The Idea of Haiti

Rethinking Crisis and Development

Millery Polyné, E d i t o r
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The Idea of Haiti

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The Idea of Haiti

R ethinking Crisis
and
Development

Millery Polyné, Editor

U n i v e r s i t y o f M i n n e s o ta P r e s s
minne apolis • london
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Chapter 4 was published previously as Sibylle Fischer, “Haiti: Fantasies of Bare Life,”
Small Axe 11, no. 2 ( June 2007): 1–15. Copyright 2007 Small Axe, Inc. All rights
reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Duke University Press.
www.dukeupress.edu. Parts of chapter 7 appeared previously as Wien Weibert Arthus,
“L’aide internationale peut ne pas marcher: Évaluation des relations américano-haïtiennes
au regards de l’Alliance pour le Progrès (1961–1963),” Journal of Haitian Studies 17, no. 1
(Spring 2011): 155–77. Copyright 2011, Journal of Haitian Studies. All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Haitian Studies Association and Center
for Black Studies Research, University of California, Santa Barbara. Chapter 10 was
previously published as Elizabeth McAlister, “From Slave Revolt
to a Blood Pact with Satan: The Evangelical Rewriting of Haitian History,”
Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 41, no. 2 (2012).

Copyright 2013 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota

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20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Dedicated to my parents,
R aymond and L or na
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Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. To Make Visible the Invisible Epistemological Order:
Haiti, Singularity, and Newness xi
M i l l e r y P o ly n é

I . Revolisyon/Kriz (Revolution/Crisis)
1 Haiti, the Monstrous Anomaly 3
Nick Nesbitt
2 Rethinking the Haitian Crisis 27
Greg Beckett
3 Remembering Charlemagne Péralte and His Defense of
Haiti’s Revolution 51
Yveline Alexis

I I . Moun/Demounization (Person/Dehumanization)
4 Haiti: Fantasies of Bare Life 69
Sibylle Fischer
5 The Violence of Executive Silence 87
Pat r i c k S y lva i n
6 Religion at the Epicenter: Agency and Affiliation in Léogâne
after the Earthquake 111
Karen Richman
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I I I . Èd (Aid)
7 The Alliance for Progress: A Case Study of Failure of
International Commitments to Haiti 135
W i e n W e i b e rt A rt h u s
8 Urban Planning and the Rebuilding of Port-au-Prince 165
H a r l e y F. E t i e n n e
9 Cholera and the Camps: Reaping the Republic of NGOs 181
mark schuller
10 From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan: The Evangelical
Rewriting of Haitian History 203
Elizabeth McAlister
11 Twenty-First-Century Haiti—A New Normal? A Conversation
with Four Scholars of Haiti 243
A l e x D u p u y, R o b e rt Fat t o n J r . ,
É v e ly n e T r o u i l l o t , and Tat i a n a Wa h

Contributors 269
Index 273
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Acknowledgments

This volume would not be possible without the important scholarship from
the authors in this book. Furthermore, I would like to thank the following
individuals, groups, and institutions for their friendship, work, and support
of this project: Judy C. Polyné, Cedric Johnson, Chantalle F. Verna, Matthew
Smith, Gina Ulysse, N. D. B. Connolly, Jose Perillan, Shawn Christian, George
Shulman, Jack Tchen, Colin Palmer and the Scholars-in-Residence at the
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (2012), Susanne Wofford
and Linda Reiss at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, the Haitian
Studies Association, the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Penn-
sylvania, the Center for Africana Studies at the Johns Hopkins University,
Nottingham Contemporary Museum, University of Rochester, Vassar Col-
lege, Wheaton College (RI), City College of the City University of New York,
SUNY, College at Old Westbury, Hofstra University, the editorial staff at Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, and the amazing photography at Fotokonbit.
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Introduction

To Make Visible the Invisible

Epistemological Order
Haiti, Singularity, and Newness

m i l l e r y p o ly n é

T he title of this book may be misleading. There is not a sole idea, a sin-
gular approach or paradigm to what scholar Walter D. Mignolo deems
the “geo-politics of knowledge” that constructed Haitians and the Haitian
republic.1 Multiple designs exist. Its roots are rhizomorphic, maintaining
local, national, and international strata, and also these ideas continue to be
in conversation and in tension with one another. Furthermore, some specific
knowledges occupy a more prevalent space in the psyche of laypersons and
scholars, and within global communication apparatuses (for example, blogs,
Tumblr, and print and television media). In some cases, an elision of Hait-
ian history, particularly the case of French historical studies, is peculiarly
apparent.2 Consider the thousands of newspaper reports about the earth-
quake in Haiti on January 12, 2010, and the subsequent global relief efforts
to this day. Many different groups, institutions, and writers have generated
ideas about the republic’s collective ethos, the lives and social relations of its
citizens, and how the state governs itself.3 Historically, the Haitian peasantry
and Haitian intellectuals have crafted a paradoxical narrative of the country’s
beauty as well as modern cultural and intellectual contributions, its radical
abolitionist history, its cooperative disposition illustrated by popular adages,
including men anpil chay pa lou (when the hands are many, the burden is
light), and its emphasis on the idea of the lakou (a spiritual, familial, com-
mercial, and community nerve center).4 At the same time, Haitians highlight
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xii M i l l e r y P o ly n é

notions of the nation’s crab antics, intense political and economic corrup-
tion, and violence. More importantly, many Haitians construct the notion
that Haiti exposes the deficiencies of a Western-style democracy and social
and economic neoliberal principles.
During the nineteenth century, several leading Haitian intellectuals, includ-
ing Anténor Firmin, Demesvar Delorme, and Louis-Joseph Janvier, crafted
an idea of Haiti that demonstrated its unassailable intellectual, cultural, and
biological symmetry with Western Europeans. Firmin and others contended
that it was the system of racial bondage that stifled the progress of African-
descended peoples, particularly in the Americas. Thus, Haitians and other
African-descended peoples positioning on the evolutionary timeline may
have lagged—and thus should not be compared with Europeans—yet “within
the grand harmony of the human destiny . . . the actors are all equal in dig-
nity. . . . This will continue until the time when all of them will fade away into
a general whole.”5 In De l’Égalité des Races Humaines (1885), Firmin’s note-
worthy nineteenth-century text that challenges French thinker Count Arthur
de Gobineau’s racist assertions of European genetic and cultural supremacy,
Firmin asserted:

I strongly believe that the Black race of Haiti is destined to ameliorate itself, to
grow continuously in beauty and intelligence. I consider any effort which con-
tributes to its redemption doubly sacred, because it is consistent both with
my scientific convictions and with my political and patriotic aspirations. It is
worth pointing out once more, however, that there can be no regeneration if
conditions do not allow people to think freely and great personalities to man-
ifest themselves freely.6

Firmin’s liberal idea of Haiti proved auspicious and bright. He, like other
esprits scientifques of the age, promoted a democracy governed by educated
elite that would build a society where all Haitian citizens thrived. In spite of
this vision, many of the leading male intellectuals of the nineteenth century
neglected to challenge the place of class and gender hierarchy in the evolving
ideas of Haiti.7
Historically, the perspectives of the majority, the rural denizens of Haiti,
have been ignored by the Haitian elite and by foreign actors, particularly
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Introduction xiii

the governments and press corps of the United States, France, and Canada.
France’s and North America’s idea of Haiti produced discourses that inten-
sify the notion of a progress-resistant, deviant and childlike nation unaware
of the material and ideological benefits of democracy and capitalism.8 Addi-
tionally, U.S. blacks and Dominicans played a significant role in constructing
an idea of Haiti. From Haitian independence (1804) through the middle of
the twentieth century, many U.S. African American artists, intellectuals, and
workers deemed Haiti to be, at times, a wellspring of black potentiality within
the realm of self-governance and revolutionary action, and at other moments
an unfinished revolutionary project in need of fraternal and northern bour-
geois influence.9 Contrary to U.S. African American visions, many Domini-
can elites’ and laborers’ conception of Haiti complemented Global North
paradigms while simultaneously embracing indigenous aesthetics.10
Thus, in spite of the varied and multitiered conceptions of Haiti, which
demonstrate that there is not a singular idea, what singularity in the Haitian
context reveals is the notion of Haiti as inimitable and exceptional. “When
we are being told over and over again” asserts Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “that
Haiti is unique, bizarre, unnatural, odd, queer, freakish, or grotesque, we are
also being told, in varying degrees, that it is unnatural, erratic and therefore
unexplainable.”11 Thus, the perpetuation of an enigmatic Haiti, largely pro-
duced by the gravitational forces of North American and Western Euro-
pean ideologies of Christianity, capitalism, and whiteness, forms an infinite
space of distortion—a space-time singularity, if you will—that warps one’s
capacity to see, assess, and proceed.12 Despite assertions of what seemingly
is a boundless state of misrepresentation, this volume of essays exemplifies
one among several significant scholarly attempts to disrupt and contextu-
alize the idea of the eternal Haitian crisis so as to potentially encourage more
critical and comparative scholarship and popular writings on the Haitian
republic.
The Idea of Haiti is a book about remembering, historicizing, and contex-
tualizing three central ideas—revolisyon (revolution)/kriz (crisis), moun (per-
son, humanity)/demounization (dehumanization), and èd (aid)—that inform
both an internal and external perception, and responses to Haiti and its affairs.
These concepts work to organize the essays in the volume, to highlight pre-
dominate narratives that shape ideological discourses on the Haitian republic,
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xiv M i l l e r y P o ly n é

and to help frame counternarratives to popular textual and pictorial repre-

sentations of Haiti.
Revolisyon/Kriz is a pivotal lens that many scholars, writers, and laypersons
utilize to examine and understand Haiti. These moments of resistance, of vio-
lence, of political and economic power struggles are critical to understanding
conflict within societies and across borders, in addition to being fundamen-
tal to selling the news—a disaster capitalism of the airwaves, if you will. Yet
how does one complicate the idea of a nation’s struggles as irreducible, as a
truth that is pure, severed from the body that is global politics? In response
to historian Laurent Dubois’s assertion that media depictions of Haiti are
frequently deemed as negative stereotypes, writer Mischa Berlinski claimed
that Haiti’s suffering, its disaster and poverty, are the truth: “It is not the
whole truth . . . but it is surely the most important truth.”13 Therefore, if it
is the truth, are we able to discuss and think about Haiti without privileging
the lens of crisis? This question is the focal point of Greg Beckett’s insightful
essay. Beckett, as well as the other contributors in this section, pushes us to
think about the evolution of crisis within the Haitian context and how it is
inextricably linked to national and, more importantly, globalizing forces.
The daily experience of domestic and international forces such as neo-
liberal capitalism, Western militarism, urbanization, and ecological blight
impels one to examine how the person, the individual, the citizen is affected.
In what ways have a people’s humanity—those who struggle to live, to work,
to laugh, to love within these impacted spaces—been affirmed, questioned,
or negated? Where does one locate their humanity at moments of conflict
or despair? How have Haitians been represented or treated by executive
leadership, foreign powers, or even cultural artists? How does one critically
read images of Haitian life or textual representations when renderings have
become more intricate, even unintentional? And what does one gain from
this engagement of the most ubiquitous depictions of Haitians in the U.S.
media, the moun andeyò—the marginalized Haitian masses. “Is it our desire
for knowledge,” questions scholar Sibylle Fischer, whose chapter helps us
grapple with understandings of humanity and dehumanization of the Haitian
political subject. “Do we enjoy” these narratives or renderings, specifically
Bruce Gilden’s 1996 photographs of Haiti, “because they make us under-
stand the operations of power in Haiti?” Fischer is unconvinced that Gilden’s
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Introduction xv

photographs and possibly other popular, “artistic[ally] complex” yet decon-

textualized cultural representations of Haitian subjectivity provide the audi-
ence with a more nuanced insight to Haitian life and affairs. The viewer
is often locked in a perpetual state of “intense discomfort and enjoyment,”
claims Fischer, a psychological chasm where it is difficult to assess one’s
emotional and intellectual state.
If one pursues an examination of how the Haitian political subject is
affected by the aforementioned international forces—the process of human-
izing and dehumanizing Haitian life—then it is also critical to interrogate
how internal and external institutions respond to and seek to assist Haitians
in need. The international discourse on development primarily focuses its
attention on nations that possess a majority of African-descended peoples.
This dialectic between largely European and U.S. American thinkers and non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) produced a slew of books within the
last two decades that analyze African and Caribbean governance, and the
effectiveness of international aid programs.14 Billions of dollars have been
pledged and donated, yet transformative change in many countries remains
illusive. Furthermore, the cottage industry of development studies is finan-
cially well-heeled, with a myriad of global strategists. In the midst of this dis-
cursive space, many critical questions persist: In the postearthquake era, what
can we learn from past instances of aid distribution between Haiti, foreign
powers, and international nongovernmental institutions? What are some new
development/aid strategies in place? How do these strategies depend upon
or move beyond established Western modernizing practices? What are the
empirical markers of success? The politics of aid or the ideas and practices
that seek to improve the lives of marginalized peoples maintain material con-
sequences, for better or for worse.15 Thus, within the Haitian context, if more
than $3 billion in relief and recovery aid have been given to Haiti since 2010,
but in actuality a preponderance of the funds remained in the coffers of
foreign governments, international aid organizations, and for-profit corpo-
rations, or if there are resources that have yet to be administered or enjoyed,
then what does that reveal about Haitian sovereignty and foreign concep-
tions of and intentions for the Haitian state and its people?16
The Idea of Haiti analyzes the geopolitics of knowledge that have been in-
tensified since the 2010 earthquake. These geopolitics for centuries produced
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xvi M i l l e r y P o ly n é

what scholar V. Y. Mudimbe calls “gratuitous systems of recollection,” “com-

posite memories” that conjoin objects, knowledge, and encounters. “One
might choose to emphasize certain aspects,” argues Mudimbe, “and, volun-
tarily or accidentally, to forget or, at least, to minimize others.”17 Within the
context of foreign assistance, a history of rebuilding and renewal that pre-
cedes the moment of January 12, 2010, and the legacy of troublesome rep-
resentations, violent treatment of Haitians in Haiti and abroad, this volume
critically examines the politics of the past—its facts and fables—and how it
illuminates our understanding of the domestic and transnational structures
in place that have contributed to Haitian underdevelopment and cultural sur-
vival in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Moreover, the
book examines the challenges and benefits of strategic recovery operations
during the postearthquake period in Haiti.
The essays in the anthology take into account that in spite of the recent
efforts to rebuild Haiti and the proliferation of the reference of a new Haiti
during 2010, the idea of a new Haiti is not particular to the aftermath of Jan-
uary 12. The notion of a new Haiti possesses historical roots and provides
insight into understanding potential pitfalls and obstacles to current develop-
ment plans, in addition to the key actors involved, such as NGOs, national
and international state apparatuses, and diasporic Haitians. Development,
as historian Frederick Cooper and Randall Packard have shown, maintains
ideological, social, and technical components. The Idea of Haiti demonstrates
the ways in which foreign actors articulate development within this current
neoliberal context, similar to the imperial crisis of the 1940s, as a reassertion
of the dominance of the Global North. At the same time, many Haitians, par-
ticularly the peyizan (peasant) majority, convey development as a rebuff of
fundamental principles of Western hegemony in order to contribute in hemi-
spheric affairs and “lay claim to a globally defined standard of living” that
enables a fresh, modern, and different existence.18 Scholar Jennie M. Smith’s
powerful ethnographic work on peasant workers and community organizers
in southwestern Haiti demonstrates critical engagement with complex polit-
ical and economic systems such as democracy and development. Through
active civil institutions and chante-pwen (pointed songs) members of these
organizations and cultural practitioners are “well aware that in this increas-
ingly interconnected world, if they fail to gain the respect of those outside
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Introduction xvii

their communities, their hopes for a better society are in vain.”19 “We have
to go show the blan-s [whites] that we are adults! We are not children!”
exclaimed one representative of a Haitian peasant organization who was
threatened by the actions of a co-optative foreign priest.20 Similar critiques
by marginalized groups, mostly peasants or unskilled laborers in Latin Amer-
ica and the Global South, reflect the connective ideological and radical tissue
sparked by a legacy of asymmetrical relations within formal political and
economic systems.
As stated earlier, the book examines the notion of new, in a new Haiti, and
its implications—for even the concept of “new” possesses histories and mean-
ings. The investigation of the new through the lens of history and literature,
photography, urban planning, religion, and governance is in constant tension
with the narratives and epistemologies of Haiti specifically and the Caribbean
more broadly. For many observers, writers, and thinkers, the 2010 earth-
quake demonstrated structural deficiencies in these fields and practices,
particularly urban planning methods, which exacerbated notions of differ-
ence or a counterdiscourse of resemblance to American nation-states and
its relationship to modernity. Haiti has been fixed in alterity by hegemonic
forces, specifically European metropolitan and colonial elites during the pre-
Haitian independence era. However, there is important scholarship that high-
lights the ideas of Haiti from below—the enslaved, former bondspersons
and free people of color (pardos) in the Caribbean and Latin America—men
and women who understood Haiti to be a site of republican ideals, a nation
by its own existence continuously “define[d] the boundaries of slavery and
freedom, citizenship and rights.”21 Nonetheless, the United States, France,
the Vatican, and many Latin American governments during the post-1804
period through the twentieth century rendered the black republic as a New
World embarrassment ill-equipped for the intellectual, governmental, and
cultural challenges critical to the advancement of modernity, such as mass
literacy and media, industrialization, democratization, rationalization, and
antitraditionalism. These nineteenth-century renderings are entrenched in
the sphere of deviance, which has become more pronounced in the wake of
Haitian reconstruction strategies and media coverage.
For example, six weeks separated two watershed natural disasters in Haiti
and Chile in 2010, which propelled critical observers to assess the tragedy’s
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xviii M i l l e r y P o ly n é

impact on the nations’ citizenry, civil society and markets. Yet despite the
cluster of crises in the Americas and perhaps globally (such as Pakistan in
2010, Australia in 2010–11, and Japan in 2011), there have been few investi-
gations concerning the consequences of the history of race and development
in relation to these earthquakes.22 With consecutive catastrophes of this mag-
nitude, it is expected that comparisons will be drawn, reflective questions
asked, and monetary and material aid pledged and dispensed quickly to sur-
vivors in need. However, although prevailing beliefs of earthquakes as a
natural egalitarian force persist—as people prepare their bodies and minds
for aftershocks and as discussions of rebuilding commence—one sees “pre-
existing [social], political and economic fault lines” that expose the fissures
between state and nation and unveils the irregularities in gaining access to
necessary provisions.23 Thus, some scholars have questioned: how natural
are these disasters? How are environmental calamities socially constructed?
What are these preexisting fault lines in calamity-stricken sites? And how
does it inform reconstruction efforts or ideological and political discussions
in the aftermath?24 As recovery operations and rebuilding plans manufacture
a discourse on newness (for example, establishing a new education system
and building codes in Haiti; new construction of upscale apartments in San-
tiago, Chile), how will additional tremors be generated? Furthermore, in
what ways are current renewal strategies informed by past ideas about a
nation’s people and its history, a nation’s complex relationship with political
and economic institutions, in addition to perceptions about a nation’s ability
to contribute in a transformative manner to an ever-shifting modern future?
What is fascinating to me as a historian of the United States and Haiti
who perused and participated in political radio programs and newspapers
with empathy and shock is how easily intelligent people (including myself )
fall into the trap of using Haiti as an embodiment of alterity—exception-
ally chaotic and incomprehensible. The average citizen in the Americas
is accustomed to the hackneyed phrase of Haiti as the “poorest country
in the Western Hemisphere” as well as the double-edged cliché, a nation
“plagued by political violence,” that introduces a conventional news story.
These ubiquitous phrases are exhausting and reduce Haiti and its citizens
to “insurrectional bodies, tortured bodies,” to contaminated and savage bod-
ies.25 Even Haitians are not exempt. In moments of exasperation, many
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Introduction xix

Haitians—native, diasporic, or second-generation Haitians, like myself—

lose sight of context and history and wonder why tortured bodies haven’t
been soothed and empowered.
Historically, other Caribbean and Latin American countries, such as Cuba,
Brazil, and the Dominican Republic, have used moments, histories, cultural,
political, and economic systems and somatic particularities to further distin-
guish and distance itself from uncivilized paradigms in order to demonstrate
its forward march through modernity.26 An analysis of print media within a
year of the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile demonstrated subtle distinctions
made between the two nations—a semiotic code of development—that for
some may simply speak to the reality of material advancement in Chile. At
the same time, I believe it further entrenches the reader into a discourse
of Haitian life as antimodern, violent, and perpetually ill-equipped if one
properly situates Haiti in the historical and regional context of antiblack,
anti-Haitian prejudice, and its relationship to Latin American elites. In the
context of the Haitian revolution (1791–1804), historian Ada Ferrer asserts
that the Cuban elite’s “firsthand experience” in Saint Domingue in the mid-
dle 1790s to “mobilize and contain armed former slaves in support of elite
political goals” helps us to understand how the idea of Haiti has been “cre-
ated, reformulated, sustained, and broken,” specifically in nineteenth-century
Cuban archives.27 This form of archival power, to use Michel-Rolph Trouil-
lot’s term, constructed several Haitis. First, Haiti has been created “as a place
about which detailed, complex, dense, and unruly stories circulated . . . a
brief cautionary (or inspirational) invocation,” as a site where “colonial and
metropolitan authorities” refused to use the country’s new name for decades
and did not permit Haitians to travel to Cuba.28 The Cuban example, which
draws on the history of Haiti’s radical abolitionism, and Haiti’s systemic
underdevelopment in relation to North American and European powers and
other Hispanophone nation-states further cements Haiti within a narrative
of the other, of violence, of disorder within the Americas.
In response to multiple reports by the U.S. and Latin American press of
postearthquake Chilean communities rife with looting, scholar Steven Volk
argued that although these instances of unlawfulness may have been exag-
gerated, it “provided an immensely troubling narrative for a political class
uniformly horrified by the highly unflattering comparisons to Haiti they
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xx M i l l e r y P o ly n é

engendered.”29 These references to looting are embedded with race and class
implications, but also they lead to other, less obvious clues, particularly in the
U.S. press, that underscores Chilean progress in lieu of descriptions about
Haiti, such as the emphasis on Chile’s long-standing building codes; multi-
storied edifices; insurance claims; exhibition of technological and govern-
ment power in the form of helicopters and boats; the estimated $30 billion
in reserves to rebuild; the search for expatriates from G-7 nations like Japan
and Britain; and last, how the prices of Chilean national commodities such
as copper and even wine affected international markets.30
Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Junot Diaz also offered important reflec-
tions on the earthquakes. He argued in the Boston Review that the event, par-
ticularly in Haiti, was an apocalypse of revelation.31 Diaz’s “ruin-reading”
effectively spurs the reader to refuse to “hide behind the veils of denials” and
to bear witness to disasters that undoubtedly demonstrate human culpabil-
ity—politically, environmentally, and economically. Although Diaz is con-
cerned about how the superrich and the irresponsible are decimating our
planet, there is still the use of Haiti as emblematic of a dystopia, as an excep-
tional tool that Diaz hopes will produce an enlightened group of the elites and
masses that will not “transform . . . our planet into a Haiti.” “Haiti,” asserts
Diaz, is “not only the most visible victim of our civilization—Haiti is also
a sign of what is to come.” Diaz’s plea to the “we” of humanity to “stare into
the ruins—bravely [and] resolutely” and to act is insightful and historically
grounded. Yet I am concerned with how, for example, the donor, the writer,
the policy maker—those who perceive themselves as redeemers—sees and
remembers these ruins, and what tools are secured to see and to discern.
Furthermore, I am interested in what markers or examples are used to under-
stand the issue, the object, and the event that is in focus. Why is Haiti the
exceptional case in the Americas, and perhaps globally to be feared and to be
a foil? Can the black republic ever be seen as postexceptional, and is that
state of postexceptionality a mere mimic of the West?32
Thus, if the narratives of Haiti continue to be mired in the discourse
of deviance, how does that inform international relief efforts in the short
term and reconstruction plans in the long term? Additionally, how are strate-
gies to strengthen Haitian capacity in order to maximize its self-sufficiency
also informed by these discursive practices? What is the idea of Haiti, and
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Introduction xxi

how does it inform competing visions of a new Haiti? How have Haitians
responded to this idea? How do they challenge or reinforce these ideas?
Embedded within the discourse of a new Haiti and newness are articula-
tions of blueprints. Blueprints outline a detailed course of action and/or pres-
ent a model of development. Often, blueprints denote originality, a prototype
that can influence or inspire other artists, workers, intellectuals, politicians,
and professionals to conceive of other renderings, possibilities—archetypes
of change. Those who devise blueprints are believed to be experts in the field,
skilled inventors, authorities who define the discourse and who are publish-
ing in and providing commentary on key debates. During the history of Haiti,
particularly the long twentieth century through the first decade of the twenty-
first century, there were many significant moments where Haitian political
architects, sympathizers, and hegemonic structures mobilized to create blue-
prints for Haitian development. From the period between 1803 and 1806,
specifically the moment of Haitian independence, the writing of the consti-
tution, the process of land distribution, and even the naming of the nation,
as scholar David P. Geggus asserts, many elite representatives of the country,
some formerly enslaved, outlined a course for the nation that perhaps, contra-
dictorily, “reject[ed] Europe and its colonial claims” and attempted to create
a free, egalitarian society, although temporarily. Yet at the same time they
chose a new name for the nation with Amerindian roots that resonated widely
and also served the purpose of distinguishing powerful persons with mixed
ancestry from the largely “alienat[ed] or marginaliz[ed] African-descended
peasantry.33 Emanating from this three-year time period and for decades to
come in the nineteenth century, divisions and tensions concretized between
forced agrilaborers and landowners, an “uneducated black officer corps that
controlled the army and the brown-skinned professional business class,” and
a northern monarchical structure and southern republican government.34
An outcome of the brutal system of racial slavery, radical antislavery and
independence, and domestic and international political and economic deci-
sion making crafted a nineteenth-century blueprint where class and color
politics, in addition to the establishment of an authoritarian habitus, pro-
duced enduring conflicts and underdevelopment.35
Other key moments that highlight the politics of newness in Haitian affairs
include the politics of nineteenth-century unification of Haiti’s north and
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xxii M i l l e r y P o ly n é

south under Jean-Pierre Boyer in 1820; the U.S. military withdrawal from
Haiti after nineteen years of occupation (1915–34); the second Haitian rev-
olution of 1946, which ushered in a period of noiriste, or dark-skin rule; the
tourist boom between 1947 and 1956; Haitian exile and anti-Duvalierist
responses between 1957 and 1986; and the election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
These significant events and periods brought about a reevaluation of ideas,
boundaries, laws, and relationships critical to the formation of national iden-
tity. For the purpose of this introduction, I will concentrate on the post-U.S.
occupation period because the similarities between this era and the post-
earthquake phase are compelling and may provide insight to the complexities
of envisioning and developing a new Haiti—specifically the dilemmas and
interconnectedness of foreign assistance and Haitian sovereignty.
One reads in the historical record the expectations for reform by the
Haitian peasantry and the radical elite once the U.S. military evacuated the
country in 1934 and Haitian sovereignty was restored. The post-U.S. occu-
pation era of Haiti, the period between 1934 and 1957, is an understudied
and misunderstood period in the annals of historical research on Haiti, but
also it was “modern Haiti’s greatest moment of political promise.”36 The two
decades after the U.S. occupation brought about the establishment of a pop-
ular labor movement; the emergence of political parties; the contested yet
vibrant ideological struggles; and a shift toward a conservative brand of Hait-
ian black nationalism, noirisme, that not only defined a “feature of Haitian
politics, but also prefigured similar developments elsewhere in the Caribbean
region.” According to historian Matthew Smith, Haiti has long possessed
a rich and organized radical culture in the twentieth century that has chal-
lenged the structures of political and economic power in Port-au-Prince.
These radical Marxists, socialists, and black power activists, intellectuals,
writers, and workers sought alternative systems of governance, overtly and
covertly, in order to “sharpen the debate against the anti-democratic [Hait-
ian] state.”37
Thus, similar to the optimism that followed the traumatic and violent
event of the U.S. military occupation, embedded in the postearthquake lit-
erature is the idea that Haiti’s natural disaster holds a tremendous amount of
promise for the nation. Billions of dollars were pledged, although not released,
and newness manifested itself in primarily a north–south flow of aid workers,
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Introduction xxiii

capital, and technical knowledge without adequately improving Haitian

capacity. Although newness has much to do about the discourse on differ-
ence, one can also make the argument about its adjacent relationship to nar-
ratives on sameness—implementing programs that adopt Western modes
of development—in the likeness of the West.38
Similarly, but sixty years earlier, after a nearly three-decade U.S. financial
receivership of the black republic, Walter White, executive secretary of the
NAACP, organized the Haitian–American Advisory Board for the Economic
Development of Haiti, which sought to organize “new enterprises in Haiti
on a basis which would protect the interests of Haiti and its people.” White,
a believer in the promise of postoccupation, argued that “there [was] a reser-
voir of ability and goodwill in the United States” that could actualize such an
institution.39 As a tireless defender of integration and U.S.-style democracy,
as long as democratic theory remained consistent with practice, White under-
stood the United States and an interracial body of U.S. specialists as par-
ticularly equipped to realize the technological and financial development
of Haiti. The United States served as a model and center for economic
development for less developed nations for many U.S. African American
integrationists, social scientists, and policy makers. In fact, White was often
criticized by the U.S. African American left, particularly W. E. B. Du Bois, for
his political allegiance to President Harry Truman and his calculated con-
formity to Washington’s politics on U.S. domestic and foreign policy, partic-
ularly the Point Four program, during the early cold war period. Given U.S.
influence in global affairs, White believed that the United States possessed
the power to affect change in the periphery of the African diaspora—a view
that many U.S. black intellectuals have held since the nineteenth century,
particularly Frederick Douglass in the post-Emancipation period.
One of White’s major achievements in Haiti was helping to organize
a successful public relations (PR) campaign for the Haitian government
between 1947 and 1955 that quintupled tourist arrivals to Haiti from 8,000 to
65,000.40 Walter White’s PR campaign paralleled U.S. policy objectives of Pan-
Americanism—mutual cooperation and financial and technical assistance in
the Caribbean and Latin America. In spite of the secretary’s accord with U.S.
policies, White confronted U.S. hegemony of Haitian affairs, believing that
an economically empowered and politically stable Haiti could profoundly
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xxiv M i l l e r y P o ly n é

affect African American advancement in cold war America. However, despite

his optimism and determination, White’s and Haitian officials’ focus on devel-
oping tourism as a main springboard of the public relations campaign proved
ineffective to the advancement and training of the Haitian masses. The goals
of the PR campaign were inspired and ultimately compromised by a program
of racial uplift, foreign investment, and (under)development in Haiti.
This same tourist model of development is occurring with an energy twist
in the postearthquake period. Several U.S.-based and multinational corpora-
tions, including Eurasian Minerals Inc., Royal Caribbean, and Global Renew-
able Energy, a sustainable development corporation, maintain strong interest
in capitalizing on the tourist potential in Haiti.41 Global Renewable Energy
brought forth a plan to former president René Préval in 2009 to invest in the
infrastructure of La Gonâve, an island of fewer than 100,000 inhabitants off
the western coast of Haiti. The La Gonâve Development Authority project
(LGDA), according to CEO Fred Rice, will “manage La Gonâve as a busi-
ness and foster the development of the island by targeting the energy, cruise
and tourism industries,” specifically establishing an oil refinery, food process-
ing plants, petroleum product tank farm, residential and commercial projects,
and a private industrial airport.42 The LGDA project proposes that more
than 18,000 jobs will be created—employment that is unquestionably needed
in a country where many Haitians participate in the informal economy. How-
ever, there are many questions about the tourist model of development and
its ability to effectively aid struggling economies, particularly in its effort to
pay Haitian workers a livable wage, to train them beyond the service sector,
to produce a healthy, professional middle class, and to allow the state to
make life-affirming decisions for its citizens without the threat of foreign
control or foreign disinvestment.43 Undoubtedly, there are some valuable
ideas to rebuilding Haiti, but how do these projects shift or decentralize
power—economic power, political power, sociocultural power—out of Port-
au-Prince so that it can arrest the mass urban migration to the capital? Perhaps
LGDA’s and Royal Caribbean’s investment out of the capital (La Gonâve
and Labadie, respectively) and other ventures by influential corporations are
an important piece of the dependency puzzle. Perhaps they are not.44
Methodologically, the essays in The Idea of Haiti build on the work of
scholars who make visible the invisible epistemological order of perspectives
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Introduction xxv

and interpretations about a continent, a region or concepts with “unstable . . .

