Haiti

by Laurent Dubois

  2. Savaille, Grève, 24–34.

  3. Claude Moïse, Constitutions et luttes de pouvoir en Haïti, 1804–1987: De l’occupation étrangère à la dictature macoute (1915–1987), vol. 2 (Montréal: Éditions du CIDIHCA, 1988), 158–59; Savaille, Grève, 47–54; Kethly Millet, Les paysans haïtiens et l’occupation américaine d’Haïti, 1915–1930 (La Salle, Québec: Collectif Paroles, 1978), 131. For a summary of the situation in rural Haiti under the occupation see Suzy Castor, L’occupation américaine d’Haïti (Port-au-Prince: Société Haïtienne d’Histoire, 1988), chap. 5.

  4. Matthew J. Smith, Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934–1957 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 10; Georges Michel, Charlemagne Péralte and the First American Occupation of Haiti, trans. Douglas Henry Daniels (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 1996), 45–47; Andrew Walker, “Contested Sovereignty: Haitian Politics and Protest in the Era of U.S. Occupation, 1915–1934” (B.A. thesis, Duke University, 2011), 4–5.

  5. Roger Gaillard, Charlemagne Péralte le caco (Port-au-Prince: R. Gaillard, 1982), 27–28.

  6. Alex Dupuy, Haiti in the World Economy: Class, Race, and Underdevelopment Since 1700 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989), 136; Millet, Les paysans, 123; Gaillard, Charlemagne, 90–92; Castor, L’occupation américaine d’Haïti, 95–96; Kate Ramsey, The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), n. 254.

  7. Millet, Les paysans, 107–9; Karen E. Richman, Migration and Vodou (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005), 102–11; Castor, L’occupation américaine d’Haïti, 91–97; Ramsey, Spirits, 124. For a contemporary critical account of the dispossession of rural land, see Perceval Thoby, Dépossessions: Le latifundia américain contre la petite propriété d’Haiti, vol. 1 (Port-au-Prince: Impr. de “La Presse,” 1930).

  8. Blancpain, Borno, 176, 198.

  9. Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, In the Shadow of Powers: Dantès Bellegarde in Haitian Social Thought (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1985), 63–66; Millery Polyné, From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti and Pan Americanism, 1870–1964 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010), 69; Blancpain, Borno, 175–76.

  10. Laënnec Hurbon, Le Barbare Imaginaire (Paris: Cerf, 1988), 119–20; David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour, and National Independence in Haiti, rev. ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 155; Eugène Aubin, En Haïti: Planteurs d’autrefois, nègres d’aujourd’hui (Paris: A. Colin, 1910), 54–60.

  11. Ramsey, Spirits, 128–30.

  12. Hurbon, Barbare, 121–23; John Dryden Kuser, Haiti: Its Dawn of Progress After Years in a Night of Revolution (Boston: R. G. Badger, 1921), 57–58; Ramsey, Spirits, 131, 146, 149, 200.

  13. Millet, Les paysans, 108–9; Castor, L’occupation américaine d’Haïti, 97–101.

  14. Gaillard, Charlemagne, 31, 93–95, 171–74; Marc C. McLeod, “Undesirable Aliens: Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism in the Comparison of Haitian and British West Indian Immigrant Workers in Cuba, 1912–1939,” Journal of Social History 31, no. 3 (Spring 1998): 599–623; Catherine C. Legrand, “Informal Resistance on a Dominican Sugar Plantation During the Trujillo Dictatorship,” Hispanic American Historical Review 75, no. 4 (November 1995): 555–96.

  15. Ramsey, Spirits, 133–34, 137–38; Mary A. Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 159–60; Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 119; Gaillard, Charlemagne, 237–39.

  16. Polyné, Douglass to Duvalier, 61–62; Renda, Taking Haiti, 186. For Johnson’s statements, see the Crisis (February 1922), p. 182.

  17. Polyné, Douglass to Duvalier, 62; Renda, Taking Haiti, 188–96; Schmidt, Occupation, 114–20.

  18. Ramsey, Spirits, 134–37, 182, 315n80.

  19. Ulysses G. Weatherly, “Haiti: An Experiment in Pragmatism,” American Journal of Sociology 32, no. 3 (November 1926): 366; Robert Fatton Jr., The Roots of Haitian Despotism (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2007), 164–65, 189; Schmidt, Occupation, 124–29; Gaillard, Charlemagne, 239.

  20. Moïse, Constitutions, 2:105, 137.

  21. Ibid., 2:110–111. The most detailed study of Borno’s political life is Blancpain, Borno.

  22. Georges Corvington, Le palais national de la république d’Haïti (Port-au-Prince: Henri Deschamps, 2004); Barthelemieux Danache, Le président Dartiguenave et les américains (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de l’État, 1950); cited in Blancpain, Borno, 172–73; Bellegarde-Smith, Shadow, 64–65; Rayford W. Logan, “Education in Haiti,” Journal of Negro History 15, no. 4 (October 1930): 450.

