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Patrick Jean-Baptiste

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The Land Remembers: Tourism, Legacy, and the Haitian Future

Haiti, land of contradictions they say, where the past is not just remembered but lived. The soil still carries the footprints of revolution, the...

An Hour a Day: A Story of Books, Time, and Legacy

I have watched her ascend, this girl of mine, from the moment she could grasp the weight of a book in her tiny hands....

Banks Protect Their Wealth—Why Can’t Haiti?

Push, Don’t Pull: What Fidelity Taught Me About Banking, Corruption, and Haitian Sovereignty Money moves, but not freely. It is watched, monitored, tagged, and caged...

Teaching Haitians: Understanding Banking, Inflation, & Financial Markets

Why This Matters Money is not neutral. It is a force—one that has built empires and destroyed nations--nobody knows that better than Haitians. It has...

Blood as Currency: Gender, Violence, and Power in When the Mapou...

When the Mapou Sings: Haiti’s History in Verse and Silence The minute I opened When the Mapou Sings, I was grateful that I did not...

Stones by Stones. Words to Deeds

The Citadelle Henry and the palace of Sans-Souci still stand, two centuries later. Stone upon stone, carved from sweat and will, they endure. What...

Breaking the Cycle: Why Haiti’s “Fixes” Fix Nothing

If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If...

The Quiet Architecture of Black Excellence and the Death of the...

A friend from the neighborhood stopped by last night with his wife and their 18-year-old daughter, bright-eyed, standing at the edge of her future,...

You Can’t Win Tomorrow’s Game with Yesterday’s Points

During one of our monthly Afro-Caribbean men’s domino gatherings—the kind where the slap of the tiles carries the weight of history and pride—a debate...

The First and Last King of Haiti

Whenever I hear 1804 Haitian fanatics—those who shout with fevered breath about the glories of the Haitian Revolution, about the unshakable will of Christophe,...