Skip to content
🇭🇹   BETA  ·  Istwanou is free during beta — free access continues until January 1, 2027 or when we reach 100,000 entries, whichever comes first.  ·  5,363 entries published  ·  94,637 entries away from the 100k milestone.       🇭🇹   BETA  ·  Istwanou is free during beta — free access continues until January 1, 2027 or when we reach 100,000 entries, whichever comes first.  ·  5,363 entries published  ·  94,637 entries away from the 100k milestone.       
You are offline — some content may not be available
1992-06-19

A leaf seller is arrested for calling out the name of a plant

Haitian

Marc Bazin was installed as de facto prime minister of Haiti on 19 June 1992, nine months after the army removed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Rara bands at Leogane answered by singing that Bazin was fake and illegitimate. In the business district of Port-au-Prince a woman sold medicinal leaves. Like any street vendor she sat and chanted her stock and her prices all day long. One of the plants she sold was called fo bazen. In Kreyol that is a perfect homonym of faux Bazin, false Bazin. She was arrested for shouting the name of a herb she had been selling all along. Under the coup government the meaning of a word could shift within days, and nobody had to decide that it should. Songs about going away were heard as accusations that the army had made people flee. Songs to Ogou, the warrior spirit, were heard as attacks on the army itself, and for two weeks in 1993 soldiers informally banned them from the Raras.

Source  ·  p. 174, 175, 210 McAlister, 174, 175, 210