  23. Blancpain, Borno, 184–86.

  24. Ibid., 175–76; Savaille, Grève, 18–19; Schmidt, Occupation, 184.

  25. Bellegarde-Smith, Shadow, 61–62; Magdaline W. Shannon, Jean Price-Mars, the Haitian Elite and the American Occupation, 1915–1935 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 23; Polyné, Douglass to Duvalier, 77–79; Philippe Delisle, Le catholicisme en Haïti au XIXe siècle (Paris: Kharthala, 2003), 66.

  26. Polyné, Douglass to Duvalier, 76; Logan, “Education in Haiti,” 440–48; Blancpain, Borno, 188.

  27. Blancpain, Borno, 179–81; Bellegarde-Smith, Shadow, 122–23, 155–57, 164.

  28. Savaille, Grève, 9–14, 47–54, 107; Moïse, Constitutions, 2:158–59; Schmidt, Occupation, 197.

  29. Polyné, Douglass to Duvalier, 83–86.

  30. Blancpain, Borno, 188–89; Savaille, Grève, 101.

  31. Schmidt, Occupation, 149; Gaillard, Charlemagne, 171; Bellegarde-Smith, Shadow, 63–64; Nadève Ménard, “The Occupied Novel: The Representation of Foreigners in Haitian Novels Written During the United States Occupation, 1915–1934” (Ph.D. dissertation: University of Pennsylvania, 2002).

  32. Schmidt, Occupation, 138–39; Renda, Taking Haiti, 132–33.

  33. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Haiti, State Against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990), 130–31. For detailed studies of how the occupation shaped the thought of particular Haitian intellectuals, see Bellegarde-Smith, Shadow; Shannon, Price-Mars; and J. Michael Dash, Literature and Ideology in Haiti, 1915–1961 (Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble Books, 1981).

  34. Gaillard, Charlemagne, 62–63; Shannon, Price-Mars, 55.

  35. On Jeanty, see Michael D. Largey, Vodou Nation: Haitian Art Music and Cultural Nationalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), chap. 2. On Candio, see Gage Averill, A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 49–50.

  36. Shannon, Price-Mars, 57–61; Moïse, Constitutions, 2:93–94; Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier, 150; Walker, “Contested Sovereignty,” chap. 3. On the history of struggles for women’s rights in Haiti see Madelaine Sylvain Bouchereau, Haïti et ses femmes (Port-au-Prince: Les Presses Libres, 1957).

  37. Blancpain, Borno, 171; Moïse, Constitutions, 2:128–35; Schmidt, Occupation, 128, 195.

  38. Bellegarde-Smith, Shadow, 66–77.

  39. Schmidt, Occupation, 208; Moïse, Constitutions, 2:149; Shannon, Price-Mars, 64; Emily Greene Balch, Occupied Haiti (New York: Writers Publishing, 1927).

  40. Shannon, Price-Mars, 14–15.

  41. Ibid., 16–23.

  42. Ibid., 59; Ramsey, Spirits, 126.

  43. Hurbon, Barbare, 119–20; Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier, 132, 155; Shannon, Price-Mars, 59; Bellegarde-Smith, Shadow, 104, 127.

  44. Jean Price-Mars, Ainsi parla l’oncle: Essai d’ethnographie (Port-au-Prince: Compiègne, 1928), i–ii. While I have largely followed the translation provided in Jean Price-Mars, So Spoke the Uncle, trans. Magdaline Shannon (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1983), I have also retranslated some passages. For an analysis of Price-Mars and his relation to Firmin, see Gérarde Magloire-Danton, “Anténor Fi
rmin and Jean Price-Mars: Revolution, Memory, Humanism,” Small Axe 9, no. 2 (September 2005): 150–70.

  45. Price-Mars, Ainsi parla l’oncle, 2–3; Price-Mars, Uncle, 8–9.

  46. Price-Mars, Ainsi parla l’oncle, 2; Price-Mars, Uncle, 8; Ramsey, Spirits, 178–81.

  47. Smith, Red and Black, 9; Schmidt, Occupation, 210–12; Moïse, Constitutions, 2:160–61.

  48. Moïse, Constitutions, 2:168.

  49. Ibid., 2:191–95; Schmidt, Occupation, 224–26.

  50. Moïse, Constitutions, 2:191–95, 212; Schmidt, Occupation, 224–26; Polyné, Douglass to Duvalier, 79–80.

  51. Moïse, Constitutions, 2:194–95; Smith, Red and Black, 18.

  52. Ramsey, Spirits, 149–50, 162–66; John Houston Craige, Black Bagdad (New York: Minton, Balch, 1933); John Houston Craige, Cannibal Cousins, 1st ed. (New York: Minton, Balch, 1934); Renda, Taking Haiti, chap. 2.

