And thus the embers of the candle of the year that was finally flicker out to be replaced by the brilliant light of the flame of the year that is to come, with all the hope and expectation that it brings.
For me, as for the world, 2023 has been a tumultuous year, to put it mildly. It began with a trip to Haiti, where I found a country that has practically become my second home in the nearly 30 years I’ve been visiting and writing about it held hostage by the armed gangs that control most of the capital as well of the roads in and out of it, while an illegitimate Prime Minister and an equally discredited opposition squabble over power. I traveled all over Port-au-Prince, the capital, talking to everyone I could to try and form a complete picture of a country at war and the hundred daily acts of resistance the population engages in to try to build a more decent society amid such chaos. When I returned home, I found not a single editor at the publications I usually contributed to interested in such an article, many of them content to phone in their coverage from abroad, and that led me to launch this newsletter you are reading now, and to publish my observations and conclusions here, so the words of all the people who paid me the honour of trusting me with their stories would not go unrecorded. Though I was doubtful that my little corner of the internet would amount to much, to my happy astonishment “Notes from the World” has steadily been building subscribers, proof, if any was needed, that people - the general public - are willing to pay for quality reporting and analysis, and are still willing to read long-form essays that defy easy ideological categorization. It has been immensely gratifying to see this.
Also this year, after three years of work, I completed and submitted for publication my new book, With the Pen In One Hand and the Sword in the Other: Haiti and the United States in the Nineteenth Century, a work of pure history which I hope will open peoples’ eyes to the complex intricacies of the relations between the hemisphere’s two oldest republics and the vital role that Haiti played as a beacon for liberationist thought and action in the Americas during the 1800s, despite its own internal convulsions.
And then, not to be outdone for drama, I had an unwelcome visitor in my home and in my body, which I continue to deal with and address as best as I am able. I have been touched beyond words at how many people from different eras of my life have reached out with support both moral and material in the last months. You have really made me feel like I had an impact in the world, which is the most moving, precious gift anyone can ask for. Thank you all so much.
Abroad, we watched the heroes of Ukraine continue to defend their homeland against the imperialist, fascist Russian invaders, despite the cynical drip-drip of aid dangled before them by Western nations who still seem unable to fully grasp that if Ukraine falls, not only Moldova but the Batlic states and Poland will almost certainly be next. The sadism of Putin’s Russia was not confined to Ukraine, of course, as he helped the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad terrorizedefenseless civilians there, as well. Cuba’s jails continued to groan with more than 1,000 political prisoners, includingsome of the leading writers, musicians, artists, feminist and LGBTQ voices in the country as its creaking dictatorship demanded “sacrifice” from anyone but its own bloated, cosseted members. Venezuela’s ruling narcokleptocracy, attempting to inject some advantage into elections it is sure to lose if they are fair (they won’t be), began issuing bellicose threats against its neighbor, tiny, democratic Guyana, as if ruining one country utterly is apparently not enough destruction for them. Iran’s ossifying theocracy desperately attempted to silence critical voices abroad as well as at home as a reportrevealed how security forces there used rape and other forms of sexual violence amounting to torture to intimidate and punish peaceful protesters during the 2022 “Woman Life Freedom” uprising. In Afghanistan, fully half of the population remained erased from public life as the violently misogynistic Taliban, whose illegal usurpation of power was celebratedby such low-dwelling fellow travelers as Greece’s former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, continued their misrule. Sudan remained torn asunder in a war between its military and the Rapid Support Forces militia, living down to their pedigree as the spawn of the genocidal janjaweed - itself descended from the Muammar Gaddafi-supported Arab supremacist Tajammu al-Arabi - as it conducted horrific ethnic cleansing in Darfur. And in Israel and Gaza, the slaughter went on, provoked initially by a group of atrocious rapists and mass murderers and now prolonged by a government of fanatics and cynics that will do anything to stay in power and for whom the safety of Israeli hostages is far down on the list of priorities.
But there are signs of light in the darkness. In Europe, the nations that have seen firsthand the sharp end of the imperialist designs emanating from Moscow are leading the fight to defend the continent’s democracy and autonomy from the Kremlin’s tyranny. Chile’s young president, Gabriel Boric, despite facing a series of setbacks at home, has proven himself to be a strong defender of democracy and human rights throughout the region and beyond.
In Guatemala, in a victory that almost no one (including me) saw coming, Bernardo Arévalo, the son of that nation’s first democratically-elected president, Juan José Arévalo, won the presidency in a triumph that sent the criminal monarchy that has run the country directly or through political proxies for decades scrambling for a Plan B that has, thus far, mercifully, failed. In Arévalo and his Movimiento Semilla party, one sees the beginning of the fruition of the long-delayed Guatemalan Spring that began in 2015. An extraordinary country with immense potential, those committed to democracy and human rights should be prepared to watch closely and assist Guatemalans however they can as the latter attempt to reclaim their nation from the grupos clandestinos who have plundered it for so long.
In Puerto Rico, mi querida isla del encanto, although many environmental problems and structural and systemic problems with the political system persist, in the alliance between the Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño and the Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana there is an opportunity for the forces of change on the island to take advantage of the progress of the 2020 elections during next year's vote to break once and for all the two-part duopoly that has ruled - and failed - the island for so long.
And, despite the dire moments it is living through, I continue to believe in the inevitable renaissance of Haiti, for a country that has done so much for the cause of human freedom cannot be and will never be extinguished. Ayiti pap peri.
And as for me? And for us?
On New Year’s Eve, 1917, the French novelist Marcel Proust penned a letter to his financial adviser and dear friend Lionel Hauser where he mused J'ai renoncé à croire que les années soient nouvelles et puissent apporter un bonheur qui est désormais derrière moi. Mais cela ne me fait pas désirer moins vivement que soient heureux ceux que j'aime (I have given up believing that years are new and can bring happiness that is now behind me. But that doesn't make me less eager for those I love to be happy).” But, eh bien, ma chère, even with the uncertainty that now stretches before me, I can say that there is so much to love and to value and to look forward to in this world. The caress of the tropical wind on an island in the Caribbean just before plunging into the relief of the blue-green foam of the sea; the hum of the life of the natural world in a field in the Loire Valley in the deep summer; the wonderful carefreeness of watching kids just starting out on their journey hanging out and partying and flirting along the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris; the song of the coquí on a starlit night outside of Aibonito; the purr of a cat or the smile of a dog that has come into your life; the sound of a beloved’s voice in the next room followed to see their face a moment later in which intense joy and endless possibility reside.
Be brave. Be free. Love and allow yourselves to be loved. I wish you all jouissez sans entraves (joy without limits) and the most wonderful happiness in the new year and beyond.
With love,
M
