Editorial

By Francesca Theosmy


Since last year, Jean Ernst Muscadin, the government commissioner of Miragoâne, has appeared in the media as a bulwark against bandits. The character arouses popular admiration as much as he arouses the concern of many. At the university, he would have defended a thesis on the importance of the death penalty. On several occasions, he would have shot in cold blood defendants who were still handcuffed. At the slightest opportunity, he proclaimed himself Baron Samedi when the Nippes would be the cemetery of criminals. 

This week, speaking at a press conference, he again presented himself as "fearless", impervious to threats and with a solid network of informants. "There is no room in the police stations for criminals... in Miragoâne. The guys who are in prison in Miragoâne are those who have committed small cases of rape, theft, have been involved in disputes between couples ... ", he recalled. 

This statement could make those who think that a rape is never small, that a death sentence should never be expeditious, and who know that those responsible for kidnappings, murders and sexual crimes in Haiti (the big fish) would never take a bus or a motorcycle to go to the South. They take the plane or their armored car. 

In any case, Muscadin remains an eminently interesting media figure from a sociological point of view. Equipped with the panoply of a soldier (bulletproof vest, assault rifle and khaki pants), supported by a part of the population that worships him, he embodies a martial, individual solution to a complex socio-political situation, mangonmen (deteriorate) beyond the realm of possibility. 

One could compare him to the superhero, an imaginary solution that the West brings out in moments of crisis. He looks a bit like Louis Jean Beaugé, a soldier who existed and who would have come to the end of a popular insurrection all alone, by his bravery and means... "supernatural". This aspect of a providential individual, fearless, alone against all, who works for the good by getting his hands dirty, makes this commissioner a lwijan boje of the 21st century, a blue and red Iron Man. And so, a social fantasy that speaks volumes about our distress. 

However, if the character tears the opinion so much, it is because he crystallizes the essential point of the fight to be led, but that the violence of the political and economic relations tended to make forget: justice. At a time when Haiti's neighbors, its oppressors of yesterday and today, continue to place the electoral issue at the heart of the search for solutions, the character Muscadin is there to remind us that they have it all wrong. It's about social justice, fighting impunity and exclusion. 

Today, gangs symbolically strut around in bizangos. They occupy strategic crossroads (accesses to the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, the Grand'Anse and the Artibonite, the country's granaries). They attack in a flash, almost magical way, anywhere. School, church, private home... Se kon w pran w konnen. They create the illusion that no one can escape them, that everyone - except their sponsors - is at fault and can endure the ultimate punishment according to the Haitian imagination: losing their freedom and thereby their lives. 

But if the bizangos have existed, it is to replace the void left by justice as shaped by the elites. So how could an individual overthrow what centuries have atrociously built? 

The truth is that no public official or elected official from a tèt chat election would replace the direction chosen by a collective, organized, determined movement. The current collapse is proof of this. We have eaten of this moldy bread a thousand times over.