‘It wasn’t just about the protests.’ Entrepreneur, activist Bernard Fils-Aimé dead at 67
As an entrepreneur, he helped pioneer cellular service in Haiti as the chief executive officer of a mobile phone company where he made corporate giving and responsibility the rule rather than the exception, and gave working Haitians access to technology and the chance to get connected.
And as a retiree, he used his skills as a former assistant dean of students at Miami Dade College to groom Haiti’s next generation by giving them a shot at a college education as chairman of the board of the Haitian Education & Leadership Program, HELP.
But it is Bernard Fils-Aimé’s role as a militant activist and organizer, which eventually led him to become a founding member of one of the most powerful Haitian rights organizations in the United States, the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami, that he was most proud of and will be best remembered for.
“I was at the forefront of the battle to gain legal status for Haitian refugees,” Fils-Aimé told state Rep. Dotie Joseph in May as part of a spotlight on trailblazing Haitians during Haitian Heritage month. “We won many legal battles, which paved the way for the development of the vibrant Haitian-American community in South Florida today.”
Fils-Aimé, who spent his life working to raise the voice of Haitians at home and abroad, died Saturday at the University of Miami Hospital in Miami after becoming infected with the novel coronavirus. He was 67.
“What gave his life meaning, besides his loving family, is he always fought for people’s rights and for communities, especially for Haiti,” said son Karl, 35. “He was an exceptional human being and an even better father. He will be missed dearly.”
Fils-Aimé’s untimely death is not only hitting his family hard but a closely knit circle of friends and collaborators in South Florida and Haiti, the two communities where he and his wife of 41 years, Marise, called home and divided their time after moving back to Haiti in 1995.
A former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Haiti, Fils-Aimé often advised his close friend, the late President René Préval, on a number of issues including the development of Haiti’s private sector. Lately, he had spent a lot of time thinking about the country’s political future, its struggling private sector and how he could best influence Haiti’s path.
“He had flawless rationale and the ability to extract the big picture from a huge amount of information or a big event. René appreciated his capacity to reach out to people from all categories and reunite them with a common purpose, which was to strive to make things change for the good of all,” said Préval’s widow, Elisabeth Débrosse Delatour Préval.
As news traveled this week about his death, former employees of his mobile phone company, Communication Cellulaire d’Haïti, S.A. or ComCEL, which was better known by its trademark Voilà before being acquired by Digicel Group in 2012, remembered Fils-Aimé as a caring and generous boss.
“He was really proud at one point because ComCEL/Voilà was the No. 2 organization that had paid the most taxes,” said daughter Erica Brown, 46. “He was proud because it was about providing stability for the betterment of the community.”
Another proud moment came just weeks before the Jan. 12, 2010, Haiti earthquake. In December of 2009, the company’s U.S. subsidiary, Trilogy International Partners, was honored by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Voilà’s corporate responsibility programs, transparent business practices and contributions to the economic development of Haiti under Fils-Aimé’s management.
“Some would like to see in Bernard two different people,” said Fritz Longchamp, a longtime friend and former Haiti foreign minister who served as chief of staff to Préval during his second term in office. “The militant activist who fought for the rights of the Haitian people and the minority owner of a telecom enterprise. But that was absolutely not the case. For Bernard, it was two sides of one coin. His primary objective was always the wellness of the people.”
Rulx Jean-Bart, a former director of the Haitian Refugee Center, agreed.
Friends for more than 50 years, Jean-Bart and Fils-Aimé met while attending college in New York and working as student organizers. Fils-Aimé was at Columbia University while Jean-Bart was at York College.
Their activism would later chart their paths in life as they both joined the burgeoning Haitian rights movement in Miami as community organizers in the 1970s and worked together at Miami Dade College. Decades later, they would regularly gather at Fils-Aimé’s Miami Beach home along with several other lifelong friends, and reminisce about their fighting days while brainstorming on the issues of the day.
“Bernard is a guy, who practically all of his adult life was devoted to the betterment of the Haitian people,” said Jean-Bart, who lives in Miramar. “Whether it was as a student in college in New York, or his fight against Duvalier, he’s been there.”
Recalling the various Haitians organizations that he and Fils-Aimé were involved in to help Haitian asylum seekers win the right to remain in the United States, Jean-Bart said, Fils-Aimé “was a key person, instrumental in a lot of decisions.”
“There wasn’t one move that happened — legal, political, all of the activities, demonstrations — where he was not part of a discussion as a member of the leadership of those various organizations,” Jean-Bart said. “And he always did it with respect for the people he was serving. In Haiti he did the same thing. It’s clear he had a good relationship with the community that we were serving, organizing, defending.”
Fils-Aimé was born in Petionville, Haiti, on May 24, 1953. At the age of 13, he moved to New York with his mother to flee the dictatorship of Francois “Papa” Doc Duvalier.
As his children recalled his legacy and pivotal moments in his life on Monday, they said he had several loves: his wife, a good glass of Scotch with his friends and sòs pwa, a popular Haitian bean soup dish.
They recalled his stories about getting chased while fighting on behalf of farm workers, fighting against the Duvalier dictatorship and deciding to relocate to Miami from New York because he believed “this was going to be the front line for the rights of Haitian immigrants,” said son Gerard, 40.
“We’ve all been to protests with him at Krome when we were young kids,” he added. “He was a freedom fighter.”
Brown said the poor conditions at the Krome Detention Center in South Dade and the state in which Haitians arrived off the boats before being detained there were motivating forces for her dad.
“Haitians ... were coming with no rights, no humanity and that really became his guiding principle of empowering them and fighting for just basic human rights,” she said. “It wasn’t just about the protests. But it was also about how he lived his life.”
In addition to his wife and three adult children, Fils-Aimé is survived by five grandchildren and a host of family and friends. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fils-Aimé’s family said he will be laid to rest in a private ceremony on Thursday. A Catholic Mass in his honor will take place Friday at Saint Charbel in Peguyville, a residential area of Port-au-Prince.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks those who wish to honor his legacy to make a contribution in his honor to HELP, https://bernard.uhelp.net, the education charity that was close to his heart.
