The Tower of Babel

To Pierre Antoine Louis, to Dr. Sauveur Pierre Etienne, Roromme Chantal, Thomas Lalime, Sabine Lamour, Carly Dollyn, Edelyn Dorismond etc… To Attorney Daniel Jean, Enomy Germain, Ricardo Germain, Mayelle Montilus, Carlens Napoleon and to all the 'Gouverneurs de la rosée' in a generally indeterminate way who still hesitate to get involved! There was a time, it is said, when men spoke a single language. In a common fervor, they undertook to build a gigantic tower, a symbol of their unity, their power, and their will to reach the sky. But God, disturbed by such arrogance, confounded their speech. Confusion set in. And each dispersed, speaking only their own language (Genesis 11:1-9). Today, Haiti seems to re-enact this biblical scene, but in reverse. It is no longer God who sowed confusion: it is we, in full autonomy, who have made dispersion our mode of governance. Each ministry, each general directorate, each public office acts like an isolated island, drifting in the ocean of its own interests or inertia. The State has become a disjointed puzzle, a headless body, a machinery that operates in slow motion, just enough to simulate existence. The Ministry of Agriculture, entrusted like spoils of war to the Pitit Dessalines Party, is a stark illustration of this, and this aberration is now perceived as an administrative banality. Politicians, for their part, have traded democracy for theater. They play at the Republic as one plays Russian roulette, with the people as the target. Ideals are dead, common projects forgotten. All that remains is sterile logorrhea, a Republic emptied of all substance, producing nothing but words to fill the void. The media, meanwhile, no longer report: they orchestrate. They chase after dramas, amplify groans, turn corpses into spectacles, and pain into a selling point. Information has become a voracious beast, feeding on the chaos it claims to denounce. The international community, true to itself, talks a lot and acts little. It wraps itself in its statements, its seminars, its resolutions. A tragic chorus that comments on the fall, without ever getting involved. The Ministry of Education, for its part, draws up reports: so many schools destroyed, so many students affected. Meanwhile, an institution under the said ministry publishes brochures, erects banners, organizes forums. During this time, the Haitian school system collapses like a house of cards in the rain. And the people? They are suffocating. They live without living, in a slow suffocation, punctuated by anguish, resourcefulness, fear, and hunger. A people still standing, not out of hope, but out of necessity. We live in an organized cacophony. Everyone does as they please. Without a plan, without direction, without consultation. A dissonant country, where institutions cross paths without speaking to each other, where voices are raised without ever being heard. As Jean Casimir writes, « we have no common language, because we do not address each other, we shout at each other, without the will to understand each other. » (A Decolonial Reading of the History of Haitians, 2020). What he calls a « dialogue of the deaf » has become our institutional normality. And if this continues, we will all die. Not only from hunger or bullets, but from collective abandonment. We will die from indifference, from fragmentation, from our tragic inability to forge a common horizon. But the lesson of Babel did not end in failure. It contained, implicitly, the hope of a rediscovered language. A language not unique, but shared. A language of meaning, listening, and project. Perhaps there is still time, provided we agree to rebuild together not a tower, but a country. Reference: Casimir, J. (2020). A Decolonial Reading of the History of Haitians. Éditions de l’Université d’État d’Haiti. The Bible; Louis Second translation Yves Lafortune
Florida, July 30, 2025