social meanings” from dominant societies that have been constructed, dis-
seminated, and institutionalized over time.45 What have been the effects
of these hegemonic conceptions? How have colonized/oppressed peoples
responded, created, and contributed to these ideas? The theoretical work of
Caribbean/Latin American studies scholars, including the aforementioned
Mudimbe and Mignolo, have pushed the boundaries of the production, exoti-
cization, and repudiation of blackness, Haiti, and the Caribbean within the
modern world.46 The Idea of Haiti’s contributors draw from their disciplinary
training in history, literature, anthropology, urban planning, and sociology
to explore how these historical discursive practices on race, power, class, and
national development inform strategies to envision the republic anew.
The Idea of Haiti engages these ideas by identifying four arenas of daily
life that significantly structure the lives and politics of Haitian society in the
twenty-first century: urban and rural planning; Vodou and Christian evan-
gelism; local and national governance; and the politics of assistance (the
present and future of NGOs in Haiti). Historically, these four areas have
been marginalized or ignored in development strategies, while tourism and
low-wage manufacturing industries have been privileged. These four fields
shift the discourse, open up an array of new possibilities for Haitian society,
and use multiple methodological approaches and interdisciplinary frame-
works that explore the intersections of Haitian affairs in the United States
and Latin America.
Although scholarship on Haiti has existed for several decades, the pioneer-
ing work in Haitian revolutionary studies and its historical and intellectual
connections to the age of revolution and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
Cuban, Dominican, and American studies have energized many scholars to
consider the question of Haitian politics, literature, leadership, and history
in questions on race, citizenship, universalism, globalization, and modern-
ization. This is apparent in the proliferation of Haitian topics at academic
conferences, as well as the increased attention university and trade presses
are giving to Haitian studies manuscripts. These intellectual developments
reflect demographic shifts of Haitian communities in urban centers through-
out the Americas over the last thirty to forty years—from Montreal to Miami,
Kingston to Santo Domingo. These changes, along with the migration of
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xxvi M i l l e r y P o ly n é

thousands of Haitians to these American spaces, provide the backdrop for

current debates and demand research to understand and explore the con-
vergences of past and present, the idea of Haiti, and the transformation of
the nation.
In Part I, the essays weave historical and theoretical frameworks that
wrestle with notions of revolution and crisis as intrinsic to Haiti and its citi-
zens. As scholar Greg Beckett argues, if Haiti is “cast in this light, the Haitian
past becomes . . . a temporality defined by rupture and breakdown.” The
putative rational methods of capitalistic systems and racial science coupled
with historiographic and philosophic traditions of European Enlightenment
nurtured the roots and paved the routes of a logic of power and modernity
that simultaneously suppressed information of and contributions by Haitian
revolutionaries in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.47 Addi-
tionally, this logic normalizes Haiti within paradigms of disaster that repro-
duces vulnerability and marginalization on the national and international
stage. Nick Nesbitt and Greg Beckett identify and engage the discourse that
generates the momentum of Haitian alterity within international relations.
Both scholars locate the hub of this discourse rotating along a Western axis
of shock and pain that unendingly constructs Haiti as delinquent—for Nes-
bitt, it is through his study of U.S.–Haiti relations, and Beckett’s research
examines institutional roles in reproducing difference. Appropriately, Beckett
asks, “What do we really mean by crisis, and what do we mean by crisis in
Haiti?” Likewise, the brutal images of U.S. occupation oppositional leader
Charlemagne Péralte’s bullet-ridden body during a particularly violent year
of 1919, as Yveline Alexis demonstrates, highlights the ways in which inter-
ventionist forces sought to make Haitian defiance a crisis against U.S. nation
building. However, Péralte’s wilted body, photographed by the American
military, was surprisingly positioned like Christ on the cross, inevitably inspir-
ing many Haitian patriots to refuse to give in to U.S. marines and Washing-
ton interventionist policies.48 From the perspective of Washington, years of
political and economic instability in Haiti rendered it objectionable to dem-
ocratic self-governance. Yet at the same time, Haiti’s authoritarian rule made
the country politically and ideologically appealing to affirm U.S. dominance
in the region. In this case, threats against Caribbean sovereignty, as per U.S.
occupation and intervention in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Trinidad, and
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Guatemala in the early to mid-twentieth century, are contingent on desir-

ability—or rather what power and influence can be gained through interven-
tionist politics. For Haitian oppositional forces during the U.S. occupation,
specifically the cacos, the rewards included personal and political dignity, a
return to self-rule so hard fought in the early nineteenth century, and perhaps
a restoration of some forms of military and economic clientelism. Therefore,
desire in this context operates in a way that political actors (for example, U.S.
marines, U.S. state department officials, and rural working-class Haitians)
must negotiate how power—internally or externally—is wielded.
In Part II, scholar Sibylle Fischer analyzes representations of this crisis
through a series of photographs from the 1990s that center the Haitian body.
Astutely, Fischer challenges readers and those who claim to act or speak for
those who suffer that they must watch their complicity in physical, struc-
tural, or symbolic violence (demounization). And in turn, they must aim to
actively engage in an “historical, philosophical, or representational contextu-
alization” in order to oppose one’s collusion in aggressive exploits.49 Transi-
tioning from foreign or external forces that contribute to dehumanization to
internal structures, Patrick Sylvain impels the reader to ask: What are the ways
Haitian leadership create openings for or replicate discourses and systems that
make the nation susceptible to harm? Given the media and popular criticism
from Haitian citizens against former Haitian president René Préval’s muted
and lack of leadership in the aftermath of the earthquake, what perceptions are
reinscribed or structural vulnerabilities revealed between state and nation?
Despite the nation’s structural vulnerabilities before and after the earth-
quake, one of the most important institutions for sustaining Haitian humanity
(moun) has been the Vodou faith and the Christian church. Karen Richman’s
work centers religion and faith in postearthquake Haiti and establishes that
in spite of speculative claims about Vodou’s impact on the nation and the
experiences of Haitians during this complex and arduous time, there remains
a void in empirical scholarship regarding the religious implications of Haiti’s
monumental seismic event. In what ways and to what extent have Haitian
people’s faith, “an integrated spectrum of mystical techniques and strategies
to hold illness and misfortune at bay,” shifted as a result of the tremors on
January 12 and the days after? What can we learn historically, culturally, and
politically about specific communities and their relationship to the state, civil
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xxviii M i l l e r y P o ly n é

society, and international organizations through a religious context? Richman

centers the politics of religion and how it is being used by number of key
Haitian and foreign actors in the discussion of a new Haiti and twenty-first-
century reconstruction and healing strategies.
The final section of the anthology illuminates the idea of vulnerability
within contemporary Haitian governance and planning, foreign relations and
aid, and diasporic citizenship. An analysis of these concepts and its varied
aspects—asset, social, security, ecological, and psychological vulnerability—
allows one to interrogate how inequality operates between individual and
institutions and how resilience to asymmetrical material and social relations
is both strengthened and stunted.50 It is this persistent and perhaps universal
disparity that spawned the products of modernity (urbanization, industrial-
ization) and furthermore allowed for the dichotomous construction of “vic-
tims and rescuers,” where often, according to Diaz, “recovery measures . . .
further polarize the people and the places they claim to mend?”51
Weibert Arthus’s essay demonstrates the complexity of inter-American/
transnational affairs when states attempted to mold themselves to U.S. for-
eign policy strategies. An anticommunist Haiti proved to be insufficient
for the Kennedy administration and the billions promised to Latin Amer-
ican and Caribbean governments for development projects and societal
improvements. Authoritarian leadership, weak infrastructure, and the hur-
dles to reconcile nationalistic pride and international assistance illuminate
the intricacies of sovereignty and the machine of global aid programs. These
struggles continue to this day. Analyzing them may help us unpack the cur-
rent issues in tent camps and other sites hit hard by the earthquake, and also
help us assess policy and financial matters at the executive and local level,
where nongovernmental and international organizations tend to dominate.
In an effort to bridge the local and state deliberations, scholar Harley
Etienne pushes academics and national and international leaders within the
world of politics and social service to take seriously the discipline and practice
of urban planning. Urban planners are critical components to the recovery
effort because they coordinate policy, design, and resources to achieve long-
term goals of urban growth, regeneration and economic development. Eti-
enne asserts that the relationship between the country’s formal institutions
(that is, legal and educational systems) and Haiti’s social organization and
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Introduction xxix

capacity for social service provision are relegated to secondary or tertiary roles
in national planning strategies. Hence, in an effort to push the boundaries of
the field, Etienne emphasizes that a broad, interdisciplinary spectrum of pro-
fessionals—law, social work, civil engineers, public policy advocates—engage
in a comprehensive and unified dialogue to produce durable urban and rural
regeneration and offset popular pressures to rush the rebuilding process.
Within the scramble to expedite necessary provisions, what are the poten-
tial complications and weakness of aid strategies? Does any form of imme-
diate assistance outweigh the impending or actual damage? Anthropologist
Mark Schuller examines social health risks in urban neighborhoods, specif-
ically cholera, in which these health threats were amplified by measures
taken by NGOs. The global discussions about the origins of the cholera out-
break in Haiti, where more than 300,000 people have been affected and 5,000
have died, dominate news desks and encourages the reader to think about the
circulation of disparaging ideas about Haiti when foreign relationships are
renewed in the wake of this tragedy.52 Schuller’s emphasis on Haitian women’s
voices in this chapter and in his own academic and artistic work demon-
strates a critical need to interlace and highlight women’s perspectives on
Haitian social, political, intellectual, and economic affairs.53 In light of Haiti’s
natural disaster, “it is women who are disproportionately affected,” asserts
anthropologist Gina Ulysse. “As the potomitan of their families, women bear
the responsibility of having to be present to care for their children, par-
ents, and other dependent family members.”54 This volume falls short of
an analysis centered on gender, or specifically an interrogation of women’s
voices that complicates and challenges male-centered power that dominates
Haitian social and political leadership. Yet all of the contributors seek to
stimulate questions and counternarratives in order to disrupt historical frame-
works that have led to the marginalization of the Haitian state and nation.
I believe that the contributor’s efforts complement a feminist project to
challenge hegemonic forces and provide more sustainable and egalitarian
paradigms.
As technical experts, businessmen, academics, and politicians devise blue-
prints to mend the gashes attributed to racial slavery, despotism, environmen-
tal degradation, and foreign intervention, there are many religious practition-
ers who believe they also possess the answers to the nation’s structural and
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xxx M i l l e r y P o ly n é

systemic problems. Elizabeth McAlister’s chapter provides a much-needed

lineage and analysis of the ideology and practice of Haitian and American
Christian evangelicals who, in response to a burgeoning acceptance of Vodou
under Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s administration, believed that Haiti’s political,
economic, and social troubles could be ameliorated through a rededication to
Christian values and the transforming power of Jesus Christ. The inclusion
of McAlister’s chapter in the Éd section is particularly important and fasci-
nating because it situates aid through a spiritual, textual, and oratorical lens.
McAlister demonstrates that this commitment to Christ and Christian tradi-
tions by evangelicals and Protestants, who some scholars estimate compose
a third of the Haitian citizenry, is influenced by colonial events, specifically
the religious sacrifice of a pig by Vodou practitioners at the beginning of the
Haitian revolution (August 1791). Furthermore, McAlister’s emphasis on the
Spiritual Mapping movement, an “evangelical understanding” of global his-
tories as an “ongoing battle between the devil and God,” centers the spiritual
relief work of prayer warriors who are “on assignment” to fight Haiti’s putative
curse by Satan. Thus, the work of religion and ritual in the years before and
after the earthquake, according to McAlister, works to “renarrate Haitian his-
tory.” Additionally, the Christian evangelical movement reasserts the central-
ity of Jesus Christ in the spiritual, political, and historical space of Haiti—in
effect suppressing non-Christian practices—and therefore “recast[ing] Hait-
ian civil religion.”
Last, Alex Dupuy, Tatiana Wah, Robert Fatton Jr., and Èvelyne Trouillot,
four leading scholars on Haiti, engage in an enlightening conversation. Their
examination of urgent and meaningful topics such as Haitian sovereignty,
economic and cultural development, citizenship, urban planning, and Haiti’s
relationship with the international community and its diaspora help anchor
the volume’s themes. Given this exchange, particularly their discussion on
Haitians living abroad, how will the recent change of the 1987 Haitian con-
stitution in May 2011 that now grants Haitians living abroad dual nation-
ality undermine or bolster notions of citizenship in Haiti and the diaspora?
For those Haitian Americans, Haitian Canadians, and others who have been
influenced by hypercapitalist and Global North modes of development, how
will citizenship and increased access to property and voting privileges alter
the idea of Haiti and their relationship to the nation-state?
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Introduction xxxi

In April 2011, Haitian citizens elected Michel Martelly, a kompas singer,

to the presidency. Martelly’s personal history, campaign, and election proved
to be controversial and yet called into question the idea of Haitian sover-
eignty; it also cast another cloud over the nation and its executive office. His
campaign manager held ties with the International Republican Institute, a
U.S.-based organization that seeks to “support democracy and freedom” glob-
ally but is known to “fund . . . organizations to destabilize governments it
deems to be a problem.”55 Additionally, the Organization of American States
declared Martelly, a third-place candidate according to primary voting results,
eligible for the second and final round of the presidential election, thus arbi-
trarily removing Jude Célestin, a candidate from the well-heeled Unity party.56
There are many questions about Haiti’s current leadership and its relationship
to the international community, whose neoliberal policies are committed to
low-wage manufacturing jobs and open markets for metropolitan goods and
services.57 How does one reconcile a need to be an architect of one’s own
affairs? At the same time, how does one confront the legacy of dependency
and the need for foreign aid (that is, money and technical knowledge)? Is
that narrative of need a myth?
The Idea of Haiti is just the beginning of an important dialogue in the
post–January 12 era. It examines history and asserts that scholars and stu-
dents, corporate entities and workers, journalists and broadcasters ought
to create new narratives that challenge enduring tropes of Haitian identity
and affiliations; to recover and rethink local, national, and transnational his-
tories and memories; and to highlight the creative activism, cultural produc-
tion, and innovation emerging from Haitian peoples before and after the
earthquake.

Notes
1. Walter D. Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell,
2005), xi.
2. Scholar Alyssa Goldstein asserts that in metropolitan France, “both lay people
and scholars shared what the late Yves Benot called a national amnesia (oubli) about
the history of slavery. Textbooks do not cover the topic, and it barely appears even
in university curricula.” See Alyssa Sepinwall Goldstein, “Atlantic Amnesia: French
Historians, the Haitian Revolution and the 2004–6 CAPES Exam,” Proceedings of
the Western Society for French History 34 (2006): 302.
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xxxii M i l l e r y P o ly n é

3. There are too many articles, reports, and blog entries to mention in this foot-
note. Yet although I commend a spirit of volunteerism and the efforts of those to
remember, discuss, and help Haitians in need, I am concerned by the recent atten-
tion that U.S. fiction writers and aid workers have received considering their limited
knowledge of the country, conceptual framing of their stories that often reify tragedy
and mystery as Haitian truth and emphasize personal torment, confusion, shock, and
annoyance with Haitians and the Haitian state. See Mischa Berlinski, “A Farewell to
Haiti,” in New York Review of Books, March 22, 2012, 8, 10, 12, and Quinn Zimmer-
man, “Day 326: Questions and (No) Answers (The Aid Bitchslap),” These New
Boots, April 22, 2012, http://thesenewboots.blogspot.ca. See also Zimmerman,
“Aid Worker Leaves Haiti with a Sour Taste,” National Public Radio, Talk of the
Nation, May 10, 2012, http://www.npr.org; Mac McClelland, “I’m Gonna Need
You to Fight Me on This: How Violent Sex Helped Ease My PTSD,” Good, June 27,
2011, http://www.good.is. See also responses to McClelland by Gina A. Ulysse,
“Why Context Matters: Journalists and Haiti,” Ms. Magazine Blog, July 8, 2011,
http://www. msmagazine.com; and Edwidge Danticat, “Edwidge Danticat Speaks
on Mac McClelland Essay,” Essence, July 20, 2011, http://www.essence.com.
4. Jennie M. Smith, When the Hands Are Many: Community Organization and
Social Change in Rural Haiti (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001), 73.
5. Gordon K. Lewis, Main Currents in Caribbean Thought: The Historical Evolu-
tion of Caribbean Society in its Ideological Aspects, 1492–1900 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1987), 318–19. For more on an analysis of Haitian intel-
lectual thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see also J. Michael Dash,
“Nineteenth-Century Haiti and the Archipelago of the Americas: Anténor Firmin’s
Letters from St. Thomas,” Research in African Literatures 35, no. 2 (2004): 44–53;
Magdaline W. Shannon, Jean Price-Mars, the Haitian Elite, and the American Occupa-
tion, 1915–1935 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, In
the Shadow of Powers: Dantès Bellegarde in Haitian Social Thought (Atlantic High-
lands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1985).
6. Anténor Firmin, The Equality of the Human Races, trans. Asselin Charles
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 313.
7. Lewis, Main Currents, 263.
8. See David Brooks, “The Underlying Tragedy,” New York Times, January 14,
2010, http://www.nytimes.com.
9. For more on Haitian and U.S. African American relations, see Millery Polyné,
From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti and Pan Americanism,
1870–1964 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010); Chris Dixon, African
America and Haiti: Emigrationism and Black Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000); and Léon D. Pamphile, Haitians and
African Americans: A Heritage of Tragedy and Hope (Gainesville: University Press of
Florida, 2001).
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Introduction xxxiii

10. For more on Dominicans’ embrace of indigenous aesthetics, see Ginetta E. B.

Candelario, Black behind the Ears: Dominican Racial Identity from Museums to Beauty
Shops (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007).
11. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “The Odd and the Ordinary: Haiti, the Caribbean
and the World,” Cimarrón: New Perspectives on the Caribbean 2, no. 3 (Winter 1990): 6.
12. Ibid., 7.
13. Berlinski, “Farewell to Haiti,” 8.
14. See Frederick Cooper and Randall Packard, International Development and
the Social Sciences: Essays on the Politics of Knowledge (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1997); William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Eforts
to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good; Amartya Sen, Development
as Freedom; Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a
Better Way for Africa; Lindsay Whitfield, Politics of Aid: Africans Strategies for Dealing
with Donors; Carol Lancaster, Aid to Africa; and Issa G. Shivi, Silences in NGO Dis-
course: The Role and Future of NGOs in Africa (Oxford: Fahamu, 2007).
15. See Mark Schuller’s chapter in this volume.
16. See Bill Quigley and Amber Ramanauskas, “Haiti after the Quake: Where
the Relief Money Did and Did Not Go,” Counterpunch, January 3, 2012, http://
www.counterpunch.org.
17. V. Y. Mudimbe, The Idea of Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1994), 212.
18. Frederick Cooper, “Modernizing Bureaucrats, Backward Africans, and the
Development Concept,” in Cooper and Packard, International Development, 84–85.
19. Smith, When the Hands Are Many, 186.
20. Ibid., 187.
21. Ada Ferrer, “Haiti, Free-Soil and Antislavery in the Revolutionary Atlantic,”
American Historical Review 117, no. 1 (February 2012): 43. See also Matt D. Childs,
“A Black French General Arrived to Conquer the Island: Images of the Haitian Rev-
olution in Cuba’s 1812 Aponte Rebellion,” 135–56, and Marixa Lasso, “Haiti as
an Image of Popular Republicanism in Caribbean Colombia: Cartagena Province
(1811–1828),” 176–90, both in The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic
World, ed. David P. Geggus (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001).
22. For more on the cluster of crises, see Gabriel Adkins, “Organizational Net-
works in Disaster Response: An Examination of the U.S. Government Network’s
Efforts in Hurricane Katrina,” in The Handbook of Crisis Communication, ed.
W. Timothy Coombs and Sherry J. Holladay (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell,
2010); and Marcello Pericoli, “A Primer on Financial Contagion,” Journal of Eco-
nomic Surveys 17, no. 4 (September 2003): 571–608.
23. Steven S. Volk, “The Chilean Earthquake of 2010: Three Perspectives on
One Disaster,” LASA Forum 41, no. 3 (Summer 2010): 3. See also Patricio Nava,
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xxxiv M i l l e r y P o ly n é

“Small Earthquake in Chile: Not Many Dead,” LASA Forum 41, no. 3 (Summer
2010): 6–8.
24. Post-Katrina literature has been critical to our understanding of the historical
conflicts exacerbating natural disasters. See Cedric Johnson, ed., The Neoliberal Del-
uge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism, and the Remaking of New Orleans (Minneapo-
lis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011); Chester Hartman and Gregory Squires,
eds., There Is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster: Race, Class and Hurricane Katrina
(New York: Routledge, 2006); Kevin Gotham, Authentic New Orleans: Tourism, Cul-
ture and Race in the Big Easy (New York: New York University Press, 2007); Phil
Steinberg and Rob Shields, What Is a City? Rethinking the Urban after Hurricane
Katrina (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008).
25. See Sibylle Fischer’s essay in this volume. See also Laurent Dubois, “A Spoon-
ful of Blood: Blaming Haitians for AIDS,” Science as Culture 6, no. 26 (Winter 1997):
7–43; Paul Farmer, AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 2006); and Trouillot, “The Odd and the Ordi-
nary,” 1–15.
26. For a concise history of how four Latin American countries used race and
culture to distinguish and distance themselves, see Richard Graham, ed., The Idea of
Race in Latin America, 1870–1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).
27. Ada Ferrer, “Talk about Haiti: The Archive and the Atlantic’s Haitian Revolu-
tion,” in Tree of Liberty: Cultural Legacies of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World,
ed. Doris L. Garraway (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008), 34.
28. Ibid., 35.
29. Volk, “Chilean Earthquake,” 3.
30. See David Ciampa, “Quake Boosts Copper Stocks,” Australian Financial
Review, March 2, 2010, 27. The Wall Street Journal reported that Chile’s earthquake
“destroyed 32,500 gallons on wine, or almost 13% of last year’s production, with
value of $250 million.” Also, refer to Matt Moffett, “Chile Winemakers Feel Quake
Hangover,” Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2010, 19; Ginger Thomson and Marc
Lacey, “Chile Says Rebuilding May Cost Tens of Billions of Dollars,” New York Times,
March 2, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com; Carlos Eduardo Martin, “Riveting: Steel
Technology, Building Codes and the Production of Modern Places” (Ph.D. diss.,
Stanford University, 1999).
31. Junot Diaz, “Apocalypse,” Boston Review, May/June 2011, http://www.boston
review.net/.
32. See Philip Abbott, Exceptional America: Newness and National Identity (New
York: Peter Lang, 1999), 2; Trouillot, “The Odd and the Ordinary.”
33. David P. Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 2002), 219. See also Deborah Jenson, “Nineteenth-Century Postcolo-
nialités at the Bicentennial of the Haitian Independence,” Yale French Studies 107
(2005): 3–4.
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Introduction xxxv

34. Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, 29.

35. See Robert Fatton Jr., Haiti’s Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition
to Democracy (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2002), and David Nicholls, From
Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour and National Independence in Haiti (London:
Macmillan, 1988).
36. Matthew J. Smith, Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Confict, and Political
Change, 1934–1957 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 2.
37. Ibid., 189. See also Millery Polyné, “To the Sons of Dessalines and Pétion:
Radicalism and the Idea of a ‘New’ Haiti,” Small Axe: A Journal of Criticism 36
(November 2011): 164–72.
38. Michelle Ann Stephens’s current research on race, color, and origins of differ-
ence in the Americas has been helpful to think about newness. Refer to Stephens’s
“Skin Talk: Race and Intimacy in the Cross-Cultural Americas,” lecture given at
New York University’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, March
28, 2011.
39. Walter White to Dumarsais Estimé, June 28, 1949, Walter F. White Papers,
box 2, folder 61, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, New Haven, Conn.
40. See Millery Polyné, From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti,
and Pan Americanism, 1870–1964 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010),
143–45.
41. Since 2006, Eurasian Minerals Inc., a Colorado-based mining company, has
explored and mined gold–silver and copper–gold deposits in northern Haiti. There
has been much concern about how the Haitian people and the state will benefit
from such a partnership. See “Who Will Gain from Haiti’s Gold Rush? Haitian Gov-
ernment Embraces U.S., Canadian Mining Firms,” Democracy Now, May 31, 2012,
http://www.democracynow.org; Monica Clesca, “Haiti Hopes Gold Find Means
Boom Times Ahead,” The Root, May 24, 2012, http://www.theroot.com/.
42. For more on Global Renewable Energy, see http://www.globalrenewable
energy.org/gre/index.php; and see the following YouTube videos: “La Gonave, The
Vision,” and “La Gonave Concert Video.”
43. See Luigi F. Girard and Peter Nijkamp, eds., Cultural Tourism and Sustainable
Local Development (London: Ashgate, 2009); Maurice Burac, “The Struggle for Sus-
tainable Tourism in Martinique,” in Beyond Sun and Sand: Caribbean Environmen-
talisms, ed. Sherrie L. Baver and Barbara D. Lynch (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers
University Press, 2006), 65–72; Steven Gregory, The Devil Behind the Mirror: Glob-
alization and Politics in the Dominican Republic (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2007), 130–65, 209–33; George Gmelch, Behind the Smile: The Working Lives
of Caribbean Tourism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003).
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xxxvi M i l l e r y P o ly n é

44. Sarah Maslin Nir, “In Haiti, Class Comes with a Peek at Lush Life,” New York
Times, May 3, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com.
45. V. Y. Mudimbe, The Idea of Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1994), xiv.
46. See Louis A. Perez, Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Impe-
rial Ethos (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008); Sibylle Fischer,
Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004); Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the
Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995); Richard
Graham, ed., The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–1940 (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1990); Enrique Dussel, The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of “the
Other” and the Myth of Modernity (New York: Continuum, 1995).
47. See Mignolo, Idea of Latin America, and The Darker Side of Western Modernity:
Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2011);
Fischer, Modernity Disavowed.
48. Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934 (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 102–3.
49. Fischer, this volume.
50. For more on vulnerability studies, see Martha Albertson Fineman, “The
Vulnerable Subject: Anchoring Equality in the Human Condition,” Yale Journal
of Law and Feminism 20, no. 1 (2008); Bryan S. Turner, Vulnerability and Human
Rights (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2006); Peadar Kirby, Vulnera-
bility and Violence: The Impact of Globalisation (London: Pluto Press, 2005); Katie
Oliviero, “Vulnerable Sensations: Imperiled Citizenship, Intimacy and Personhood
in 21st Century Social Change” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles,
2010).
51. Diaz, “Apocalypse.”
52. See Jean Saint-Vil, “Haïti, au creux de la vague du Choléra?,” Journal of Haitian
Studies 16, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 19–37; Charles H. Nicholson, “Chronology of Onset
of the Haiti Cholera Epidemic: October and November 2010,” Journal of Haitian
Studies 16, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 38–45; Deborah Jenson, “Le Choléra dans l’Histoire
d’Haïti,” Le Nouvelliste, November 6, 2010; “Haiti’s Continuing Cholera Outbreak,”
New York Times, May 10, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com.
53. See Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy, dir. Mark
Schuller and Renée Bergan (Tèt Ansanm Productions, 2009).
54. Gina Athena Ulysse, “Pawòl Fanm Sou Douz Janvye (Women’s Words on
January 12th, 2010),” Meridians 11, no. 1 (2011): 93. “The potomitan is the central
pillar of a Vodou temple. There is an old saying in Haiti that states . . . women are the
potomitan of their families” (97). For more on Haitian women’s voices after the 2010
earthquake, see Meridians 11, no. 1 (2011): 91–162.
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Introduction xxxvii

55. Greg Grandin, “Haiti’s Second Disaster,” Aljazeera English, May 4, 2011,
http://english.aljazeera.net/.
56. Ibid.
57. See Alex Dupuy, “Disaster Capitalism to the Rescue: The International Com-
munity and Haiti after the Earthquake,” NACLA Report on the Americas, July/August
2011, 19.
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01chap1_Layout 1 16/04/2013 2:58 PM Page 1

pa r t I

Revolisyon/Kriz
(Revolution/Crisis)
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Haiti, the Monstrous Anomaly

nick nesbitt

En nommant les objets, c’est un monde enchanté, un monde demonstres,

que je fais surgir sur la grisaille mal différenciée du monde; un monde de
puissances que je somme, que j’invoque et que je convoque.
By naming the objects, it is an enchanted world, a world of monsters,
I emerge from the poorly differentiated dullness of the world; a world of
powers I sum, that I invoke and that I convene.
— A i m é C é s a i r e , La poésie . . .

T he creation on January 1, 1804, of the first decolonized republic to have

banned slavery, universally and immediately, should rightfully have
shamed and terrified the neighboring Atlantic states, founded as they were
upon the economic system of plantation slavery. If Haiti was perceived after
1804 by the slaveholding powers as a terrifying monstrosity, its revolution
and subsequent independence systematically and repeatedly ridiculed, belit-
tled, caricatured, refused, undermined, extorted, repressed, denied, and above
all, as Sybille Fischer has argued, disavowed, this is testimony to the enor-
mous exertions required to sustain and ideologically justify even the largest,
most powerful slaveholding societies when confronted with the actual exis-
tence of this powerful affirmation of equality, a slave-free society founded on
the formal abolition of slavery in the nineteenth-century world system.
In what follows, I want to examine the fact of this terror, the objective mon-
strosity of denying and disavowing what by right should have been hailed,
above all by those new nations such as France and the United States, claim-
ing to be founded on the rights of man, as the most glorious dawn of a new
era of justice and equality.
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4 nick nesbitt

