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General Honoré: New Orleans' Savior to the Slow Response of the U.S. Government with Hurricane Katrina Relief
By Nathan Bassiouni, Op/Ed.
Posted: Sep 9, 2005 20:07 UTC
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NEW ORLEANS, LA - Active Duty Lieutenant General Russell Honoré is one intimidating character that makes non-commissioned officers and junior officers of all branches shake in their boots, including Bush Cabinet appointees.
CNN has nicked named him "John Wayne" because of his stature and presence in public. He is seen working twenty hours a day since Thursday evening in the most unlivable conditions imaginable. Sounds Familiar. Huh bruh?
Maybe you saw him Friday in the media during the Department of Homeland Security press conference tell the Director of Homeland Security, Michael Brown, "on the behalf of all the first responders to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, "THAT'S B.S.!". His anger was in response to lies that the incompetent Director Brown was disseminating in his press release.
General Honoré is your stereotypical light-skinned South Louisiana Créole with Haitian ancestry, hence the name "John Wayne" and not Toussaint or Dessaline.
Actually, being Créole has nothing to do with one's skin shade or color of people of African descent in South Louisiana. It basically consists of social, cultural and artistic characteristics that differentiates us from our African-American Southern Baptist neighbors to the north, west and east. They Barbeque, we boil seafood at family and cultural gatherings. And of course their is always lots of liquor, beer, music and dancing.
A Louisiana Créole is a cultural identity that generally describes someone by having a French surname, but at the same time there exist large Créole families with Spanish, Italian, German (Catholics from L'Alcase Lorraine and Bavaria), Irish, Jewish and even some surviving African names from the Séné-Gambia region of West Africa.
Most are Catholic, but some feel the pressure to convert to local non-denominational yet Baptist Protestant churches, which emulate Roman Catholic terminology and hierarchy, which makes conversion more appealing. Other Créoles convert because some believe the former and present Pope do not address the social issues of Black Catholic Americans, which are mostly located in the inner cities or Louisiana plantation country on the banks of the Mississippi River. They also convert to experience the pseudo-solidarity that the rest of the deep south and the domestic black diaspora believes exist among Baptist Churches and their congregations.
Créole culture began in Louisiana during the mid-eighteenth century, but was re-enforced immediately before, during and after the Haitian Revolution and the Louisiana Purchase by 10,000 Haitian Revolution refugees that trickled into New Orleans between 1791 and 1804.
Then a second wave of 10,000 expelled Haitian Revolution refugees arrived in New Orleans from Santiago de Cuba in 1810. But they didn't leave Cuba without leaving their mark, introducing vodun, as well as coffee and sugar cane cultivation and production.
These 20,000 Haitian Revolution refugees were composed of White Plantation owners or béké, Black plantation owners or grand nég (béké would be used for lighter skinned men or grimo, and grand nég for darker skinned men), their loyal African and Créole slaves (in regards to their place of birth), white non-slave owning community or ti blanc, and the gens de couleur libre or free people of color.
Louisiana would become a Federal State in 1810 and the American Protestant Antebellum invasion would begin with conflicting social values of culture, music, religion, religious practice, race relations and education. But without the 20,000 Haitian Revolution refugees entering New Orleans, Créole culture would have not survived because the population of New Orleans before the Haitian Revolution was only 20,000, which means Haitian Revolution refugees doubled the population of New Orleans in less then 20 years.
The first export of the Haitian Revolution or Négritude, that I am aware of, took place in the early 1810 up river from New Orleans in the river Parishes of Saint Charles, Saint Jean-Baptiste, Ascénsion, and Iberville.
A Haitian Slave, I believe by the family name of DuLarge, who was forced to leave Haiti during the revolution with his master, organized a revolt and marched down the east bank of the Mississippi River towards New Orleans burning 32 Plantations along the way. DuLarge and his rebels killed plantation owners as well as his own master, while simultaneously liberating each plantation of its slaves, which re-enforced their strength.
Just outside New Orleans in the early morning, the rebels were resting on the Desterhan plantation preparing to invade New Orleans when U.S. Federal Troops from Baton Rouge ambushed them from the rear. It was the largest slave revolt in U.S. History.
I know most of you are aware of New Orleans' rich and historical Créole restaurant culture, but did you know that the first restaurant in New Orleans was named Café Refugée?
Yes, the first restaurant in New Orleans served Haitian food! It was a house in the Faubourg Marigny where White and Black plantation owners and merchants met to discuss returning to Haiti (or Saint Domingue) to re-claim their property and apply for the unprecedented and illegal indemnity that is still controversial to this day and was a factor in the forced removal of democratically elected President Aristides from Haiti by the United States, France, and Canada in 2004.
New Orleans' Créole culture might be gone forever, but can it be rebuilt and duplicated? Numb cities have tried, but were never successful in duplicating our jazz, architecture, funk, diet, brass, soul and joi de vivre.
But ironically American cities were able to duplicate the socially counter-productive theme music of my 3rd ward neighborhood, not the unnoticed socially conscious local hip-hop, but rather the local internationally recognized main-stream gangsta rap, that I hope does not survive storm.
What's worth protecting is why battle-hardened combat General Honoré has been deployed to New Orleans. He is in charge of fighting the floods, breached levees, looters, disease, and most importantly, federal bureaucracy.
General Honoré is also rescuing his endangered roots and culture that has already lost it's urban Créole French dialect. Can General Honoré save New Orleans? Bébé, he'll die tryin' yeah. Fo sho!
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