Day 8: “This Land (Haiti) Cannot Die”: Happy Black History Month from Jacques Roumain (Haiti)

“Therefore, see this peasant. Put your hand in his hand, rough calloused and beautiful from touching, from toiling each day in the Blessed Earth. Let us be brothers united. Without that, a death more cruel than physical death awaits us. Let us break the barriers. Let us close ranks.

But no force cannot prevent us from joining hands. For the great work of National Restoration must be fulfilled. That is why today we turn to everybody and especially to the younger generation and cry: Forget, forget. All of us are suffering. Grief has equalized us. Harshly. Above all petty quarrels, there is the wounded Fatherland to be saved.

This land [Haiti] cannot die: this magnificent field rampaged by sacrilegious hands. Devastated, but on the surface. Its depths are engorged and rich with the blood and corpses of nobly fallen: our fathers [our mothers].”

—Jacques Roumain, “Le peuple et l’élite” (1928