Why We Need to Need Haiti

As I write these lines, nearly two years after the 2010 quake, seven years after
the most recent coup, twenty-four years after the fall of Duvalier, the ques-
tion remains, more pressing than ever: What is to be done? Among the
answers for those of us living outside Haiti in places like France, Canada, the
United Kingdom, and the United States, political critique must surely remain
as pressing as the immediate imperative of humanitarian interventionism.
One might begin such a critique by first asking a deceptively simple but
nagging question: Why Haiti?1 Why the repeated and by now extensively
documented North Atlantic destabilization campaigns, invasions, extortions,
feral pig genocides, coups d’états of democratically elected presidents from
elections vetted by the U.N., the repeated suppression of democratic parties
and candidates in favor of unknown or widely despised minoritarian repre-
sentatives of a tiny elite? All to make a few baseballs or Disney T-shirts to
underwrite an increasingly massive U.S. debt? It just doesn’t add up. So why?
Surely (speaking as a U.S. citizen) one must continue to interrogate the role
of the elected government acting in our name rather than displacing blame
onto the hollow notions of a putatively failed state.
Why spend so much time, effort, and money to systematically undermine
Haiti and make sure it remains the poorest country in the Western Hemi-
sphere, economically dysfunctional in the face of every democratic aspiration
and development? It seems we in the North Atlantic world have a problem,
to which Haiti—a dysfunctional, impoverished, underdeveloped, barbaric,
and undemocratic Haiti—has for two centuries offered us handy a solution.
This “problem” is a void that lies at the core of our society; it eats away at
its democratic foundations. Like any actually existing democracy, ours has
its own singular contradictions, compromise formations, and oligarchies of
interest. But what does that have to do with Haiti?
Let me risk putting the matter in more speculative terms: from the very
start in 1783, and even already in 1776, the institution of the rule of law, of
a democratic American constitution, of a declaration of independence, of
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, was built on the foundation of a sys-
tem of dehumanizing violence. The United States, like the post-1789 French
republic, was structured around a fundamental regime of violence, a void that
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Haiti, the Monstrous Anomaly 5

held together in ignominy a new nation, suturing its diverse populations and
various modes of production, to enable the American republic and its pur-
suit of happiness. This regime of violence was, of course, plantation slavery,
a system that was not defeated, but rather reinforced and radically extended
by the achievement of American independence. If it is true that all states
necessarily found the rule of law around some disavowed core of violence, if
all civilization is to some degree a testament to barbarism, it was Haiti’s glory
and misfortune to have embarked alone to destroy this particular system of
total violence and human debasement in 1804, on a tiny geographic speck on
the periphery of the Atlantic world, what De Gaulle would have called a mere
Caribbean poussière lost in the vast Atlantic economy of early modern plan-
tation and slave-based capitalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
If France and the young United States have vied repeatedly in their efforts
over the preceding two centuries to undermine Haiti, and despite the many
and varied immediate causes, interests, and motivations in these processes,
Haiti’s independence, in the richest sense of the word, was from the start in
some vital sense a threat to these more powerful country’s self-fashioning
and identity—not so much a military, economic, or political threat but an
ideological terror. The ever-renewed destruction of Haiti is no fact of nature
or even of a vindictive and racist deity. Haiti has long constituted a poussière
of terrifying antimatter at the core of the slaveholding Atlantic world system.
The destruction of Haiti is thus strategic. Haiti must survive, but only on
nongovernmental organization and U.N. life support, in a vegetative state.
Without a doubt, the horrific death and destruction witnessed since the
earthquake of January 2010 was no mere natural event but rather entailed a
political catastrophe wrought from forcible underdevelopment and structural
precariousness. Haiti cannot be allowed to disappear, no more than it can
be allowed to flourish. Haiti must imperatively remain, for it is essential to
the United States and its allies. The trauma of Haiti is a North American
trauma, projected (through various operations from the ideological to the
economic and military) onto the poorest country in the Western Hemi-
sphere. Haiti, that dysfunctional, barbaric, undemocratic, and undemocra-
tizable Haiti fatally prone to ever-renewed disasters, is a fantasy. It remains
and returns endlessly, however, because this site has the misfortune of con-
stituting an essential fantasy for Haiti’s big Other: the fantasy an eminently
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6 nick nesbitt

democratic, developed, and civilized nation. Haiti is the fantasy projection,

the negative kernel of the real that so effectively sustains North American mis-
recognition and disavowal. Haiti is the repressed, traumatic core of a nation’s
democratic fantasy. It is not just that the country has the misfortune of being
impoverished; how many other sites around the globe could play that role?
Haiti, in addition, is the image in negative, as void or absence, of the founding
violence of the American and French democratic republics: slavery. If Haiti
hadn’t existed as the ready-at-hand model for dysfunction and underdevel-
opment, we would have had to invent it (or perhaps that’s exactly what hap-
pened). If Haiti is actually at the very center of Atlantic modernity, it is not
only because it precociously announced the coming destruction of slavery in
the nineteenth century. Haiti is the impossible truth, the inadmissible real, of
North Atlantic democratic self-identity. The scandal of Haiti is to have stood,
not just from 1791 to 1804 and, arguably, from 1986 to 2004 and beyond, as
the unthinkable, unfathomable democratic real of a spectral fantasy. Not only
the Haitian revolution, but the defense of democratic empowerment, majori-
tarian economic, and agricultural autonomy, as well as the protection of these
rights of the disenfranchised by all means available, casts the specter of right-
ful violence before the illegitimate violence of regime change, intervention,
and the incursions of global capital.
Haitian underdevelopment calls out for an ever-renewed process of criti-
cal, partial historiography, in every sense of the word. It is true historiogra-
phy, and not mere fantasy, to recover in the broken pieces of history as what
concretely, if only virtually, could have been the result of that eventful night
of August 29, 1791, in northern Saint Domingue. The universal destruction
of plantation slavery was from that night on no fantasy but a truth of Atlantic
modernity, a truth actively disavowed over the following century, a nonethe-
less very real, virtual truth of 1791: universal emancipation, equality, auton-
omy, self-sufficiency, the democratization of democracy. The call of such a
historiography must be to go beyond the fantasy projection of Haitian under-
development and barbarity, to illuminate Haiti as the vanishing mediator of
Enlightenment radical democracy.
This critical historiography would return to the founding enunciations of
Haitian political subjectivation. To turn over these shards of a broken and
incomplete sequence of universal emancipation is to reveal a process of
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Haiti, the Monstrous Anomaly 7

radical, uncompromising political subjectivation, in which the subject is to

be understood not as the persistence of selfsame identity through time, nor
even as the recognition of the traumatic void or absence at the center of sub-
jectivity that would foreclose the possibility of such an identity. If humans
were to accept and limit subjective experience to the repeated recognition
and traversal of this void or impasse and the contemplative and ultimately
idealist recognition of our disavowed symptoms, political sequences such as
Lavalas or the Haitian revolution would never have occurred. Only the explo-
ration of the consequences of a momentary vanishing event such as the night
of August 29, 1791, only the extensive, determined struggle to unfold within
a world the implications of such an event, to transform the ontological param-
eters of what counts as true in a world, can itself count as the process of sub-
jectivation. Not the unfolding of an essence, but the determined persistence
in the wake of an event, a process in which absolutely anyone may come to
count themselves as subject to a truth such as universal emancipation, a pro-
cess in which a former slave—and indeed slave owner—can come to count
her or himself as a subject of universal justice as equality, and to give a proper
name to this process: Louverture.
General emancipation is universal insofar as it traverses a world, breaking
through its sedentary regimes of violence, to initiate a process of subjectiva-
tion that will only be followed through subsequent to this appearance or ini-
tial event, initially unthinkable, having no place in the world it must destroy.
Above all, the appearance of a singular universal takes the form of a decision
that breaks the regime of undecidability by which a world perpetuates its
reign. After 1789, the new world of the French Revolution created novel tran-
scendental, structuring coordinates, articulated in the Declaration of the Rights
of Man and Citizen: “Les hommes naissent et demeurent égaux en droits’; la
résistance à l’oppression [est un] droit naturel.” Such statements of universal,
eternal and infinite truth immediately create a situation of undecidability that
would be fought over in coming years: who is the subject homme? Women?
Jews? Mulâtres like Vincent Ogé? Slaves? The site of such a universal, then,
is a point of decision on an undecidable question.2 First in 1789: it is the
Tiers état, which is henceforth to be, we decide, tout. It is women, all women,
declares Olympe de Gouges. It is mulâtres, says the revolutionary assembly,
and then it isn’t, and then it is again in 1791.
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8 nick nesbitt

If the event of August 23, 1791, destroyed in the flash of a fire-filled night
a world, a system, this vanishing event, the morning after, demanded to be
followed through. And so Louverture’s appearance exactly two years later in
August 1793 is the incipient sign, the word of the first consequences of this
momentary event. The universal import of Haiti lies not in that night of 1791,
only quantitatively different from the many Caribbean slave revolts that pre-
ceded it. The politics of Haitian universalism lie in the qualitative leap that
followed that evanescent event, in the laborious struggle to follow through
and develop the enormous, unfathomable, inadmissible and unthinkable con-
sequences of 1791, beyond 1804, for all who are universally implicated in the
consequences of this declaration of universal emancipation, beyond any con-
stituted identity that situates such subjects before the universal. The world
historical importance of this single utterance of Louverture’s was to constitute
for the world, “pour l’univers entier,” as Louis Delgrès would reinterpret this
event in Guadeloupe in 1802, the statement of the truth of an event. Liberté
générale, “universal emancipation.” A statement to be reformulated again by
Lavalas: “Tout moun se moun.” A declaration, a statement, a decision or
axiom on an undecidable question in the post-1789 slaveholding world, an
infinite network of consequences and a protocol of political subjectivation
to unfold down to the present to invent the new world it implies.
Is it possible still to believe the famous claim of Michel-Rolph Trouillot
that the universal prescription of the Haitian revolution, of a slavery-free
global order, was literally unthinkable as it unfolded? Was the slavery-free
order invented in Haiti in 1804 simply a productionist, caporal agrarian mod-
ification of the ancien régime, or a radical break from that world? To affirm
that universal emancipation was absolutely unthinkable prior to 1791 implies
that a truth, prior to its articulation in a situation, is intransitive to all knowl-
edge. In the slave regime of Saint Domingue, one knew how to make profit
on sugar and coffee, how to make Africans labor, but for any and all inhabi-
tants of this world, the truth of universal emancipation may indeed have been
unthinkable, an absolute void in the ancien régime plantation order. But can
one assert the utter intransitivity of these two worlds without falsely hypo-
statizing a conditional subjectivity back into a more radical priority, in a his-
toricist version of the familiar old question, “If a branch falls in the forest with
no one there to hear it . . . ,” which question of course illegitimately smuggles
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Haiti, the Monstrous Anomaly 9

in the presupposition of the transcendental horizon of presentation as a con-

ditional (“if there had been someone there to hear it . . . ”).
What if the givenness of these singular forms of universality only appeared
as a correlation between world and subject following the event of 1791?3 The
stakes here are double: first, to assert (nondogmatically) the absolute pos-
sibility of a (politicohistorical) truth outside of its presentation to a (tran-
scendental) production-based subject (say, the truth of justice as equality);
and second, to assert the absolute contingency of any regime of (political)
presentation, including that of production-based constituent subjectivity:
from within any world (such as the ancien régime, plantation slavery) whose
regime of presentation or countability appears unsurpassable, we assert not
only the possible mutation/singularization of individuals (of mere cyclical,
ontic change in which the pieces are moved around the chessboard, but the
rules remain in place; or slaves purchase their individual freedom and we
replace bad slave owners with kind ones while the world system of planta-
tion slavery goes on unperturbed) but that the very regime of presentation,
the rules of the game, are themselves absolutely contingent (another world is
possible), though we have no way of knowing when or where or even whether
they actually will mutate.
There would then be (at least) two questions to ask if we are to signifi-
cantly radicalize Haitian historiography. To do so requires, I would submit,
an attempt to think a meaningful distinction between the empirical and tran-
scendental nonexistence of the subject of universal emancipation prior to
1791. Can we actually distinguish the empirical and transcendental condi-
tions allowing for the emergence of the universal? I think we can, quite easily.
We know, for example, the empirical facts that allowed for the appearance
of universal emancipation and the destruction of plantation slavery as a sys-
tem or world in the Haitian revolutionary sequence, 1791–1804. These
include the vast numerical disproportion between whites and blacks, a dis-
proportion unmatched elsewhere in Atlantic slavery; the power vacuum in
Saint Domingue after 1789; the white planter class’s bid for independence
in 1790–91; the circulation of truth statements such as “les hommes nais-
sent et demeure égaux en droits” throughout the Atlantic world, and Saint
Domingue specifically, immediately from November 1789 on; the African
declarations of universal human rights such as the Charte du Mandingue; and
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10 nick nesbitt

so on. The subject of universal emancipation appeared not so much dialec-

tically but furtively, like sparks to kindling, sparks that were at first too few
(Makandal’s failed revolt of 1750), but that, when the kindling was dry
enough and the sparks sufficient, caught fire, and burned the cane fields and
plantations of the Northern plain of Saint Domingue to the ground on the
night of August 23, 1791.
But, secondly, what are the transcendental conditions of the appearance
of the subject of universal emancipation in Saint Domingue in 1791–1805?
Might these include some sort universal reason or reasonability including
illiterate African slaves, or a postulate of universal becoming/singularization?
In other words, can one step back from the assertion of unsurpassability that
grounds such a condition as constituent subjectivity, to understand the very
emergence of the conditions for the taking place of the transcendentality of
the universal citizen-subject?
Or finally, taken another way, insofar as a transcendental subject of uni-
versalism implies the taking place of that subject (that is, its minimal condi-
tion being that there is such a subject), is it possible meaningfully to posit
(speculatively) the existence of an ideal universal independently of its rela-
tion to a bodily support, without relapsing to metaphysical dogmatism? In
other words, posed as a politicohistorical rather than purely ontological prob-
lem, can any other order take place than what the transcendental regime of
presentation (of production under slavery) decrees? Not simply, can the
order of sovereignty dialectically mutate, modulate from an ancien to nou-
veaux régimes of production as with Toussaint and Christophe, but can there
appear an entirely new order of presentation and counting, say, that of the
universal, ethnically, racially despecified citizen in 1804 or the moun andeyò
as described by Jean Casimir and Gérard Barthélémy?4
Following Trouillot, taking him quite literally at his word, the radical sin-
gularity and absolute contingency—at an ontological level of the order of
presentation—of a universal sequence such as the Haitian revolution would
seem to depend on this distinction, to avoid collapsing what Sartre called
historical intelligibility into a neo-Hegelian totality of univocal becoming.
To think singular universality emphatically as Trouillot implicitly enjoins us
would seem to imply the circumscription of transcendental critique, to posit
the nondogmatic but absolute contingency of any truth politics.
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Haiti, the Monstrous Anomaly 11

While this unthinkability may hold for the ancien régime, 1789 is in
fact the determinate refutation of Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s assertion.5 For
Trouillot does not simply claim that this political sequence was effectively
unthinkable prior to 1791. Nor does he merely document the degree to which
the Haitian revolution remained misunderstood, if not actively stigmatized
and debased, as it unfolded and in the two centuries since. While this is un-
doubtedly true, it remains a merely empirical claim, a carence that nearly two
decades of intensive historiographic investigation of the Haitian revolution
has to an important extent managed to address.
Trouillot’s primary claim is of course a much stronger one, namely, “that
the events that shook up Saint Domingue from 1791 to 1804 [ . . . ] were
‘unthinkable’ facts” that were never “accompanied by an explicit intellectual
discourse.” The unthinkable, Trouillot tells us, refers specifically to “that for
which one has no adequate instruments to conceptualize. [ . . . ] The unthink-
able is that which one cannot conceive within the range of possible alterna-
tives, that which perverts all answers because it defies the terms under which
the questions were phrased.”6 In fact, those tools, those adequate instruments
of thought were readily available, circulating throughout Saint Domingue
in both printed matter (in colonial papers such as the Jacobin Créole Patri-
ote) and oral debate, in the abstract, universalist, race-free axioms of freedom,
equality, and the right to resist unjust regimes contained in the declarations
of the rights of man and citizen of 1789 and 1793, as well as the debates and
proceedings of the French Revolution as reported in both French and colonial
journalism and through oral communication by subaltern sailors and other
travelers from Europe.7
The Haitian revolution was in no sense unthinkable as its events unfolded;
instead, there merely occurred a general failure to think through, on the part
of the metropolitan revolutionaries, the simplest and most obvious implica-
tions of the universal truth that Tous les hommes naissent et demeure libres et
égaux en droits.
In light of this long history of disavowal, it is clear that ideological critique
of the image of Haiti, though necessary, is not enough. It is not enough simply
to traverse this fantasmatic structure, “mark[ing] repeatedly,” as Žižek says,
“the memory of a lost cause” in an infinitely renewed cycle of journalistic
desperation that can only mirror the ideological fantasy of ever-renewed,
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12 nick nesbitt

putatively natural Haitian submission to fate, Nature, or whatever other name

the media would give the “poorest nation in the Western hemisphere.”8 Once
we perceive the unactualized truths of 1791 and 1804 and 1991 and 2000,
once we have written the umpteenth editorial telling the truth of Haiti’s
systematic impoverishment and derailed democracy, what then? When we
subtract ourselves from any active participation in the culture of nongovern-
mental organization and marine invasions, we still remain responsible for
those acting in our place and name. Yet how can we force the restructural-
ization of the rules of Haitian engagement, such as those adopted by our
humanitarians disguised in the uniforms of the U.S. marines or U.N. peace-
keepers? One may rightfully support the recourse to violence at the last limit
when defending democracy, the right to force one’s way to recover water, say,
in a collapsed building when one is on the edge of life. But what form would
an engaged forcing of the transcendental axioms of U.S.–Haitian foreign pol-
icy look like?9 If the Haitian revolution teaches any lesson, it is surely that
there will never be a right moment to intervene to restructure the injustices
of a system. Quite simply, what would be necessary to shift this U.S. policy
from today’s all-too-familiar Clinton–Clinton–Obama promotion of Port-
au-Prince sweatshops, the continued destruction of rural agricultural self-
sufficiency, passive support for the reinstitution of the Haitian army, which
was Aristide’s greatest concrete accomplishment to have eliminated, and the
continued and scandalous support of a conseil electoral provisoire whose only
function seems to be to exclude popular parties and candidates and to pro-
mote unknown and/or unpopular candidates in Haitian elections? What
would it mean to radically reorient U.S. policy to promote instead of elec-
tions of the elite what Chavannes Jean-Baptiste calls food sovereignty?

The Monstrous Anomaly

A hundred pages into the second, unfinished volume of his monumental
study Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre makes another of his seemingly
unending digressions in his defense of the intelligibility of historical struggle,
to elaborate a fascinating analysis of the world systemic situation of the USSR
in the 1920s. The situation of this fragile new state, as Sartre describes it,
holds a remarkable series of parallels with the unheralded new nation that was
Haiti in the immediate aftermath of 1804. Sartre focuses on the confrontation
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Haiti, the Monstrous Anomaly 13

between Stalin and Trotsky in this period despite their shared objectives,
including potential agreement on a range of basic issues from the objective
necessity to pursue socialism as a global, rather than merely national, project,
as well as the necessity of consolidating the shaky foundations of this new
state by means of violent accumulation and modernization, before addressing
the claims of equality and social justice inherent in the communist project
by definition.10 For both Trotsky and Stalin, Sartre tells us, the immediate
aftermath of the revolution would necessarily be defensive, a consolidation
of the gains of the revolution in the face of a hostile world system, and con-
structive, delaying the immediate implementation of the egalitarian claims
of communism to secure initially the very existence of that state that could
subsequently hope to construct a just society. This fragile new state would
necessarily be self-reliant, unable to expect resources and support from a
hostile external world.
Nonetheless, Sartre observes, these two figures entered into inevitable con-
flict. Sartre describes an intellectual Trotsky, a theoretician, a thinker whose
political action as such would remain radical and uncompromising in its uni-
versalism. Marxism, like the antislavery of Toussaint Louverture, was above
all for Trotsky universalist in its claims and pretentions. The scope of its
address necessarily encompassed the entire world system; the persistence of
injustice anywhere in the world, whether in its literal form as plantation slav-
ery in 1804, or its metaphorical equivalent, the exploitation of labor after
1917, was absolutely intolerable. One thinks here of the famous proclama-
tions and letters of Louverture to the French directory or of Louis Delgrès
in Guadeloupe, addressed not to a government, a class, or a nation, but to
l’univers entier.11
While Trotsky had argued forcefully that the vanguard of the revolution
would rightly take place on the underdeveloped periphery of Europe, it was
Haiti that, after the destructive fury of Thermidor, the subsequent rise of
Bonaparte, and the consolidation and strengthening of North American slav-
ery after 1787, stood as the sole remaining defender of the call for universal
emancipation.
In contrast to the idealist Trotsky, Sartre’s Stalin is the practical revolution-
ary, the opportunist, the long-suffering local militant who had for so many
years received orders from the exiled intellectuals. It is Sartre’s Stalin who
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14 nick nesbitt

perceives most clearly the dangers at hand for the young state and whose
strategic decisions were all guided by a single imperative: to save what had
been achieved. This, Sartre writes, could only be accomplished by enacting
a defensive strategy that would preserve the gains of the revolution to that
point and avoid dispersing it to the winds in what he saw as a suicidal desire to
internationalize its struggle.12 Suicidal because, in a context of general enmity
in this sense parallel to the encirclement of Haiti by slaveholding states after
1804, any attempt to internationalize its struggle would have unnecessarily
antagonized its more powerful, hostile neighbors. In this view, forced indus-
trialization and collectivization were the exigencies of a situation, sacrifices
for the preservation of the gains made to that point against a hostile world.
If their ideologies differed, this same sacrificial logic in the name of conser-
vation of the revolution and independence underwrote the forced-labor ini-
tiatives of Toussaint, Dessalines, and Christophe alike.
Such clashes and contradictions, Sartre writes, give birth to monstrosi-
ties.13 The greatest monstrosity of all was undoubtedly the aberration known
as “socialism in one country.” Such a formulation and the politics it implied
went much further than a mere affirmation of self-reliance of a young nation
in an unwelcoming world. It implied the negation and disavowal of the very
universalism that had underwritten and justified the revolution itself. To
refuse the internationalization of the struggle, whether for communism in
the 1920s or for antislavery after 1804, meant deciding that the revolution
was only universalist insofar as it remained ideal, and that once it became an
existing political reality and independent state, that universality would be,
necessarily and rightly, sacrificed on the alter of the nation.14 This meant, of
course, that the actually existing state, whether the USSR or postindepen-
dence Haiti, existed to some degree as the living denial of the very universal-
ist justification that helped to actualize their existence.
Sartre rightly refuses any simplistic personalization of this clash, however,
quickly moving beyond the Trotsky–Stalin doublet to examine the underly-
ing social contradictions they personified. The dual monstrosities of “social-
ism in one country” and “antislavery in one country” are not to be understood
as effects of the fundamental poverty and underdevelopment of these respec-
tive states, as a certain apologism might conclude. Sartre is uncompromis-
ing in his assertion that decisions for or against forced collectivization or
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Haiti, the Monstrous Anomaly 15

modernization, again like that of the repeated return to forced plantation

labor in Haiti, were the result of revolutionary practice—a practice that chose,
correctly or not, the conservative revolutionary path of realism and preser-
vation of what had already been gained.15 Haiti after 1804, like the USSR of
the 1920s, shared a common threat: encirclement. The return of royalist gov-
ernments in France, as Deborah Jenson has recently argued, meant a very real
threat of invasion and recolonization, the result of which would of course
have meant reenslavement in the period from 1802 to 1848. The poverty and
underdevelopment of the new Haitian state were real social problems, but
that same poverty had enormous consequences for the struggle against slav-
ery itself; Haitian poverty made the internationalization of antislavery as a
practical, political agenda literally suicidal. What’s more, as recent work on
the impact of the Haitian revolution in the Atlantic world has shown, the
actual success of the Haitian revolution and the founding of Haiti had in many
cases a negative impact on the struggle for emancipation abroad, insofar as
it divided abolitionists on the question of violence, radicalized conservative
opposition, and forced antislavery underground in the United States in partic-
ular until the 1840s. As Sartre concludes, the “incarnation [of the revolution]
was in direct contradiction with its universalization.”16 Instead of the Haitian
revolutionaries’ example radicalizing the global struggle for emancipation, at
least initially, it may have become a key factor in delaying emancipation.
In both Haiti and the USSR, the relative strength of the liberal capitalist
regimes surrounding it, combined with the weakness of those involved in the
respective struggles for justice as equality, drove those regimes to a moder-
ate policy of what Sartre euphemistically calls prudence.17 We all know what
tragedy such prudence led to in Haiti’s case, including the U.S. trade embargo
of 1806 and the scandalous extortion by royalist France in 1825 of the diplo-
matic recognition the new state could not live without, the 125 million franc
ransom—more than twice the country’s GDP at the time, and a ransom
whose payment bankrupted France for the rest of the century.
In this situation, both countries were left to their own devices, politically
as well as economically, and in this as well one should rightly conclude that
even the antiegalitarian developments after 1804 (Christophe’s agricultural
militarization and reinstitution of monarchy, Boyer’s Code rural) were due
not to personal, antidemocratic aberrations but rather to the outrageous
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16 nick nesbitt

monstrosity of Haiti’s situation as the lone outpost of antislavery until 1848.

In other words, the violence and inequities of Christophe and Boyer, in one
sense the betrayal of the universalist revolution itself, were a consequence
not, or at least not only, of a personal struggle for power, but they would never
have occurred had the United States and France (as well as the United King-
dom, in its own highly conflicted way) stood as partners in the fight against
slavery, rather than its declared enemies.
Soviet and Haitian isolation were each monstrosities, the former an under-
developed country on the eastern periphery of Europe that stunned the world
in its passage from feudalism to incipient socialism without transition, and
the latter a peripheral colony thought to be inhabited by savage Africans and
dissolute colonists that presented to a stunned, uncomprehending world the
unthinkable reality of a slavery-free nation—and on this fundamental score,
the most politically advanced nation in the world in 1804.
In this light, C. L. R. James’s postulation of a black Jacobinism in Haiti
takes on a new light: as a univeralist politics of justice as equality, as histori-
ans such as Jean-Pierre Gross have shown, the short-lived Jacobin experi-
ment not only invented what would become a century and a half later the
Western welfare state (an initiative quickly dismantled by Thermidor and
the directory in its threat to privilege), but exported, as an abstract political
logic, the most uncompromising image of egalitarian justice at the very same
time that it denied abolition in the name of economic survival. If the radical
enlightenment, like Marxism two centuries later, first articulated its truths
in Europe, it was in the farthest extremes of the capitalist world system that
a singular enunciation of the truth of justice as equality would be first instan-
tiated as political reality. This was perhaps so because both tsarism and plan-
tation slavery, unlike the relatively benign forms of so-called servitude of
Western Europe, sustained themselves with the most extreme forms of ultra-
violence, as James and others famously narrate. The instantiation of both
antislavery and Marxism in singular communities necessarily meant that each
would morph into singular, unheralded forms at these peripheral sites. Before
1804 and 1917, antislavery and socialism were both abstract, theoretical
struggles (as in the case of Condorcet and Les amis des noirs). After each rev-
olution, their respective struggles became the lived experience of each com-
munity, the ontological substance of their novel social experiments. Both
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Haiti, the Monstrous Anomaly 17

antislavery and Marxism were radically transformed in this passage, when

they became the lived existence of Bossale former slaves in Haiti and work-
ers, “so uncouth,” writes Sartre, “so hastily manufactured and so close to the
peasantry,” full of “wild voluntarism and youthful barbarism.”18 Both coun-
tries were the incarnation of philosophical truth, imperfect in many ways,
but in their very anomaly, beacons for their respective generations involved
in the struggle for social justice. In this way, these uncivilized marginals of
the time actually and actively subordinated the so-called enlightened West-
ern intellectuals; Haiti, as Sartre writes of the USSR, thus became the “truth
of the abstract universal.”19 It was these marginal sites that correctly under-
stood the implications of the truth statements of the radical enlightenment
and Marx. In the wake of these two unheralded revolutions, radical theory
found itself revealed in the full poverty of its abstraction: Rousseau to the
Encyclopédistes, Louverture to Napoleon, Dessalines to France, Lenin to
Bernstein—each was uncompromising in the denunciation of the poverty
of mere theory as such.
Like the novel concept of socialism in one state, in which socialism, Sartre
argues, gradually came to mean no longer communism itself but the interme-
diary situation between the former and capitalism, antislavery after 1804 no
longer stood for the entirety of the struggle to end slavery, but came to signify
the intermediary state between an inferior, idealist abolitionism and the fully
instantiated reality of a slavery-free global order. And if Sartre unconvincingly
tries to argue that the USSR “really was a socialist order,” perhaps the last
point of comparison of these two examples is that in contrast to the fact that
the communist hypothesis has, so far at least, been a failure in its various
instantiations, monstrosity defeated by capital, Haitian antislavery was in fact
one of the great successes of the modern era, a world historical revolution
that, despite its initial quarantine, would decisively and actually transform
the world system of slave-based labor, in 1838 in Britain, France in 1848, the
United States in 1865, that largely succeeded within a century of 1804.20
Like the USSR in the twentieth century, Haiti inspired a general terror
in liberal democracies of the nineteenth. That Haiti appeared to the out-
side world a monstrosity in this context was precisely the point. Dessalines’s
famous declaration of independence should literally be understood as a
restatement and tropicalization of the Jacobin terror. The point is quite rightly
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18 nick nesbitt

to strike terror into the slaveholding world. Moreover, one can say that inso-
far as Haiti was perceived as anything but a monstrosity by the slave-based
world system, its truth was being actively disavowed. This is another way of
understanding the precise nature of the tragedy that Césaire calls the Tragédie
du roi Christophe. A great deal of energy in the play is exhausted demonstrat-
ing the relative absurdity of Christophe’s court of what Naipaul called “mimic
men.” The true monstrosity ad tragedy is not the mimicry of Christophe’s
courtiers (whom Césaire precisely describes in his notes as boufon and mal-
adroit), the struggle to invent a world and imagine a slave-free nation (though
this poverty of imagination was itself tragic), but that Haiti itself could only
be perceived on the world stage as a mere caricature of Europe—in other
words, devoid of legitimacy, political or otherwise.21 Of course this caricatu-
ralization, the predominant trope of which is the racist stream of demeaning
portraits of Louverture that appeared in endless variations through the nine-
teenth century from the fetid imaginations of Western apologists and detrac-
tors alike.
The terror that an independent Haiti inspired, described in detail by
Fischer and Jenson, demands further interrogation. For terror has stood as
the principal referent in the disavowal of revolutionary action and its atten-
dant violence since Burke’s famous, hysterical denunciations of the French
Revolution. The ritualistic denunciation of revolutionary terror has become
so banalized and reflexive, from Burke to Furet, that even relatively sympa-
thetic historians of Jacobinism utterly misrecognize its meaning. Contem-
porary historiography no longer even equates Jacobinism with the Terror,
which was a short-lived political intervention, limited in scope and intent,
of the summer and fall of 1793, quickly abandoned, as Dan Edelstein has
recently argued in his Terror of Natural Right, for a politics of deformalized,
natural rights–based republicanism in the spring and summer of 1794. Yet
Edelstein himself misrecognizes the nature of political terror, which was never
a measure of subjective affect, of the fear felt by the Jacobins themselves, as
Edelstein strangely claims. The Terror was, quite simply—and rightfully, if
one believes the French Revolution progressed beyond the ancien régime
in its destruction of feudalism and hierarchy—intended to terrify the forces
of European counterrevolution. This necessarily limited its scope and rele-
vance as a political agenda, as it called for no more than an affective block,
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Haiti, the Monstrous Anomaly 19

unable to initiate any construction of a more just society. As such, it served

its purpose in the execution of the king and was only briefly at the center of
Jacobin politics.
The related problems of the legitimacy of terror and violence go to the
heart of our ability to understand the political radicality of both the Jacobin
and black Jacobin revolutions. Had the French revolutionaries, like the slaves
of Saint Domingue, capitulated to the voices of economic reason and mod-
eration, the events of 1791 for the colony and 1792 for France itself would
never have occurred, and France might be today a constitutional monarchy
like its British neighbor, Saint Domingue, a colony of slave laborers.
Hegel appears his most reactionary when he equates terror with abstrac-
tion in the Phenomenology. Far from limiting terror to those few months of
1793 and 1794, Hegel expands terror to make it the very definition of the
revolution itself.22 As it had in the earlier master–slave dialectic, terror and
dread are the affects that dissolve the reified solidity of an unjust world. If
in the earlier passage this process was merely individual, in the later analysis
of the French Revolution, terror is the mortal dread that seizes a moribund
society, the ancien régime of feudalist iniquity and hierarchy. The terror is for
Hegel “the destruction of the actual organization of the world,” and we have
become so deadened by the repeated invocation of the famous description of
the guillotine as “the coldest and meanest of deaths, with no more significance
than cutting off a head of a cabbage,” that we universally and unthinkingly
assume that Hegel’s conclusion is, as he writes, that the outcome of revolu-
tionary Enlightenment as abstraction is “the death that is without meaning,
the sheer terror of the negative that contains nothing positive, nothing that
fills it with a content.”23 While the lines are famous, they are not in fact
Hegel’s conclusion at all. The final analysis of the section actually continues
for another page and a half in Miller’s translation.
What Hegel does conclude of the Terror is that “the meaningless death,
the unfulfilled negativity of the self, changes round in its inner Notion into
absolute positivity. [ . . . ] What vanishes for it in that experience is abstract
being or the immediacy of that insubstantial point, and this vanished imme-
diacy is the universal will itself which it now knows itself to be in so far as it
is a pure knowing or pure will.”24 As Susan Buck-Morss has urged us to do
for the master–slave dialectic, we should read this passage as referring at least
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20 nick nesbitt

as much to Haiti as to France: the Haitian revolution is precisely this vanishing

of the abstract critique of slavery, as well as the insubstantiality and incon-
sequentiality of the actually existing slaves of Saint Domingue, who come
to know themselves as the truth of “pure knowing,” the “pure will” that was
the creation of Haiti in 1804 against all historical odds and disbelief. Hegel, as
commentators from Ritter to Rebecca Comay today have not tired of remind-
ing us, pursued from the beginning to the end of his public career a philoso-
phy of human freedom and unequivocally affirmed the French Revolution as
the quintessential moment of that struggle for the modern world. Hegel’s
terror, then, must be understood as much to be the violence of the Haitian
revolution as that of the white Jacobins. Each progressed insofar as they forced
what Hegel unambiguously calls “absolute freedom” to “remove the antithe-
sis between the universal and the individual will.” In fact, reading the closing
lines of Hegel’s analysis of “Absolute Freedom and Terror” in this fashion, it
appears to Haiti that gains the upper hand in the struggle for human free-
dom, insofar as in this moment, Hegel tells us, “absolute freedom leaves its
self-destroying reality” of Thermidorian France, that is, “and pass[es] over
into another land of self-conscious Spirit where, in this unreal world, free-
dom has the value of truth.”25
If everything remained to be done in this morning of 1804 if Hegel’s affir-
mation of revolutionary terror as abstraction describes no more than the
destructive event itself and not the painstaking unfolding of its consequences,
this limitation points to the contradiction at the heart of Hegel’s equation of
terror as abstraction with the entirety of the revolution itself. On the one
hand, to simultaneously equate terror with abstraction, as Hegel does, is to
negate the common cliché that both white and black Jacobins, Robespierre
like Louverture, were bloodthirsty barbarians. But universalist terror does not
a politics make. There is no such thing as a politics of affect, and on this count,
terror must be unequivocally critiqued as anything more than a necessary, if
defensive and initial, moment in the struggle for justice as equality. Politics
addresses not sentiment but the criteria of inclusion, of who counts or does
not count in a society, and even more, the determination of the transcenden-
tal criteria of such a count itself. In a political struggle for inclusion, so-called
terror on the Jacobin and black Jacobin models can be no more than a limi-
nal insurgence, the turning point in a state of general terrorization that stops
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Haiti, the Monstrous Anomaly 21

