OFF TO UTEP
Rusea’s High’s Jordani Woodley accepts scholarship from University of Texas-el Paso
TO say it was an unpredictable final high school track and field season for Rusea’s High School’s Jordani Woodley would be an understatement, to say the least, but at the end, he can smile.
From winning the Class One boys’ 110m hurdles title at the County of
likely bracing for the usual flood of Haitian boat people who seek haven on this island after every upheaval in that ill-fated, French-speaking country.
While Jamaicans have been historically hospitable to Haitians needing refuge, the Government’s coffers have been stretched thin by its spend on the novel coronavirus pandemic, and there is little appetite for offering assistance.
The killing of Moise in the deathly quiet of dawn Wednesday seemed to have caught the world off guard, despite the violent build-up in recent months, which spurred the Jamaica Observer to editorialise on the urgent need for a diplomatic solution to the Haitian crisis.
“The people of Haiti, who have been through too much difficulty for too long, deserve to be spared further pain and heartache,” the newspaper cautioned in its February 10, 2021 editorial.
After empathising with the long-suffering Haitian people, the world had been ready to see a new Haiti rise from the January 12 earthquake and shake off more than two centuries of misery, when it fought France to bring an end to one of the world’s most brutal slave colonies.
Few people disagree that Haiti had been allowed to recover in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804 launched by slaves and free people of colour, led by a former slave, Toussaint Louverture.
After 12 years of fighting, the Haitians achieved a stunning defeat of the forces of the great French military leader Napoleon Bonaparte under Louverture’s successor, Jeanjacques Dessalines.
On January 1, 1804 they declared Haiti the first independent nation of Latin America and the Caribbean, the second republic in the Americas, the first country to abolish slavery, and the only State in history established by a successful slave revolt.
Apart from Alexandre Pétion, the first president of the republic, all of Haiti’s first leaders were former slaves.
But the suffering of the Haitians did not end with the overthrow of the French, who demanded reparations for their loss — setting off a history of impoverishment of Haiti supported by the western powers.
Historians have routinely blamed Haiti’s intractable problems on the French extraction of reparations after Haiti declared its independence,