One Sunday morning in 1988...
Illustration
Object:
One Sunday morning in 1988, as Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide (later to become president of Haiti) was preaching at mass in his church in Port-au-Prince, a riot broke out. Government soldiers stormed the gates of the church. Paid assassins scaled the walls and set the place on fire. With knives and bullets, they massacred unarmed people.
In the midst of the riot, a young pregnant woman was stabbed by the soldiers. She lay there bleeding, fearful for her unborn child. As the mercenaries continued their rampage, someone spirited her away to a hospital.
Father Aristide writes, "Everyone in Port-au-Prince had heard the story of the attack against the young mother and the unborn child. And that night, after the massacre, the criminals went to the university hospital, searching the maternity wards. They heard the woman had survived, and they wanted to finish her off, to show the people that there was no hope in the world." They searched the maternity wards but never found that woman.
By some miracle of God, she had been taken to another hospital far away. Soon, she gave birth to a baby girl by caesarean section, a baby girl slightly wounded, but more or less healthy and undamaged. She named that child Esperancia, which means "Hope."
Father Aristide says, "The baby's birth showed that the assassins, the criminals, the police, the Army, the president, and all the president's men could not put an end to Hope in Haiti; they could not destroy us with their knives and spears ... The child called Hope is the new generation of my country."
(Adapted from Jean-Bertrand Aristide, In the Parish of the Poor: Writings from Haiti, trans. Amy Wilentz [Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Press, 1990], pp. 64-65.)
In the midst of the riot, a young pregnant woman was stabbed by the soldiers. She lay there bleeding, fearful for her unborn child. As the mercenaries continued their rampage, someone spirited her away to a hospital.
Father Aristide writes, "Everyone in Port-au-Prince had heard the story of the attack against the young mother and the unborn child. And that night, after the massacre, the criminals went to the university hospital, searching the maternity wards. They heard the woman had survived, and they wanted to finish her off, to show the people that there was no hope in the world." They searched the maternity wards but never found that woman.
By some miracle of God, she had been taken to another hospital far away. Soon, she gave birth to a baby girl by caesarean section, a baby girl slightly wounded, but more or less healthy and undamaged. She named that child Esperancia, which means "Hope."
Father Aristide says, "The baby's birth showed that the assassins, the criminals, the police, the Army, the president, and all the president's men could not put an end to Hope in Haiti; they could not destroy us with their knives and spears ... The child called Hope is the new generation of my country."
(Adapted from Jean-Bertrand Aristide, In the Parish of the Poor: Writings from Haiti, trans. Amy Wilentz [Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Press, 1990], pp. 64-65.)