terror in its tracks, the sublime terrorization of intransigent ancien régime

violence itself.
Against Edelstein’s wrongheaded assertion that the Jacobins were sen-
timental Rousseauians enacting a politics of conscience, attention to their
speeches and letters shows white and black Jacobins alike to have under-
taken a systematic politics of abstraction. The point of this politics of abstrac-
tion was precisely to abstract oneself from the world of feudalism, of ancien
régime injustice in France, from the code noir and the ultraviolence of plan-
tation slavery in Saint Domingue. This abstraction is manifest in the regu-
lar and recurrent assertion of a politics of principles in the primary texts of
black and white Jacobinism alike, from Robespierre’s assertion of the justice
of the execution of Capet based not on sentiment, but on what he calls “la
vérité éternelle des principes” of justice and equality, as it is manifest in Tous-
saint’s intransigent letter to the reactionary Napoleonic directory, in which
he expresses his hope that “France will not renounce her principles” of “lib-
erty and equality.”26 The point of such actions is precisely to terrorize the
terror (of monarchy, of the slave owner). If Jacobin terror, whether black or
white, is by this measure right, just and necessary, Hegel is utterly wrong to
assert that it constitutes the truth of the revolution in its entirety. A mere
politics of affect may serve a strategic point at key moments of counterrev-
olution, as Fanon famously argued, but any politics beyond terror must be
equated quite simply with principled fidelity to an undivided, universal, and
immanent Truth.27
Among the great accomplishments of C. L. R. James’s Black Jacobins is to
have mounted for the first time a vigorous defense and justification of the
revolutionary violence and terror of the Haitian revolution. In the face of near-
universal denigration of this event as the work of bloodthirsty savages, James
affirms the unity of the struggle for justice as equality based on the universal,
color-free principles of liberty and equality, and their pursuit in the revolu-
tionary politics of abstraction of Louverture and Dessalines. And yet James’s
defense of black Jacobin violence is punctual and even muddled, at odds
with the systematically rationalist, colonial enlightenment thesis of the book.
Three passages in Black Jacobins illustrate this shifting and somewhat uncer-
tain defense. The first occurs early in the key chapter “The San Domingo
Masses Begin,” which describes the initial mass uprising of August 1791. The
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22 nick nesbitt

passage initially affirms the “tireless” destruction of the insurgent slaves as

an unspecified “salvation,” a thoughtless and reflexive lashing out against the
immediate manifestations of oppression, human and material, before their
eyes. “They were seeking their salvation in the most obvious way,” James
writes, “the destruction of what they knew was the most obvious cause of their
sufferings.”28 James’s enslaved masses are unthinking, with no understanding
of the structural, systemic causes of their subjection and suffering. Their exer-
tions short-circuit all rational reflection; they are immediately and simplis-
tically reflexive: “if they destroyed much it was because they had suffered
much.” This is no more than the most basic rationality of the if/then calcu-
lation of the most rudimentary computation.
And yet the passage then affirms a minimal awareness and reflection that
goes at least as far as the eye can see: “They knew that as long as these plan-
tations stood their lot would be to labor on them until they dropped.” Still,
this is only the most basic, binary form of reflection, projecting thought, imag-
ination, and planning no further than the negative, binary erasure of such
visible signs: “The only thing was to destroy [the plantations].” This mass
violence, if legitimate in James’s eyes, is no more than the most primary justice
of vengeful retribution. “From their masters they had known rape, torture,
degradation, and, at the slightest provocation, death. They returned in kind.”
This initial moment of the revolution was, James concludes, an unthinking
“frenzy, in which ‘Vengeance! Vengeance!’ was their war-cry.” This initial
reflex-based automatism is only the weakest defense of revolutionary vio-
lence and terror, and James hardly strengthens it by concluding, without evi-
dence, the insurgents were relatively “moderate” insofar, inevitably, rather
than reflectively so, James observes, because “the cruelties of property and
privilege are always more ferocious than the revenges of poverty.”29
Quite different is James’s presentation of Louverture’s call to a just revo-
lutionary violence. Toussaint’s call to a war of total slash-and-burn guerrilla
violence was invoked in his famous letter to Dessalines of February 8, 1801.
The call to violence is no less total than that of the insurgent slaves of a decade
before. “Do not forget,” Louverture writes to his lieutenant, “that we have no
other resource than destruction and fire. Bear in mind that the soil bathed
with our sweat must not furnish our enemies with the smallest sustenance.
Tear up the roads with shot; throw corpses and horses into all the fountains,
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Haiti, the Monstrous Anomaly 23

burn and annihilate everything in order that those who have come to reduce
us to slavery may have before their eyes the image of that hell they deserve.”30
If the invocation of violence is equally total, its defense unswerving and cat-
egorical, the logic of this defense is utterly opposed to that of the unthinking
masses. For Louverture’s affirmation is not reflexive but proleptic. The vision-
ary Louverture is not reacting, amoeba-like, to a painful stimulus against
which he lashes out, but sees forward in time to a future reimposition of
slavery. His imaginative vision encompasses by this, perhaps tragically late,
point, understanding slavery as a world system. The consciously elaborated
tactic of guerrilla violence is the result of all-knowing, enlightened calcula-
tion. Above all, Louverture invokes in his call to general violence a concept,
an abstract universal, the full negativity of which perhaps he alone, in James’s
narrative, is able to grasp: slavery. If this concept is inextricable as much
from the lived experience of the lash and the general regime of plantation
torture, Louverture crucially abstracts from this earlier experience, and pos-
sesses, moreover, a greater power of abstraction than all others involved in the
struggle, above all the short-sighted Napoleon and his fellow strategists.
If James goes on, in the final pages of Black Jacobins, to disparage the un-
justified, merely reflexive retributive violence of Dessalines 1805 massacre
of whites as mere revenge, a practice, James writes, that “has no place in
politics,” as “purposeless massacres [that] degrade and brutalize a popula-
tion,” the contradiction with his earlier defense of the masses’ 1791 uprising
is blatant.31 It would only be irresolvable, however, if one were to retain the
subject-centered phenomenology of revolutionary consciousness and the
great leader that structures James’s entire narrative. If the Haitian revolution
was a politics of principle from start to finish, the forms this rationality took
in the long and twisted course of those years were many. If Toussaint, like his
metropolitan Jacobin colleague Robespierre, was among the most articulate
rationalist politicians of the 1790s, the idea of universal emancipation, of jus-
tice as undivided and immediate, immanent equality circulated throughout
the Atlantic world in the form of asubjective, despecified truth statements
such as “Les hommes naissent et demeurent égaux en droits.” Against any
claims that the Haitian revolution was unthinkable in the midst of its unfold-
ing, justice as equality was the asubjective idea that animated and legitimated
the destruction of plantation struggle in Saint Domingue from the night of
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24 nick nesbitt

August 29, 1791, to its instantiation as a materialized, fully formed concept

first in Toussaint’s inaugural 1801 constitution, and finally on the dawn of
January 1, 1804. To reject James’s muddled defense of revolutionary vio-
lence without retreating to the cowardly Kantian shelter of the established
and righteous rule of law, any law, without retreating to the Hegelian sleight
of hand that affirms revolutionary terror as abstraction as the mere prepara-
tion for the coming of a (future) truth, one must assert that the idea of uni-
versal emancipation, that destroyer of worlds, moves beyond all limits. This
idea of August 29, 1791, moves beyond all state-based attempts to monop-
olize so-called legitimate violence, beyond the confines of its formulation by
any single subject, no matter how world historical, to reappear in any singular
situation and any world, no matter how seemingly unfree or abject. This asub-
jective, eternal idea moves freely, timelessly, from Mali in 1222 (in the words
of the Mande Charter: “Every human life is a life,” “Ko nin bèè nin”), to Paris
in 1792, to Egypt or Zucotti Park today, or to appear as the principled, ultra-
rational Kreyòl affirmation of infinite justice as equality that remains in force
at this moment as we witness the continued and systematic destruction of
Haitian democracy: “Tout moun se moun.”

Notes
1. On the necessity of a political critique of disasters such as the 2010 earthquake,
see Peter Hallward, “Our Role in Haiti’s Plight,” Guardian, January 13, 2010, http://
www.guardian.co.uk.
2. Alain Badiou, Theoretical Writings, trans. Ray Brassier (New York: Continuum,
2004), 149.
3. Although I think that Trouillot much too easily dismisses Diderot’s famous
ancien régime passage from Raynal’s Histoire, already a call to the revolutionary
destruction of plantation slavery grounded on universal natural rights. See Michel-
Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Bea-
con Press, 1995), 81.
4. Jean Casimir, in books such as Culture opprimée, has posited the existence of
a counterplantation society in rural Haiti that since 1796 has consistently refused
incorporation into the liberal and now neoliberal Atlantic capitalist modes of pro-
duction. Barthélémy, in the remarkable book L’univers rural haïtien, adapted Casi-
mir’s insights along with those of Pierre Clastres to describe Haitian rural society—
the moun andeyò—as a system of stateless egalitarianism. The principal difference
between Casimir and his disciple Barthélémy, to my eyes, is that of emphasis: Casimir
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Haiti, the Monstrous Anomaly 25

describes a rural mode of production in predominantly economic terms, while

Barthélémy focuses on the sociopolitical implications of this singular social form.
5. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 82.
6. Ibid., 82, 88.
7. On the circulation of the discourse of the rights of man throughout the oral
and written public sphere of Saint Domingue by the fall of 1789, see Nick Nesbitt,
Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment (Char-
lottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008), 71–78. The Créole Patriote was pub-
lished in Saint Domingue from September 21, 1792, to February 21, 1793—the key
period when the initial slave revolt of August 1791 became radicalized into a univer-
salist revolution for human rights and its consequent imperative to destroy slav-
ery, immediately and without qualification. After the paper’s suspension in February
1993, its editor, Milscent, went on to publish in the paper Bulletin des Amis de la
Vérité. Yves Bénot famously called attention to Milscent’s tropical Jacobinism, and
more recently, Jean-Daniel Piquet has written in more detail about the evolution of
the Créole Patriote’s critique of slavery.
8. Slavoj Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Fac-
tor (London: Verso, 1991), 272.
9. Such a question is made all the more compelling in light of the documents
released by Wikileaks to the Brooklyn-based newspaper Haiti Liberte. These leaked
documents, the paper showed, “reveal [an] obsessive, far-reaching U.S. campaign to
get and keep Aristide out of Haiti. . . . The cables not only bolster existing evidence
of U.S. involvement in the 2004 coup, but portray a sophisticated, globe-spanning
campaign afterwards to marginalize Aristide and imprison him in exile.” See “This
Week in Haiti,” Haiti Liberte, July 27, 2011, parts 1–4, http://www.haiti-liberte.com.
10. Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason (London: Verso, 2006), 2:99.
11. The proclamations of Louverture calling for the global and universal destruc-
tion of slavery such as that of May 18, 1797, are indicative of this as well. Nesbitt,
Universal Emancipation, 28.
12. Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, 101.
13. Ibid., 102.
14. Ibid., 103.
15. Ibid., 104.
16. Ibid., 105.
17. Ibid., 106.
18. Ibid., 109, 111.
19. Ibid., 109.
20. On the concept of a communist hypothesis that would transcend both the
initial experiments of 1789–1871 and the struggles for political power of 1917–89,
see Badiou, Theoretical Writings.
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26 nick nesbitt

21. Aimé Césaire, La Tragedie du Roi Christophe (Paris: Presence Africaine,

2000), 35.
22. Rebecca Comay, Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2010), 76. Like so many authors, Comay’s fasci-
nating book is fundamentally weakened by its initial moralistic presupposition that
the actual Jacobin Terror was reprehensible and irredeemable, precisely the point
that must be critically interrogated in any contemporary examination of the relation
of revolutionary violence to historical progress, to reveal the singular political logic
of 1792–94.
23. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1977), 359, 360, 362.
24. Ibid., 363.
25. Ibid.
26. Nesbitt, Universal Emancipation, 34–35.
27. On such a politics of courage in opposition to all politics of anxiety and resent-
ment, see Badiou’s astounding lecture of May 7, 1977, pitting Aeschylean courage
and justice against the (Lacanian) terror and anxiety of Sophocles’ Antigone. Badiou,
Theoretical Writings, 158.
28. C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint Louverture and the San Domingo
Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1989), 88.
29. Ibid., 89.
30. Ibid., 300.
31. Ibid., 373.
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Rethinking the Haitian Crisis

Greg Beckett

I s it possible to speak of Haiti without speaking of crisis? After all, the

country seems mired in crises: deep poverty, environmental degradation,
weak political institutions, disasters, catastrophes. Even a cursory reading of
the scholarly material shows widespread agreement that crisis is a normal—
that is, regular and recurring—aspect of the country’s social, political, and
economic institutions. For some, crisis is not just a regular feature of Haitian
society but a normative one, an inherent, inescapable condition that plagues
the country and its people.
But what do we really mean by crisis, and what do we mean by crisis in
Haiti? To answer these questions, I begin with a brief overview of the idea
of crisis itself, in order to show how the conceptual core of the term has
remained remarkably consistent over centuries of extensive usage. I then turn
to the three key ways in which crisis has been applied to Haiti: as a histori-
cal category that renders the country’s past as a story of decline rather than
progress; as a political category that makes crisis a normative feature of the
nation-state; and as a diagnosis by outside experts that is used to justify
repeated foreign invasion and intervention. All of these applications suffer
from the same problem: mistaking the symptom for the cause. In the final
section of this chapter, I offer an alternative approach that treats crisis as a
mode of embodied experience. This view can help us analytically understand
how the country’s integration into a complex and contradictory world sys-
tem produces symptomatic forms of suffering in the lives and bodies of many
Haitians.
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28 greg beckett

The Idea of Crisis

The word crisis is widely used to name just about any problem in social or
natural systems. Thus, we speak of an identity crisis, an ecological crisis, an
economic crisis, a political crisis, or a crisis of values, to name but a few exam-
ples. Yet what do we mean when we declare something to be a crisis? While
its usage has been greatly extended in recent years, the word has retained a
remarkably stable set of meanings. In order to understand how the idea of
crisis has been applied to Haiti, it is first necessary to consider the most
essential features of the concept.
Crisis is etymologically related to the Ancient Greek verb krinein, “to
decide” or “to judge.” This sense of judgment as a faculty of the mind was
given a new meaning by Hippocrates, who used the word krisis as a clinical
term to name the turning point in the course of a disease. In On Afections,
Hippocrates defined crises as moments “in diseases whenever the diseases
increase in intensity or go away or change into another disease or end alto-
gether.”1 As a critical event in the life course of the patient, the medical crisis
was defined by four essential properties. First, it was a disjuncture in which
there were a range of logically possible but mutually exclusive future out-
comes (the patient may live or die, but not both). Second, while the exact
future outcome could not be known, the medical crisis required experts to
make a diagnosis about the cause of the problem and a prognosis about the
most likely result. Third, diagnoses were based on interpretations of symp-
toms, which meant there could be debate among experts as to the cause and
consequences of the crisis. Finally, the medical crisis was a moment of deci-
sion that called for urgent action and intervention (although based on the
varying diagnoses, the nature of that action could also be disputed).
Although contemporary meanings have drifted far from Hippocrates’
usage in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, the core aspects of disjuncture,
diagnosis, debate, and decision have remained at the center of our under-
standing of crisis. Modern historians have used the concept to name critical
turning points that, in retrospect, made a significant difference in the histor-
ical process. Social scientists have borrowed, sometimes unknowingly, the
medical language of pathology and cure, diagnosing social or political ills and
prescribing policies that aim to cure them. The key analogy that made such an
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Rethinking the Haitian Crisis 29

extension possible was that of the body politic, according to which societies
were understood to be like organisms with functionally related, interdepen-
dent parts. If a society was like a body, then it could suffer crises that threat-
ened it with death—social disorder or breakdown.2
The declaration of a crisis is an important moment, for it opens up debate
about the possible actions that might be taken in response to it. But such
debates are far from democratic or egalitarian, as those with the power to
respond to crises hold considerable weight in the determination of the nature
and extent of that response. Even more problematic are the unequal power
relations according to which various actors are granted the authority to diag-
nose crises in the first place. Ulrich Beck, writing of the emergence of a world
risk society, calls these the “relations of definition” of risks and defines them
as “the rules, institutions and capabilities which specify how risks are to be
identified in particular contexts.” As Beck astutely notes, definitions of risks—
much like definitions of crises—entail and presuppose relations of power and
domination.3 In light of this, we might question the specific power relations
that lie behind the constant designation of Haiti as a country in perpetual
crisis.

A History of Crisis
There has been no shortage of accounts that describe Haiti as a country with
a long history of crisis. But such accounts are rarely offered only as descrip-
tions. Rather, they seek to explain the country’s problems by treating crisis
and disorder as intrinsic features of Haitian society. Cast in this light, the
Haitian past becomes more than just a story of one crisis after another; it
becomes a temporality defined by rupture and breakdown.4 Such a view pre-
sents Haitian history as a story of decline and marks it in stark opposition
to the Western idea of linear development and historical progress.
Haiti has always been intimately bound to the West. It was the site of the
first European settlement in the New World and, like the rest of the Carib-
bean, it was a crucial node in the transatlantic triangle of trade that united
Europe, Africa, and the Americas in the first truly global economic and
political system. As Enlightenment philosophers wrote about the cultural,
political, and economic progress of their own societies, the growth and devel-
opment of Europe was being fueled by the exploitation of slaves working on
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30 greg beckett

sugar plantations. The emergence of Caribbean societies was thus a key part
of the historical process by which the West became the West. The deep con-
nection between Europe and the Caribbean (and other colonized regions)
has been systematically excised from Western history, but this silencing has
perhaps been strongest in the case of Haiti. The country has, at times, been
cast out of modern history altogether.5
This dismissal of Haiti has its origins in the European response to the
Haitian revolution, an event that was rendered impossible, even as it hap-
pened, by the very categories of Enlightenment philosophy.6 As Michel-Rolph
Trouillot has argued, the revolution was “unthinkable” as a historical event
because it occurred in a world predicated on colonialism, racism, and slav-
ery. The inability of Europe to accept the revolution on its own terms was
partly due to the antiblack racism of Caribbean planter society and partly
to the fact that many Europeans had personal financial stakes in overseas
plantations. But underlying both of these issues was a deeper problem that
had to do with the values and concepts of the Enlightenment itself. Even the
most liberal European philosopher could not accept the revolution on its
own terms because the epistemological foundations of the West made a slave
revolution categorically unthinkable. In short, the Enlightenment ideas of
Man and Freedom simply did not allow for property or things—for that is
what slaves were—to proclaim their own freedom.7
The response to the revolution is well known. It included political iso-
lation, social exclusion, and a radical disavowal of its political content.8 For
Caribbean planters and European philosophers alike, Haiti became a pariah,
an example of the tragic consequences of slave revolutions.9 Perhaps the most
famous example of this line of thought is Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau’s
The Inequality of Human Races. De Gobineau combined the various strains of
European racist thought into a single tome that became a key text for scientific
racism, eugenics, and white supremacy. He argued for the innate inequality
of races and characterized all African and African diasporic people as “bru-
tal,” “savage,” and “incapable of civilization.”10 Writing fifty years after the rev-
olution, de Gobineau often used Haiti as an example of the inferiority of the
black race, arguing that the political and economic decline of the country
proved that blacks were incapable of self-rule. This was hardly, however, a
unique or new position. As Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze has shown, the idea
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Rethinking the Haitian Crisis 31

of racial inequality was central to Enlightenment philosophy, which conflated

theories of the geographical and racial basis of human difference with a phi-
losophy of World History.11
The refusal to recognize Haiti as an independent political territory, which
only increased the country’s isolation, was bolstered by descriptions of Haiti
as a barbaric land. Thomas Carlyle described the country as a “tropical dog
kennel and pestiferous jungle,” and James Anthony Froude expressed a sim-
ilar disgust when confronted with the “ulcer” of Port-au-Prince.12 These are
only two now famous examples of a general trend according to which foreign-
ers, whether they visited Haiti or not, wrote about it as a place of decay and
ruin. The physical descriptions of Port-au-Prince or the countryside were
taken as signs of deeper problems, namely moral decline and historical back-
wardness. Soon enough, Haiti came to stand as an emblem for the ineluctable
ruin that awaited any project of black emancipation in the region.13
Reactions to the revolution have always remained a key part of the rejec-
tion of Haiti from modern history. But in the mid-nineteenth century, a new,
even more potent image of barbarism emerged in the foreign representations
of Vodou. This view was solidified when the British consul general to Haiti,
Spenser St. John, published an account of the 1864 trial, conviction, and pub-
lic execution of eight men and women found guilty of the sacrifice and canni-
balistic consumption of a child.14 The crime, known as the Bizonton Affair,
became a touchstone for foreigners and for Haitian government officials
alike. If the crime was a marker of the barbarity of some Haitians, then the
government response was meant to demonstrate that the state, at least, gov-
erned according to modern principles of morality and legality. Thus, Haitian
officials attributed the Bizonton Affair to Vodou, which they described as a
“barbaric religion imported to us from some corner of Africa.”15 The strong
reaction to the Bizonton Affair shows just how much Vodou had become
a central concern for the government. It was no longer regarded as a symp-
tom of the backwardness or superstition of the peasantry, but rather as the
“unique source” of barbarism itself.16
While the Haitian state attempted to limit this barbarism by both attribut-
ing it to the peasantry and legislating it out of existence, some foreigners
accused the government of supporting practices such as cannibalism and
child sacrifice (neither of which have any factual basis as part of Vodou). In
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32 greg beckett

such views, barbarism ran deep and spoiled even the highest levels of admin-
istration, condemning the country to even further historical decline. One of
the clearest statements of this position was offered by the American journal-
ist Stephen Bosnal, who wrote the following:

The real charge against Haytian civilization is not that children are frequently
stolen from their parents and are often put to death with torture, and subse-
quently eaten with pomp at a Voodoo ceremony, but that Haytian officials,
often the highest in the land, not only protect the kidnappers, but frequently
take part in the cannibalistic rites which they make possible. This is the charge
which I bring and which I am prepared to substantiate in every particular upon
evidence which appears to me, and to many others to whom I have submitted
it, to be absolutely unimpeachable.17

Bosnal’s comment appeared several decades after the Bizonton Affair. By that
time, the discursive frame of backwardness and barbarism was well estab-
lished in the foreign press.18 It would be easy enough to show that there was
no factual basis to the foreign representations of Vodou, but the idea of Haiti
as barbaric and backward was a fiction that was stronger than fact. Even apol-
ogists for Vodou reproduced the idea that Haiti did not exist in the same his-
torical time or along the same temporal trajectory as the West. For example,
in 1888, William Newell sought to counter the myths of Vodou by arguing
that the condemnation of Vodou was similar to the witch hunts that had taken
place in Europe and North America centuries earlier.19 For Newell, the sim-
ilarity lay not just in the condemnation of these religions but in the religious
practices themselves. Thus, he argued that Vodou was not even African—a
position that accepted the general idea that African culture was barbaric—but
was rather historically related to the European pagan rites of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. It was hardly a defense at all, because it too relied on an
implicit historicism that equated the Haiti of the nineteenth century with
European society of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
As Nicholas Dirks has noted, “History is surely one of the most important
signs of the modern. We are modern not only because we have achieved this
status historically, but because we have developed consciousness of our his-
torical depths and trajectories.”20 Newell’s defense of Vodou, much like the
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Rethinking the Haitian Crisis 33

rejections of both it and the revolution, deny Haiti this historicity. Haiti, it
is claimed, has not yet achieved modernity. This dismissal is still prevalent
today. When it is not blatantly racist, it appeals to more general problems, like
culture or history. For example, Lawrence Harrison, who argued that under-
development was nothing but a state of mind, wrote that “culture is the only
possible explanation for Haiti’s unending tragedy.”21 This amounts to saying
that Haitians are to blame for their own problems, as if racism, colonialism,
slavery, and imperialism never existed. More nuanced positions take this his-
tory into account, but only to argue that it is precisely the country’s crisis-
ridden past that is an obstacle to progress and development.22 Today, the
development paradigm reproduces the same historical logic of the Enlight-
enment, with its stages of progression and its telos of Western liberal states. In
this context, portrayals of Haiti’s persistent poverty and chronic crises effec-
tively cast the country outside of modern time. Against the taken-for granted
norm of the West, Haiti is rendered pathologically stuck in a temporality of
crisis, in a time that goes nowhere.

A State of Crisis
In the nineteenth century, Haitian intellectuals offered an alternative explana-
tion of the country’s problems. Rather than defend Vodou or peasant culture,
these intellectuals countered the dismissal of Haiti by stressing the country’s
European roots (and by suggesting that all Haitians were French-speaking
Catholics).23 The implicit claim was that Haiti was modern precisely because
it was just like Europe. Or, at least, it ought to be just like Europe. Given
the country’s shared history with France, it should have progressed along
the same path of moral and social development.24 The problem was thus to
explain why Haitian development had lagged behind. To answer that ques-
tion, Haitian intellectuals turned to national historiography.
The two great founders of Haitian historiography were Thomas Madiou
and Beaubrun Ardouin, both of whom sought to produce a history of the
nation that could be used for educational purposes.25 Trained in the European
mode of historical production, Madiou and Ardouin placed Haiti within a
narrative frame of universal linear history that proceeded through successive
stages of progressive development toward its end goal, a liberal state. In rela-
tion to this framework, which was the same framework that categorically
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34 greg beckett

made the revolution unthinkable, the country’s past was rendered pathologi-
cal. Haiti suffered from a crisis history in which the sequential formation and
eruption of crises displaced the normative ideal of linear development.26
While foreigners cast this history of crisis as a story of the country’s bar-
barism, Haitian intellectuals understood crisis not as a historical category but
rather as a political one. The central problem, according to them, was located
in the country’s social and political institutions. There was no denying the
weakness of national institutions and the authoritarian trend in national poli-
tics. These were understood, however, not as signs of Haiti’s irredeemable bar-
barism but rather as symptoms of a deep cleavage that split the country along
lines of color, class, and standing. For some, this division was fundamentally
based on color differences, and the assassination of Jean-Jacques Dessalines
in 1806 symbolized the rivalry between noirs and mulattoes that was tear-
ing the “Haitian family” apart.27 But for most intellectuals, the color ques-
tion was nothing more than a fiction used by the economic and political elite
to conceal the real source of social and political conflict—the stark schism
between the elite and the vast majority of the population.28
Yet while intellectuals began to challenge the color question, it remained
remarkably potent as a form of political ideology. Its success in displacing the
structural relations of class and power was due primarily to the spatial and
cultural separation of the peasantry and the elite, which helped to conceal the
underlying relations of exploitation and domination that united them. The
physical and social separation made it possible to imagine that the peasants
were at least semiautonomous producers living and working on their own
land. But in reality, Haitian peasants have always been enmeshed in national
and global networks of commodities and cash. They grew food and made
household goods, to be sure, but they also grew export crops that were bought
and sold by licensed speculators who then traded them at the country’s major
port towns. Haiti’s marginal and dependent position in the world system
made peasant farmers vulnerable to changes in global demand, price fluctu-
ations, and competition from other agricultural zones. This was problematic
enough, but it was compounded by the internal relationship between peas-
ant producers and merchant traders and the political elite who granted them
exclusive licenses and trade monopolies. As peasant yields reached their limit
in the mid-nineteenth century and then began to diminish, the political and
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Rethinking the Haitian Crisis 35

economic elite—who lived off the profits of the system collected through
monopolies, price fixing, and custom duties—became increasingly preda-
tory. The state played a key role in this process, as political leaders sacrificed
the peasantry in order to uphold their positions of wealth and power.29
The underlying social contradictions of this system spurred repeated con-
flicts and crises in the political arena. The country’s numerically small elite
expanded as the yields from agriculture and other enterprises declined, caus-
ing increased factionalism among the most powerful and wealthy sectors of
society. Although rural revolts were common in the second half of the nine-
teenth century, they rarely, if ever, led to a direct political struggle between
the peasantry and the elite. At the national level, the political crisis remained
a contest between various elite groups who were vying for control of the state
(and who often used rural armies to seize power).30
By the end of the nineteenth century, these crises, which were really social
and political conflicts, had become so commonplace that Haitians and for-
eigners began to see them as evidence of the total breakdown of the proper
functioning of the country’s political institutions. For many Haitian intel-
lectuals, the root cause of this breakdown was authoritarianism, although in
retrospect, authoritarianism was a response to the crisis, not its cause. Author-
itarianism itself was seen as a peculiarly Haitian pathology, and the calls for
reform and remedy invariably appealed to Europe as the model for normal
functioning states.31 Louis Joseph Janvier, for example, criticized the mili-
tarization of political authority and called for the institutionalization of a
civilian public administration.32 By the early twentieth century, some writ-
ers argued that the social, economic, and political divisions in the country
were so entrenched, and that political leaders and merchant elite were prof-
iting so substantially from them, that it was no longer possible for Haitians
to solve the crisis without some sort of foreign intervention.33
The idea that crisis in Haiti is really a political crisis of the state has been
remarkably durable. To be sure, the Haitian state is riddled with problems,
and those problems were made significantly worse by nearly thirty years of
dictatorship followed by a democratic transition characterized by coups and
political violence as much as by elections or government reform. The coun-
try’s difficult transition from dictatorship to democracy has bolstered the idea
that the crisis is located in the state itself. Such an idea is rooted in the rather
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36 greg beckett

recent notion that the nation-state is the primary unit of political order in the
world system, and that the task of any state (whether democratic or not) is
to ensure security and stability within its borders. In recent years, the inabil-
ity of the Haitian government to provide the political goods of security—let
alone infrastructure, economic growth, or just about anything else—has led
political scientists to classify it as endemically weak.34
In contemporary international relations theory, weak states fall along a con-
tinuum that includes normal states on one end and failed states on the other.35
In most cases, weak states are characterized by ethnic, religious, or commu-
nal conflict or by sudden economic decline with a corresponding deflation in
standards of living (as in Argentina in 2002 or Russia in the 1990s). Although
there remains a pervasive schism between the elite and the rural and urban
poor in Haiti, this division has little in common with countries such as
Rwanda or regions such as Northern Ireland, where political institutions
were unable to contain ethnic and religious conflicts in a peaceful manner.
Nor has Haiti suffered a particularly sudden drop in its economy. For inter-
national relations theorists, Haiti is thus an atypical case of a weak state, one
in which persistent poverty has produced a state that is “enduringly frail.”36
Such classifications are problematic for two reasons. First, they are based
on a normative theory of the state according to which the typologies of weak
or failed states are defined in relation to the liberal-democratic states of North
America and Western Europe. The assumption is thus that such states are
abnormal or pathological—that is, that they suffer from internal structural
deficiencies. But those countries that exhibit weak or failed states are usually
the same countries that have been rendered marginal and dependent in the
world system by sustained policies of colonialism, imperialism, and (more
recently) structural adjustment. State weakness and failure are thus often
caused by long-term political and economic relationships within the inter-
national arena. The second problem with such classifications is that they are
used to justify and legitimate international military interventions. At the core
of the state failure paradigm is a realist approach to international relations,
according to which states are the only entities capable of ensuring security
and stability in global politics. Beyond states lies anarchy, and weak or failed
states thus become threats to normal states within the global order because
they could potentially export disorder and insecurity.37
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Rethinking the Haitian Crisis 37

The international response to such disorderly states has been varied, but
in the Haitian case it has involved efforts to contain the crisis through, for
example, the forced repatriation of Haitians fleeing violence and misery.38
The response has also included a range of forms of international interven-
tion, including the following: a sustained humanitarian effort to help allevi-
ate the worst suffering; decades of economic and political policies designed
by the international community to integrate the country more tightly into the
world system; and multiple foreign military interventions.39 The results are
not good. While efforts such as food aid or humanitarian relief have undoubt-
edly saved lives, the cumulative effect of decades of foreign aid and interven-
tion has been devastating. As the crisis has deepened, more intervention has
followed, and it is now impossible to separate the Haitian crisis from the inter-
ventions meant to address it.

