We are responding to your letter addressed to the people of Quebec. We live in Cite Soleil. However, since your letter attempts to define the relationship between Quebecois and Haitians, we prefer to speak for ourselves.

The “reconstruction” plan for Haiti was tabled in January 2009. A year later, it was promoted as a response to the earthquake. Its intentions are very clear and should outrage anyone who defends democracy and the right of Haitians to control their lives.

How is it possible that none of World Vision and Vision Mondiale, CARE, Free the Children, Oxfam Canada and Oxfam Québec, Centre d’étude et de coopération internationale, Save the Children, Canadian Red Cross, UNICEF Canada and UNICEF Québec, once alerted to the problem of an entire neighbourhood in desperate need, cannot coordinate any help whatsoever four months after the earthquake?

I am profoundly skeptical about history: how we teach history and how we learn history. People imagine their place in the world on the basis of what has come before them and where – based on that trajectory – they are going.

Under the leadership of President Woodrow Wilson, who would subsequently be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the United States pursued the established policy of “stabilizing” the Caribbean under American control. In 1912, since neither Wilson nor his Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, knew anything about Haiti, they asked John H Allen, the American manager of the Banque nationale in Port-au-Prince, to brief them. Bryan’s reaction to Allen’s description of Haiti was, “Dear me, think of it! Niggers speaking French.”

Everyone likes to be on solid ground. But it’s amazing what you can get used to. In Delmas 33, where my friend Vilmond is living with a group of forty people who have come together to see each other through the crisis, people started laughing. Someone joked that he was getting used to the earth rocking him to sleep. “It’s so comforting,” he said.

Sometimes, Haitians refer to the earthquake as spektak la. It means not only “the show” or “the spectacle,” but also “the dramatic event.” Everywhere, people have been assigning meaning to the spektak in appreciation of their target audiences. Bill Clinton and the poor of Port-au-Prince are all discussing what the earthquake means to them in the context of their lives.

For a very brief historical moment, all Haitians in Port-au-Prince found themselves in the same boat. But when President Preval announced to his compatriots that he was a victim like everybody else, they shook their heads in disgust.

Vilmond Deralcine is never late for the 5 o’clock mass on Tuesday evenings. However, on January 12, he had stopped to pick up a friend. As she was not yet ready, he decided to wait for her. Those who had arrived early for church would be dead just minutes later.