It's not just Carel Pedre, it's us Haitians in these difficult times!

Carel, I've almost never met him. Only one fleeting encounter, during an activity organized by Altema Jean-Marie centered on music and technology. I especially remember his gaze: a 'business wide' look, structured, oriented towards efficiency. I had then slipped a remark, almost instinctive, regarding the State, the public role, what collective power still had to assume. Two visions that intersect without contradicting each other: one driven by individual initiative, the other by common responsibility. What I have always recognized in him is this way of being in struggle with life. He chooses his words carefully. He speaks with mastery, with that oral intelligence that captivates, retains, convinces. This is not insignificant. In a country where much is spoken but little is said, his relationship with words is a discipline. An art. A craft. And the Haitian music industry would undoubtedly have benefited if other presenters had understood that language is also a cultural, symbolic, political capital. But today, it's not about him. It's never really about one man. It's about a people. I will not speak of the penal aspect. That would be too easy, too brief, too convenient. But on the migratory question, on what Haitians experience at the borders, in administrative corridors, in the interminable wait for papers that determine dignity, it's insane. And it's revolting. Not because the law exists—every society needs it—but because injustice has become systemic, almost mechanical, dehumanized. What we see is not Carel's singular destiny. It is the collective price of an ancient, historical, accumulated excess.
A people who still pay, in their flesh, for their foundational audacities, their radical ruptures, their liberties too soon conquered for a world that has never truly forgiven them. One cannot eternally survive outside the country.
One cannot ask a nation to stand tall when it no longer even has the space to dream. We must build a country. Build a country to dream. Build a country to give scope, real scope, to all those Haitians who ask for only one profoundly subversive thing: to live there. With dignity. In their own home. And as long as this possibility remains confiscated, each individual destiny will become a cruel mirror of our collective failure. May Carel use this ordeal as a true initiation to continue to give the best of himself! Yves Lafortune, Miami, December 26, 2025