  53. Ramsey, Spirits, 171.

  54. Ramsey, Spirits, 170–173; Richman, Migration and Vodou, 111; Laënnec Hurbon, “American Fantasy and Haitian Vodou,” in Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, ed. Donald Cosentino (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1995). The best discussion of the symbolism and meaning of the zonbi in Haiti is Hurbon, Barbare. Wade Davis argues that the practice of zombification does exist among secret societies in Haiti who use neurotoxins against certain enemies; see Wade Davis, Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), which was popularized in his The Serpent and the Rainbow (London: Collins, 1986) and later in a rather unfortunate movie version by horror film director Wes Craven.

  55. Chantalle Verna, “Haiti’s ‘Second Independence’ and the Promise of Pan-American Cooperation, 1934–1956” (Ph.D. dissertation: Michigan State University, 2005).

  56. Jacques Roumain, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Léon-François Hoffmann (Paris: Allca XX, Collection Archivos, 2003), introduction and p. 429; Smith, Red and Black, 18–20. For insights into the broader cultural movements of this time, see Ramsey, Spirits, 178; Roger Gaillard, La destinée de Carl Brouard: Essai accompagné de documents photographiques (Port-au-Prince: Henri Deschamps, 1966); and Dash, Literature and Ideology in Haiti, 1915–1961, chaps. 2–4.

  57. Smith, Red and Black, 19–22.

  58. Ibid., 20–21.

  59. Moïse, Constitutions, 2:194–95; Smith, Red and Black, 22; Averill, Hunter, 50.

  60. Sténio Vincent, En posant les jalons (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de l’État, 1939), 334–35; Moïse, Constitutions, 2:194–95, 214–15.

  61. Smith, Red and Black, 41–43; Moïse, Constitutions, 2:217–23, 235–36.

  62. Ramsey, Spirits, 182; Gérard Barthélemy, L’univers rural haïtien: Le pays en dehors (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1990), 47.

  63. Richard Lee Turits, “A World Destroyed, a Nation Imposed: The 1937 Haitian Massacre in the Dominican Republic,” Hispanic American Historical Review 82, no. 3 (August 2002): 595.

  64. Ibid., 610; Richard Lee Turits, Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003). See also Eric Roorda, The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic, 1930–1945 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998), and Lauren Hutchinson Derby, The Dictator’s Seduction: Politics and the Popular Imagination in the Era of Trujillo (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009).

  65. Turits, “World Destroyed,” 613.

  66. Ibid., 614; Brenda Gayle Plummer, Haiti and the United States: The Psychological Moment (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992), 154.

  67. Plummer, Haiti and the United States, 156–57; Smith, Red and Black, 34; Turits, “World Destroyed.”

  68. Roumain, Oeuvres, 682–88.

  69. Ramsey, Spirits, 181–91; Hurbon, Barbare, 124.

  70. Kate Ramsey, “Without One Ritual Note: Folklore Performance and the Haitian State, 1935–1946,” Radical History Review 84 (Fall 2002): 22.

  71. Ramsey, Spirits, 231–32; Ramsey, “Ritual Note,” 20–21.

  72. Ramsey, Spirits, 177, 181–91, 231–36; Ramsey, “Ritual Note,” 20–22; Hurbon, Barbare, 124.

  73. Ramsey, Spirits, 194, 196, 200–202; and Smith, Red and Black, 49–50.

  74. Smith, Red and Black, 48–49; Ramsey, Spirits, 185–86, 198–200.

  75. Alfred Métraux, Voodoo in Haiti, trans. Hugo Charteris (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), 17.

  76. Roumain, Oeuvres, 745–52.

  77. Ibid., 247–54; Jacques Roumain, Masters of the Dew, trans. Langston Hughes and Mercer Cook (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947).

  78. Roumain, Oeuvres, 88–94.

  8: AN IMMATERIAL BEING

  1. Marie Vieux-Chauvet, Love, Anger, Madness: A Haitian Trilogy (New York: Modern Library, 2009), xxi–xxii, 160, 230, 265. On Vieux-Chauvet within the broader context of twentieth-century women’s writing in Haiti see Myriam Chancy, Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997), chap. 5.

  2. Ibid., 228.

  3. Ibid., xiii, 24–25; Patti M. Marxsen, “In Perpetual Revolt,” Women’s Review of Books, April 2010.

  4. Vieux-Chauvet, Love, Anger, Madness, xxii; Marxsen, “In Perpetual Revolt”; Bernard Diederich and Al Burt, Papa Doc: The Truth About Haiti Today, 1st ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), 216–17.

