Customer Reviews

In the Parish of the Poor: Writings from Haiti

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is excellent! Having met Aristide- in Haiti, I know the absolute power of love that Aristide holds in his heart for the people of Haiti - and this book does just that. It gives the reader a look at the problems in Haiti, those that Aristide has experienced, and why he believes he can change the situation there. He gives the reader fact and feeling- true, honest feelings without the flowery-detail. The feelings in this book are human. Aristide calls out to his readers to take heed and see Haiti as a land of people with pride, love, and faith. He lets you see - from his point of view - the atrocities of standing against the powerful government....of what his vision is for Haiti's future and how faith and liberation theology will bring Haiti to a new level. An excellent read- a powerful book- with actual sermons given by Aristide at the end- that might change the reader's view of the society we live in and his/her place in it.

As a person who takes an interest in the country of Haiti and its political figures, I was very excited upon discovering Aristide's "In the Parish of the Poor". This book, which includes a wonderful foreword by Amy Wilentz, contains all the intellect and emotional fervor that makes Aristide the highly-respected individual that he is. The book is well-written and even contains some of Aristide's sermons. I am in no means a supporter of Aristide; however, I must highly recommend this book to anyone. I have thoroughly enjoyed it.

Haiti- 600 miles from Florida, but it may as well be 600 light years! Jean Bertrand Aristide captures that magnificently in "In The Parish of the Poor". As an educator I have used passages from this book in class to provoke discussions on social justice and morality. And as someone who is drawn to Haiti as often as funds allow,I cherish it for its truth. A lot has happened to Haiti since Titid wrote this, but it has a spirit that is timeless.

Let me say this is a well written treatise and worth reading. It is a piece of history to be reviewed. However, I don't buy into liberation theology and do not apologize for believing in the free enterprise system. Teach a man to fish and he will fish. Teach a man to make nets and a boat and he will produce. Teach a man to market the fish, boat and nets and he will sell. Not really an evil concept in itself. What has happened and is happening in Haiti is a tragic story. One can blame the US, France and others. One can blame a harsh climate, endemic disease and poor resources. One can also blame the self-grown despots who "governed" Haiti. Unfortunately Mr Aristide "talked a good ball game" but played no better than the rest, in fact, was worse than most. He lifted the people up only to dash them down. The book is hypocritical to it's core. It falls into the abyss with previous socialist and communist manifestos.

My daily unwelcome anti-Catholic trolls will immediately leap all over this review, but in the light of the courageous witness of the Reverend Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide facing down countless gun barrels in the Sanctuary of Salesian Churches, I must not flinch from providing testimony and witness for this excellent spiritual treatise of what it means to be in truth and integrity a Roman Catholic Priest.

No words can sum up this brilliant spiritual treatise and witness of our Faith under violent persecution by imperialist powers, the same which martyred the Blessed Monsenor Oscar Romero. The documentation of repression is unquestionable and deeply, terribly moving, and must be read by every Roman Catholic to understand what it truly means to be Roman Catholic under actual, physical, lethal repression, to learn our best and only response in resistance through nonviolence, solidarity peace and prayer most deeply in the mysteries of our Faith. By this martyrdom and inexorable repression we see our Faith.

Read as well the Blessed Monsenor Romero, and Father Ellacuria and Companions. Read Jean Donovan and Sister Ita Ford. But above all read here (or in the original French/Creole) the Reverend Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide. See also his Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization and his Dignity as well as The Prophet and Power: Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the International Community, and Haiti (Critical Currents in Latin American Perspective).

Here in this publication by the greatest and most Faithful American Roman Catholic printing house, the fine Orbis Books housed in Maryknoll, New York, in sometimes rugged translation by Amy Wilentz (author of The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier and several other works) with her adequate introduction, we find a collection of several writings and talks by the Reverend Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, so ardently vilified by the Reagan/Bush regime and all of its instruments.

I cannot add to the strong spiritual power of Father Aristide's words and prayers by subtracting from them, nor by summing them up. Equally disastrous to the full Gospel message here is drawing forth passages for your review, for your correct decision to purchase this immortal collection. Nevertheless, permit me please to suggest for your present lectio divina these few brief passages.

