Awakening the Ancestors to Defend Sovereignty in Burkina Faso. Dessalines in Ouagadougou

Jean Saint-Vil, Global Research, April 14, 2025 ─ 

You are likely aware that, since 2022, Burkina Faso is undergoing a revolutionary process under the leadership of its 37 year wise president Ibrahim Traore. The challenges faced by the people and their leader are manyfold, including two dozen assassination attempts against the president. Thanks to active solidarity within the African continent, starting with neighboring Mali and Niger – now extending worldwide, the amazing socio-economic and political transformations began three years ago are proceeding steadfastly in Thomas Sankara’s homeland of honest men and women.

May 15 in Burkina Faso is “Customs and Traditions Day”, a newly established public holiday to celebrate and strengthen national identity based on ancestral traditions and customs. The pan-African vision embodied in Burkina Faso’s revolutionary process will shine ever brightly during this year’s celebrations which has set projectors on Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a son of kidnapped and displaced Africans who defeated three armies of European enslavers (Spain, UK, France) to liberate the island of Hayti in 1804 and spearhead the abolition of racial slavery throughout the Americas.

Thanks to a timely initiative led by 3R International and its Haitian-Canadian President Darlene Lozis (Manzè Choublak), on Thursday, May 15, 2025, at the Peace Monument in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, there will be a public screening of Arnold Antonin’s documentary film “Jean-Jacques Dessalines: the Man who Defeated Napoleon Bonaparte“.

To help defray related costs, organizers have launched a fundraising campaign to which Pwodiksyon Jafrikayiti have contributed and I invite you to consider doing the same (please see details here).

For some the connection between Haiti’s founder Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traore might be self-evident. Nonetheless, I encourage you to peruse this 2-page pamphlet developed for the occasion by 3R International.

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