“I was shocked when they told me by phone about the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse,” says Marleine Bastien.
“That they killed him in his own home shows how unstable and dangerous he is. Haiti has returned, ”says the Haitian-American social worker, referring to the armed attack suffered by the president of that country on Wednesday morning.
Founder of the Family Action Network Movement ( FANM, for its acronym in English) in Miami, Bastien regrets that Haiti is engulfed in a wave of violence that has transformed it into hell.
“We have seen massacres, kidnappings, rapes of girls, thousands of people trying to escape,” he explains.
But Bastien has another story to tell.
One proud story of how Haitian migrants who arrived in Miami in the early 80 managed to lay the foundations of a community that, despite he obstacles, he has managed to forge a destiny in the United States.
“The story of Little Haiti is a story of success” She explains with a smile on her face, recognizing that it has not been easy for families to find a place in a country where there is what she considers to be “systemic racism.”
Marleine Bastien
Bastien has worked since decades ago with underserved residents and families requiring assistance in Miami.
Its headquarters are in the iconic neighborhood “Little Haiti”, also known as “Little Haiti” .
An area that originally became a refuge for thousands of people fleeing from the misery, violence or natural disasters of their land, and where a community now lives that has made its way in difficult circumstances.
The epicenter of cultural life
On Northeast Second Avenue, at street level 59, is the epicenter of the cultural life of Little Haiti.
It is easy to recognize it by the gigantic and colorful murals that cover some of the walls and, without a doubt, by an iconic building different from the rest.
It is the Center Cultural Little Haiti with its Caribbean Market (Caribbean Marketplace) that operates on Saturdays.
This is a colorful building designed by architect Charles Harrison Pawle as a modern replica of the Iron Market in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti.
Also known by residents such as the “Mache Ayisyen”, its construction follows the Haitian “gingerbread” architectural style of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
There are small shops around the cultural center neighborhood that sell clothes, groceries, music, laundry service and money transfers abroad, as well as some hairdressers.
The area is also full of botanists, small shops that sell spiritual items and all kinds of mysterious objects related to religious beliefs in the Caribbean.
One of them is the botanical 3 × 3 Santa Barbara , a place crammed with things as different as skulls, saints, voodoo dolls, candles, statues, along with some wooden toys and even characters from Star Wars .
“There is no other place where you can get closer to the Haitian culture than in Little Haiti ”, says Jean Dondy Cidelca, a young architect from the neighborhood.
“ What I like the most about here is the people, because it is the people who make a place unique ”,
“There are several things to do,” he adds, such as, for example, on the third Friday of each month a musical event called Sounds of Little Haiti at the cultural center. “It’s a great time to eat and enjoy art.”
“When you walk around Little Haiti you listen to music, you smell good Haitian food… and the art is so beautiful,” says Marleine Bastien.
“We Haitians are welcoming, we are an inclusive, vibrant community and we are fighting to maintain that cultural flavor.”
Despite the distance, the Little Haiti community maintains a bond very close to its land.
“We Haitians have one leg here and the other leg there,” says Paul Christian Namphy, a resident of the neighborhood.
“My 9 year old daughter is visiting Haiti with her mother right now. I’m worried about the current situation, I don’t know when they will be able to return. ”
A situation that has led the Caribbean country to a new level of uncertainty and instability after the assassination of the president, even by the standards of a nation that has had more than 20 governments in 35 years and has been plagued by all kinds of natural disasters, poverty and violence.
It is likely that the The new crisis, experts say, will push more people to escape violence by trying to find refuge in other countries, such as the United States, where an estimated two million Haitians , most of them in Florida.
The specter of gentrification in Little Haiti
After walking several blocks, yes Guiding more or less the route that marks the Northeast Second Avenue of Little Haiti, there are certain images that are repeated.
Like the many businesses in neighborhood that have definitively closed their doors and where they hang notices saying “this property is for sale.”
Seniors with few economic resources who walk around without a clear destination are also common.
In certain parts of the neighborhood it could be thought that it is an area in decline, like those towns that are slowly beginning to be abandoned.
But right on the next corner there is a recently opened high-end restaurant and beyond that a hip cafeteria where professionals with greater purchasing power come to have a cappuccino as they discuss how they are going to expand their startup .
As if it were a collision of two worlds that for now coexist side by side, although perhaps not for long.
“Little Haiti has changed a lot. Makes 10 years began a process of gentrification “, explains Louis Herns Marcelin, anthropologist and professor at the University of Miami.
“There is a real estate boom in that neighborhood. People are buying properties because the land is in a higher area in relation to sea level, so it is safer to live there than in Miami Beach ”, he explains in dialogue with BBC Mundo.
It is For this reason, he adds, climate change has made the neighborhood a more attractive area to make investments.
“In 10 or 15 years more, Little Haiti will not be the same due to climate gentrification ”, he points out.
Those who live or work there have also witnessed quite a dizzying change in recent years .
“Little Haiti used to be the largest Haitian community, but gentrification has forced people to move elsewhere,” says Bastien.
Some have had to go, he explains, north of Miami, but co When there is a housing crisis, they end up emigrating to Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Georgia, or even outside the United States.
“There are business owners and homeowners who are under constant pressure to sell their homes. There are investors who come from Venezuela and other countries with a lot of money in their hands ”, he points out.
“Some are even scared because they think that if they don’t sell something will happen to them, as if it were a psychological war so they leave,” Bastien says.
It is a change that in just a decade is profoundly transforming a neighborhood in which many of its residents live with minimal income.
Despite the great challenges, the inhabitants of Little Haiti are looking for a way to stay in the neighborhood and continue to progress as they have done so far.
And, if the economic situation allows it, help their relatives in Haiti, who are going through one of the moments most critical of violence and political instability in recent years.
Carlos Serrano contributed to this story)
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