In Los Angeles, a growing Haitian community looks to the World Cup to change the narrative | OneFootball

As reported by L'Équipe, Los Angeles’s growing Haitian community used the World Cup as respite and a platform, gathering in Leimert Park to watch a 3-0 loss to Brazil.

Even at half-time, three down, the mini fanzone kept dancing to capoeira rhythms and Creole chants. The sound briefly dropped after the restart, and with an opening 0-1 defeat by Scotland, early elimination loomed.

Some attendees noted a bond with Brazil, shaped by the presence of Brazilian soldiers in Haiti from 2004 to 2017. The Seleção have long had admirers among Haitians, if rather fewer on this night.

Haitian Spotlight ran the screening and, after four years of community events, had shown the Scotland game in a nightclub. On 19 June, the focus turned to Haitian and Caribbean culture alongside the African diaspora in a lively corner of South Los Angeles.

About 100,000 Haitians live in California from San Diego to Sacramento, often calling themselves CaliHaitians, and numbers in the west keep rising as Los Angeles draws newcomers. Nationally, the community is concentrated in Brooklyn’s Little Haiti and especially Florida, with around one million Haitians now compared with fewer than 100,000 in the early 1980s.

The aim was to offer a rallying point and help change how Haitians are talked about amid today’s politics. Donald Trump has placed Haiti on a visa red list and revoked temporary protection for about half a million immigrants, and he previously repeated a false rumour about Springfield, yet the night ended in shared celebration beneath a sea of Haitian, Brazilian, American, Jamaican, Ghanaian, Spanish and Burkinabè shirts.

Source: L'Équipe