'Our heritage is abandoned': burning of Haitian church fuels anger at politicians
Damage to part of Unesco world heritage site is emblematic of uncaring government, critics sayBy Michael Deibert
Published on Fri 17 Apr 2020 12.45 BST
The Guardian
(Read original article here)
Cultural leaders in Haiti
have described the gutting by fire of a celebrated 200-year-old church
as an avoidable tragedy that highlights the fragility of the Caribbean
nation’s patrimony – and the need to preserve its historical treasures.
The
Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception church in the town of Milot is
part of a Unesco world heritage site that includes the ruins of the Sans
Souci palace and the Citadelle Laferrière, an imposing fort that looms
over Haiti’s northern plains.
Fire tore through
the church on Monday, causing its distinctive black wooden dome to
collapse. The cause of the blaze has not been determined, but some saw
it as indicative of the malaise of misrule that has long bedeviled the
island – some of it locally rooted, and some imported by more powerful
neighbors.
“[For years] we have been asking the state to
ensure the protection of these colonial dwellings, which are important
as monuments of slavery, yet nothing has been done,” said Laënnec
Hurbon, a sociologist with the State University of Haiti.
“But
the state spends its time buying luxurious cars for ministers,
functionaries and parliamentarians. It is therefore not surprising that
everything concerning the national heritage is abandoned.”
The
church was constructed between 1810 and 1813 by Henri Christophe, one
of a cadre of revolutionary leaders including Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines who helped Haiti oust the French and end the system of slavery.
Christophe
went on to declare himself King Henry I and ruled in autocratic
splendour over northern Haiti until his death by suicide in 1820 amid a
protracted civil war.
On Christophe’s death,
the church was ransacked, and its dome had collapsed following an 1842
earthquake. In the 1970s, the renowned Haitian architect Albert Mangonès
led an effort to restore the complex. It was named a world heritage
site in 1982.
Some worry the legacy that the buildings at Milot attest to is being lost amid Haiti’s current political upheaval.
“The structural inequalities in our society mean
there has never been an education accessible to all that would teach the
idea of the common good,” says the Haitian author Yanick Lahens.
Haiti has been shaken by often violent unrest for months,
prompted in part by a long multibillion-dollar corruption scandal which
has engulfed the administration of President Jovenel Moïse.
Despite
the political battles, however, the church seems to pierce to the heart
of Haiti’s national identity, across party lines.
In
a letter to the government after the fire, educational and civil
society figures called on the nation’s political leaders to “stop this
denial of our history as a people [as] only these monuments remain,
testimonies of our history of struggles, suffering and hope.”
One
former president, Prosper Avril, who ruled the country from 1988 to
1990, has called for a taskforce to protect the country’s cultural
heritage.
In a land that often seems beset by
internecine political vendettas, some hope that even in this dire
moment, the church’s reconstruction might serve as a point of unity.
“The
royal chapel of Milot is a testimony to the history of our people,”
said Erol Josué, director of Haiti’s national bureau of ethnology (BNE).
“The Haitian state should engage all layers of the population in its
reconstruction, because this is our heritage.”