Crisis and Intervention

Politicians or other experts often declare a crisis in order to justify a partic-
ular kind of action, for once diagnosed, a crisis calls for a decision of some
kind. Thus, in the wake of a natural disaster, the executive branch of a gov-
ernment can declare an emergency and, in the very process of making such
a proclamation, can give itself extraconstitutional powers. As the political
philosopher Carl Schmitt has famously shown, the ability of a government
to decide on an emergency, or to declare what he called a “state of exception,”
is a constitutive feature of sovereign power.40 Of course, emergencies are not
limited to natural disasters. Indeed, declarations of a state of exception are
more typically used to extend a government’s power during times of social or
political unrest. But in the Haitian case, the power to declare a state of emer-
gency has not been limited to the national government, as both foreign gov-
ernments and international organizations have exercised the sovereign power
to intervene in the face of a pressing crisis.
The paradigmatic case of foreign intervention in Haiti is the military occu-
pation of the country by the United States from 1915 to 1934. The U.S. occu-
pation was hardly the first instance of foreign power interfering in domestic
politics. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, France used exter-
nal debt to exert an influence on national politics, and Germany and England
used gunboat diplomacy to defend their national interests. But the occupation
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38 greg beckett

was the first time since independence that a foreign military invaded and
ruled Haiti. Critics of the occupation have rightly noted that it violated
international law and went against the United States’ own position on self-
determination. Charlemagne Péralte, who led a short-lived revolt against the
U.S. marines, even wrote a letter to the French government in which he char-
acterized the occupation as an illegal and unjust invasion of a recognized inde-
pendent state.41 Although the occupation was clearly part of a wider American
project to extend its military and economic influence throughout the region,
it is nevertheless important to understand the logic by which the United
States justified its own actions. However paradoxical it may sound, the United
States claimed that it was intervening in order to defend Haiti’s right to self-
determination.
The conceptual key to this position is the logic of political emergency.
Haitian politics had been characterized by conflict for several years before
the invasion, as a succession of leaders seized power with the use of personal
armies. This was due to many factors, including regional factionalism, weak
national institutions, and economic decline, all of which contributed to a
political crisis in which control of the state, and especially the office of the
presidency, became the primary means by which elites gained access to wealth
and power. This crisis was of little concern to the United States until President
Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was killed by a mob. Sam was not the first pres-
ident to be killed during the years of crisis, but the conditions surrounding
his death were significantly different. Facing mounting protest and rebellion,
Sam sought refuge at the French legation, although not before he ordered all
political prisoners in the city jail to be executed. When his opponents learned
of the massacre of their family members and loved ones, they stormed the
legation, removed Sam, and killed him in the street.42
Sam’s death left the country without a legitimate government, but this itself
was not the primary concern of the United States. According to Secretary of
State Robert Lansing, the assassination and the lack of a ruling government
were both important, but the crucial element in the decision to intervene was
the fact that Sam had been killed after he sought refuge in the French lega-
tion.43 Thus Sam’s death not only threatened to bring about political insta-
bility but also a military response on the part of the French government,
which might see the incursion into the legation as a violation of its territory
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Rethinking the Haitian Crisis 39

and authority. It was the possibility of a French invasion, more than the pos-
sibility of instability in Haiti, that made intervention, in Lansing’s words, “a
matter of urgent necessity.”44 Necessity is always the key word used to justify
emergency powers. Sam’s death opened up a state of exception that called for
a strong power to intervene and restore order. In Lansing’s view,

The restoration of order and government in Haiti was as clearly the duty of
the Government of the United States as was the landing of the marines. If the
United States had not assumed the responsibility, some other power would.
To permit such action by a European power would have been to abandon the
principles of the Monroe doctrine. The United States had no alternative but
to act, and to act with vigor.45

This same logic is invoked today by the United States, the United Nations,
international financial institutions, and nongovernmental organizations to
justify repeated instances of military and humanitarian intervention in Haiti.
Emergencies caused by state failure, political violence, or natural disasters are
all seen as threats to the stability of the global order, as failed states or disas-
ter zones may become exporters of terrorism, violence, or refugees.46 At the
same time, intervention in the face of emergency has become a central aspect
of global governance, replacing cold war containment policies or colonialism
and imperialism. The declaration of a state of emergency is now widely used
by powerful states to supersede the doctrine of sovereign equality that pre-
vents foreign military incursions in normal times.47
Powerful governments, international agencies, and nongovernmental orga-
nizations now use what Craig Calhoun calls the emergency imaginary to
decide on the necessity of intervention. This paradigm unites a wide range
of phenomena—from catastrophes and natural disasters to ethnic and civil
conflict—under the rubric of emergency.48 The discursive formations and
epistemological foundations of the emergency imaginary bear a striking
resemblance to the conceptual core of crisis discussed above, in which the
crisis is a decisive moment that calls for action. But there is a crucial difference
between the kind of action called forth by the medical crisis and the inter-
national response to emergencies. In the former case, the doctor or expert
intervenes to remove the underlying causes so that the patient may live and
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40 greg beckett

thrive. In the latter case, international organizations intervene to contain and

manage crises in order to defend the stability of the global political and eco-
nomic order.
The rise of the emergency imaginary and the corresponding security par-
adigm have made crises into normal emergencies caused not by problematic
social relations but rather by the complex interactivity of the global system.49
In the face of normal emergencies, systems of risk assessment are used to
determine the probability of disasters or crises and may be used to justify pre-
emptive intervention.50 The international response to normal emergencies
is typically a hybrid of military and humanitarian intervention, making such
interventions a form of biopolitics in which the logics of security and pro-
tection are conflated and the right to intervene in order to protect life itself
is taken as an ethical imperative.51 But what if those who suffer and who live
in the midst of emergencies want to do more than merely live a bare life?
What if they want a response to the underlying conditions that cause them
harm? What if they want to live well, to live a good life? For all the good it
does (and it often does much good), the international emergency paradigm
has a fatal flaw. In concept and action, the emergency paradigm reduces
crises to periodic interruptions in the normal functioning of the world sys-
tem. The response is thus equally geared to the timeframe of urgent but tem-
porary problems. But in many places, and certainly in Haiti, crises are not
abnormal or periodic interruptions. Rather, they are the expression of a gen-
eral condition of human vulnerability, one that cannot be resolved by food
aid, disaster preparedness, or military invasion.

Crisis as Embodied Experience

Writing on the meaning of crisis, Jürgen Habermas notes that “we would not
speak of a crisis, when it is medically a question of life and death, if it were
only a matter of an objective process viewed from the outside, if the patient
were not also subjectively involved in this process. The crisis cannot be sep-
arated from the viewpoint of the one who is undergoing it.”52 Who, though,
is the subject of crisis? When crisis is used as a historical or political category,
it is treated as an objective process that has stricken a country or a nation-
state. This has, in fact, become the standard usage of the concept when talking
about Haiti, and most people inside and outside of the country now regularly
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Rethinking the Haitian Crisis 41

speak of the Haitian crisis in this way. The situation is somewhat different,
however, if we take crisis to be a category of human experience.
Although there are many Kreyòl words that cover the semantic field of the
English term crisis, the most direct translation is the word kriz. Kriz is ety-
mologically related to the same Greek root as is its English counterpart, but
its common meaning is much closer to the French crise, which is typically
used to name an attack or a fit. This is a key difference. In English, the tem-
porality of crisis has become its key feature, and we usually use the term to
name a turning point or a time of intense difficulty. But the French and Kreyòl
terms render crisis as an embodied condition that is rooted in the social and
psychological experience of an individual.
In Haiti, kriz afflicts people who are suffering from loss and trauma,
although it can also be used to name the moment of possession when a
Vodou lwa (spirit) mounts the head of an initiate. In either case, the kriz is
a direct bodily response that is visible to others and that is accompanied by a
loss or reduction of consciousness. Kriz is similar to sezisman (shock), which
is also an emotional reaction to trauma, and both cause such symptoms as
“dizziness, extreme weakness and collapse, and sensory dissociation (tem-
porary blindness and deafness).”53 Kriz is also associated with extreme con-
vulsions and muscular tension and it can result in seizures that cause one’s
body to go rigid and lose all energy and collapse.54 As Paul Brodwin notes,
both sezisman and kriz are “unmediated bodily responses to loss” that leave
one’s body weakened and prone to illness or even instantaneous death.55
When Haitians use the term kriz to refer to a political crisis or the after-
math of a disaster, its meaning carries with it this sense of an unmediated
bodily response to trauma. Kriz are always sudden interruptions in the proper
functioning of one’s body and mind. Although these ruptures can bring about
death on their own, they are more commonly thought of as conditions that
leave one vulnerable to illness or death by other means. This sense of sud-
den rupture and vulnerability is at the core of a set of cultural categories that
Haitians use to talk about suffering and misery. While kriz and sezisman name
individual experiences, there are other forms of embodied suffering that
are clearly social and political, such as gran gou (hunger), lavi chè (expensive
life—referring to the high cost of living), and ensekirite (insecurity).56 As Erica
James has shown in the case of ensekirite, these terms name both a specific
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42 greg beckett

experience, such as hunger, inflation, or political violence, and the general

condition of living amid a constant state of possible crisis and rupture.57 This
general condition is the result of the normalization of vulnerability, risk, and
uncertainty, all of which have ceased to be aberrations and have become
instead regularly occurring and expected aspects of everyday life.
These conditions of extreme uncertainty erode the social foundations of
trust, leaving instead what Anthony Giddens calls ontological insecurity.58
Ontological insecurity is defined most concretely by its opposite, ontologi-
cal security. The latter is both a social and psychological condition in which
individuals have, and feel as though they have, “an autonomy of bodily con-
trol within predictable routines.” It plays a key role in subject formation, as
children learn to move through the world freely with trust and confidence.
Ontological security is an integral aspect of social reproduction, as it is the
primary means through which social practices become routinized in institu-
tions and customs. Ontological insecurity thus threatens the very continuity
of expected and desired forms of social life.59 If crisis is understood as an
embodied experience and as a condition of ontological insecurity, then we
must ask: What are the underlying social conditions that cause it?
Sometimes ontological insecurity is the direct result of political domina-
tion, as it was under the Duvalier regime or under the military junta that ruled
Haiti during the de facto period (1991–94). In both cases, the state, which
ought to be one of the main pillars of social security, turned against the nation
and used violence to kill, expel, and terrorize its citizens. But there is a more
pervasive set of conditions that make rupture routine in Haiti. These condi-
tions have been well documented, and they are well known by those who
must live with insecurity. In Haiti, ontological insecurity is caused by the dis-
location of peasants after the construction of a dam or an industrial park and
by the desperate need to chache lavi, to “look for life” in the crowded slums
of Port-au-Prince or in the cane fields of the Dominican Republic.60 It is also
caused by the illnesses that befall those who become prostitutes so they can
support their families or by fraudulent cooperative banking schemes in which
the poorest members lose their meager but indispensable savings.61 All of
these situations, and many more like them, are commonplace for the inhab-
itants of what foreign journalists so frequently call “the poorest country in
the Western hemisphere.” Could it be that they all have a common basis?
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Rethinking the Haitian Crisis 43

Karen Richman has provided one of the richest accounts of the transfor-
mation of Haitian peasants from agricultural producers to consumers of for-
eign goods and exporters of mobile migrant labor.62 For decades now, the
very reproduction of peasant households has been structurally dependent
on the wages remitted by migrant laborers working overseas. Transnational
migration may be a necessity for many Haitian communities, but it is not
something undertaken lightly, and it has enormous consequences both for
migrants themselves—who make a dangerous journey over the Caribbean
Sea only to take up a precarious life often on the margins of the law—and for
their families. For example, Richman documents a family dispute in which a
migrant named Ti Chini died a painful death from a “sent sickness” that
many attributed to jealous family rivals. Near death, Ti Chini offered a differ-
ent interpretation of his illness. Recounting Ti Chini’s position, Richman
notes that

in the final moments of his life he contends that the evil enemy is not a discrete
person but rather a vast, sorcerous system that turns poor Haitian neighbors
against one another. This system, in which suppliers of mobile labor like Haiti
play an unequal and minor part, seems to reserve its cruelest sentences for
migrants who cross nation-states’ borders to “pursue livelihood.”63

Haitians like Ti Chini experience the world system in a direct and unmedi-
ated way, as something that happens to them. In this sense, hunger, illness,
violence, and death are the concrete ways in which people experience the
effects of abstract systems such as capitalism. Haiti has always been depen-
dent on and marginal to the world system. Decades of structural adjustment
policies have only made the situation worse and the country poorer. Even
today, in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010,
economists, politicians, and development experts continue to promote the
country as a site of cheap, docile, and mobile labor. But this so-called compar-
ative advantage is one of the most devastating outcomes of the underlying
structural contradictions of neoliberal policies. Rural and urban Haitians have
become, like the British farmers and artisans of the nineteenth century, free
in the double sense—free to enter into wage-labor contracts and free from any
other possible means of subsistence except wage labor.64 The complex and
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44 greg beckett

contradictory system of global capitalism produces societies and bodies that

are riddled with crises.65 Kriz, gran gou, ensekirite, and the many other forms
of embodied crisis that cause poor Haitians to suffer are thus the symptoms
of a more general and much more complex and abstract problem, one that is
ultimately located in the unequal social and economic relations of the world
system.

Notes
1. Randolph Starn, “Historians and ‘Crisis,’” Past and Present 52 (August 1971):
4. See also Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (Lon-
don: Fontana Press, 1983), 85.
2. Reinhart Koselleck, Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of
Modern Society (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988); Reinhart Koselleck, The Prac-
tice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts, trans. Todd Samuel
Presner et al. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002). For an extended
discussion of the body politic, see David G. Hale, “Analogy of the Body Politic,” Dic-
tionary of the History of Ideas (2003), 1:68–71.
3. Ulrich Beck, World at Risk, trans. Ciaran Cronin (Cambridge: Polity Press,
2009), 32.
4. Jean-Jacques Honorat, “Social Divisions,” in Haiti’s Future: Views of Twelve
Haitian Leaders, ed. Richard A. Morse (Washington, D.C.: Wilson Center Press,
1988), 22.
5. See Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1982). See also Sibylle Fischer, Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the
Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,
2004); Sidney W. Mintz, Caribbean Transformations (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1989); and Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Pro-
duction of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995).
6. Fischer, Modernity Disavowed; Trouillot, Silencing the Past.
7. Trouillot, Silencing the Past.
8. Fischer, Modernity Disavowed.
9. Susan Buck-Morss, “Hegel and Haiti,” Critical Inquiry 26, no. 4 (2000): 821–
65. See also James Anthony Froude, The English in the West Indies, or The Bow of
Ulysses (New York: Scribner, 1897), and Gordon K. Lewis, Main Currents in Carib-
bean Thought (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).
10. Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races, trans.
Adrian Collins (New York: Howard Fertig, 1967), 48–53.
11. Decades before de Gobineau, Hegel had already dismissed the entire conti-
nent of Africa as irrelevant to world history and had declared African social and
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Rethinking the Haitian Crisis 45

political forms as inherently antimodern because, he argued, Africans were not con-
scious of themselves as historical beings. See Emmanueal Chukwudi Eze, ed., Race
and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1997), 109–49.
12. Thomas Carlyle, Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question (1853), http://
www.newschool.edu. See also Froude, The English in the West Indies.
13. Joan Dayan, “Gothic Naipaul,” Transition 59 (1993): 158–70.
14. Sir Spenser St. John, Hayti, or The Black Republic (London: Smith, Elder,
1884).
15. Le Monitor Haïtien, February 20, 1864. See also Laënnec Hurbon, Le Barbare
Imaginaire (Port-au-Prince: Éditions Henri Deschamps, 1987), 116, and Kate Ram-
sey, “Performances of Prohibition: Law, ‘Superstition,’ and National Modernity in
Haiti” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2002), 239.
16. Ramsey, “Performances of Prohibition,” 239.
17. Ibid., 257n51.
18. For an updated account, see Robert Lawless, Haiti’s Bad Press (Rochester,
Vt.: Schenkman Books, 1992).
19. William W. Newell, “Myths of Voodoo Worship and Child Sacrifice in
Hayti,” Journal of American Folklore 1, no. 1 (April–June 1888): 16–30.
20. Nicholas B. Dirks, “History as a Sign of the Modern,” Public Culture 2, no. 2
(1990): 25–32.
21. Lawrence Harrison, cited in Paul Farmer, The Uses of Haiti, 3rd ed. (Monroe,
Maine: Common Courage Press, 2003), 285.
22. Mats Lundahl, “History as an Obstacle to Change: The Case of Haiti,” Journal
of Interamerican Studies and World Afairs 31, no. 1/2 (Spring–Summer 1989): 1–21.
23. This position changed significantly in the 1920s. See, for example, Jean Price-
Mars, So Spoke the Uncle, trans. Magdaline Shannon (Washington, D.C.: Three Con-
tinents Press, 1983).
24. Joseph Justin, Étude sur les Institutions Haïtiennes (Paris: Augustin Challamel,
1894), 1:9.
25. Thomas Madiou, Histoire d’Haïti, 8 vols. (Port-au-Prince: Éditions Henri
Deschamps, 1991), and Beaubrun Ardouin, Études sur l’Histoire d’Haïti, 11 vols.
(Port-au-Prince: François Dalencour, 1958). See also Catts Presoir, Ernst Trouillot,
and Henock Trouillot, Historiographie d’Haïti (Mexico: Instituto Panamericano de
Geografia e Historia, 1953).
26. See, for example, Justin, Étude sur les Institutions Haïtiennes, vii, where he
decries the constant political coups and revolutions that had become a permanent
fixture of national politics, arguing that it was “no longer the time for revolutions,
but for progress.”
27. For a review of this position, see ibid., 9.
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46 greg beckett

28. See L. J. Marcelin, Haïti, ses guerres civiles, leurs causes, leur consequence futur et
fnal. Moyens d’y mettre fn et de placer la Nation dans la voie du progrès et de la civiliza-
tion (Paris: Arthur Rousseau, 1892). See also Mintz, Caribbean Transformations;
and Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Haiti, State against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of
Duvalierism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990).
29. See Robert Fatton Jr., Haiti’s Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to
Democracy (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Reiner, 2002); Honorat, “Social Divisions,” 23;
Justin, Étude sur les Institutions Haïtiennes; Jean Luc, Structures économiques et lutte
nationale populaire en Haïti (Montreal: Éditions Nouvelle Optique, 1976); Trouil-
lot, Haiti, State against Nation; and Stenio Vincent, En Posant Les Jalons, vol. 1 (Port-
au-Prince: L’Imprimeur II, 1939).
30. On rural revolts, see Roger Gaillard, Le République Exterminatrice, vol. 1, Le
Cacoisme Bourgeois Contre Salnave (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Le Natal, 2003);
David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour and National Independence
in Haiti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); and Mimi Sheller, Democ-
racy after Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Radicalism in Haiti and Jamaica (Lon-
don: Macmillan Education, 2000). See also Pierre-Raymond Dumas, “Legitimizing
Politics,” in Haiti’s Future: Views of Twelve Haitian Leaders, ed. Richard A. Morse
(Washington, D.C.: Wilson Center Press, 1988), 13–20; Justin, Étude sur les Institu-
tions Haïtiennes, 13; and Vincent, En Posant Les Jalons.
31. See Léon Audain, Étude Sociale: Le mal d’Haïti, ses causes et son traitement
(Port-au-Prince: J. Verrollot, 1908); Mark Baker Bird, The Republic of Hayti and Its
Struggles (New York, 1869); L. J. Marcelin, Haïti, ses guerres civiles; and Vincent, En
Posant Les Jalons.
32. See Louis Joseph Janvier, Du Gouvernement Civil en Haïti (Lille: Le Bigot
Frères, 1905). For a critique of this position, and a defense of the militarization of
politics in Haiti, see Frédéric Marcelin, Au Gré du Souvenir (Paris: Augustin Chal-
lamel, 1913).
33. See, for example, Audain, Étude Sociale.
34. Robert Rotberg, “The Failure and Collapse of Nation-States: Breakdown,
Prevention, and Repair,” in When States Fail: Causes and Consequences, ed. Robert
Rotberg (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), 1–45. See also Maryle
Gélin-Adams and David M. Malone, “Haiti: A Case of Endemic Weakness,” in State
Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror, ed. Robert Rotberg (Washington, D.C.:
Brookings Institute Press, 2003), 287–304.
35. Rotberg, “Failure and Collapse.”
36. Ibid., 19.
37. Nelson Kasfir, “Domestic Anarchy, Security Dilemmas, and Violent Preda-
tion: Causes of Failure,” in When States Fail: Causes and Consequences, ed. Robert Rot-
berg (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), 53–76. See also I. William
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Rethinking the Haitian Crisis 47

Zartman, Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority

(Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Reiner, 1995).
38. For a discussion of the U.S. government’s response to Haitian migration, see
Alex Stepick, “Haitian Boat People: A Study in the Conflicting Forces Shaping U.S.
Immigration Policy,” Law and Contemporary Problems 45, no. 2 (1982): 163–96; Alex
Stepick, “The New Haitian Exodus: The Flight from Terror and Poverty,” Caribbean
Review 11, no. 1 (1982): 14–17, 55–57; and Alex Stepick, “Roots of Haitian Migra-
tion,” in Haiti: Today and Tomorrow, ed. Albert Valdman and Charles Foster (Lan-
ham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984), 337–49.
39. The most recent intervention began in 2004, when a coup d’etat against Aris-
tide’s government prompted U.S. political scientists and policy makers to revise
Haiti’s designation from weak to failed state. See Greg Beckett, “Phantom Power:
Notes on Provisionality in Haiti,” in Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency, ed.
John D. Kelly, Beatrice Jauregui, Sean T. Mitchell, and Jeremy Walton (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2010), 39–51.
40. Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty,
trans. George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). See also Gior-
gio Agamben, State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2005).
41. Charlemagne Péralte, “Against the Yankees: Lettre,” in Libète: A Haiti Anthol-
ogy, eds. Charles Arthur and Michael Dash, trans. David Nicholls (Princeton, N.J.:
Markus Wiener, 1999), 221–22.
42. For a general discussion of the death of Sam and the U.S. occupation, see
Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934 (New Brunswick,
N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1971).
43. Robert Lansing, “Letter to Senator Medill McCormick, May 4, 1922,” in
Inquiry into Occupation and Administration of Haiti and Santo Domingo, Hearings
before a Select Committee on Haiti and Santo Domingo, United States Senate 67th
Congress, S. res 112 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1922), 1:31.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. See, for example, P. H. Liotta and F. Miskel, “Redrawing the Map of the
Future,” World Policy Journal 21, no. 1 (2004): 15–21.
47. Craig Calhoun, “A World of Emergencies: Fear, Intervention, and the Limits
of the Cosmopolitan Order,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 41, no. 4
(2004): 373–95. See also Beckett, “Phantom Power”; and Didier Fassin and Mariella
Pandolfi, eds., Contemporary States of Emergency: The Politics of Military and Human-
itarian Interventions (New York: Zone Books, 2010).
48. Calhoun, “World of Emergencies.”
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48 greg beckett

49. For a related discussion, see Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with
High-Risk Technologies (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999).
50. Beck, World at Risk.
51. Didier Fassin and Mariella Pandolfi, “Introduction: Military and Humanitar-
ian Government in the Age of Intervention,” in Fassin and Pandolfi, Contemporary
States of Emergency, 9–25.
52. Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), 1.
53. Paul Brodwin, Medicine and Morality in Haiti: The Context of Healing Power
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 87. See also Paul Farmer, “Bad
Blood, Spoiled Milk: Bodily Fluids as Moral Barometers in Rural Haiti,” American
Ethnologist 15, no. 1 (1988): 62–83.
54. See Jeanne Philippe and Jean B. Romain, “Indisposition in Haiti,” Social Sci-
ence and Medicine 13B (1979): 129–33; and Brodwin, Medicine and Morality in
Haiti, 210n18.
55. Brodwin, Medicine and Morality in Haiti, 101, 210n17.
56. See Beverly Bell, “Introduction: The Women of Millet Mountain,” in Walking
on Fire: Haitian Women’s Stories of Survival and Resistance, ed. Beverly Bell (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001), 1–22; Paul Farmer, Aids and Accusation: Haiti
and the Geography of Blame, new ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2006); Michel Hector, Crises et Mouvements Populaires en Haïti, 2nd ed. (Port-au-
Prince: Presses Nationales d’Haïti, 2006); Erica Caple James, “Haunting Ghosts:
Madness, Gender, and Enserkirite in Haiti in the Democratic Era,” in Postcolonial
Disorders: Refections on Subjectivity in the Contemporary World, ed. Mary-Jo DelVec-
chio Good, Sandra Teresa Hyde, Sarah Pinto, and Bryan J. Good (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 2008), 132–56; and Drexel Woodson, “Lanmanjay, Food
Security, Sécurité Alimentaire: A Lesson in Communication from BARA’s Mixed
Methods Approach to Baseline Research in Haiti, 1994–1996,” Culture and Agricul-
ture 19, no. 3 (1997): 108–22.
57. James, “Haunting Ghosts.”
58. Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1984). See also Erica Caple James, Democratic Insecurities: Violence,
Trauma, and Intervention in Haiti (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).
59. Giddens, Constitution of Society, 50, 61.
60. Farmer, Aids and Accusation. See also Samuel Martinez, Decency and Excess:
Global Aspirations and Material Deprivation on a Caribbean Sugar Plantation (Boul-
der, Colo.: Paradigm Press, 2007), and Karen E. Richman, Migration and Vodou
(Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2005).
61. Farmer, Aids and Accusation; Kai Erikson, A New Species of Trouble: The Human
Experience of Modern Disasters (New York: Norton, 1995).
62. Richman, Migration and Vodou.
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Rethinking the Haitian Crisis 49

63. Ibid., 266.

64. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, trans. Ben Fowkes (Lon-
don: Penguin Books, 1976), 1:874.
65. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, Lifeworld and
System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1987).
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Remembering Charlemagne
Péralte and His Defense of
Haiti’s Revolution
Yveline Alexis

T he United States government illegally occupied the sovereign nation of

Haiti from 1915 to 1934. While U.S. presidents and marines promoted
this act as an intervention and a humanitarian gesture toward their neighbor,
Haitian nationalists such as Charlemagne Péralte interpreted the U.S. pres-
ence as a war of conquest. For Péralte, the idea of an occupied Haiti was an
affront to the nation’s sovereignty. Thus, in his efforts to protect the nation,
he turned to Haiti’s revolutionary past. Using the memory of Haiti’s rebellious
origins as a strategic ideological weapon, Péralte deployed this method in
warnings to the U.S. occupiers and as inspiration for Haitians to defend their
revolution. From 1915 until his assassination in 1919, Péralte directed a revolt
against the occupation. His actions had repercussions in the early twentieth
century and remain significant in twenty-first-century Haiti.
As one Haitian expressed most recently, “The memory of Charlemagne
Péralte reigns high.” In 2004, during Haiti’s celebration of its bicentennial, sol-
diers from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH)
arrived to the island and remain there today. During these years, Haitians
resurrected the memory of Péralte as a symbol of resistance. Here I engage
the themes of occupation, resistance, and historical memory in my examina-
tion of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Haitian and U.S relations. Draw-
ing on archival sources and oral histories conducted in both nations, I look
at Péralte’s use of historical memory in resisting the U.S. occupation of Haiti
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52 yveline alexis

in 1915 and the memory of Péralte’s resistance in present-day U.N.-occupied

Haiti. I argue that the assassination of Péralte and his subsequent historical
marginalization demonstrate how revolutionary his acts were in the twenti-
eth century. Furthermore, the reimagining of Péralte among Haitians on the
island attests to his revolutionary appeal in the twenty-first century.

Silencing Haiti’s Resistance Narratives

Polyné begins The Idea of Haiti with a provocative question: “Why is Haiti
the exceptional case in the Americas, and perhaps globally to be feared and
to be a foil?” From a variety of disciplines, the scholars in this volume offer
equally provocative responses to this enduring question about Haiti’s past
and present. Here, I look at this concept of fear via a historical approach that
examines Haitian and U.S. diplomacy. I argue that from the age of revolutions
through the U.S. occupation of Haiti, various individuals in the United States,
including slaveholders, politicians, and soldiers, promoted an idea of Haiti
as a feared—and later, failed—republic. Haiti became a danger to the United
States once President Jean Jacques Dessalines declared the nation indepen-
dent in 1804, and it remained a danger thanks to the nationalist rhetoric and
actions of individuals like Charlemagne Péralte in the twentieth century.
Michel Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of His-
tory interrogates this global angst that Haiti’s revolution generated in 1804
and centuries afterward. In this collection, both Nesbitt and Beckett’s works
offer key reflections on Trouillot’s seminal thesis about the recording and dis-
seminating of this unthinkable history. The parallels between the silencing
of Haiti’s revolution and the figurative burial of Péralte’s resistance move-
ment in the histories reveal a striking trend. Though occurring in different
eras, both moments were rendered invisible and nonrevolutionary, and were
viewed as failures.
Examples from both periods document the creation of the idea of Haiti
and Haitians as an other. Immediately after Haiti’s declaration of sovereignty,
U.S. vice president Thomas Jefferson concocted an ideology of fear. He used
the Haitian revolution as an example to caution against abolition in the
United States. Print culture also spreads this cautionary tale: U.S. newspa-
pers decried Haiti’s revolution as a massacre by brigands and cannibals, a
bloodbath that victimized French slaveholders and colonial administrators.
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Remembering Charlemagne Péralte 53

The aspect of the Haitian revolution that was a battle against slavery and for
freedom became constructed as a display of savagery and barbarianism. The
delayed acknowledgment of Haiti’s independence by France and the United
States, and the reparations paid to the French by Haitians, set up power sys-
tems that grossly marginalized Haiti and succeeded in promoting the myth
of the nation as an other. Indeed, the surveillance of Haiti by officials in the
U.S. government since its revolution gave way to the latter’s illegal occupa-
tion of the island in 1915. An examination of marines’ correspondence dur-
ing the occupation finds similar tactics in depicting these twentieth-century
Haitian resistors as the new brigands and cannibals. The marines routinely
labeled Péralte as a bandit-rebel and dismissed his revolt as apolitical and
disorganized.
These deliberate efforts in portraying both moments as nonevents serve a
contrary purpose, as it underscores their very significance.1 The twelve-year
revolt in Saint Domingue from 1791 to 1803 disrupted the key foundation of
the Atlantic—the institution of slavery—and catapulted the island onto the
world stage. Haiti’s black republic joined the independence victories of France
and the United States during this age of revolution. And in his efforts to pro-
mote and preserve this victory, Haiti’s first president, Jean Jacques Dessalines,
routinely declared, “Haiti is for Haitians” and precluded foreign ownership of
Haitian lands. Péralte upheld this Haitian nationalism in his four-year revolt
against the occupation. In doing so, he disrupted the myth of Haitians as
barbaric and uncivilized. Through his nonviolent methods of petitioning
American and French ambassadors for the occupation’s end, Péralte shed
light on the fallacies of U.S. democratic policies in Haiti. In an interesting
manner, Péralte became Dessalines’s twentieth-century successor and con-
tinued Haiti’s revolution. When the occupation continued despite persistent
nonviolent protest, Péralte became violent. The same goals of liberté, égalité,
and fraternité applied as Péralte’s fought marines for Haiti’s sovereignty.

Resisting the U.S. Occupation of Haiti, 1915–19

Days after 300 U.S. marines disembarked in Haiti on July 28, 1915, Haitian
resistance commenced. Haitians from across class, color, and educational
lines waged private, public, individual, and collective struggles against the
marines for the duration of the nineteen-year occupation. Several U.S. policies
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54 yveline alexis

on the island fueled these fires of resistance. Within the first three years of
the occupation, the U.S. administrators neutralized the Haitian state politi-
cally and economically.2 First, they selected Haiti’s president, Philippe Sudre
Dartiguenave, who, under the threats of the marines, became a puppet of the
U.S. occupiers. Second, they negotiated the treaty of 1915, which reduced
Haiti to a protectorate status. Third, they authored the nation’s 1918 consti-
tution, which revoked Dessalines’s clause that precluded foreign ownership of
Haitian lands. Haiti could now cede territory, but only to Americans. These
conditions, along with many other grievances, stirred Péralte’s revolt against
the occupation.
Péralte was a political man who at the time of the U.S. arrival to Haiti
served as a commandant d’arondissement. This post, the equivalent of mayor,
provided Péralte with access to a wide spectrum of the Haitian population.
He used his position to publish accounts in Haiti’s newspapers that were con-
trary to the occupation and that appealed for its end. At first, Péralte’s protest
was aggressive but nonviolent. He urged the occupiers to “leave with God,”
and he reminded the marines of Haiti’s rebellious origins:

In the presence of this great danger which menaces and threatens to crush our
black and yellow Republic, of which all Haitians are rightly proud. . . . It is not
the work of 1804, of Dessalines, Petion, etc. and so many other brave souls,
that we must smash, or cause to be smashed.
For too long a time we have worked alas to have this terrible catastrophe
fall upon us. It is again the time. There are some men, some well-meaning souls
capable of defending the soil of our ancestors. To be sure, we shall not permit
the insulting strangers to step on us like they are our masters.3

Péralte’s actions marked him as a threat against the occupation, and thus the
marines sought to silence him through imprisonment. Before leaving his posi-
tion, Péralte addressed the populace in the following letter dated August 30,
1915, in which he argued that in fact he was being removed from his post.

My dear compatriots, I would be lacking in high moral duty if I were to remain

cold and insensitive to your sobbing hearts, to so many tears that you have
shed over my removal, and so I say, that I testify loudly and publicly as to my
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Remembering Charlemagne Péralte 55

gratitude before so much sympathy and the many acts of kindness that you
have displayed towards me under these remarkable circumstance.4

The marines’ plan to curb Péralte’s influence against the occupation backfired.
Péralte began serving his prison term at a jail in Cap Haiiten and used his
time to further recruit guerrilla fighters, known as cacos. In fact, when Péralte
escaped from the prison in September 1918, it was due in part to prison
guards who were also cacos.
In his leadership of the group, Péralte used Haiti’s revolutionary history
to appeal the people to join the movement and urged Haitians to uphold the
mission of their forebears:

Haitians, the day like the 1st of January 1804 will soon rise. Since 4 years the
occupation insults us in every way: every morning brings us a new sadness. . . .
Haitians, let us be firm: let us follow the example of Belgium. No matter if our
towns are burned. For it is not a vain thought that was written on the grave of
the great Dessalines: “Upon the first shot the towns disappear and the nation
rises.”5

Péralte’s methods worked: that year, 1918, the cacos and marines engaged in
over a hundred battles. Although the marines downplayed the actions of guer-
rilla fighters as bandit raids with no political or military significance, the fre-
quency of their telegrams to the U.S. state department challenged this myth.6
Their subsequent plot to assassinate Péralte further illustrates that he and
the cacos posed a formidable threat to the occupying forces.

Hunting Péralte and Dispossessing His Resistance, 1919

On October 31, 1919, the marines reported: “Thirty six bandits were killed
in the district of Grande Rivière the past month. One of whom was Charle-
magne Péralte.” The following comprehensive details about the plot and their
display of Péralte’s body demonstrate the marines’ attempts to hunt down and
dispossess the nationalist fighter.

