From the editors: In the lead-up to the World Cup, the first to be held in Africa, we are serializing in three parts an essay by Eli Jelly-Schapiro on the cultural politics of soccer. This essay will then be followed by a Periscope forum about the Cup. Read more.
Haitians have been struggling for decades to build what they call yon lot Ayiti — “another Haiti.” The popular movement of the 1980s, which helped end the Duvalier family dictatorship and launch the democratization of Haitian society, was based on the radical hope that the future was open and full of promise. Hope was thus a central political category, often intimately connected with suffering and misery — the most common names for the stark reality of daily life.
