I, Hillary Rodham Clinton: Haiti’s Pay-to-Play IHRC

By Dady Chery Haiti Chery From its inception, and well before it made $10 billion of earthquake aid money disappear, Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) was a vicious joke on Haitians. The original name, Commission Intérimaire … Continue reading →

Haiti as a Testament to Human Resistance

By Kim Ives Haiti Chery Review of Dady Chery’s book, We Have Dared to Be Free: Haiti’s Struggle Against Occupation, and discussions of this work with Dr. Chery on WBAI 99.5 FM’s radio program, Lanbi Call. Every definable chapter of recent Haitian … Continue reading →

Haitian-Born Author Dady Chery Discusses ‘We have Dared to Be Free’ With Anita Stewart – Part I

The following interview was originally broadcast on Wise Women Media on August 5, 2015 and later rebroadcast as a three-part series on Challenging the Rhetoric, on August 26-28. For the audio for the first part of the series, scroll to … Continue reading →

Le festin des dieux: Lien du Vodou à l’agriculture d’Haïti et aux ancêtres

Par Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. La religion et la culture haïtienne sont intimement liées à l’agriculture locale, à tel point que les cérémonies de Vaudou sont habituellement appelées manje lwa: festin des dieux. Nos lwa (dieux, esprits, divinités) doivent être nourris.

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Food for the Gods: Link of Vodou to Haiti’s Agriculture, a Legacy of the Ancestors

By Dady Chery Haiti Chery Haitian religion and culture are so linked to local agriculture that Vodou ceremonies are routinely called manje lwa: food for the gods. Our lwa (gods, spirits, deities) must be fed. They are not eternal and … Continue reading →

Francois Duvalier Interview in English, 1968

By Alan Whicker and Frank Pocklington, BBC, ITV, Yorkshire Television | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Selected scenes of 1968 Haiti, plus a remarkably extensive and candid interview, in English, between a quite fearless British reporting team and Francois Duvalier.

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Homage to My Mothers: Restavek, Vodou, and Haiti’s Stolen Children

By Dady Chery Haiti Chery “There are no orphans in Haiti!” After a long silence at the other end of the line, my friend Jordan murmurs: “Come again?” He must be thinking I lost my senses. I realize how I … Continue reading →

In the Fight Against Imperialism, Beware the Peddlers of Despair

By Dady Chery Haiti Chery All around us – Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, the Congo, Ivory Coast, Palestine, Somalia, Libya, and elsewhere – empires are tearing a trail of destruction. This is not a sign of strength but of weakness, because … Continue reading →

‘Tezen Nan Dlo’: An Ecological Folk Tale from Haiti | Fisgados pela Vida: Lenda Folclórica Ecológica do Haiti

By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. “A long time ago, in a thatched house snuggled in a valley between the flamboyant-covered hills of Haiti, there lived a girl whose greatest ambition was to bring home the cleanest water in all the world….” (English | Portuguese)

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Now I Am Without Weight: Excerpt from Katherine Dunham’s ‘Island Possessed’

By Katherine Dunham, Doubleday 1969, University of Chicago Press Edition 1994 | YouTube | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. In 1936, Katherine Mary Dunham, a brilliant and adventurous young woman torn between dance and anthropology, went solo to Haiti to study primitive dance and ritual. Videos include Dunham in the dance sequence of Stormy Weather and in a 1962 interview.

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Gerard Fortune: Art Imbued With a Passion for Life, Nature, and the Gods

Gérard Fortune is one of Haiti’s most imaginative self-taught painters. He was born in 1925 in Petionville, Haiti. He was originally a houngan (Vodou priest) and pastry chef and did not start to paint until around 1980. His work has been exhibited the world over and is described in most books on Haitian art.

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Beware the Peddlers of Despair | Mefiez-vous des marchands de desespoir

By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. All around us empires are tearing a trail of destruction. This is not a sign of strength but one of weakness, because the aim of empire is not to destroy but to conquer.

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Guinea Fowl or Pintade: a Photo Essay

By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. In his book, “L’Oiseau Nègre: L’Aventure des Pintades Dionysiaques”, Jean-Marie Lamblard follows pintades from Pharaonic Egypt to Alexandria, Greece, Abyssinia, Venice, Africa, and America in reverse order and includes the role of “oiseaux negres” in Haitian Vodou, where they are a symbol of the runaway slave because these birds reclaimed their freedom immediately after being introduced on the island in the early 16th century.

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Eduardo Galeano: Haiti, Occupied Country | Haïti, pays occupé | Haití, país ocupado | Haiti, país ocupado

By Eduardo Galeano, Cuba Si. “It is worth repeating it once again, so that the deaf can hear: Haiti was the founding country of the independence of America and the first one that defeated slavery in the world. It deserves much more than the fame sprung from its misfortunes.” – Eduardo Galeano. (English | French | Portuguese | Spanish)

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