ART: "The Charcoal or the Grenade" by R2C2H2/ 2004
Copyright © 2004
"THE CHARCOAL OR THE GRENADE"is the title of the above art that R2C2H2 created for this edition. He writes, "It's my take or satire on 'The Ballot or The Bullet'. One of Haiti's major products or 'cash crops' is charcoal (shown being held in the right hand of the figure) which is collected from the rotten trees on the mountainside due to their inability to grow vegetables because of extensive erosion caused by a lack of trees in the lowlands to keep the fertile soil in place. A lot of their best trees were bought and cut down by the French for millions of dollars in the 19th century. However, no one thought about replanting the trees that were taken and so by the start of World War One, the damage was done.
"The hand grenade in the other hand symbolizes the violence that seems to have been a vital part of Haiti's legacy since and before its inception and will tragically continue to play a part in its present and future...The handcuffs symbolize how these symptoms of the problem are linked because of lack of a profitable economy and stable government. Violence will continue to play a major part in the lives of all Haitians and will continue to affect the rest of the world for the worse."
- R2C2H2
I always believed that Haiti was being systemically punished by Euro centric White Supremacist led Governments worldwide for not only becoming the first free Black Republic of the Western Hemisphere during one of the darkest times in Hue-man History, the Trans Atlantic Slave trade, but also for defeating one of the greatest White War Mongers and Dictators the world has ever seen in one Napoleon Bonaparte...Haiti's environment was devastated by the greed of European Colonialism and the blissful ignorance and greed of the Haitian government...The reasons why they can not grow quality crops or have fertile soil is because all the trees were cut down to feed the demands and greed of the European colonial powers...Trees help to stop soil erosion, meaning that they keep the soil from being washed away by for example, flood waters...Over nearly 200 years of this type of abuse without even an afterthought given to environmental conservation, we currently now have the situation where a desperate and poor country who now can not even provide or produce enough goods for the survival of its own people let alone export any goods to the rest of the world to help rejuvenate an otherwise dead economy......
I always found it funny how so many wealthy major league baseball players continue to come out of the Dominican Republic, the country which is Haiti's next door neighbor...Great players with names like Pedro Martinez, Albert Pujols, Sammy Sosa, Manny Ramirez, David 'Papi' Ortiz after becoming American baseball superstars continue to go back and invest millions of dollars into their country's economic infrastructure and people...Why are U.S. businesses so willing to invest in the Dominican Republic and not Haiti???
After all America was built and continue to prosper from exploiting the uncompensated labor of people of color descended from Africa...To ignore this fact is to DO A GREAT DISSERVICE TO THE BLOODY & VIOLENT U.S. HISTORICAL RECORD and to also ignore the dirty little secrets that it was greed, militarism, injustice and indifference that made this great nation the world superpower that she is and not the rhetoric known as "liberty and justice for all" or "the pursuit of happiness"...Maybe Billary does have a point about platitudes and lofty speeches!!! LOL!!!
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