Daily Inspiration Quote by Jean-Bertrand Aristide

A small sentence with a barricade hidden inside it. “We have problems which will be addressed by Haitians” is Aristide drawing a hard perimeter around sovereignty: not just “we have problems,” but problems that belong to a people and must be solved by that people. The phrasing makes “Haitians” the operative word, a corrective to the long history of Haiti being treated less like a nation than a project site for foreign powers, NGOs, and geopolitical managers.

Aristide’s intent is both practical and performative. Practically, it signals political control: policy will be set locally, legitimacy will be claimed domestically, and accountability will point inward rather than toward donors or diplomats. Performatively, it’s a refusal of the colonial script where Haitians are cast as recipients of solutions instead of authors of them. The line isn’t a denial of crisis; it’s a denial of tutelage.

The subtext is sharper: outside help has rarely arrived as neutral “assistance.” Haiti’s modern history is crowded with occupations, coups, debt regimes, and “stabilization” missions that promised order while narrowing Haitian self-determination. Aristide, a populist figure with a mandate grounded in the poor majority, is also defending that mandate against elite and international pressure that often prefers predictable partners to disruptive democratic energy.

Its power comes from how calm it is. No grand rhetoric, no pleading. Just a quiet insistence that the primary subject of Haiti’s future is Haitian agency - and that any relationship with the world must start there.