  5. Vieux-Chauvet, Love, Anger, Madness, xiv–xv, xxii; Marxsen, “In Perpetual Revolt.”

  6. Matthew J. Smith, Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934–1957 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 43–44.

  7. Ibid., 45–46; Diederich and Burt, Papa Doc, 50–51; Claude Moïse, Constitutions et luttes de pouvoir en Haïti, 1804–1987: De l’occupation étrangère à la dictature macoute (1915–1987), vol. 2 (Montréal: Éditions du CIDIHCA, 1988), 236–37.

  8. Smith, Red and Black, 77–79; Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, In the Shadow of Powers: Dantès Bellegarde in Haitian Social Thought (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1985), 147–48; Moïse, Constitutions, 2:235.

  9. Moïse, Constitutions, 2:252–54; Smith, Red and Black, 73, 80–82.

  10. Smith, Red and Black, 90–99, 110–13; Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, Haiti: The Breached Citadel, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2004), 121; Edmund Wilson, Red, Black, Blond, and Olive; Studies in Four Civilizations: Zuñi, Haiti, Soviet Russia, Israel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), 91; Moïse, Constitutions, 2:282–88; Bellegarde-Smith, Shadow, 148.

  11. Millery Polyné, From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti and Pan Americanism, 1870–1964 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010), 138–39; Smith, Red and Black, 114–16.

  12. Smith, Red and Black, 107, 143–44; Gage Averill, A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 63–65; Polyné, Douglass to Duvalier, chaps. 4 and 5, esp. 146–47; Katherine Dunham, Island Possessed, 1st ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969); Polly Pattullo, Last Resorts: The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2005).

  13. Smith, Red and Black, 139, 142, 145–47.

  14. Moïse, Constitutions, 2:315; Smith, Red and Black, 149–62; Diederich and Burt, Papa Doc, 68.

  15. Diederich and Burt, Papa Doc, 64–65, 68; Smith, Red and Black, 164–65; James Ferguson, Papa Doc, Baby Doc: Haiti and the Duvaliers (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1988), 35. On the Schweitzer hospital, see Barry Paris, Song of Haiti: The Lives of Dr. Larimer and Gwen Mellon at Albert Schweitzer Hospital of Deschapelles, 1st ed. (New York: Public Affairs, 2000). For a detailed firsthand account of Magloire’s regime, see Bernard Diederich, Bon Papa: Haiti’s Golden Years (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2008).

  16. Smith, Red and Black, 164–66, 169; Diederich and Burt, Papa Doc, 68.

  17. Smith, Red and Black, 161; Ferguson, Duvaliers, 32–33; Moïse, Constitutions, 2:327.

 
18. Diederich and Burt, Papa Doc, 30–38.

  19. Ibid., 38, 45; Ferguson, Duvaliers, 33. For extended reflections on color in Haitian politics, see David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour, and National Independence in Haiti, rev. ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996).

  20. François Duvalier, Oeuvres essentielles (Port-au-Prince: Presses Nationales d’Haïti, 1966), 1: 311–12; Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier, 194–95.

  21. Duvalier, Oeuvres essentielles, 1: 311–12; Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier, 194–95; Smith, Red and Black, 23–24; Robert Fatton Jr., The Roots of Haitian Despotism (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2007), 179.

  22. Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier, 185–88; Smith, Red and Black, 97–99, 110–13, 161; Ferguson, Duvaliers, 32–33; Moïse, Constitutions, 2:327.

  23. Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier, 113–17, 154–55; Smith, Red and Black, 23–26.

  24. Moïse, Constitutions, 2:330, 334–35; Diederich and Burt, Papa Doc, 78–79, 86.

  25. Smith, Red and Black, 168–85; Moïse, Constitutions, 2:344–45, 352–58; Diederich and Burt, Papa Doc, chap. 8; Bellegarde-Smith, Breached Citadel, 125–26.

  26. Moïse, Constitutions, 2:344–45, 366–67; Smith, Red and Black, 168–85; Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier, 208–9; Diederich and Burt, Papa Doc, 99–100; Bellegarde-Smith, Breached Citadel, 128.

  27. Moïse, Constitutions, 2:366, 381, 396; Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Haiti, State Against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990), 169; Fatton, Roots, 182; Ferguson, Duvaliers, 37, 57.

  28. Moïse, Constitutions, 2:372–73; Ferguson, Duvaliers, 39.

  29. Moïse, Constitutions, 2:374–77.

  30. Diederich and Burt, Papa Doc, 102, 105; Moïse, Constitutions, 2:380–81.

  31. Diederich and Burt, Papa Doc, 113–20, 145; Ferguson, Duvaliers, 41; Robert Debs Heinl, Nancy Gordon Heinl, and Michael Heinl, Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People, 1492–1995, 2nd ed. (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1996), 593; Moïse, Constitutions, 2:385–88.