A Conch Call for Haiti

Two hundred and twenty years ago, Haiti blew the conch call of freedom from slavery. The figure of the runaway maroon blowing a conch to alert and to bring together is well-inscribed in the collective imagination of the Haitian people. The sound of the conch resonates past mountaintops and over valleys, raises heads, and mobilizes energies. Before the reverberation declared long-awaited freedom, the conch was the sound to galvanize spirit and call for a response of immediate action and purpose. It was a necessary call of revolt, a gathering of forces, and a harbinger of an upcoming storm. Today, the conch calls for coming together in community to affect rescue and bring about salvation to, once again, blow the conch of freedom. Haiti, and its people—my people—have been adrift on the high seas of the world for a very long time without a sense of a common vision of who we are and where we are going. We are again today in the death throes of internecine fighting where gangs are maiming, raping, and killing innocent civilians while the state’s armed forces, poorly equipped and poorly led, struggle to contain a hydra that renews itself constantly, notwithstanding how many heads are cut. Today, I intend to resound the conch call once again through the story of a small organization, Lakou Lapè, and the search for solutions and pursuit of peace in a society drifting toward a widening abyss of violence.

Haitians and foreigners are always asking why is there always trouble in Haiti? Revolts, coup d’etats, violent conflicts, natural and man-made disasters, and poverty.  In general, the advice—solicited or not—has always been “You need more foreign investment,” “you need to fight corruption,” “You need more electricity, more roads,” “you need a stable government,” “you need a messiah, an enlightened dictator” or “free and fair elections”. Over all these years, I believe both the domestic and international community have been barking up the wrong tree.  We keep on applying the same bandages to a festering wound and getting the same results year after year, generation after generation.  All the identified needs above may be good and useful, but they are not the crux of the matter that we are facing. We are asking the wrong questions. We need a paradigm shift of the highest magnitude.

In 1804, Haiti became independent after 300 years of slavery and 13 years of bloody carnage. The wars of independence of Haiti were wars of annihilation, treason, ethnic cleansing, betrayal, reversing of alliances, and massacres. Yet this struggle was also marked by sublime courage, dedication, and hope. The Haitian independence wars were a free-for-all, kill-or-be-killed struggle where brothers betrayed brothers for survival. Finally, after uniting against the colonial master at the last moment, the former slaves managed to shake off the shackles that bound them. Alas, nobody could know that the physical chains of slavery were compounded by moral, psychological, and spiritual chains that had not been broken by the Act of Independence (James, 1963). Oppression lingered in Haiti long after slave masters and colonial subjugation were removed through decolonization. The new masters of the country quickly reinstated a system of quasi-servitude under different guises while calling it freedom. This system—the extraction of wealth at the expense of human lives—has perpetuated itself in my country since then, transmitted from parent to child, from one generation to the next. True liberation first actualizes with individual and collective conviction that the only future worthy and destined for the Haitian people is that of freedom and peace.

Coming from a lineage of thinkers and intellectuals, including Jean Price-Mars of So Spoke the Uncle fame, and Dr. Louis Mars, the first Haitian psychiatrist who pioneered ethnopsychiatry, I was always intrigued by the endless repetition throughout Haitian history of the same conflicts and revolts. The never-ending struggles around the acquisition of power keep replaying with different actors and circumstances but eerily similar scenarios. I wanted to be part of a fundamental movement capable of breaking these cycles of repetition of violence and upheaval. But how do you do that?

Mediator bringing people together. Photo Credit: Louis-Henri Mars

In 2007, I was called upon to connect members of the Haitian private sector with a dialogue process led by Irish facilitators from the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation. This process, initially focused on violence in disadvantaged neighborhoods, revealed the involvement of external actors, including the Haitian private sector, in perpetuating violence. Recognizing the need for dialogue across class and racial divisions, we embarked on a journey to build bridges of understanding and create a sense of community.

The transformative moment came during a retreat, led by a Glencree facilitator and myself, in the mountains above Port-au-Prince. Community members, gang members, prominent business leaders came together and shared their personal life stories in a space of confidentiality and non-judgment. The revelations of shared humanity broke barriers and fostered a sense of unity. This approach echoes Paulo Freire’s (1970) emphasis on dialogue as a tool for liberation and transformation.

Dialogue Circle. Photo Credit: Louis-Henri Mars

After the devastating 2010 earthquake, a brief sense of solidarity emerged among Haitians, transcending social and economic barriers. However, this unity was short-lived, as systemic issues quickly resurfaced. In 2012, inspired by the Glencree project, a group of participants, including a former gang leader, founded Lakou Lapè, or “Peace Yard,” as a model of inclusivity and equality. The Lakou represents a physical, relational, and spiritual space—a vision of Haitians as one family living in peace. The Haitian people are facing a man-made earthquake today. Port-au-Prince, the capital of the country, is almost completely surrounded by armed gangs who breathe deadly violence at every turn. Although there is a space for armed self-defense in society, more violence is not going to overcome the fundamental structures of exploitation that have led to the present moment. Lakou Lapè has the experience of bringing together individuals, men and women, of different social backgrounds, convening them into a circle where oligarchs and politicians, community leaders and gang members, the poor, the not so poor and the rich can look towards a different future for their country. The opportunity is here now to build a news sense of community from the ashes of this disaster.

