(Thanks to Nicolette Bethel for sourcing this important statement and sharing it.)
“I have an old debt with Haiti. We all have. Haiti is the first womb, the place where the Caribbean was born, it’s the Africa from within, the unnamable pain, the scar. It was the first country in America where a black person dared think of himself as free, to think of himself as a leader of the people (Toussaint L’ouverture). Haiti has paid heavily for this impertinence. They are still paying. The Old Empire that harbored a revolution (Liberté, Fraternité, Egalité) for the West has not forgiven them. Even they have not forgiven themselves, like those who have made a parody of the initial dreams of liberty, fraternity and equality (Henry Christophe, Duvalier, Aristide). And now this. Haiti under rubbles.
“What sort of ancestral crime we have not finished paying for? Why does the earth hate us so much (Le Damnées de la Terre, always, les damnées de la terre)? How do we get up now? Because the Caribbean cannot walk without Haiti. It stumbles, it hits the dust. It cannot keep on dreaming the dream that gave birth to it. It cannot keep on trying (egalité, fraternité, liberté) to make it a reality. Haiti is falling again. And we are also falling. We cannot keep on walking. Not without Haiti. Without Haiti we all fall.”
Source – http://mayrasantosfebres.blogspot.com/2010/01/haiti.html (Original in Spanish – Translation here: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/01/14/puerto-rico-bloggers-grieve-over-earthquake-in-haiti/)