Latest from Michael Deibert
Freedom Soup and the Liberation of Haiti
Haitian cuisine is “a love story with our history.” Since its independence from France, Haitian cuisine has been infused with African and European influences — but also with the revolutionary heritage that people still hold so dear.
Restoring Glory to a Baltimore Neighborhood
Baltimore’s Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood erupted into America’s consciousness with the murder of Freddie Gray by police officers in 2015. But the struggle to recapture the neighborhood’s former glory predate one unhappy Sunday morning – and say much about the attitude of local and national government towards one of the most disadvantaged areas of the country
In Latin America, Backers of Leftist Dictatorships Look the Other Way
There is a sector of the Western left eternally enamored of flags, slogans and ceaseless homages to dead leaders that is every bit as illiberal as the caustic right and whose support seems to have less to do with any kind of coherent humanitarian policy outlook and more to do with facile anti-Americanism and an impulse for dictator worship, as if defending the abusive practices of security forces in Venezuela is better than defending them in Colombia, or defending the extractive policies of a left-wing government in Bolivia is somehow more appropriate than defending the same policies when done by the right-wing government of Brazil.
Book Examines African Role in Western Prosperity
Howard French’s new book, “Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War”, serves as a kind of elegy for the cataclysmic effect that contact with Europeans had on African societies, many of whose monarchs were enthusiastic participants in the slave trade before the Europeans arrived but with considerable differences to how it later became known.
The Death of Haiti’s President Summons Ghosts Old and New
Former Haiti president Moïse is gone, but the system that he was part of and ostensibly was fighting against, made of blood and bone, both predated him and will outlast him.
Rumblings of Change in Puerto Rico
Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens who can vote in U.S. presidential primaries but not in the general election. The island territory is ruled by the United States but politically and socioeconomically adrift from it. Many want that to change.
Haiti’s Dangerous Crossroads
A Caribbean nation of 11 million, sharing the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, Haiti has rarely known a period free of political tumult in its 217-year history. But the last year was different.
New Voices of Rebellion Rise in Cuba
Cuba’s dictatorship retained an allure for many on the global left. But this adulation of a totalitarian system is not stopping those facing down Cuba’s dictatorship on a daily basis from keeping the island’s culture and desire for freedom alive.