Another significant revelation came from trauma-healing processes developed after the earthquake, emphasizing the transgenerational transmission of trauma. As Richard Rohr (2011) aptly states, “If we do not transform our pain, we will always transmit it.” Indeed, layers of unresolved trauma, layers of rage and devaluation of one’s humanity, and layers of mistrust and insecurity inherited from the colonial system are deeply embedded in my people’s psyche, heart, and spirit. It’s an anti-love accumulation of negative attitudes, habits, and traditions that negate the sanctity of the human being. Haitians are a traumatized people who have never found a doctor. We keep harking back to 1804, proudly calling ourselves the first Black republic, while covering up “the day after” betrayals of the fight for freedom and the unequal distribution of the spoils of war that followed the separation from France. This unresolved historical trauma, as proposed by Dori Laub (1992), continues to haunt us today. We are living in a matrix that re-produces its clones every generation. When one adds on the stress of living through the present-day horrors of the gang wars, 5,000 killed between January and October 2024, 700,000 internally displaced people, countless instances of collective rape, we can understand the magnitude of the work ahead of us.

Gang Members. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Louis-Henri Mars

There is a need for a deliberate effort for us Haitians to systematically work on our individual and collective traumas. Haitian generational trauma is a public health issue that must be perceived through an epidemiological lens.  This work must be facilitated by groups of interconnected psychotherapy professionals that will create a web of individuals from all walks of life who will have done the internal work of transformation. Groups will gather to get to know each other, swap stories, encourage one another, compare notes, build alliances, hold each other accountable, support each other’s internal and collective work. Sharing what they have learned with others will eventually bring us Haitians to a “tipping point” of collective transformation of our emotions, relationships and capacity to share a common vision of ourselves and of our future together as a people. I firmly believe that, with other academic and professional preparation, from such a process will spring up leaders that will have broken the deep insecurity that propels the need for immediate satisfaction of unmet needs and leads to unbridled corruption.

In developing our internal security and our ability to work together we can then tackle the challenge of transforming the socioeconomic systems that perpetuate the neocolonial structural violence in our country. Without that transformation there will be increasingly violent upheavals. As the population grows and the economic and social conditions worsen, more and more waves of violence will engulf the nation.

Recognizing our common humanity, transforming our prejudices, transforming our accumulated pain are the basic first steps toward reconciling the hurts of these past 220 years.

Today, we must address both the historical injustices and the systemic inequities that have plagued us for so long. They are the basic first step towards reconciliation between haves and have nots. Economic transformation is essential, as the roots of violence are intertwined with economic despair.  Deliberately seeking to provoke integration and a sense of being “one team” will bring to work together instead of against each other what is a mosaic of people of different ethnic, social and cultural backgrounds. Whether we are afro-descendants or of German, Italian, Norwegian, Syrian, Lebanese, Italian, French or American origin we are all worthy of being called “Haitians”.

Working together. Photo Credit: Louis-Henri Mars

What we Haitians are facing is not uncommon. All countries who have had to struggle with colonialism and slavery face some of the same issues. In Haiti its specially compounded by the history of isolation and neo-colonial rule of some elites. We must not forget that this process concerns also the Haitian diaspora. They play an important role in the country as they interact with family and friends who have stayed behind. There are currently 3.5 million Haitians living outside their homeland. The majority live in neighboring Caribbean countries with the United States having the second highest population of over 800,000. Although they left their country’s borders, they did not abandon. Their financial transfers of US$3.8 billion annually represents 20% of Haiti’s GDP. Around 70 percent of Haiti’s skilled workers live abroad and not only support the country financially but are seeking tools and expertise to help the cause back home. They clamor for an increased political role as well and want to be represented on all avenues of power in the country. They too are called to do the internal transformation work.

The shared experiences of the African diaspora highlight the need for collective reflection and action. A symposium of Afro-descendant people could foster dialogue, exchange, and mutual encouragement. Comparing the various ways self-colonization expressed itself in different cultures and contexts, and how the afro diaspora adapted or fought against it would open the door to new solutions being discovered and applied in Haiti and in other countries.

Haiti’s legacy of unprecedented revolution and liberation can still be heard in the echoes of the first conch call those two hundred and twenty years ago. Today, the Conch Call for Haiti is a call for personal and collective freedom; a call for breaking the chains that still bind us.

Louis-Henri Mars is a Founding Member and the Executive Director of Lakou Lapè, a peace building organization located in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Since 2007, he has dedicated his life to developing dialogue processes, building community and peace between all sectors of Haitian society.

He wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Ms. Kathylynn Pierre Griff, Ed.D, and Ms. Sophia Hutchison who were instrumental in developing this text.