When the Salesian Church in the capital was invaded by hired thugs of the military dictatorship after the consecration at morning Mass, under the careful and hands-off eye of the military garrison across the street and the police HQ's nearby, the thugs shot people in the Church, market women, mothers, grandmothers, church ladies, beat them to death, shoved steel pikes into their bellies, and shot at Father Aristide. Miraculously he was not killed. He saw one young women clutching her belly where the irregular soldiers had shoved a steel rod through her, seeing her pregnant. Another priest organized assistance for her with massacres going on all around inside the church, and bodies piled up to be carted off to hidden mass graves uncounted as children in Fallujah.

Father Aristide was held hostage the rest of the day in the rectory as the soldiers and thugs waited for dark to dispose of him. One of the officers knew him from school and protected him as long as possible, despite their orders. Father Aristide writes as beautiful and moving a meditation on these School of the Americas US trained terrorist armies as any in the Blessed Monsenor Romero's final Cathedral sermon pleading with these same brutal soldiers's homologues in San Salvador.

After the thugs finished ransacking the rectory libraries and shelves and sundown came, Father Aristide knew his time had come with darkness. He was warned not to step outside, but finally could, surrounded by religious and priests, finally safely driving into the city. He later heard the miraculous fate of the young woman stabbed by a steel pole through her womb:

"Remember that young woman I saw that day, bleeding from her womb, clutching herself where they speared her, sobbing that she would lose the baby that was growing inside her? Here again is a story of life coming where there should be death. This is the story - finally - of the child called Hope. The woman bled and bled as the assassins rampaged through my church; they had knifed her where they knew it would do the most damage. These are men who see a mother and want to damage what is within her. Insanity. Somehow, the woman, bleeding and sobbing, was brought to a hospital. Everyone in Port-au-Prince had heard the story of the godless attack against the young woman and her unborn child. And the criminals, that night, after the massacre had ended, went to the university hospital, searching the maternity wards. They had heard that the woman had survived, and they wanted to kill her, to show the people that there was no hope in this world. They made the mothers in the maternity ward lift their white nightgowns to see if they were wounded in the stomach. Indecency.But they never found the woman. She had been taken to another hospital far away, and there - miracle, miracle - she was delivered by Cesarean of a baby girl a wounded baby girl, but fine, healthy, more or less undamaged. And that child she called Esperanza, or Hope. Because that baby's birth showed that the murderers, the assassins, the criminals, the police, the Army, the president and all the president's men could not put an end to Hope in Haiti, could not destroy us, could not wreck our infant aspirations with their knives and spears. Hope's birth showed that a new Haiti could emerge from the wounded body of the old, that in spite of the atrocities visited upon Haiti, she could give forth new life, if only her friends would help her, and shelter her, and protect her, and help her with the birth. Hope is the new generation of my country (pp. 64-65)."

Unfortunately of course, the US CIA needs a convenient stop over for its drug flights out of Colombia, and Haiti is still the preferred rest stop, and Hope has been deferred. In this new era may we once more have the The Audacity of Hope as Father Aristide wrote earlier in this great work:

"For hope is always there, even in the darkest times, even in the most obscure places, as long as you and I have the energy and the commitment to search for it, and then to bring it forward, to share it. Hope is there, no matter how heavily the boots of the Army tread upon it, in their effort to stamp it out. Hope is there like a smoldering fire that cannot be extinguished. The fire is beneath the earth - like the fire of a charcoal pit - and all it takes is a little air, a little oxygen, a bit of fanning to make it ignite and explode and burst through the surface like a refiner's fire, a purging blast of heat that will someday - if we work hard and carefully enough together - turn into a steady, even flame over which we can cook good, nourishing food for all the people; someday, that purifying furnace will heat a decent, poor man's kitchen stove. That is our work, to fan the fire of hope and turn it into a tool for the people. We tried to do that in those dark days, to help the people think in useful ways about their future, and about the continuing possibility of burning their way out of their hellish prison. It was not an easy task, and each time one of us spoke out, we were marked even more clearly for violent death. We, and those who surrounded us. Our friends. Our family. The Haitian people (pp. 48-49)."

Keep Hope alive. Get this great book and read it well. Keep Hope alive.