haiti and observing a future that looks dim for the younger generation, I want to take the same position that Dr. Rosalvo Bobo (1873-1929), a political leader, a physician, a researcher on herbal medicine, took at the eve of Haiti's centennial. I am not celebrating. Since January 1st is also a World Day of Peace, I would rather peacefully reflect on the following translation of Dr. Bobo's centennial speech addressed circa the end of 1903.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
404 p., France experienced a period of crisis following World War I when the relationship between the nation and its colonies became a subject of public debate. The author focuses on two intersecting movements that redefined imperial politics— colonial humanism led by administrative reformers in West Africa and the Paris-based Negritude project, comprising African and Caribbean elites.
