A moment of hope in the midst of devastation. A baby, her mother’s first, is born in Haiti…and her name tells where the hope came from:
A group of Venezuelan doctors from the Simón Bolívar Humanitarian brigade attended a birth on Wednesday in a mountainous zone of Haiti, affected by Hurricane Matthew.
The newborn arrived at 3:10 in the afternoon. The baby’s mother decided to call her “Venezuela” as a gesture of thanks to the doctors who attended the birth. The information was reported earlier by Telesur’s special correspondent in Haiti, Madelein García.
Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro welcomed baby Venezuela via his Twitter account, “to the Great Homeland of the 21st Century. The people’s times are returning, and you will see the dreams of the giants. Amen.”
“Life is born of solidarity, of hope. Today Venezuela was born of a Haitian mother, 200 years after the arrival of Bolívar in Pétion’s Haiti,” wrote the Venezuelan president, in another tweet.
Recently, the Bolivarian government sent 700 tonnes of humanitarian aid materials to Haiti, as well as a load of heavy machinery to remove rubble, rebuild roads, and restore wells.
Translation mine.
Haiti is of great significance to Venezuela, as Madurito alludes; it was the Haitian slave revolts that inspired Venezuela to declare (and fight for) independence from the Spanish empire. Poverty was the price that both lands paid for that rebellion, but democracy remains the reward they both sought. Let’s hope that baby Venezuela will see the realization of those 200-year-old dreams in her lifetime.
