Haiti is a land of emigration. This displacement of our workforce did not start recently. Eager to learn a living, our population has, since the 1930s, taken the road to exile, leaving behind, but hoping to return to someday, its native country to which it has remained attached.

First, the Haitians went to Cuba where they worked as agricultural workers, especially on the cane plantations.

“haitiano maldito, negro de mierda”, that is how they were called, while they toiled in the fields to help the Cuban economy. It is Jacques Roumain, the famous Haitian writer, who reminded us in his book “Masters of the Dew” while making of a Haitian peasant immigrant from Cuba he called Manuel the hero of his famous novel. Upon his return to his country, Manuel Jean Joseph was going to reunite the divided country of Fonds-Rouge and, there, he formed the coumbite to find the spring, the water to irrigate the arid land of his village.

Today the descendants of these Haitian rural workers have integrated Cuban society where they have – I guess – participated in the socialist revolution to oust dictator Batista and establish a revolutionary regime.

(From my book Evocations of my Past available on http://www.amazon.com).