By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
When journalist Ralph Thomassant Joseph heard that thousands of his fellow Haitians crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and were in a makeshift camp under the international bridge in Del Rio, he said he knew he had to bear witness to the historic event.
“When I heard that my fellow citizens were having hard times under the bridge in this place, we made the decision to come here and to report to Haiti what is going on, because we felt that there are very few people in Haiti who really understand what’s going on,” Joseph said.
Joseph currently lives in the United States and studies at New York University (NYU).
Joseph said in Haiti, there has long been a perception that the United States “has an open hand to welcome people,” but he also said for too long Haiti’s stories were told by foreign journalists.
“That’s the reason why I needed to come here in person, to see what’s going on, to talk, to speak to my fellow citizens and to report their situation,” he said.
Joseph has been in Del Rio since Saturday.
Joseph and a fellow cameraman were at the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition’s migrant processing center on Las Vacas Street earlier this week, speaking to members of migrant families preparing to leave the area.
I asked him about his first impressions of the situation.
“Well, when I first came here, what I saw was very horrible, because there were many pregnant women, many children, very young kids, even newborn babies, and some people I saw were sick and they couldn’t even express their feelings to the people who are taking care of them,” Joseph said.
“They have been through so many hardships because some of them that I talked to have spent more than two months making the trip from Brazil to Mexico. Many of the women said they were raped. Many of them were robbed. Many of them were wounded. I met mothers who had sick babies. I met people with wounds, so it’s a very horrible situation,” he added.
But despite the many hardships they have encountered on their journeys, nothing prepared them for the teeming migrant encampment under the bridge here, Joseph said.
“When I talk to them and ask them questions about what it’s like under the Del Rio bridge, most all of them told me that this is where the situation was the worst. Before they left Brazil or Chile, they understood what the trip could be. They knew that there were thieves along the way. They knew there would be rain. So in their mind, they expected that, but when they were under the bridge, they said there was dust, and I met a woman yesterday, she gave birth to a baby and two days after they gave her the baby under the bridge, it was in a dusty area, a very dirty area, so they have to deal with this. It’s very horrible,” Joseph said.
As word spreads that many of the Haitians now under the bridge are being deported, but many others are being processed and allowed to remain in the U.S. pending their asylum claims, Joseph said feelings among those with whom he has spoken are mixed.
“Some of them are very aware of what to expect here. They know that they just came here to get a job, and I met some of them who think, ‘Okay, I made it. This is America. This is the place that everyone needs to be.’ But they don’t understand all the hardships they will have to go through here in the United States,” he said.
“It’s a kind of mixed feelings. Some are aware that here in the United States, you have to work and that it’s a very difficult life, but the difference is here, they can expect to have a job, they can get a job,” he said.
Joseph also spoke with pride, love and sadness about Haiti, his homeland.
“It’s a beautiful island, a green island, a beautiful island with sea, sand, sun, but it’s a very impoverished island, so it’s a mixed thing. Also, most of the time when people refer to Haiti, they think of poverty, and of course, we have poverty in Haiti, like everywhere, but one of the things that describes the country is inequality (of resources). You have very rich people and a majority of poor people,” Joseph said.
“If you go, for example, to the slums of Port-Au-Prince, you will find poor people. You will like them because they are heartwarming people. They are welcoming people, but you will also find violence because it’s in every place where poverty prevails,” he said.
“But if you go to the countryside, if you go to some city outside Port-Au-Prince, you will find the beauty of this country. It’s a country rich with culture: we have the voodoo, we have the music, we have our own cuisine, we have our own identity,” he added.
Joseph said one thing he wants Americans to understand is that the current Haitian migrant crisis is driven in part by the U.S. supporting and continuing to support corrupt government in that country
“I don’t believe in the exportation of American democracy anymore . . . The only country in the world that could help us fix the political and administrative mess in Haiti could be America, but with time I realized the United States has backed the most corrupt government and one of the things people must understand here in the United States is that the current migrant crisis you have here is the result of rigged elections backed by the United States in 2011 in Haiti,” he said.
There is one thing of which Joseph said he is certain.
“President Biden is sending thousands of Haitians back to Haiti, but the one thing I am sure of is that these people will come back. These people will come back and in even greater numbers,” he said.
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Contact the author at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com