In the month of August the undersigned arranged with a native named Jean B.
Conzé to affect the capture of Charlemagne Péralte. This man, with a gendarme
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56 yveline alexis

named Jean Edmond Francois, his secretary, and a native called Cherubin
Blot, Commandant, took up their positions at Capois and organized a [cacos]
camp. . . .
The affair appeared to have become known and the undersigned made
a simulated attack on Capois, during which I was supposed to have been
wounded. Charlemagne Péralte with his brother St. Remy Péralte and Ademar
Francismar, Estravil, Papillion with many other chiefs and about 1200 bandits
finally arrived at Capois on Sunday morning, October 26, 1919. . . .
The night of this attack was to be Friday night October 31, 1919 . . . with
our faces blackened, and twenty gendarmes all in old dirty clothes, dressed as
civilians and with one machine gun took up position. . . .
Charlemagne had arranged with General Conzé that after Conzé had cap-
tured Grande Rivière that he, Conzé should send up a detachment of bandits
to come and notify him. . . . So after our first plan was frustrated the following
was decided upon. We would be the detachment that would go and tell Charle-
magne that Conzé had captured Grande Rivière and it would be safe for him
to come down. . . . The Secretary thereupon returned to us and swiftly told me
what Charlemagne had said and that was dangerous as we had to pass six dif-
ferent outposts to get to Charlemagne . . .
The sixth outpost was the immediate guard over Charlemagne. . . . Button
and myself advanced to within fifteen feet of Charlemagne, who was stand-
ing over a fire and was speaking with his woman, when two men halted us
and worked the bolts of their rifles. The undersigned said to Button, all right
and immediately raised his 45 automatic and took deliberate aim and fired at
Charlemagne. . . . The undersigned found Charlemagne’s body shot through
the heart.
It is requested that the reward offered for Charlemagne, plus $1,000 be
given to Mr. Jean B. Conzé, who has performed a wonderful piece of work
in the killing of this man, risking his life every moment that he was in the
hills.7

Péralte and several cacos lay dead; the marines were elated. The soldiers
displayed his body in a town square, photographed him, and later dissemi-
nated pictures of the deceased via aircraft. The hope was that without their
leader, cacos activity would cease. However, Haitian resistance continued
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Remembering Charlemagne Péralte 57

until the end of the occupation in 1934. Furthermore, Haitians at the time
reinterpreted the image of Péralte’s assassination as a symbol of his mar-
tyrdom. This reimaging of Péralte as one of the nation’s beloved sons who
sacrificed his life in defending the nation remains in twenty-first-century
Haiti.

Remembering Péralte’s Defense of

Haiti’s Revolution in the Twenty-first Century
As Haitians celebrated their second century of independence, MINUSTAH
troops arrived to the island in 2004. Immediate objections to this circum-
stance erupted on the island in the form of protest murals, songs, scholarly
works, and rallies. These acts demonstrated that Haitians likened their new
reality to that of their predecessors during the U.S. occupation of Haiti in
1915, although with a few differences. In the early twentieth century, the for-
eign officers were white American men; now Haitians shared similar racial
and cultural backgrounds as MINUSTAH recruited soldiers from countries
in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Then, the Haitian government
of Vilbrun Guillaume Sam had collapsed in a bloody turmoil; now, Haitians
questioned whether the United States had orchestrated the exile of President
Jean Bertrand Aristide.
Elected by those who believed in his practice of liberation theology
(adapted to Haiti as the Ti Legliz movement), the Catholic priest first
assumed power in 1991. During his early years in office, President Aristide
launched attacks against Haiti’s army and elite, as well as against the United
States. The sermon below documents Aristide’s manner to incite protests
against these individuals:

All powerful God, we are little before you, we do not identify with the impe-
rialist Americans, neither a Macoutes amongst us. We endure the blood, we
are destroyed but you are one whom we understand and who can help us feel
liberated of our sins and capable of freeing our country of the imperialist
impression that suffocates us.
All powerful God we incite a united march under the voice of anti-imperi-
alism that can bring a grand revolution of love, of integral liberation, in the
name of Jesus who walks with us always.
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58 yveline alexis

These overt criticisms often landed the president in trouble, culminating in

a coup d’état in 1991 that barred him from rule in Haiti until 1994. Thus, in
2004, Haitians questioned whether Aristide’s “involuntary” departure was a
repeat of 1991 or a resurgence of an imposed foreign occupation.
It became clear that Haitians accepted the latter explanation and ques-
tioned MINUSTAH’s supervision of the nation during its 200th anniver-
sary. The memory of Charlemagne Péralte immediately became embroiled
in their protest. Interlacing history and nationalism, Haitians recalled Péralte’s
actions of the early twentieth century to demonstrate against the state of
affairs in the twenty-first. A mural in the nation’s capital during this time put
the iconic Péralte on a par with one of the revolutionary fathers, Toussaint
Louverture. Interviews conducted in Haiti revealed corresponding senti-
ments. One individual described the cacos leader as “President Péralte, a very
highly respectable and respected person [who] is part of the soul of Haiti.”8
Equating the presence of MINUSTAH to a form of a military occupation, one
Haitian emphasized that within Haiti’s present condition, the “soul of Péralte
will be living . . . as an emblem of freedom and national resistance.” Many
people felt insulted by MINUSTAH’s supervision of Haiti and responded by
reflecting on Péralte.
The following are excerpts from interviews of Haitians from varying dis-
ciplines, age groups, classes, and regions in Haiti who shared their views on
Charlemagne Péralte’s significance to the nation’s history and present state in
the twenty-first century.9 In all of the interviews, it became clear that Péralte’s
methods of defending the nation through the use of historical memory suc-
ceeded. In a telling manner, the interviewees precisely recalled the memory
of Péralte’s acts for Haiti in articulating their sentiments for Haiti to retain
its independence in the twenty-first century.
One professor possessed a solid command of the topic and provided an
in-depth history of the cacos’ origins:

First thing is that they are people who had been resisting the military occupa-
tions of Haiti. But there is more behind this cacos because the cacos did not
appear with the American military occupation. They had been here before,
since the nineteenth century, mainly mid-nineteenth century and their exis-
tence is related to, how can I put it, the birth of what we can call the peasantry,
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Remembering Charlemagne Péralte 59

the Haitian peasantry. It was the time when the peasants or the people from
the rural area, from the hinterlands, had been trying to affirm themselves as
social partners, as having rights.

He continued: “They were mostly black while those people from the south
and the west, the new collaborationists, were mostly mulattoes. It is a seri-
ous change. That is why I think the rebellion of Charlemagne Péralte is sig-
nificant.” The cacos’ unified demand for equal rights was a menace because
it featured diverse collaborations. The professor praised the cacos leader as
“President Péralte” and referred to him as one of the founding fathers who was
now a “hope bearer for a new society.” He actually felt insulted by my query
about Jean Baptist Conzé, asserting, “I know about Conzé as a traitor. . . . He
died the same day that he committed treason against the nation, not only
against Péralte, against the nation.” He concluded that Péralte’s legacy remains
alive today. Equating the current MINUSTAH supervision to a form of mil-
itary occupation, it is here that the professor stated that in Haiti’s present
condition, “Charlemagne Péralte reigns well.” He appeared convinced that
individuals who uphold Péralte’s tradition of resistance would rise to combat
Haiti’s present twenty-first-century state.
A student from the Université d’Etat d’Haiti indicated to me Péralte’s story
seems reserved for the educated class and for peasants who still praise Péralte’s
acknowledgment of their plight. With dismay, he alleged that Haitians “know
of Petion, Dessalines, and other persons like that. [However,] not everyone
knows what Charlemagne Péralte did in battle for the country.”10 He attrib-
uted his knowledge of Péralte to his family, specifically those who were alive
during the occupation. Additionally, he was from Péralte’s hometown of
Hinche, which explained his keen awareness of the details surrounding
Péralte’s political agenda, arrest, and later assassination. His view of Péralte
was also lofty: he called him a “grand Haitian, a man who was serious, who
cared about the affairs and [the] misery the people experienced in order to
start a revolution to end the oppressive system.”
When I inquired about Haitian presidents who revived Péralte’s memory,
he mentioned Aristide and shared how the former president would say, “We
will do what Péralte demanded.” He also noted that celebrations for Péralte
drew to an end once Aristide endured his first exile, commenting, “You find
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60 yveline alexis

then that defiance, it started to go down, be diminished, started losing its

value.” An interview I conducted with an artist fleshed this point out further.
According to this man, a drummer, after Aristide’s exile, Aristide abandoned
his rhetoric about the more militant Péralte in order to praise the more diplo-
matic Toussaint Louverture. Below is his extensive speculation about the
reason for this change.

Well, once upon a time, when Aristide was president, he would speak of Péralte
a lot. We walk the testimony of Charlemagne Péralte that is how he used to
talk. However, he endured a coup d’état and was exiled. When he returned, he
did not speak of Péralte; he started speaking of Toussaint Louverture.
I do not know if it is the works of the Americans, what they did to his spirit
to have him return but during his first time, he use to speak of Péralte a lot.
During this second time, he never spoke of Péralte; he spoke of Louverture.
Hence Péralte put a warning in Americans’ heads and Americans do not like
when you speak of Péralte. They probably said if we return you to the island,
you have to cease speaking of Péralte and that is it. That is the way it is, he
wanted to return to Haiti. Once upon a time, he also spoke badly of the Amer-
icans but when he came back, he did not speak badly of them at all.11

The drummer expressed that Péralte and allies organized the cacos because
an “occupation is never sweet,” and he emphasized how the acts of “violence,
rape, [and] thievery” against Haitians inspired their movement. He com-
mended Péralte as being a unique “child of Haiti” whose citizens should
applaud his choice to die for Haiti. “It is not every Haitian who will lead this
fight. He chose this route and paid for it. You have to respect it,” he argued
with overt pride. Our interview continued with several of his rhetorical
queries:

How are you living in Haiti, [and] you call a street Martin Luther King? You
can call it Martin Luther King? This is a joke. But the street named after John
Brown, what is this? You have Péralte, a lot of heroes here who did a lot of
work. You cannot tell me you have a street named John Paul II.
How can you have a street named John Paul II, why did they not call it
Benoit Batraville? [Haitians probably devoted a street for the Pope’s role in
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Remembering Charlemagne Péralte 61

denouncing the Duvalier regime in 1983.] Speak of them, those men! But John
Paul II, you cannot tell me this. I do not live in Italy. What work did they do
in or for Haiti? The people here are walking on their heads, not on their feet,
meaning those who came to do them wrong, they are the ones they honor.

The last statement is especially relevant. Several streets and statues in Haiti
do celebrate foreign figures, which invites a question: why is Péralte not
memorialized with a national monument in the capital? Ultimately, what
history is nationally promoted, why, and by whom? When asked where
he learned this history, he attributed his consciousness to his Vodou faith,
which he opined Péralte also practiced. “When you speak of Charlemagne
Péralte, Benoit Batraville, all of them were Vodou practitioners, not men of
the Church. In Vodou circles you will always hear wind of these men and
their past.”
The community activist possessed a reservoir of knowledge about the
occupation and Péralte. With enthusiastic ardor, he narrated the stories of
this “great man,” who had the “courage of a nationalist.”12 In his opinion,
Péralte’s decision to command a following to refute the occupation resulted
in his sacrifice of his chance to rise as a future president, and more impor-
tantly marked him as a security threat. According to his description, Péralte,
Batraville, and others were great thinkers who led the cacos in a revolution
against an oppressive system. As leaders, they advised the cacos to exercise
self-control, especially when the marines waged media campaigns that char-
acterized the cacos as bandits and savages. He issued a challenge to writers
of history, who, he argued, falter in their assessments of the cacos. He con-
tended, “They do not give truly how many marines died, they always show
you the other as a way to psychologically hold the population to show the
force was strong. If ten marines died, they would say one, or that there were
just injuries.” He questions that if Péralte were not a significant figure, why
then did the marines decorate the persons who killed him? Despite his per-
ceptive awareness of the facts, he affirmed that he was on a quest to learn
more. He commented on the elders’ role in not transmitting history to his
generation when he stated in a proverbial manner, “I have not yet found
grandparents to explain them to me.” He is hopeful that Péralte’s heroic role
will someday “resonate globally.”
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62 yveline alexis

My interview with a Haitian living in the United States was likewise clar-
ifying. Born two years before the occupation’s end, he confessed to not pos-
sessing a firm memory of the period. However, he often heard it referenced
because his father had served as a senator under President Sténio Vincent.
When I asked whether his family supported the occupation, he remarked, “It
was difficult. It was hard to decide because Haiti had a lot of disorders in 1915.
Thus, they had diverse opinions. But my father was not in accord with the
principal behind the occupation because my father was a good Haitian, a good
Goinavian.”13 He characterized the cacos as “a group of patriots” and argued
that because of “their reputation, however, they came to have a reputation of
terrorists.” When asked how he became exposed to the history of the occu-
pation, he responded genuinely:

I will tell you frankly, I am not a historian. I have lived a long time but I am not
a historian. There are a number of details that I cannot provide you. . . . The
history of Haiti, I learned ever since I was small. I was educated at St. Louis
Gonzague. . . . But even then I knew the history of the cacos. Do not forget the
history of Haiti. We have a tradition, mouth to mouth, because we are descen-
dants of Africa.

When I asked whether the ideology of the cacos remains in Haiti, he

responded:

A lot. I think the ideology continues to exist. I am not in politics but I can say,
bald-headed, that the majority of Haitians are not happy with the occupation.
But in the meantime, they need the whites for the reason that Haiti reached a
stage where it produces nothing. It is [NGOs,] people like those that are help-
ing them survive. But I think Haitians overall are patriots and they do have a
cacos sentiment at home. But the time has changed; there will not be a revolu-
tion like last time with the new modern science. It is very difficult for Haiti to
rise and revolt.

He extolled Péralte as a “great patriot” and justified the cacos’ actions as nec-
essary “because the occupation brought racist white Americans to Haiti.”
Given Benoit Batraville’s leadership of the cacos as well, I asked: “Why do
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Remembering Charlemagne Péralte 63

you think many people hear more about Charlemagne Péralte than Benoit
Batraville?” He responded:

Well, Charlemagne Péralte was more colorful as you say in English, he was a
leader. Benoit Batraville was a leader as well but Péralte created more imagi-
nation in people’s spirit. . . .
Péralte is a very common figure in Haiti’s history and the U.S occupation
in the same manner that Jean Jacques Dessalines was known in 1804. Charle-
magne Péralte is another Dessalines of 1915.

And finally, he offered commentary on the reason for this revival of Péralte:
“Well, I think they want to go back to their roots, like me! See I am seventy-
six, I am getting older, and I like to know where I came from and the history
of Haiti, the history of Haiti is a beautiful history.” He concluded by posing
the dominant question I encountered during my fieldwork: why was Péralte
chosen as the subject of study, given all the other historical figures? Below is
our exchange:

YA: Yes, it is true. I grew up on the history of Jean Jacques Dessalines and Tous-
saint Louverture.
Interviewee: Yes, so you want to appear with a new person?
YA: Well yes, someone new and the U.S. books outside of academia on Charle-
magne Péralte paint him as a bandit or a terrorist as you say.
Interviewee: Yes, what you say is very just! I agree with you for choosing
Charlemagne Péralte, given that Haiti is under the same thing, an occupa-
tion. . . . Yes, Charlemagne Péralte is a symbol for Haiti, a good symbol. Nat-
urally, what Charlemagne Péralte attempted to do in 1915, if we attempted
that now, it would result the same because it is not only the U.S. that occu-
pies Haiti; it is the United Nations. All of these countries, the U.S., Brazil,
Venezuela, Canada, France, oh my.

Conclusion
Despite the attempts to silence Haiti’s past narratives of resistance, Haitians
have challenged the dissemination of these fables. Those who participated
in the Saint Domingue uprising of 1791–1803 created an independent Haiti,
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64 yveline alexis

and since 1804, Haitians have defended their revolution in various ways. The
first president, Dessalines, routinely promoted Haitian nationalism, and as
the last interviewee noted, “Charlemagne Péralte is another Dessalines of
1915.” The present apotheosis of Péralte as a freedom fighter and gatekeeper
of Haiti’s revolution also serves this purpose. There remains a prevailing idea
for Haiti to remain sovereign among Haitians living in the postearthquake and
MINUSTAH-occupied state.
One of Péralte’s descendants shared the following sentiment: “They [the
U.S. occupiers] were scared of Charlemagne because he was brutal, they were
scared. They kept him under key always.”14 His thoughts recall the idea of
Haiti and Haitians as sites of fear, as I discussed in the beginning of this chap-
ter. Haiti’s revolt in 1804 inspired fear because it threatened the political econ-
omy of the time while also challenging myths of racial superiority. In a similar
vein, Péralte’s revolt in 1915 posed a danger to U.S. imperial projects in Latin
America, the Caribbean, and Asian Pacific islands. Péralte’s actions for Haiti,
which ultimately resulted in his untimely death, were revolutionary. Another
relative of Péralte commented on the significance of his role and praised him:
“If we find liberty now, if Haitians find liberty, it is because of Charlemagne
Péralte.”15
In 2004, Haitians drew inspiration from the memory of Péralte’s national-
ist acts when MINUSTAH disembarked on the island. In voicing their objec-
tions to this perceived new occupation, Haitians promoted key moments
in the nation’s history. New murals in the nation’s capital not only depicted
one of the fathers of the republic, Toussaint Louverture, but the artists
also drew a mural of the nation’s flag being tugged at by its citizens on one
side and MINUSTAH on the other. Another mural depicted the image of
Charlemagne Péralte, the hero who some reasoned was denied an oppor-
tunity to be a president of Haiti. These street paintings and their inten-
tional pairings were a strategic and effective protest method. First, they served
to remind Haitians of their history as trailblazers during the age of revo-
lution. It reminded them that they were to be gatekeepers of their revolu-
tionary past and to uphold the work of their forebears, such as Louverture
and Dessalines. Second, the murals also delivered a message to MINUS-
TAH that Haitians were prepared to defend their nation-state against for-
eign intrusion.
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Remembering Charlemagne Péralte 65

As MINUSTAH continues to play a role in Haiti’s affairs, the national pro-

motion of Péralte persists. Understanding Charlemagne Péralte’s defense of
Haiti’s revolution and the enduring resistance against foreign occupation of
the island remains relevant in the reconstruction efforts of postearthquake
Haiti. Then and now, he is still associated with the ongoing fight for the
actualization of Haitians’ progressive desire to achieve equality, justice, and
national sovereignty.

Notes
Alexis thanks her family, mentors at UMass-Amherst, and colleagues in the Critical
Caribbean Studies Initiative at Rutgers. She dedicates this chapter to her nephew,
Calvin Alexis, the emerging generation of Haitian critical thinkers.
1. Michel Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1995).
2. Roger Gaillard, Charlemagne Péralte Le Caco (Port-au-Prince, 1982); Brenda
Gayle Plummer, Haiti and the Great Powers, 1902–1915 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1988); Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti,
1915–1934 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1971).
3. Le Matin, August 2, 1915, and Le Nouvelliste, August 8, 1915.
4. Georges Michel, Charlemagne Péralte and the First American Occupation of
Haiti (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 1996), 70.
5. Charlemagne Péralte, March 14, 1919, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
6. 63rd Company, USMC, Marine Barracks, Port-Au-Prince, Statement in the
Case of Private James F. Deigham, October 17, 1919.
7. From District Commander, Grande Rivière, to Chief of the Gendarmerie
d’Haiti regarding Charlemagne Péralte’s death, November 1, 1919.
8. The quotations that follow, unless otherwise indicated, are from my inter-
view with the professor on July 27, 2007, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
9. The interviews ranged from thirty to forty-five minutes and included a set of
ten to twelve open-ended questions provided in Haitian Kreyòl and English so that
participants had a choice to respond in their language of ease. This open-question
format encouraged participants to freely assert their opinions on the subject man-
ner, which enabled an assessment of their understanding of this history and use of
Péralte by the public. Some of the participants were hesitant about disclosing their
names for publication, so I refer to each based on his or her profession and relation-
ship to Péralte.
10. The quotations that follow, unless otherwise noted, are taken from my inter-
view with the university student, July 17, 2007, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
11. The quotations that follow, unless otherwise noted, are taken from my inter-
view with the drummer, August 4, 2007, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Jean-Bertrand
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66 yveline alexis

Aristide and Christophe Wargny, Aristide: An Autobiography (New York: Orbis,

1993); Alex Dupuy, The Prophet and the Power: Jean Bertrand Aristide and the Inter-
national Community (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); Robert Fatton,
Haiti’s Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democracy (Boulder, Colo.:
Lynne Reiner, 2002).
12. The quotations that follow, unless otherwise noted, are taken from my inter-
view with the community activist, August 18, 2007, in Hinche, Haiti.
13. The quotations are taken from my interview with the radio personality, Miami,
Fla., August 29, 2008.
14. Interview with Péralte’s stepson, August 18, 2007, Hinche, Haiti.
15. Interview with Péralte’s granddaughter, August 18, 2007, Hinche, Haiti.
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pa r t I i

Moun/Demounization
(Person/Dehumanization)
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Haiti
Fantasies of Bare Life

sibylle fischer

C oming home from work one day in 2006, I found my two-year-old son
drawing furiously on a pile of used office paper. “Look, Mami,” he said.
Barely obscured by the childish squiggles, there was the grainy black-and-
white photograph of a male corpse on a muddy road, sullied, naked, with no
head. There were other photos spread across the floor. I gathered the sheets
of paper and took them away, with my son looking at me uncomprehendingly.
Pictures of severed limbs, festering wounds, pigs eating corpses: a human
rights report on Haiti. I cannot remember who might have sent the images
to me, and I have been unable to trace them to their source. No doubt some-
where in the pile of papers was an explanation, something to justify the cir-
culation of these pictures of horror. Would it help to know whom to blame?
And what was the purpose of the pictures? Is this how a claim for human
rights is made, in the grotesque triangulation of a desecrated body of a vic-
tim, an intrepid photographer, and an awed metropolitan reader?
The representation of human life violently reduced to its bare bones,
beings without the accoutrements of context or history, human life as indis-
tinguishable from animal life—what Giorgio Agamben has called nuda vita
(bare life)—raises some serious concerns. This essay is not, I should say from
the outset, an investigation into the operations of global power, the crisis of
legitimacy of the nation-state, or indeed the many philosophical complica-
tions of Agamben’s theory of the state. It is an interrogation of the operations
and effects of a representational mode, a rhetoric, an imagery that has as its
subject just that: the violence that produces bare life.1
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70 sibylle fischer

The example of Haiti is not coincidental. The discourse of Haiti as place

where the ordinary constraints of human society do not apply goes back to
the origins of the state in a slave revolution, which was perceived by French
colonists and most observers abroad not as a political event with political
goals, an event to be understood in the context of the revolutionary age, but
as a matter of bloodshed, rape, and boundless material destruction. The most
circulated and repeated story was that of the insurgents using a white baby
impaled on a bayonet as a standard on their marches, a story for which no
eyewitness account exists and which is only reported as hearsay by a single
French colonist.2 It seems that accounts of that kind prepared the ground for
an imaginary that looks to Haiti to see only this: insurrectional bodies, tor-
tured bodies, bodies in trance. This despite the fact that much of Haitian his-
tory, from the slave uprisings that began in 1791 and the struggles to preserve
independence in a slaveholding Atlantic, to the painstaking contestation of
theories of racial inequality and an anthropology that mistook measurements
of skulls and bones for an account of humanity, is in fact an act of contestation
and an assertion of political subjecthood.3 Haitian intellectuals throughout
the nineteenth century expended enormous effort to defend their country
against the calumnies of outside observers and scientists, but to no avail.
Spencer St. John’s Hayti, or The Black Republic (1884), Hollywood’s zombie
movies (“the living dead”), and innumerable other texts that liberally mix
stories of political violence, travelers’ adventure and sexual exploits, including
Blaire Niles 1926 Black Haiti, Graham Greene’s predictable The Comedians
(1966), and postmodernist Kathy Acker’s outré sexual adventures in Kathy
Goes to Haiti (1978). As Michel-Rolph Trouillot has pointed out, it almost
does not matter whether these texts and films belong to a racist-colonialist
imaginary and simply showcase the triumph of the white narrator’s heroism
and rationality in the face of impenetrable darkness, or instead mean to offer
sympathetic defenses of Haitian eccentricities;4 nor, I would add, whether
they aspire to a post/modern exploration of the constraints of Western self-
hood. In each case, Haiti is returned to the reader as the bare-boned, incom-
prehensible place of unspeakable cruelty and bodily suffering, of the Tontons
Macoutes and “voodoo doctors” and corpses drifting in muddy swimming
pools, a liminal space on the edge of Western civilization without the social
and political practices and taboos that constitute life in Western society.
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Haiti 71

There are a number of important studies of the discourse of Haitian other-

ness and its rhetoric that trace its political, literary, and scholarly ramifications.
These include Laënnec Hurbon’s classic work on the denigration and sup-
pression of Vodou in Le barbare imaginaire, Michael Dash’s Haiti and United
States, and Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s brief programmatic essay “The Odd and
the Ordinary.”5 There is a question, however, that is rarely raised: what is the
appeal of this discourse of deviance? What desire is being satisfied? Clearly
there are economic and strategic interests of the hegemonic powers in the
Atlantic world that are being served. But that does not explain the peculiar
shape this discourse takes at times, and why it keeps returning.

Bare Life
The discourse of grotesque otherness evidently feeds on a number of het-
erogeneous sources and interests and is deeply embedded in the ideologies
of colonialism and racial slavery. It is not my intention here to trace these
complex genealogies; nor do I mean to analyze this discourse in its hetero-
geneity and contradictory repetitiveness. The aspect I will focus on here is
what I call, appropriating Agamben’s term, fantasies of bare life—where I take
bare life to be an emblem of a highly ambivalent attitude toward the bodily
degradation of humans. What happens when we rhetorically, philosophically,
or photographically reduce human beings to their mere physical being, to
their suffering, to their mortality?
In Agamben, bare life and its embodiment, homo sacer, are both a product
and a constitutive element of sovereignty.6 Homo sacer can be killed without
sanction but cannot be sacrificed. As such, homo sacer can be considered “the
originary figure of life taken into the sovereign ban” and as a trace of “the orig-
inary exclusion through which the political dimension was first constituted.”7
Bare life—biological life, animal nature—is outside the political realm, yet
constitutive of it. The sovereign ban is an effect of the sovereign’s right to
decide over life and death.
For Agamben, the history of the Western state is patterned through the
shifting relation between bare life and political life, and an increasing draw-
ing of bare life into the ambit of sovereignty. In a teleological fulfillment of a
potentiality that can be discerned already in ancient Greece and Rome, we
are now witnessing the collapse of the two into each other: politics has turned
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72 sibylle fischer

into biopolitics. “Man has now reached his historical telos and, for a humanity
that has become animal again, there is nothing left but the depoliticization
of human society by means of the unconditional unfolding of the oikonomia,
or the taking of biological life itself as the supreme political (or rather impo-
litical) task.”8 But, and this is indisputably the most controversial aspect of
Agamben’s account, “there is no qualitative difference between our contem-
porary predicament and the first radical instantiation of biopolitics in the
Nazi Death Camps. . . . The camp—as the pure, absolute, and impassable bio-
political space . . .—will appear as the hidden paradigm of the political space
of modernity, whose metamorphoses and disguises we will have to learn to
recognize.”9
In some ways, it is not surprising that Agamben’s thought should have
such wide appeal.10 Agamben is one of the very few thinkers who seems to
be able to give words to what evidently is the most urgent issue in contem-
porary political theory: the dehumanization entailed by the exclusionary
transformation of citizens and political subjects into subjects of management
and control. We might think of the ever increasing number of disenfranchised
migrant workers, or the vast numbers of refugees around the world who end
up in internment camps beyond the reach of any legal rights and protec-
tions; but we can also think of explicitly exclusionary policies such as those
that produced the Guantánamo Bay prison camp, secret CIA prisons in East-
ern Europe, categories like “enemy combatant” or, less overtly violent, “guest
worker.” What more disturbing picture of bare life than José Padilla, shack-
led to a stretcher, his eyes hidden behind huge dark glasses, ears plugged,
shipped thus to the site of dental work?11 Other instances may produce less
moral outrage but still support the overall picture: think of those convicts
in the United States, who, on account of the sexual character of their offense,
are upon their release placed under twenty-four-hour surveillance, barred
from certain public areas and activities, and forbidden to reside in certain
neighborhoods. The law is done with them—they are released from prison—
but they are now subject to the unregulated exercise of power by the state.
For Agamben, these developments cannot be understood in terms of unre-
lated humanitarian crises or quasi-accidental breakdowns of the rule of law.
They are a structural feature of modern geopolitics and need to be addressed
as such.
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Haiti 73

The timeliness and appeal of Agamben’s thought are clear, but there are
questions to be raised as well. Take the very term nuda vita: it is a graphic
term in a way that other terms—say, “biological life” or “mere existence”—
are not.12 It has a representational quality, a certain starkness that no doubt
does a lot to explain the high currency the term has achieved in recent years.
I will have more to say about this rhetorical aspect, but in order to fully
understand it, we need to consider at least briefly the scope of Agamben’s
thought.
There is, in the first instance, a striking geopolitical limitation to an argu-
ment that moves from the Greek polis to Hobbes, the French Revolution, to
Auschwitz. Does colonialism belong to this story? What about slavery? On
the face of it, there have never been more exclusionary strategies than slav-
ery and colonialism, and both slavery and colonial administration could eas-
ily be regarded as instances of murderous biopolitics.13 Yet neither one fits
Agamben’s picture particularly well. It is difficult to see how one could argue
that the slave, at least under the regime of modern racial slavery, relates to the
sovereign in a rapport of exclusionary inclusion. The slave is, first and fore-
most, private property of a master and to that extent not subject to the sov-
ereign ban. The slave may fit the definition of homo sacer as someone who
may be killed without being subjected to a homicide or a sacrifice (and hence
is excluded from both human and divine law); yet as private property, she is
protected from sovereign despotism. The exclusion (or the ban) that under-
lies racial slavery goes much beyond the double exclusion Agamben diag-
noses in bare life.
An interesting instantiation of this problem, and one that is of particu-
lar interest because it provides another perspective on the foundations of
politics in the West, is John Locke’s justification of slavery in chapter 4 of the
Second Treatise on Government (1690). When in the course of a just war a pris-
oner is taken, Locke argues, he has forfeited his life and can be legitimately
enslaved as a way of postponing death. Locke’s argument and language cer-
tainly resonate with that of homo sacer: the slave is the living dead, the one
who has lost his right to life and who has no claim to the legal protections that
the political subject—the Englishman—has. Slavery cannot be a contractual
relationship between master and slave because “no Man can, by agreement,
pass over to another that which he hath no in himself, a Power over his own
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74 sibylle fischer

Life.”14 The master may kill the slave if he resists, but suicide is not permit-
ted. There is then a de facto limitation on the practice of slavery: no one can
contract into slavery. Slavery is a continuation of the state of war; it takes
place in a realm that is not based on contracts, and hence it is outside the polit-
ical realm altogether.
But consider now Locke’s use of the term slavery in the first Treatise on Gov-
ernment, which famously begins: “Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate
of Man, and so directly opposite to the generous Temper and Courage of our
Nation; that ’tis hard to conceive, that an Englishman, much less a Gentleman,
should plead for’t.”15 Here Locke evidently defines slavery in relation to sov-
ereignty—that is, as political slavery. Note too the rhetorical form Locke’s
polemic takes: he begins his attack on Sir Robert Filmer, the author of Patri-
archa (1680) and theorist of absolute power, not with an argument or a state-
ment of principle, but by calling into question his opponent’s patriotism and
class standing. The point of Locke’s opening gambit is not to say that slavery
is wrong, but that slavery must not even be defended by the right sort of
people. It is surprising, then, to find that this same text should contain a jus-
tification of slavery.
The issue partly turns on the meaning and use of the term slavery in Locke’s
text. Few commentators believe that Locke is offering a good-faith argument
about seventeenth-century racial slavery in the Second Treatise.16 His rather
more straightforward and unequivocal approach to the matter in Fundamen-
tal Constitutions for the Government of Carolina (1669) would suggest that the
unequivocal condemnation of slavery in the First Treatise simply does not
refer to racial slavery: “Every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power
and authority over his negro slaves, of what opinion or religion soever.” It
seems clear that we cannot read Locke as if he subsumed racial slavery under
political slavery (as we would have to if we wanted to understand enslaved
Africans as an example of Agamben’s homo sacer).
What we see here is foundational political theory of the Enlightenment
caught in a state of profound disavowal. It seems that the Second Treatise tries
to carve out a space outside of contractual obligations and hence outside the
realm of the state in the Lockian imaginary, yet capable of sustaining legiti-
mate relations of domination within the terms of a theory of the state based
on natural law: the master has complete control over life and death of the
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Haiti 75

slave. Whether or not Locke refers to racial slavery in the Second Treatise is
an interesting question, but ultimately it may not be the most important one.
The key issue is that he creates a place for bare life beyond the reach of the
state. It is this space that then became the realm of racial slavery. What we see
in Locke is a cleavage opening up between two kinds of slavery, one defined
in relation to the sovereign and the other defined in terms of interpersonal
domination. The first relation opens toward the space of the political, where
slavery will be banned. The second opens toward the space of property rela-
tions, where slavery will be admitted. It is in this second space that racial sub-
jugation becomes the key strategy of domination. Ultimately, this cleavage,
which separates politics from race and makes race a nonpolitical issue, became
crucial for the foundation of modern politics in the Atlantic world. But it is
a cleavage that cannot be grasped with the concept of homo sacer. Bare life is
rooted in the Greek polis, not in capitalism’s property relations.
Colonialism poses slightly different problems for Agamben’s theory. For
Agamben, the increasing inclusion of bare life under sovereignty signifies
an increase of power. I would argue that colonial rule is practically always
the state of exception and is tied to weak sovereignty rather than an increase
of power.17 Agamben’s teleological story tracks the somewhat familiar story
of the increasing bureaucratization of Western societies, where the bureau-
cracy is understood as a limitation on classical politics. This does not fit colo-
nial rule, where the genocidal campaign is carried out with the gun, the camp
never was an administrative solution, and bureaucracy never amounts to
government.
Ultimately, I would argue, there is a reductivism that underlies Agam-
ben’s concept of bare life understood merely in relation to the all-powerful
sovereign who draws bare life into his ambit that prevents us not only from
understanding some crucial instantiations of exploitative and exterminatory
politics, such as colonialism or slavery, but instantiations which became foun-
dational for the establishment of politics in the West. At the same time, the
abstract graphicness of the concept of bare life and the lack of contextual
detail in the theory that produces it make it available for a highly ambiguous
fantasy investment. We do not need to get entangled in complexities of his-
torical roots and causes. We can speak of the political catastrophes of the pres-
ent without getting caught in miserly pity and compassion, or a human rights
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76 sibylle fischer

discourse that ultimately only testifies to its own powerlessness. The extremes
of violence of the contemporary state and the degradations imposed on vast
populations can be invoked in the style of Greek tragedy, or the unflinching
realism of those pictures my son had found in my desk.
In Agamben’s thought, bare life is certainly not a figure of fantasy. Yet
the dramatic abstractness of the concept, which treats Auschwitz as the truth
of Western politics, and its heightened rhetoric of life and death, of state of
exception, of sovereign ban, and animalization ultimately create an affective
space where identifications and psychical enjoyment go unchecked. Agam-
ben’s impolitical politics takes place under the sign of death: the corpse, not
in its universal inviolability, but infinitely violable. The problem is that vio-
lence separated from its roots and conditions—suffering, pure and simple,
even when only referenced in philosophical terms—engages us in ways that
no other subject does. Representation of violence creates a certain form of
complicity because it engages psychical structures of attraction–repulsion.
Historical, philosophical, or representational contextualization, the restora-
tion of contingency, and the reflexive awareness of standpoint, by contrast,
work against this complicity. And that is the issue I will pursue in the remain-
der of this essay.

