Chronicle of a Dream Confiscated

Letter to the 1990 Generation _By Jean Mapou_ «Inspired by a social media post by my friend Philippe Sauveurson». They called you the generation of transition, of renewal, of the return to freedom. You bore on your brow the light of 1986, the promise of a new Haiti, of a people finally standing tall. But this dream was stolen from you. Your right to the future was snatched away. For, instead of letting you build, you were broken. Barely an infant, a coup d'état struck you in the heart, casting you into fear and exile. Then, a spineless state betrayed you: it preferred to watch you fall, to accuse you of insubordination, rather than support you. You were criminalized, gangsterized, and alienated, because you believed in democracy. You were condemned because you hoped. You are the generation of suspended dreams, aborted projects, forced departures. The one that saw schools, courts, hospitals collapse, and with them, faith in justice. You are the generation forced to leave, to seek elsewhere the right to exist. And for those who remained, walls of misery, humiliation, and silence were erected. Yet, your story is not just a tragedy. It is also a testament. For, despite the repression, you sang, taught, cared, wrote. You continued to believe, even in the darkest night. You are that flame that nothing could extinguish, neither fear, nor hunger, nor coups d'état, not even lost territories. Today, faces have changed, but the conspiracy remains. It feeds on oblivion, resignation, collective fatigue. They want us to believe that none of this ever happened. But history remembers: every betrayed generation leaves its mark. And we, spectators of your struggle, know that the debt owed to you is immense. For it is your courage, your audacity, your very pain, that remind us what it means to stand up for a country. So, to you, sacrificed generation of 1990: forgiveness and thanks.
Thank you for carrying the flame this far, despite everything.
Thank you for believing that dignity was worth more than fear.
And forgiveness, for not having known how to protect you. Your struggle continues, in our voices, in our fights, in every dream that refuses to die. Jean Mapou.