July 27, 2017
A complex historical truth emerges in Nicolas Rossier’s intelligent examination revealing the oft-supressed story of the 2004 coup d’etat in Haiti, as well as the systemic violence and human rights violations that erupted under the interim government. An interview with the deposed president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Pretoria, South Africa, is juxtaposed with the views of a wide range of supporters and critics, including US Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega. It is not Aristide and the Lavalas supporters who emerge looking like thugs but international interests concerned with suppressing popular democracy and ending the reforms Aristide was capable of making - despite embargoes and the need to service a debt for loans Haiti never received.
History repeated itself in Haiti in 2004 in that the former parish priest had already been deposed as president in 1991 with CIA support. His kidnapping marked the fourth American intervention into Haiti in 90 years. This was also not the first intervention by France. In 1801, Napoleon had the leader of free Haiti, Toussant L’Ouverture, seized and deported to prison in France where he died. While faced with the strangulation of aid, Aristide had begun a campaign for reparations. This provocative investigation draws out the central place of international history in Haiti's poverty.
The film features an exclusive interview with Jean-Bertrand Aristide and other great personalities such as Dr. Paul Farmer, Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, John Shattuck, Gerard Latortue, Maxine Waters, Jeffrey Sachs, Laennec Hurbon, Guire Poulard, Noam Chomsky, Timothey Carney, Orlando Marville, Kim Ives, Ray Laforest, Brian Concannon, Mario Dupuy, Danny Glover, James Dobbins, Claude Moise and many other Haitian voices.
July 27, 2017
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
July 27, 2017
In this award-winning, bestselling work of fiction that moves between Haiti in the 1960s and New York in the present day, we meet an unusual man who is harboring a vital, dangerous secret. He is a quiet man, a good father and husband, a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a landlord and barber with a terrifying scar across his face. As the book unfolds, we enter the lives of those around him, and his secret is slowly revealed. Edwidge Danticat’s brilliant exploration of the “dew breaker”-- or torturer-- is an unforgettable story of love, remorse, and hope; of personal and political rebellions; and of the compromises we make to move beyond the most intimate brushes with history. It firmly establishes her as one of America’s most essential writers.
July 27, 2017
In 'Caribbean Contours' eight leading scholars in the humanities and the social sciences survey the history, politics, economics, demography, and culture of the Caribbean to provide an authoritative yet accessible introduction to this complex and geographically fragmented region.
July 27, 2017
Haiti, long noted for poverty and repression, has a powerful and too-often-overlooked history of resistance. Women in Haiti have played a large role in changing the balance of political and social power, even as they have endured rampant and devastating state-sponsored violence, including torture, rape, abuse, illegal arrest, disappearance, and assassination. In Walking on Fire, Beverly Bell, an activist and an expert on Haitian social movements, brings together thirty-eight oral histories from a diverse group of Haitian women.
July 27, 2017
In this eye-opening study, Sidney Mintz shows how Europeans and Americans transformed sugar from a rare foreign luxury to a commonplace necessity of modern life, and how it changed the history of capitalism and industry. He discusses the production and consumption of sugar, and reveals how closely interwoven are sugar's origins as a "slave" crop grown in Europe's tropical colonies with is use first as an extravagant luxury for the aristocracy, then as a staple of the diet of the new industrial proletariat. Finally, he considers how sugar has altered work patterns, eating habits, and our diet in modern times.