Finally, It's Hunger, Your Guide! (Open Letter to Counselor-President Smith Augustin)
, I published an article praising the literary and diplomatic quality of your writing, regarding your correspondence dated January 23, 2026. For hurried readers, I outlined the core of your message. I was not glorifying your position, much less endorsing it politically.
By La Rédaction · Port-au-Prince
· 2 min read · Updated 24 April 2026
Translated from French — AI-assisted and reviewed by the editorial team. The French version is authoritative. Read the original · About our translation policy
By Jean Venel Casséus
Recently, I published an article praising the literary and diplomatic quality of your writing, regarding your correspondence dated January 23, 2026. For hurried readers, I outlined the core of your message. I was not glorifying your position, much less endorsing it politically. I was analyzing a pen, a demeanor, a method. I admire your pen, but not the man you put on display. The man whose resolve falters.
Two letters, two moments, two postures. On January 23, you wrote from within a collective decision, assuming a majority process and seeking to guide its conclusion within an orderly framework. On January 29, you write from a position of withdrawal, announcing your abstention and distancing yourself from the same process. The texts respond to each other. They do not extend each other. They reveal a fracture.
The letter of January 29 comes after the announcement of visa restrictions taken by the United States against you. This fact is not open to interpretation. It constitutes the immediate context of the writing. It precedes the sudden caution, the displayed reservation, the declared abstention. This chronology is sufficient to illuminate the shift that occurred.
Hunger then enters the scene.
The hunger for a visa.
The hunger for international respectability.
The hunger for access, movement, external recognition. This hunger now guides the writing. It envelops the withdrawal in a careful legal architecture, institutional hypotheses, and belated warnings. The invoked fragilities already existed when the resolution was signed. Tensions were part of the context. What changes, between January 23 and 29, concerns your personal situation vis-à-vis the outside world. It is here that the soul falters. It is here that the gut speaks. Between the State you claim to serve and the international regard you refuse to lose. This struggle goes beyond the personal. It involves a public responsibility. It exposes Haiti to the spectacle of a written, justified, and signed disengagement. The honor of a country and its statesmen is measured by their ability to hold firm when the political cost becomes clear. On this point, your last letter marks a break. It records a renunciation in the register of law and prudence, when it stems from a choice. Finally, hunger got to you.
Not the hunger of the people, who live without visas and without a way out.
But that of the leader, confronted with the price of external recognition. Today, you are neither Charlemagne nor Conzé. Between the hero and the traitor, there is only 'Nothing'. This choice is yours.
It is now written.
The hunger for international respectability.
The hunger for access, movement, external recognition. This hunger now guides the writing. It envelops the withdrawal in a careful legal architecture, institutional hypotheses, and belated warnings. The invoked fragilities already existed when the resolution was signed. Tensions were part of the context. What changes, between January 23 and 29, concerns your personal situation vis-à-vis the outside world. It is here that the soul falters. It is here that the gut speaks. Between the State you claim to serve and the international regard you refuse to lose. This struggle goes beyond the personal. It involves a public responsibility. It exposes Haiti to the spectacle of a written, justified, and signed disengagement. The honor of a country and its statesmen is measured by their ability to hold firm when the political cost becomes clear. On this point, your last letter marks a break. It records a renunciation in the register of law and prudence, when it stems from a choice. Finally, hunger got to you.
Not the hunger of the people, who live without visas and without a way out.
But that of the leader, confronted with the price of external recognition. Today, you are neither Charlemagne nor Conzé. Between the hero and the traitor, there is only 'Nothing'. This choice is yours.
It is now written.