Haiti
Turning the pages in Bruce Gilden’s book of photographs entitled Haiti
(1996) can feel like an assault.18 Animal carcasses, a Port-au-Prince abattoir,
street dogs, a funeral crowd, bodies sweating, bodies covered in dust, bodies
dripping with mud, a body prostrate on the street, a corpse lying unattended,
eyes open, face covered in flies. Gilden gets unbearably close to his subjects.19
In these images, the human body loses its aura, its sense of inviolability. Skin
becomes texturized, sandy, gritty like the surface of a Tapiès painting (figure
4.2). It is the physical closeness of the prison guard or the torturer, not that of
the parent or the lover. The photographer imposes himself, and his subjects
stare right back, not with the collected deep gaze of the fashion model but with
the defiance and mockery of someone who is being intercepted (figure 4.1).
Winner of the 1996 European Publishers’ award for photography, Gilden’s
book has artistic aspirations. This is not news photography. Haiti is a high-
gloss product, and the European Publishers’ award meant publication in six
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Haiti 77

Figure 4.1. Mourners at a cemetery, 1990. Photograph by Bruce Gilden/Magnum

Photos.

languages and wide distribution in Europe and the United States. Although
Gilden’s style belongs to the tradition of street photography of Walker Evans
and Henri Cartier-Bresson (which means, among other things, no staged or
planned pictures) and thus has historical links to documentary photography,
Haiti’s mode of circulation and reception is that of art photography, not of
photojournalism.
As Gilden explained in an 1997 interview with Christine Redmond for the
Irish photography magazine Source, he made his first trip to Haiti in 1984, and
the fifty-six black-and-white photographs that make up the book are the result
of about sixteen three-week trips. The last pictures were taken in 1995.20 His
photographs thus cover the last two years of Jean-Claude Duvalier’s dicta-
torship, dechoukaj (the uprooting of Duvalier’s apparatus of oppression by
acts of popular justice), the violently suppressed elections of 1987, the mil-
itary regimes of Henri Namphy and Prosper Avril, the Aristide elections, the
coup against Aristide, and Aristide’s return to Haiti in 1994. But the reader
does not know this; the photographs have no titles, no captions, no dates. The
only context offered is a brief introductory essay by the British writer Ian
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78 sibylle fischer

Figure 4.2. Flour worker

in La Saline eating lunch,
1984. Photograph by
Bruce Gilden/Magnum
Photos.

Thomson, who in turn composed his text largely by lifting passages out of his
travel narrative Bonjour Blanc, an account of his travels in Haiti in the years
between the fall of Duvalier, 1986 and 1990.21 The text is broken up into two-
or three-sentence paragraphs that alternate between boldface and ordinary
print with no apparent logic, and jump restlessly between the 1791–1804 rev-
olution, the Duvalier regime of the mid-twentieth century, and the present.
In the end, any sense of coherence and narrative is lost. The dominant effect
is that of disorientation.
We could dismiss Gilden’s photographs as another instantiation of the dis-
course of Haiti’s grotesque otherness. What country would not appear bizarre
if you scramble the context sufficiently? The publisher’s publicity office, in
any event, must have decided that that was the way to sell the book. This is
how the short editorial description ends: “Steeped in Voodoo and brutalised
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Haiti 79

by its rulers, [Haiti] is a country where human life is cheap and animals hardly
worthy of life. The unconscious violence that runs through from slaughter-
house to street is chillingly captured in Gilden’s photographs.” Note the play
on opposition and implication: accepting the images of Haitian otherness, we
also accept the idea that we, whoever that may be, are not steeped in religious
ritual, and that Haitians are not brutalized by ad hoc foreign interventions.
In Haiti, politics and religion exist only as a form of devolution. As a reviewer
for the U.K.-based Haiti Support Group says of Gilden’s book, “These visions
seem more exploited than comprehended. The pages are crowded with blind
eyes, skulking dogs and graveyard hysterics. This seems to represent the typ-
ical colonial curio mentality, obscuring Haiti by mystification.”22
Certainly I understand why the reviewer felt that way about Gilden’s pic-
tures. The first time I saw them, my reaction was similar. It does not help that
some of the editorial decisions about the book were evidently dictated by the
expectation that the colonial curio shop sells, and that Haiti is most attractive
if presented as incomprehensible. But the photographs themselves are a dif-
ferent story. I have come to think that they are problematic in a much more
profound way, and that they embody an aesthetics of bare life that is not sim-
ply equivalent with the colonialist clichés of travelers’ narratives and zombie
movies. It is because of their artistic complexity and their reflexive structure
that they offer an opening for a reflection on the difficulty of representing vio-
lence, the rhetoric of bare life, and the moral and political dilemmas that come
with this.
Compare Gilden’s pictures to those of the well-known Brazilian photog-
rapher Sebastião Salgado. Where Salgado offers us a humanist celebration of
the heroism and beauty of the people in sweeping canvasses reminiscent of
nineteenth-century historical paintings, Gilden forces us to look closely. And
what we see is the violability of the body. The photos are taken as if in defi-
ance of any public and private distinction: taken in public, the photos delib-
erately violate their subject’s intimacy. Consider figure 4.1, evidently a picture
of a funeral. The photographer must be crouching right next to the open
grave. No room for piety here.
There is also no space for politics in these crowded pictures—no pub-
lic buildings, no monuments, no political activities recognizable as such.
The production of bare life is the combined effect of certain photographic
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80 sibylle fischer

techniques, such as closeness to the subject and the use of daylight flash, as
well as the editorial decision to erase any reference to the highly politicized,
tumultuous time between 1984 and 1995. The people who make up Haiti are
not political subjects.
Yet the subjects of the photographs do not exist without relation to power.
Take the portrait of a man with his eyes squeezed shut (figure 4.3), two hands
manipulating his head. In the Magnum Web gallery, the caption reads, “Port-
au-Prince. 1995. La Saline. The beating.” With that information, we are likely
to make a connection between the man’s evident discomfort and the soldier’s
shadow in the background. Perhaps it is a U.N. peacekeeper or one of the U.S.
soldiers that brought Aristide back to Haiti in 1994? We would instantly won-
der who did the beating. Anti-Aristide gangs? Pro-Aristide gangs? Foreign
soldiers? The implied story would be a political one. But without a caption,

Figure 4.3. The beating,

La Saline, 1995.
Photograph by Bruce
Gilden/Magnum Photos.
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Haiti 81

a different story emerges. Not knowing that the subject has suffered a beat-
ing, we focus on what seems most disconcerting: a hand on the left, in a latex
glove, pulling the crown of his head in one direction, another hand coming
from the right, pulling his chin in the other. The intention of the gesture is
familiar from the photo studio: to avoid the mug-shot effect, the portraitee is
to tilt his head. But the gesture is broken down here into its components—
two different hands, a pull in opposite directions, and a conflict of intentions
between an uncomfortable subject and a photographer trying to get a good
picture. We might say this amounts to a deconstruction of traditional por-
traiture: it shows not the worth and social standing of a subject who seeks
to immortalize himself, but bodily suffering, the sweat, pain, eyes shut, the
transience of human life and its violability. The putative violence of the beat-
ing becomes the de facto violence of photography. The picture not only shows
bare life; it also shows that without photographic violence, we would never
actually see bare life.
Switching from the language of photography to that of political theory,
we might say that the place of the all-powerful sovereign in these pictures is
occupied by the camera itself. This is certainly the case in figure 4.3, but con-
sider figure 4.1 too. There is the evident hostility by some of the men toward
the photographer. But that is not all. With the sole exception of the little girl,
it is unclear whether the mourners look at the photographer crouched beside
the grave or at the grave itself. In the end, it seems that the camera (and by
extension I who scrutinize this picture) occupies the space of death. Several
other pictures work through this idea: the portrait of a blind man, for instance,
staring unseeingly into the camera, with the shadow of the photographer dis-
tinctly outlined on his canvas shirt, a picture with Foucauldian overtones that
hardly need to be spelled out; or the picture of a man carrying a large joint
of raw meat on his head, taken against the backdrop of a white adobe wall,
with the shadow of the photographer crouching, very distinct on the white
wall, like a predatory beast, and the subject patently unaware of the fact that
his picture is being taken.
The troubling, disturbing ambiguity of Gilden’s photographs is thus a com-
plicated matter. No doubt, there is a certain complicity with a discourse about
Haiti as the grotesque other of Western civilization. What are we to make of
figure 4.2, for instance? The Magnum Web gallery gives us the following
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82 sibylle fischer

caption: “Port-au-Prince. 1984. Flour worker in La Saline eating lunch.” A

fairly mundane scene, it turns out. But without that information, we are more
likely to think of zombies. The radical decontextualization and the erasure
of any political space or historical reference produce a Haiti that is opaque
and incomprehensible: suffering bodies, violent death, zombielike figures, a
world that does not draw a categorical distinction between the life of ani-
mals and of humans, or even between life and death.
The issue is further complicated by the fact that there is a reflexive insight
that it is the camera that produces these pictures: what Gilden’s camera sees
is usually not visible to the bare eye. It is not necessarily Haiti. It all turns on
angles, on shadows, on focus, on composition. The photographer is part of
the picture: as shadow, as hand, as focus of the subject’s gaze. Haitian bare life
is a product of the photographic artifice.
This artistic self-awareness is of course a fairly conventional strategy and
does not necessarily solve the moral and political questions: what does it
mean to say “it is not really Haiti” if the book is titled Haiti? Still, it matters
that this reflexivity is presented as a power relation: the subjects’ gaze is
confrontational, the hand manipulates, the photographer intrudes. Photog-
raphy as interpellation? As performance? We could argue that Gilden’s pic-
tures stage the operations of power on bare life; that they are reenactments
of life in the Global South, and that the decontextualized, depoliticized bod-
ies must not be misunderstood as pertaining to the discourse of exotic oth-
erness. The subjects are imposed upon, cajoled, intercepted; that is the point.
When we speak the language of bare life, we always speak the language of the
sovereign.
But in the end, I wonder whether we can really understand Gilden’s pho-
tographs in terms of a purely cognitivist aesthetics. Is it our desire for knowl-
edge that they satisfy? Do we enjoy them because they make us understand
the operations of power in Haiti? That seems unlikely. I think that its aesthet-
ics of bare life engage us on an affective level that remains deeply ambiguous.
The unsettling subject matter of the photographs and their striking artistic
quality work against each other, with one operating as a limit on the other.
Their stark beauty and artistic power work as a bulwark against a contextual
involvement, be it of the cognitive or humanistic sort. It is not possible to
say that we feel pity for the corpse on the street. The picture does not invite
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Haiti 83

us to ask why he is dead and what killed him. We worry about the flies—what
Barthes in his classic essay on photography called the punctum.23
At the same time, however, their disturbing subject matter works against
any feeling of aesthetic pleasure. Again, the comparison with Salgado might
be useful here: even where the subject is poverty, or a refugee camp, or life
in a favela, Salgado offers us “the people” for our aesthetic pleasure. But how
could we possibly say the picture of the corpse gives us an occasion for
pleasure? If pushed, we might say, at most, that these pictures are technically
sophisticated and the result of a lot of patience and hard work.
Where does that leave us? It is a place of both intense discomfort and
enjoyment, a place where it becomes difficult to know whether our discom-
fort is the result of having seen too much already or of not having seen it all,
or perhaps of having enjoyed something that is really beyond enjoyment. Bare
life becomes a site of what we might call, with Lacan, surplus enjoyment
or jouissance, where pleasure and pain become indistinguishable and where
ultimately a desire for more would turn into an unbearable closeness: sadis-
tic violence.

Notes
1. For recent discussions of the issue of violence and representation, see Donald
L. Donham, “Staring at Suffering: Violence as Subject,” 16–33, Julie Skurski and Fer-
nando Coronil, “Dismembering and Remembering the Nation: The Semantics of
Political Violence in Venezuela,” 83–143, and Allen Feldman, “Violence and Vision:
The Prosthetics and Aesthetics of Terror,” 425–68, all in States of Violence: Politics,
Youth, and Memory in Contemporary Africa, ed. Edna G. Bay and Donald L. Donham
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006). See also Susan Sontag’s classic
On Photography (New York: Picador, 1973) for a critique of Diane Arbus’s photo-
graphs of disabled subjects and a critique of the representation of the pain of others.
2. Jeremy D. Popkin, “Facing Racial Revolution: Captivity Narratives and Iden-
tity in the Saint-Domingue Insurrection,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 36, no. 4 (2003):
520. Popkin offers a nuanced study of eyewitness accounts of the events and argues
that while the captivity narratives allowed for some subtleties of understanding and
(limited) sympathy from the white captives, the contemporary press tended to fol-
low a “rigid ideological formula,” as in the following verses: “But what horde of
rebels Rushes maddened to carnage: In his cruel hands, the Slave Carries torch and
death. Stop, tool of parricide” (514). For an interpretation of nineteenth-century
reactions to the slave revolution, especially among the slaveholding elites in the larger
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84 sibylle fischer

Caribbean, see my Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age
of Revolution (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004).
3. See especially Anténor Firmin, whose De L’Egalité des races humaines: Anthro-
pologie positive, ed. Jean Métellus (1885; reprint, Montreal: Mémoire d’Encrier, 2005),
is not only a measured argument against Gobineau and a rigorous refutation of crani-
ology and related practices deemed scientific at the time, but an attempt to reconsti-
tute anthropology as a holistic, contextual discipline equally devoted to the study of
physical, intellectual, and moral phenomena. Despite the fact that Firmin’s work is in
many ways much closer to twentieth-century anthropology than most of nineteenth-
century European anthropology, his work fell into obscurity while Gobineau’s work
went through innumerable editions. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobbain, “Anténor Firmin: Hait-
ian Pioneer of Anthropology,” American Anthropologist 102, no. 3 (2000): 449–66.
4. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “The Odd and the Ordinary: Haiti, the Caribbean,
and the World,” Cimarrón: New Perspectives on the Caribbean 2, no. 3 (1990): 3–12.
Thanks to Michael Dash for the reference.
5. See Laënnec Hurbon, Le barbare imaginaire (Port-au-Prince: Henri Des-
champs, 1987); Michael Dash, Haiti and the United States: National Stereotypes and
the Literary Imagination (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988); and Michel-Rolph
Trouillot, “The Odd and the Ordinary.” The direct political ramifications of the inter-
national ostracism Haiti was submitted to are analyzed by Brenda Gayle Plummer
in Haiti and the Great Powers, 1902–1915 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1988). Robert Lawless’s Haiti’s Bad Press: Origins, Development, and Conse-
quences (Rochester, N.Y.: Schenckman, 1992) offers a sweeping analysis of the struc-
tures of prejudice in relation to Haiti.
6. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel
Heller-Roazen (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998). For a sympa-
thetic discussion of the ambiguities in the concept of a bare life, see Andrew Norris,
“Giorgio Agamben and the Politics of the Living Dead,” diacritics 30, no. 4 (2000):
38–58.
7. Agamben, Homer Sacer, 83.
8. Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal, trans. Kevin Attell (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 2004), 77.
9. Agamben, Homer Sacer, 123.
10. It surely should count as remarkable, for instance, that one of the most influ-
ential exhibitions of contemporary art in Europe, the Documenta in Kassel, should
this year take place under the heading of three leading questions, one of which is,
“What is bare life?”
11. Front page of the New York Times, December 4, 2006.
12. Nuda vita is a translation of Walter Benjamin’s term das blosse Leben in his
early essay “Toward a Critique of Violence,” Gesammelte Schriften 2, 1:179–203. Like
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Haiti 85

bare in English, bloss in German can mean “mere,” but it is etymologically related to
terms like Bloesse and entbloessen, and hence to the idea of an exposure or vulnera-
bility due to a (limited) nakedness. But bloss is not synonymous with “naked.” By
contrast, nudo in Italian can mean both “mere” and “naked,” thus shifting the weight
toward dramatic, fully exposed nakedness. Note that Cesare Casarino translates nuda
vita as “naked life” rather than “bare life,” thus taking a stance vis-à-vis the ambiguity
of the term in favor of the more dramatic and graphic. Giorgio Agamben, Means
without Ends: Notes on Politics, trans. Cesare Casarino and Vincenzo Binetti (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
13. For a critique of the notion of biopolitics, see Achille Mbembe, “Necropoli-
tics,” Public Culture 15, no. 1 (2003): 11–40.
14. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1988), 285.
15. Ibid., 141.
16. For a discussion, see, e.g., Clarence Sholé Johnson, Cornel West and Philoso-
phy: The Quest for Social Justice (New York: Routledge, 2002), who argues on the
basis of his reading of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding that Locke’s
views on personhood are racialized in a way that the African slave would be excluded
from the circumspect attempt to justify the loss of freedom in the Second Treatise.
See also Julie Ward and Tommy Lott, eds., Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), for a good collection of essays on Enlightenment philos-
ophy and race.
17. We might remember Hannah Arendt’s argument here according to which
violence and power are in fact opposites and the use of violence indicates a lack of
power. Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harvest, 1970).
18. Bruce Gilden, Haiti (Stockport: Dewi Lewis, 1997). Other projects of Gilden’s
include books on New York, the Japanese underworld, and rural Ireland. Thanks to
Javier Guerrero for first calling my attention to Gilden’s Haiti book. Thanks also to
Karen Probasco at Magnum for timely help.
19. Gilden attributes his aesthetics of closeness to Robert Capa, the renowned
photographer of the Spanish civil war and World War II. Gilden cites Capa as say-
ing, “If it’s not good enough, you are not close enough.” Gilden, Source 3, no. 4 (Win-
ter 1997): 10.
20. I was not able to confirm dates and other details because attempts to schedule
an interview with Bruce Gilden did not work out in time for this article. In Magnum’s
Web gallery, Gilden’s pictures of Haiti are supplied with titles, dates, and locations
(http://www.magnumphotos.com). The published book does not contain this infor-
mation. The book also does not arrange the pictures chronologically. If there is a
narrative to the arrangement of the pictures, it would be a story that moves from the
hardships of life, through rituals of death and redemption, to death itself.
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86 sibylle fischer

21. Ian Thomson, Bonjour Blanc: A Journey through Haiti (1992; reprint, Lon-
don: Vintage, 2004). The publisher’s blurb announces it as “an enthralling journey
into the shadowy republic of Haiti. The land of Voodoo, zombies, and the Tontons
Macoutes. In this classic account, history jostles with adventure, high comedy is
touched with danger; and Haiti glows like a magic charm.” The Daily Telegraph is
quoted on the front cover: “Hair-raising but hugely entertaining.” The narrative itself
is journalistic and mostly sympathetic to the plight of Haitians. Still, it is plainly
annoying to read, “The politics of this island [Gonâve] might have derived from
Alice in Wonderland. But this was the comedy that one looked for in Haiti—the com-
edy of the banana skin” (62). Compare this to the praise Thomson’s previous book,
a biography of Primo Levi, received in the New York Times: “Mr. Thomson’s reserve
enables him to deal frankly with Levi’s emotional struggles and personal shortcom-
ings, while avoiding the modern biographer’s overpowering temptations: to treat
his main character as a moral inferior or a patient to be diagnosed.” Antony Grafton,
“Surviving Auschwitz, Surrendering to Despair,” Books of the Times, November 8,
2003. That one could not say about his dealings with Haiti.
22. Haiti Briefng, no. 22, February 1997.
23. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Refections on Photography, trans. Richard
Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982).
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The Violence of Executive Silence

Pat r i c k s y lva i n

Only through words can we know thought—only through thought

can we know words.
— a l l a n S t o e k l , Agonies of the Intellectual

A llan Stoekl’s contribution is crucial to the understanding of the French

intellectuals who contended with, supported, or collaborated with
Nazi Germany, then later agonizingly demonstrated their torments and con-
tradictions through text during and after World War II. Stoekl’s text, Agonies
of the Intellectual is of importance to my work as a social critic because it deals
with the power of language and thought, especially the ways in which the
rhetorician utilizes language. This chapter is far from being a work on textu-
ality and formal rhetoric. However, Stoekl’s analysis of language and violent
usage of it has proven useful in my analysis of speech, particularly the absence
of language as an example of how verbal expression can be used violently. The
French rhetorician can be substituted for the Haitian politician who abuses,
negates, or simply fails to utilize language to express thought during a time
of national crisis. In 2010, the agony of the intellectual was the agony of the
executive, as demonstrated by the president of Haiti, René Préval, as a large
part of his nation crumbled under a powerful earthquake. The leader of any
nation should view language as his most pivotal tool in the arsenal of power.
Once language fails, so does the armory.
The political figure is a rhetorician who holds the responsibility of engag-
ing in discursive acts to influence his constituency in the process of imple-
menting policies, supporting a state vision, or establishing a vision for the
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88 pat r i c k s y lva i n

state. The politician as rhetorician has language as his primary tool, and as
such, his relationship to words is sacrosanct. Inherent in this sacredness
is the communion between the leader and his people, formed at the time of
the democratic electoral process and sustained throughout the duration of
the assumed leadership. Given the rules of protocol and security, as well
as the parameters established for the people to access the executive, lan-
guage becomes the most direct way of communicating. The nation knows
the selected thoughts of the president because they are expressed.
The absence of verbal expression systematically leads to mere interpre-
tation of thoughts and feelings, which in turn often leads to distortion and
misunderstanding. Within a Foucauldian framework, Stoekl reminds us that
“language, transgression, and the sacred . . . are thus intimately linked.”1 Under
no circumstance can the executive remain silent when the nation is palpably
anxious or in crisis, for he possesses a single power: his words. At a time of
national crisis, if language is absent, the collective becomes disenchanted and
fragmented, and the potential to establish and maintain collective subjectiv-
ity fails because the sacred is broken. In the case of Préval, his silence during
the nineteen days that followed the January 12, 2010, earthquake can only be
interpreted as a violation of the sacred trust established between the governed
and the governor—a transgressive act, and thus one of violence.
The politician at the helm of the executive should be the rhetorician who
“can guarantee the containment of the vicious circle of violence purgation
only by himself arbitrarily acting to contain violence in language.”2 Violence
in language, through language, or in the absence of language when language
is needed can only be engaged or contained by the master of the national pul-
pit in which power is seated—the executive. Especially in a democratic sys-
tem, there is no leadership without clear elocution from the executive. As
Heifetz and Linsky remind us, “People grant you power because they expect
you to provide them with a service,” and such service must be a decisive lead-
ership that reduces burden, or at least establishes a positive road map.3

Background and Rationale

The goal of this chapter is to categorically systematize and establish a new
topography of the prevailing effects of the politics of executive silence on the
Haitian people. This chapter serves as an anthropological map that surveys
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The Violence of Executive Silence 89

the speeches of President Préval, his commentaries, his body language, and
the public’s overall response to his executive temperament in order to scaf-
fold and support my theory of structural vulnerability as it pertains to the
existence and national subjectivity of the Haitian body. This chapter also
presents an interdisciplinary body of analysis in order to provide an instruc-
tive theoretical discourse on executive silence-based politics as it relates to a
symptomatic ecology of violence and indifference.
Beyond any reasonable doubt, President Préval cares for Haiti’s welfare. He
is not a sadist, as some of his staunchest critics have publicly pronounced; nor
is he a demagogue who thrives on deceit and false prophecy. On the con-
trary, he is a practical politician who can be considered one of Haiti’s most
astute political strategists. He knows how to win battles but ultimately fails
at winning wars. Unfortunately, the war of trust was a battle that he failed
miserably. In a country fatigued by mismanagement, Préval was once seen
as a practical, reasonable, and politically agreeable person who would bridge
the social and economic chasms wrought by the violent transitional period
(2004–6) that brought about an increase in gang-related activities, the clo-
sure of businesses in the port area of Port-au-Prince, and an overall sociopolit-
ical tension that further divided the political classes. Préval was also assumed
to be a decisive arbitrator who would fulfill his role as a national president sat-
isfactorily and not succumb to the politics of party affiliations or the delivery
of empty rhetoric. His commitment to quash violence and stabilize Haiti was
positively applauded. However, by 2008, after a series of adverse events that
regressed his political progress and downgraded his leadership skills, trust in
Préval began to erode. His legacy quickly became completely consumed by
his handling of the nation in the aftermath of the devastating January 12, 2010,
earthquake.
The materialization of violence often transcends the boundaries of both
physical and verbal violence to become constitutive in the realm of the sym-
bolic, where gestures and nonverbal acts become tragic form of ambiguity
that are associated with political dis/engagement. Although the unanimous
common denominator often lies in the presence of physical violence, sym-
bolic or what I term cerebral violence, is an awareness of the other but with
a contemptuous response, one akin to nihilistic estrangement. For exam-
ple, in a culture of organized crime in Boston, the notion of having a code
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90 pat r i c k s y lva i n

of silence is accepted and widely used because of a fear of replication and

reprisals. According to Kaethe Weingarten, silence “incubates fear, shame
incubates violence, often retaliatory violence.”4 In psychology, when dealing
with trauma, silence in the subject of a traumatic event is seen as a form of
suppression, thus needing intervention; because, as Weingarten reminds us,
having the “ability to reflect on one’s experience is a key capacity that fosters
resilience. It allows one to witness the self and to witness others.”5 However,
silence by an adult who witnesses repeated violence toward a minor is seen
as a direct contributor or enabler of violence due to his abandonment of
accountability for the sake of the common good, civility, and the overall
protection of human rights. The materialization of silence can also be a by-
product of trauma stemming from the application of torture. Idelber Avelar
maintains, “Forced production of utterances during the act of torture may
lead to a trauma that eventually buries the subject into silence altogether.”6
The forced utterances that torture produces are a form of language produc-
tion “so as to manufacture the absence of language.”7 In this case, violence
produces silence, whereas intentional silence lies beyond the meditative pro-
cess of negating language in order to access a deeper level of knowledge. This
acquires a different kind of thought process, and the level of language pro-
duction contrasts that of the negation of language during a time of crisis to
cocoon oneself and one’s position.
In order to deconstruct the intricacies of silence as it pertains to the exec-
utive, one must look at the head of state, who, through the social contract of
the electoral process, holds the normative prowess of assuring the safe con-
tinuity of the nation as mandated by the constitution and the safeguarding
of inalienable rights. Article 148 of the Haitian constitution prescribes that
in the event that the president is temporarily incapacitated, a ministerial
council must preside under the leadership of the prime minister. Given that
President Préval was not incapacitated after the earthquake of 2010, he was
required to fulfill his role as head of state, as mandated by Article 136, which
states that he must serve as the legal guardian of the nation and respectfully
assure the stability of the institutions, the regular functions of the public
spheres of power, and the continuity of the state.
Meditative silence during a time of national crisis is not prescribed, nor is
it ethical in moments of catastrophic challenge. However, it was the primary
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The Violence of Executive Silence 91

recourse chosen by Préval in the days following the earthquake. His re-
sponse, or lack thereof, earned him several sobriquets—devil, alcoholic,
K.K. (kaka)—which were inscribed on walls throughout the capital. Here,
Allan Stoekl’s reading of Jean Paulhan’s rhetorician is apropos: “Ultimately it
is the rhetorician who dictates that the vicious circle of purgation be purged,
that clear communication and judgment based on grammar be restored—and
his power is based on nothing more or nothing less than his blinding author-
ity as a grammarian.”8 It is the executive politician at a time of national crisis
who might bring about hope and restore a sense of collectivity in the nation
through his effective and sensible language. He might efface the potentially
vile rhetoric that would further soil the nation. Instead, Préval did not fulfill
his role as the national rhetorician, and he failed to provide the people with
the grammar of hope, the inspirational language they were looking for. As a
result, he failed to contain violence.
Violence in the Haitian landscape remains amorphous and relatively elu-
sive; poverty and unaccountability have encrusted the cultural and political
landscape, rendering the Haitian physical and human geography structurally
vulnerable. The landscape of indifference is so deeply rooted in the nation’s
history that silence by Haitian executives has created a political culture of
ineptitude and passivity. In 1842, a devastating earthquake that traversed
most of the northern part of Haiti received a delayed response (seventeen
days) by then-president Boyer (1813–43), which led to the political division
of the entire island. Not only did President Boyer belatedly address the needs
of the nation, but also he only focused on the governmental needs of the port
city of Cap-Haïtien at the expense of all the other damaged northern towns.
His inept leadership was eventually met with violence from the people and the
military. Given Haiti’s history, Haitians “knew no other way to dislodge their
president for life, whose actions had begun to appear more and more dicta-
torial.”9 Indifference begat violence and violence became the modus operandi.
The 1937 genocide of Haitians on the Dominican Republic border was the
largest organized and systematic killing of civilians by a foreign military in the
twentieth-century Americas. It was conservatively estimated at 20,000, and
amplified to 40,000, for the number dead. This massacre, which took place
within a forty-eight-hour period, transpired without a display of aggravation
on the part of the Vincent administration, as it maintained amicable political
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92 pat r i c k s y lva i n

ties with the Trujillo regime, which orchestrated the massacre. Even the sub-
sequent Haitian governments of Léscot, Estimé, Magloire, and Duvalier failed
to pursue full legal actions against the then functioning totalitarian Trujillo
regime, which often negated the letters of accord and continued to mistreat
Haitians. Under mounting pressure from the population, on November 12,
1937, one month and eight days after the massacre, the Vincent administra-
tion finally brought the case to the Inter-American Conference. The Trujillo
government rejected this move under the pretext that it was a local incident.
However, on December 17, Trujillo was compelled to accept the mediation
ruling, which brought about a Haitian–Dominican legal accord, signed on
January 31, 1938. This accord mandated that the Dominican Republic pay the
Haitian government $750,000 on behalf of the victims. Only the first install-
ment of $250,000 was disbursed, and in addition, all lost properties ceased
to be returned, thus violating the agreement.10 To date, in 2011, Haitians are
still being killed in the Dominican Republic, many of whom have suffered
miserable conditions as laborers on large sugar plantations. Unfortunately,
the victims and families of the 1937 massacre did not receive one cent of
the disbursed funds, and their legacy became a mere footnote in the history
of the nation. As Suzy Castor remarks in a compelling study of the massacre,
“The massacre itself and the attitude of abandonment on the part of the
administration had had an unprecedented impact on all the social classes
of the nation, and had created an explosive climate: the chief of state had
irremediably lost his authority.”11 However, the lost legitimacy did not trans-
late into a loss of power, as Haiti’s authoritarian rule under President Sténio
Vincent was reinstituted at the end of the American occupation (1915–34),
which consequently brought about an array of light-skinned elites into power.
Perhaps not surprisingly, it was primarily writers and intellectuals who
probed the nature of the massacre and historicized it. Jean Price-Mars, in the
1950s, was first to explore the implications of this event, and Suzy Castor,
in the mid-1970s, later analyzed the archives. In the following decades, two
writers elucidated the massacre through the power of novels: René Philoc-
tète in the 1980s and Edwidge Danticat in the 1990s. Specifically, Danti-
cat’s novel, Farming of Bones (1998), rekindled the memory of the massacre,
thanks to its vast acclaim in the Anglophone world. In it, she probes the
notion of silence: “In all this, our so-called president says nothing, our papa
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The Violence of Executive Silence 93

Vincent—our poet—he says nothing at all to this affront to the children of

Dessalines, the children of Toussaint, the children of Henry; he shouts noth-
ing across this river of our blood.”12
Writing about history, and thus social events, has served to transmit irre-
versible experiences and has aimed to scaffold consciousness in order to faith-
fully translate through language the realms of paradoxes and forces of order
and disorder in the human social construct so that the past cannot be ren-
dered silent. Writing is vocalizing, and vocalizing is agency. Hence, the victims
of the 2010 earthquake vocalized their anger toward President Préval because
he failed them as their leader and therefore lost his legitimacy. In that sense,
the national agency within the productive context of historical rhetoric or rec-
iprocity of symbolic language construction by the people must be analyzed
not as dealing with muted objects of power strangulation, but as dealing with
subjects with a form of agency, and also as actors with consciousness who are
unrepresented by their elected leaders. I concur with Michel-Rolph Trouillot
in claiming that “historical narratives address particular situations and, in that
sense, they must deal with human beings as actors.”13 In Haitian historical nar-
ratives of power and responsibility, the executive has often proven silent while
the Haitian cadre of victims has tried to vocalize their desires and needs with-
out representation. The violent utterances of the victims as agents and as
actors proves that “as subjects, that is, as voices aware of their vocality,” even
when the vocality of the executive as supreme figure has been silent.14 When
the tenor of the executive voice is most needed to recognize suffering and
attend with sympathy, a vocalized recognition of national suffering should
be a validated form of agency and subjectivity.

