Grepen Center Update
On International Migrants Day: #FreeThemAll
Immigration and Customs Enforcement manages the largest immigration detention infrastructure in the world. Over the last year, however, the number of people being held in detention has plummeted, from 53,000 in October of 2019, to 16,075 at the beginning of December 2020.
Haiti: Human Rights News Briefs
Over the last few weeks there have been some key developments in the broader political context in Haiti.
For a good overview of those developments, see the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti’s summary report of human rights concerns through the end of October. From the introduction of that report:
2020 Seed Campaign: Update from Haiti
Although pandemic precautions have not permitted Quixote Center staff to visit our Haitian counterparts this year, we have kept in regular touch with our partners via virtual meetings twice a month. Because of those close connections, we were able to broadcast the need for increasing deposits in the seed bank and many of you truly delivered to meet this need. We received the report below yesterday and wanted to share some highlights with you.
#FreeThemAll, Halt Deportations
How ICE got to 16.000...
Update on Hurricane Iota
On Monday, November 16, Hurricane Iota struck Nicaragua about 15 miles from where Hurricane Eta made landfall 13 days prior.
Iota will strike Nicaragua as a category 5 hurricane
Another Hurricane will hit Central America this weekend
Less than two weeks after Hurricane Eta struck Central America, leading to deaths from Panama to Guatemala, another Hurricane is expected to hit Central America, coming ashore just north of where Eta struck along the Nicaraguan coast.
Hurricane Eta strikes Nicaragua
Nicaragua was struck with a category 4 hurricane on Tuesday this week. Hurricane Eta formed and quickly strengthened in the Caribbean last week and into the weekend. It came to shore as a very strong, slow moving storm near Bilwi on the northern Atlantic coast, and cut across the northern part of the country, swelling rivers and dropping rain all around.
Charlemagne Péralte: The Struggle of Memory Against Forgetting
For this week's Black History Month series at the Quixote Center, we are republishing a post from 2020 on Charlemagne Péralte, who resisted the U.S. occupation of Haiti and remains a legendary symbol of Haitian Liberty today.
The struggle of [hu]man[s] against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. Milan Kundera, the Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Updates from the agronomy team in Gros Morne
Several years ago a breed of weevil began infesting sweet potato crops in the area around Gros Morne, ruining many harvests. In response, the team at the Jean Marie Vincent Formation Center went to work developing a weevil resistance strain of sweet potatoes, and have been introducing this to farmers. Below are some photos from a project site in Perou, a satellite nursery for sweet potatoes, Aneus (red shirt) and Teligene (white shirt) check on sweet potatoes.