Ride ‘Em, (Black) cowboys!
129 deportees arrive in Haiti amid coronavirus concerns
Caribbean Life, May 1-7, 2020 25
By Evens Sanon
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) —
A plane carrying 129 migrants who
were deported from the U.S. landed
Thursday in Haiti amid concerns that
the second such flight this month
could strain the impoverished country’s
limited resources as it fights
the COVID-19 disease.
Authorities whisked the group
away in buses and took them to
a hotel in the capital of Port-au-
Prince, where they joined more than
60 other recent deportees already
serving a two-week quarantine.
Three of the migrants who arrived
in early April have tested positive for
COVID-19, although so far none in
the group that departed San Antonio,
Texas on Thursday has a temperature,
said Jean Negot Bonheur
Delva, director of Haiti’s migration
office. The newest group includes 50
children from ages ranging 5 to 15,
he told The Associated Press.
The World Health Organization is
providing Haiti with free testing kits,
although the local government is
paying for three meals a day and the
deportees’ two-week stay at hotels
including one in the north coastal
town of Cap-Haitien, where nearly
400 migrants are under quarantine
after being expelled from the nearby
Turks & Caicos Islands.
Bonheur declined to say how
much the situation is costing the
government as a Miami-based Haitian
rights advocacy group called
on President Jovenel Moise to stop
accepting deportees and ask that
U.S. President Donald Trump place a
moratorium on deportations.
“These flights do not only put the
deported individuals at risk, but they
also threaten to spread the coronavirus
in Haiti, a country as you know
all too well is ill-equipped to deal
with a pandemic,” wrote Marleine
Bastien, executive director of the
Family Action Network Movement.
U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement has said it has tested
425 detainees in custody as of April
21, a small fraction of the more than
32,000 in custody.
Government officials in Haiti did
not immediately respond to a request
for comment. However, Prime Minister
Joseph Jouthe said earlier this
week that the country is caring for
the deportees.
“They are Haitians. They are coming
home. We have to receive them,”
he said in an interview Monday with
Radio Vision 2000.
Haiti has reported at least four
deaths and more than 60 confirmed
new coronavirus cases.
“The Compton Cowboys: The New
Generation of Cowboys in America’s
Urban Heartland” by Walter Thompson
Hernández
c.2020, William Morrow $28.99 /
$35.99
Canada
272 pages
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The guy with the white hat has a nice
horse.
The guy with the white hat has rugged
boots with spurs like stars on his
heels. He wears crisp jeans, a starched
shirt, a big belt buckle, and a bigger
smile. The guy in the black has all those
things, too, and more: in “The Compton
Cowboys” by Walter Thompson-Hernández,
the guy in the black hat also has
black skin.
The memory had always stuck with
him.
Many years ago, back when Thompson
Hernández was a boy growing up
south of Los Angeles, being a Compton
Cowboy was something lots of kids
longed to be. It was that, or join a gang,
and the choice was a lifeline for many,
thanks to Mayisha Akbar.
Back then, after Akbar bought a ranch
in a spot that few would even look for a
ranch, after she became a Muslim and
changed her name, she understood that
if you put a kid on a horse, it has a way
of changing that kid’s life. If a kid had
discipline and goals and maybe his or
her own horse, well, that was even better
because then two lives were changed.
But her riders now were mostly adults,
Akbar had health issues, and she was
looking to pass the ranch on to her
nephew.
It was a legacy that Randy didn’t take
lightly.
Decades ago, when Compton was still
mostly rural, the ranch was set aside
for Great Migrationers who might miss
their farms back home. In its heyday, it
was something; today, it sported stables
filled with second-chance thoroughbreds
and horse-auction refugees, houses for
the hands, and riding areas surrounded
incongruously by C-stores and high traffic.
The Compton ranch wasn’t the only
place in the area for black cowboys to
ride, but it was respected and it was up
to Randy to keep it so.
That would be a battle: alcoholism
and drug abuse plagued the riders, as
did gangs, prison-time, bad pasts, and
personality clashes. The children’s program
had few takers anymore and the
ranch was technically up for sale. It was
running out of time and money…
“The Compton Cowboys” is a nice
surprise. It’s also a source of disappointment.
For sure, readers will find themselves
fascinated by a ranch in South Central,
and itching to learn more about it, but
facts here are frustratingly sparse. Yes,
author Walter Thompson-Hernández
follows the subtitled promise of focusing
his book on the cowboys themselves, but
a ranch in the middle of SoCal urbanity?
It seems like a gift. Truly, more backstory
on it would’ve been nice.
Instead, readers get a lot of throatclearing
and profile-rehashing that
spins in place before it zooms off in a
satisfying manner. Again, yes, that’s the
focus but less here absolutely would have
been more.
In the end, “The Compton Cowboys”
is good but it may leave a lingering feeling
of Not Enough. For anyone needing
a who-what-why, it requires a lot of
fill-in-the-blanks and it saddles a reader
Book cover of “The Compton Cowboys” by Walter Thompson-Hernandez. with too many questions.
Haitians who were deported from
the United States talk to a doctor
who is on the second fl oor window
of the hotel where they will be quarantined
as a measure against the
spread of the new coronavirus, in
Tabarre, Haiti, Thursday, April 23,
2020. Associated Press / Dieu Nalio Chery