Exclusionary Politics and Reverberating Silence

Préval’s executive silence at the critical juncture of the nation’s greatest natu-
ral catastrophe was tantamount to political disrespect and exclusion. It also
was representative of the conditions responsible for the creation of a contin-
ually marginalized segment of society. This time, the amplification of exec-
utive silence as violent reverberated through all sectors of society, given the
scope of the disaster. Such a reverberating silence became an altered form of
violence as the nation fearfully awaited guidance and collective reassurance
in the presence of newly arrived foreign military personnel. As Préval’s silence
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94 pat r i c k s y lva i n

reverberated throughout the nation, symbolic and physical violence accumu-

lated in the capital as there grew a perverse widespread perception of antipa-
thy, repugnance, abandonment, and powerlessness. The elected patriarchal
figure of the nation became an “unwanted drunkard,” a papa kaka (shitty
father), an incompetent figurehead who was no longer wanted by a popula-
tion that expressed their disgust through protests, songs, and graffiti. While
expletives being hurled at the head of a nation amid catastrophic crisis is diffi-
cult to entertain, it can be argued that Haitians were also lucky, at least, to have
had the minimal expressive space to articulate their own feelings. As Anthony
Giddens has determined, such “dialogic democracy becomes a prime means
for the containment or dissolution of violence”—and violence in this sense
is physical.15 However, the physical pain, mental anguish, and emotional dis-
tress that preceded the earthquake in the absence of leadership could have
only been expressed by the symbolic language of violence present in most of
the affected towns.
Despite Préval’s demands for governmental continuity during the presi-
dential election of February 2011, his party candidate, Jude Célestin, did not
make it to the second round (albeit on a technicality) because he failed to
articulate his political stance and set himself apart from Préval. Hence, he
was rejected at the ballot box, and a rude boy entertainer, Michel Martelly,
won the presidency, his election serving as a rejection of the status quo.
Silence, or unexpressed thoughts at a time of national crisis, is an indicator
of impotent leadership, especially when verbal communication is expected;
furthermore, silence indicates a vulnerability that disconnects individuals
and leads to a surreal state of relational dissonance and disengagement. Paul
Farmer’s Haiti: After the Earthquake expresses some sympathy for President
Préval, “who had already taken a public shellacking for failing to move more
quickly to meet the immediate needs of the victims.” Nevertheless, Farmer
articulates his reservations about him taking a position of power in a coun-
try where “governing Haiti was a pretty thankless job, and sometimes a lethal
one,” and then states that such a country with acute and chronic problems
“would have given any head of state nightmares.”16 While it is true that elect-
ing to run for office in a challenging territory such as Haiti is difficult, the
responsibility is still the executive’s to bear; he is chosen to be the head of
state, the pathfinder for the country’s existential morass. Having miraculously
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The Violence of Executive Silence 95

avoided being crushed on the day of the earthquake, Préval gained a new
vocabulary, a new register—one of victimhood. Unfortunately, however, his
newly acquired language failed to give rise to a narrative that expressed sym-
pathy for the collective as victims, a narrative that might have fueled a dis-
course of togetherness and symbiotic healing, as well as formed koumbit, the
quintessential Haitian peasants’ work cooperative model.
Unlike Farmer, Amy Wilentz is much more direct in her critique of Pré-
val, whom she claimed “walks around with his shoulders down, like a beaten
dog.”17 Wilentz further bemoans the lack of leadership when she declares that
Haiti does not need “a fiery populist demagogue, as Aristide once was, but
someone who would speak to the people in a time of national emergency,
not remain silent and staring. There’s enough silence and staring to go around
among the victims of this disaster. They don’t need more of same from their
President. Where’s Haiti’s Churchill?”18 Perhaps it would have been more cul-
turally appropriate for Wilentz to invoke Louverture’s name.

On Leadership
One of the greatest challenges that has faced—and still faces—the Haitian
republic is that of effective leadership. By continually concentrating politi-
cal and economic activity in the capital city, Port-au-Prince, the leaders have
failed at developing national politics that are inclusive and would address the
exclusion of the Haitian peasant from the productive development of the
country. By operating largely within the sphere of Port-au-Prince, the minor-
ity lower middle class and the even smaller elite confine their productive
activities within controlled parameters and systematically deny educational
growth or opportunities to the majority of the population, which are consid-
ered peasants, or moun andeyò. Paradoxically, as an agrarian society, Haiti’s
economic and political elites reject its semiautonomous peasantry in favor of
the cosmopolitan foreign other. Hence, century-long practices of injustice
and exclusionary politics have been repeated within the modern instrument
of power. In the past, a few leaders have tried to alter the conscience of the
elite, but inevitably, their efforts ended up spiraling into greater conflicts. The
poor majority, the moun andeyò, has been the single most important source
of national cultural creativity and character. The national energy that Haiti
emits derives from those who were and are still excluded from both power
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96 pat r i c k s y lva i n

and education. By continually marginalizing the peasant class, a part of the

national energy dissipates as people are rescued by foreign organizations that
are mostly missionary based and have primary intentions of religious con-
version. Unfortunately, the national leaders failed at positively capitalizing
on the peasants’ koumbit (collective) system of production and corporation.
A koumbit could have potentially formed the basis for a distinctively Haitian
mode of socialization and national production. Echoing Mimi Sheller, it is
worth noting that “peasant democracy involves a collective subject and col-
lective aims.”19
The disappointing recurrence of ineffective leadership in a structurally
vulnerable nation that has regressed into a failed state must be viewed through
its process of sedimentation of negative power relations that have become
normative. Such normative practices in the realm of ineffective institutional
leaderships must be understood and analyzed because they persist as a set of
practical and structural tools that shape social relations through temporal
as well as spatial realms. Here, certain fundamental categories, such as social
interactions, are accepted as antagonistic and static. Moun andeyò (provin-
cial folk) versus moun lavil (urban folk); moun sòt (uneducated) versus moun
lespri (educated folk); moun anwo (upper crust) versus moun anba (bottom
dwellers). Those antagonistic moun hierarchies run counter to national cohe-
siveness, and Haitian national leaders have failed to disassemble the rigid
structures that are forcing the nation to collapse from within.
The very collapse of the nation, apart from its social and economic chal-
lenges, was and is still based on the fundamental notion of moun (people).
The desire to be subjective agents of their own history was what brought
Haitians the universal declaration of human rights in the first place; yet that
same notion of equality and peoplehood became so elusive after the revolu-
tion that even today, Haitians continue to fight for the basic elements of
human rights and dignity. It is unfortunate that the fundamental building
blocks of the nation, the citizens, are for the most part relegated to the periph-
ery by the economic and political elite. Just as under feudalism, as Robert
Rotberg remarks, Haiti simply remains in “a perpetuation of the kind of per-
sonalization of power which had proved efficacious during and since the
time of slavery.”20 In essence, the continual demounization (dehumanization)
of the poor black population that resides outside of the capital or within the
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The Violence of Executive Silence 97

periphery of the marginalized class of the urban dwellers can be constituted

as the by-product of centuries of neglect and abuse by the ruling classes, both
political and economic. Consequently, Préval’s silence was symptomatic of
a fundamental national problem that has been in existence for centuries.
Even a mildly effective communicator at the helm of power understands
the importance of words and would try to communicate the necessity of
having a cohesive nation during a time of crisis, because it is only through
communication that trust and hope can be embodied from the conditions
of despair. An effective leader ought to be driven by the ethos of executive
civility. As former Haitian prime minister Michèle Pierre-Louis remarks, “I
think Haitians should be deciding what kind of society they want to build in
the future. It’s our responsibility, and I don’t think we should run away from
that. If we run away, it’s going to be a disaster, too.”21 For too long, we have
run into disasters instead of away from preventable adversities just because
the inclusive we was never a part of the formulation, and a plethora of leaders
have failed to build a cohesive society, regardless of the external pressures that
were placed on Haiti, since the 1804 national revolution. The vertiginous
decline of the nation to the apocalyptic destruction of the 2010 earthquake,
predominantly in the capital city, is not only a failure of government to imple-
ment national welfare policies, but also a failure to communicate the eminent
dangers of Haiti’s predicament. As Allan Stoekl reminds us, “Rhetoricians
are not to be confused with the man in the street: their procedure is actually
the opposite of the everyday relation with words. They undergo an ‘initia-
tion,’ which enables them to do things, and create things, with words.”22 As
a seasoned politician who served first as prime minister and then as a full-term
president, Préval understands the inner workings of power, and the desires
as well as the requirements of the people. He has personally been affected by
political tragedies: the military coup d’état of September 1991 that killed over
5,000 people; the January 14, 2000, assassination attempt against his sister
and other members of his cabinet; and in that same year, on April 3, the
well-orchestrated murder of his friend and national figure, Jean Dominique.
Additionally, he has witnessed various other tragedies, including deadly hur-
ricanes. Considering his public displays of emotion, it would be difficult to
categorize him as unsympathetic; however, it is evident that as a calculating
politician, his failings have been due to the very fact that he understands the
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98 pat r i c k s y lva i n

Haitian political processes and the threat that drug trafficking and political
instability generate for the future of the country.
The political character of a leader can determine the extent to which he
would react or respond to a national crisis. One can analyze Préval’s method-
ical response when he appeared on CNN on January 13, 2010. He focused
primarily on his own lack of a place to live instead of appealing to the Haitians,
both in Haiti and abroad, to form an effective chain of solidarity for the future
of the afflicted nation. He was interviewed again by CNN anchor Christiane
Amanpour a few days later, on January 19. At that time, he had yet to address
the concerned nation, even as a multitude of criminal prisoners had escaped
from the national penitentiary. When prodded on the issue of security, his
answers were vague and unconvincing: “I am convinced that every Haitian
understand that everybody is a victim in that catastrophe, whether the gov-
ernment, or MINUSTAH [United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti],
and all of the sectors of the population. . . . With the help of MINUSTAH
and the police, we are going to continue enforcing security and keep the pop-
ulation in a safe environment.”23 Meanwhile, there were no safe or adequate
encampments designated by the government as millions of displaced indi-
viduals continued to languish in unsafe conditions.
The existence of blatantly violent symbolic language that targeted the pres-
ident a few weeks after the earthquake was indicative of the indignation of a
violated population that felt as though they must respond in some way to
their conditions. Consequently, in light of the American military presence,
as well as that of the French, the president, who must constitutionally guar-
antee the territorial integrity of nation, was legally and ethically bound to
explain to the nation the nature of the troops’ existence.
The violation of the sacred space of power through violent words of pro-
test revealed the population’s level of discontent with Préval as he failed to
capitalize on any initial sentiments of solidarity that the people felt right
after the earthquake. A year later, as National Republic Radio reporter Car-
rie Kahn articulates in her report on Haiti, the “political instability engulf-
ing Haiti is just the latest trouble for Préval, who has been widely criticized
for his handling of the aftermath of last year’s earthquake.”24 Each calamity
became an added burden to his despised leadership. As Kahn further reports,
one victim of the quake, Carlos Jean, who was encamped near the destroyed
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The Violence of Executive Silence 99

palace, referred to it as “the devil’s house,” while another man, a wandering

art vendor, Charles, vehemently expressed his views: “René Préval is the devil
in this country. In his time, we received cholera, earthquake, tsunami. We
don’t need him in this country anymore.”25 In an environment where material
and structural violence is tangible, symbolic violence through protest became
an added element in the politics of disrespect that Haitians are unfortunately
so accustomed to. In his defense, in the same interview with Carrie Kahn,
Préval responded to his perceived apathy and national absence: “I don’t have
a style of leadership that is like show business. I prefer to work and be effi-
cient.”26 Certainly it is valid that Préval, along with his ministers, had been
relatively efficient prior to the earthquake in buttressing state institutions,
building roads and schools, tempering gang violence, increasing electricity
output, and increasing agricultural production. But his history of silence did
much to detract from his legacy: during his second term, he failed to give a
political speech, and he assumed a largely hands-off position during the food
riots of 2008. Fundamentally, it was Préval’s momentous silence after the
earthquake that completely erased his accomplishments and prodded the
people’s symbolically violent disapproval of his presidency.

Structural Vulnerability
The 2010 earthquake was not only a site of cataclysmic devastation. It also
revealed gaping contradictions that exist as part of Haitian society and ren-
der the nation structurally vulnerable. Millions of Haitians and people of
Haitian descent currently live in subhuman conditions in Haiti and in neigh-
boring countries; the nation also has an unfortunate susceptibility to health-
compromising pathogens. These institutional weaknesses are fully palpable.
Despite these elements, there has been an overall failure by Haitians to sys-
tematically address and redress the root causes of Haiti’s impoverishment and
susceptibility to destruction, which exposes the deficiency of its leadership.
The scaffolding that supports the entire society is compromised. The lack of
viable institutions renders the nation ill-equipped to survive calamities, and
it allows external and internal forces to apply pressure and negatively affect
various elements within a society.
The structural vulnerability of Haiti is clearly a product of its harsh legacy
of slavery, occupation, dictatorship, hyperexploitation, and willful neglect.
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100 pat r i c k s y lva i n

This has eroded the thin fabric of the nation, leaving a country, as Michel
Rolph-Trouillot describes, a “state against nation,” where the interests of the
state and its political actors supersede the collective interests of the nation.
Additionally, internal forces, including the structural polity engendered by
postcolonial rule, also fail to reconstitute an imbalance created by France in
the form of divisive class and race politics, as well as the politics of integral
territoriality that are psychologically embedded in the draconian policies of
nationhood. As Robert Fatton Jr. points out, “Haiti’s predicament is not
rooted in the absence of a nation, but rather in the ruling class’s incapacity
to construct an ‘integral’ state.” By that, he means “a state . . . capable of orga-
nizing both the political unity of the different factions of the ruling class and
the ‘organic relations between . . . political society and civil society.’”27
It is the absence of nation-state integrality that has caused such grave struc-
tural vulnerability, resulting in a place where normative rules of attributive
governance cannot be applied. Furthermore, problems that have arisen from
the lack of social and political governance have affected every sector of civil
society, creating a warped dynamic of independent selves rather than sculpt-
ing a diversely unified Haitian identity.
Also integral to the problematic of nation-state integrality is the notion of
representation. Although Haiti has periodically had legitimate governments,
equitable representation has always been at the core of the struggle for power
and political survival, contributing to the tensions experienced within a sys-
temically feeble governmental institution. A year and a half after the dev-
astating earthquake, Préval’s successor, Michel J. Martelly, after nearly four
months of being in office, still did not have a sitting government, the result
of parliamentary and political class infighting. In the ineffectual and disjoined
nation-state, the incentive to obey the rule of law is never fully a legal or
a nationally constructed ethos, but rather at times is the result of a self- or
community-based moral expectation. For it is those who are in the position
of power who are the first violators of the rule of law. Unfortunately, self-
interest supersedes national interests. Again, Robert Fatton Jr. is correct in
asserting that in Haiti, “both the possessing and ruling classes have no social
project, except the day-to-day struggle of keeping themselves in positions of
power, wealth, and prestige.”28
The structural vulnerability of the Haitian society has eroded even the
venerable religious and secular traditions where a form of communal ethos, a
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The Violence of Executive Silence 101

koumbitaj, had maintained the integrity of individuals within the corruptible

political space. Increasingly, dishonesty and one-upmanship have regressively
become the normative functions of society since the feeble state along with
the nonproductive possessing class have, as Fatton Jr. reminds us, “neither a
national vision nor a coherent ideology, their time horizon never goes beyond
the immediate short term. Ruling and possessing classes are not always in
alliance; whatever unity they achieve is rooted in an opportunistic conver-
gence of interests.”29 This convergence of interests is hardly ever nationally
oriented, and the civil society is unable to maintain its esteemed traditions
for the reason that relationships are increasingly based on opportunistic kin-
ships that eat away at the fabric of the society. The grave structural vulnera-
bilities revealed by the 2010 earthquake prompted members of the chamber
of commerce to declare in March 2010 that:

For the first time in the history of Haiti, a unified and inclusive private sec-
tor, organized around the Private Sector Economic Forum (PSEF) has decided
to break with the past and formulate a shared vision and roadmap for the sus-
tainable development of Haiti. Under the leadership of President Préval and the
management of Minister Bellerive, we re-affirm our commitment to working
to create an equitable, fair and opportunity-laden society for all Haitians. . . .
We propose to create a New Social Compact that involves government,
civil society, and the private sector—ranging from the large businesses to the
informal traders and smallholder farmers throughout the country—in a part-
nership built on respect and mutual trust. This partnership will have to include,
without discrimination, Haitians living abroad. The New Social Compact will
have at its core the strengthening of democracy and free enterprise, and a
commitment to individual freedom, both political and economic.30

One can argue that the formative processes of structural vulnerability are less
a function of one-party responsibility, that of the possessing class, and more
a synchronous confluence of malevolent and corrupted practices sanctioned
by an inept state and a nonproductive possessing class to affect marginalized
and exploited civil society. The aforementioned private sector’s statement is
indicative of its conscious and willful neglect of the masses since the inception
of the nation. As Paul Farmer correctly points out, there are “many factors
within Haitian borders and without, [that] had weakened Haiti’s institutions
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102 pat r i c k s y lva i n

and made its people so vulnerable to the quake.”31 One of those factors is the
systemic drive to hyperexploit the people, even to the extent of their death
or their social calcification as non-moun, as if protohumans.

Politics of Disrespect
The politics of disrespect are a by-product of the Haitian national politics
of exclusion that has been on display since the inception of the nation and
has been present prior to, during, and after January 12. The politics of disre-
spect, and thus of sociocultural violence on the excluded other, are of crucial
importance to nation building and cohesiveness, as associations and institu-
tions lack the power or agenda to mediate between individuals, groups, and
the state. Hence, in the absence of representation, representative democracy
cannot be functional or legitimate, and the elected leaders who are unac-
countable supplant democracy and aspirations to an inkling of equity as the
basic unit of nation building. Inclusion, however, is further thwarted as a
politics of disrespect reverberates throughout the realms of power. Conse-
quently, in lieu of pursuing a politics of respect or a politics of civility that
could rescue the fragments of society by developing a sense of common pur-
pose, national interest, and a sense of Haitianness, marginalized groups are
further isolated and exposed to greater vulnerability as the nation drifts away
from cohesion to fragmentation, and virtues of civility quickly dissipate as
individuals clamoring for their own lifelines are pitted against each other for
survival.
Such politics of disrespect and exclusion force people to alienate them-
selves from their ancestors, forgetting the purpose of nationhood as they
feel abandoned by their leaders, and even by their fellow citizens. This sort
of degradation of civic purpose and citizenship moves both individuals and
institutions away from social engagement and into the realm of despotism
that ultimately widens the scope of national conflict as the excluded popula-
tion mushrooms. Social engagement, or what John Rawls refers to as social
cooperation, is where certain “fair terms of cooperation articulate an idea
of reciprocity and mutuality” so that society functions to achieve “justice as
fairness” in order to “work out a conception of political and social justice
which is congenial to the most deep-seated convictions and traditions of
a modern democratic state.”32 Emphatically Rawls argues that there “is no
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The Violence of Executive Silence 103

alternative to social cooperation except unwilling and resentful compliance,

or resistance and civil war.”33 In the absence of basic justice, and in the pres-
ence of unscrupulous politics and abject poverty, Préval has failed at halting
the pervasive politics of disrespect when the vulnerability of the country was
internationally exposed. Instead, he publicly addressed the mourning nation
one full month after the quake during a faith-based gathering of organiza-
tions, calling for three days of prayers to mourn the dead. Instead of seiz-
ing on the opportunity to call on the Haitian cultural ethos of koumbit, the
essence of solidarity and mutual interest that brought Haiti independence,
he announced that his “only answer to all the pain was and is to continue to
look for relief, particularly abroad, to help ease the pain of those who are suf-
fering.”34 At least publicly, he officially stated his incapacity as head of state to
galvanize the people toward self-reliance while appreciating the solidarity of
the international community. As a begging country, the hope of establishing
a sustainable, equitable nation becomes mired in the abyss of vulnerability.

Politics of Incivility
Executive silence as violence is much more than a product of a leader’s char-
acter; it is also a product of a culture continually engaged in the politics of
disrespect. The Haitian politics of disrespect can be viewed as a form of sys-
tematized disregard that has violently degenerated the cultural tentacles of
representation and political power relations. The moun andeyò, who are sym-
bolically regarded as a pollutant, the infested other, is systematically rejected
by the locus of power—unless, of course, they are needed during national
elections. Otherwise, they are viewed as simple utilitarian objects that can be
disposed of, and are definitely not important enough to be included or con-
sidered during national policy planning. Yanick Lahens superbly reminds us
that we “have not been able to exercise either the consistency or the modera-
tion necessary for the construction of a citizenship that should have protected
the men and women of this land from subhuman living condition.”35 The
ecological repercussions of the earthquake highlighted Haiti’s acute poverty
and showcased its tragically epic past to the world; it also surfaced an oppor-
tunity to redress its past as politically poignant words such as refoundation,
reconstruction, decentralization, and capacity building were brought to the fore-
front, at least by those in the international community. All the while, although
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104 pat r i c k s y lva i n

working with some international partners, Préval never briefed the country
regarding the status of the reconstruction efforts that were purportedly tak-
ing place on Haiti’s soil. As Raoul Peck realistically writes, “Knowing the
shortcomings of my country and expecting no constancy in the thinking of
the international community (Haiti will not be the first place to be abandoned
by the media and humanitarian agencies), this provisional state of affairs is
transforming itself already before our very eyes (in spite of the denials of
Haitian and foreign leaders) into something definitive.”36
Préval’s executive silence within the critical first month of the catastrophe
was reminiscent of Haiti’s shortcomings, an unconscious polity of abandon-
ment that continues to sear incivility, not only disrespect but also a disregard
of citizenship, onto the national political milieu. There were, however, addi-
tional factors at play that worked to undermine Préval’s agency as a leader.
Adding to the difficulties faced at this time, the accidental and deadly intro-
duction of cholera by a unit from the United Nations further destabilized
the nation, as did the United States’ mandated presidential election, which
brought further violence and uncertainties to the country. The surprise re-
turn of Haiti’s brutal dictator, Jean-Claude Duvalier, and later, that of Haiti’s
divisive former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, further worked to sully
Préval’s credibility and authority.
The postearthquake electoral fiasco fundamentally revealed another mar-
ker in Haiti’s shortcomings of incivility: that Haiti’s future was not to be
decided by its people and national leaders. With the involvement of the Orga-
nization of American States and other agencies in the electoral process, the
leadership of the country became further divided along ideological lines.
Once again, the politics of disrespect and incivility that created a devastating
landscape of abandonment and hyperexploitation paraded the corridors of
power. Former prime minister Pierre-Louis dispatched an urgent plea when
CNN’s Amanpour interviewed her: “Let’s be conscious that things have to
change. We have to look at the future differently, and the world has to help
us understand that if Haiti does not see how to get out of poverty, how to get
out of disease, how to get out of this situation that the people are living in,
we are going to be a trouble for the whole world.”37
The silence of the executive was a misfortune onto itself that perturbed the
consciousness of the nation and derailed the agency of the victims who were
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The Violence of Executive Silence 105

seeking some form of guidance. Dreams and aspirations are made with spo-
ken words, and contempt and rejection are interpreted through the absence
of words—the cold of silence. In order to inhabit the collective hope, and I
echo Michel Le Bris’s words, “it is first and foremost dreams that keep man-
kind upright.”38 It is acceptable to suggest that the president is a human being
who has the right to be emotionally hurt, but it is absolutely unethical for the
commander in chief, the executive leader, the symbolic father of the nation
to remain silent while clearly still in charge of a country that is wailing for
help. Harold Barrett reminds us: “As rhetorical creatures, we humans act with
intention, i.e., with aim and purpose. The influencing of others is accom-
plished verbally and nonverbally, and it is the position here that messages
invented—those of conscious design as well as those arising from below
the level of consciousness—ordinarily will reflect the rhetor’s feeling and
intent.”39 Intentionality would be dangerous for me to deconstruct; however,
the pervasive effect of the president’s silence is material and is undeniably
negative on the national landscape.
The incivility and symbolic violence that the silence of the executive pro-
duced is tantamount to the denial of dreams, the denial of possibilities, and
even to social death. Since February 2010, this death has slowly started to
manifest around the camps as property owners forcibly retake their lands.
In July 2011, a forced decampment of hundreds of quake victims occurred
in public places like the Silvio Cator National Stadium and in the town of
Delmas.
The absence of effective leadership coupled with silence can only erode
civility because civility was only minutely present in Haitian national poli-
tics. Civility, which is a form of social and cultural respect, is also, as Barrett
explains, “a social good—an ethical value—and a rich source of ethos. It is
expressed in the symbolic behavior of one with another, i.e., it is effected
rhetorically. And that is why rhetorical indisposition precludes the capacity
for civility.”40 Préval’s executive silence prohibited the potential capacity
to make accountable all participants who were committed to rebuild and
improve Haiti. Silence ushered in the monstrous politics of incivility that
rendered the distraught population further vulnerable.
Effective leadership does not equate to opportunistic leadership that would
reduce victims to mere means to an end; effective and civil leadership would
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106 pat r i c k s y lva i n

incessantly try to positively confront social ills by balancing out the elements
of disorder. On the one hand, opportunistic leaders would derive an oppor-
tunity from national tragedies in order to fulfill their own political careers and
to try to accomplish long-term ideological gains by tapping into the emo-
tional weakness of the nation. In so doing, they would alienate and fragment
groups by pitting factions of society against other factions. On the other hand,
responsible and positively effective leaders would seek the greater good of
the nation, not along ideological or partisan lines, but first and foremost
through the epicenter of the inclusive national character of the nation that
emits national pride and cohesiveness. Such a leader would try to soothe the
pain of the nation by calling for a healing process during times of national
crisis or tragedy. The positive political engagement of the national leader is
an expected response, given his commitment to lead the nation toward bet-
terment. Lea Williams, in her analysis of leadership in the American civil
rights movement, indicates that “the leader’s ability to build strong, positive
interpersonal relationships and foster esprit d’corps will influence the relative
degree of success or failure.”41 The esprit de corps that Williams alludes to is
fundamental to Haitian peasant culture and to koumbit. Koumbit reinforces
kinship and solidifies the sociocultural and economic bonds of members of a
given Haitian peasant community, who rely on one another to form a local-
ized system of organization that is at once social, economic, and political.
The absence of koumbit in national politics gave Haiti silence, indiffer-
ence, and ineptitude. In addition, Williams advises us that the “transforma-
tional leader inspires followers to transcend expectations and perform at
extraordinary high levels of achievement.”42 Hence, the expected reparative
impetus to address and redress the affliction suffered in order to move the
nation forward is logical and natural. The voted national leader is not only
constitutionally responsible to safeguard the nation, but he is also ethically
responsible to assure and guide the nation away from morass during a time
of national tragedy and transcend negative expectations. Regardless of the
scope of national tragedy, the role of a national leader is to lead by provid-
ing examples of courage in times of despair. The absence of leadership and
of executive deliberation is damaging to the nation because, as Heifetz and
Linsky emphasize, “it becomes critically important to communicate, in every
way possible, the reason to sacrifice—why people need to sustain losses and
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The Violence of Executive Silence 107

reconstruct their loyalties. People need to know that the stakes are worth
it.”43 Just like a ship’s captain cannot abandon his ship during an emergency
while the crew and passengers are on board, neither can a national leader be
silent or absent while the nation is suffering.
Language or its absence is an important indicator of a leader’s tempera-
ment; it could even be a marker of one’s efficiency or deficiency in civility.
Most importantly, language is a multidimensional generator of ideas. It is only
through language that we provide reason, rationalization, or purgation from
trauma. In Maguerite Feitlowitz’s book, A Lexicon of Terror, language is inher-
ently constitutive of temporality and its effects on the self:

When a people’s very words have been wounded, the society cannot fully
recover until the language has been healed. Words mark the paths of our expe-
rience, separate what we can name from ineffable terror and chaos. At once
public and intimate, language is a boundary between our vulnerable inner
selves and the outside world. When, like skin, the language is bruised, punc-
tured, or mutilated, that boundary breaks down. We have then no defense, no
way to protect ourselves. What we knew, we no longer know; names born of
the truth of shared experience ring false. On a mal dans sa peau—we are uneasy
in our own skin.
We must pay attention to this dis-ease, we must document its signs. We
must make an artifact of this Lexicon of Terror, so that it will no longer be a
living language.44

The violence of executive silence morphed into a form of bruised language

that wrongly reverberated in Haitian ears, forcing them to question whether
they were correctly interpreting the absence of words from the crumbled
palace. Préval was briefly rumored to be dead; later they wished he was
because his silence was unbearable. The absence of language violently shat-
tered Haitians’ trust in their executive leader and further scorched a path
toward incivility where abhorrent epithets were increasingly displayed on
walls as a retort to the absence of words.
The reverberating and resulting silence of the executive added an addi-
tional searing catastrophe: acute misery of a denuded people in a failed state
that had to endure the collective trauma without leadership that could have
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108 pat r i c k s y lva i n

helped in memorializing and grieving the communal loss. The suffering pop-
ulation became unwanted subjects without substantive political and historical
connections, given the absence of a nationally constructive of “we-ness” and
an absence of a nationally constructed fellowship of fellow grieving subjects.
Finally, the silence of the executive was an abdication of moral responsibility.

Notes
1. Allan Stoekl, Agonies of the Intellectual (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1992), 177.
2. Ibid., 163.
3. A. Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky, Leadership on the Line (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 2002), 168.
4. Kaethe Weingarten, Common Shock: Witnessing Violence Every Day (New York:
New American Library, 2003), 142.
5. Ibid., 152.
6. Idelber Avelar, The Letter of Violence: Essays on Narrative, Ethics, and Politics
(New York: State University of New York Press, 1991), 45.
7. Ibid., 46.
8. Stoekl, Agonies, 163.
9. Robert I. Rotberg, Haiti: The Politics of Squalor (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1971), 78.
10. See Jean Price-Mars, La République d’Haiti et la République Dominicaine
(Port-au-Prince: Édition Fardin, 1953), and Suzy Castor, Le Massacre de 1937 et les
Relations Haitiano-Dominicaines (Port-au-Prince: Le Natal, 1988).
11. Castor, Le Massacre de 1937, 29. My translation.
12. Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones (New York: Soho, 1998), 212.
13. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 23.
14. Ibid.
15. Anthony Giddens, “The Politics of Human Rights,” in The Politics of Human
Rights, ed. Obrad Savic (London: Verso, 1999), 256.
16. Paul Farmer, Haiti: After the Earthquake (New York: Public Affairs, 2011),
91–92.
17. Amy Wilentz, “Could Pierre-Louis Fill Haiti’s Leadership Void?” Time Mag-
azine, January 27, 2010, http://www.time.com/.
18. Ibid.
19. Mimi Sheller, Democracy after Slavery (Gainesville: University of Florida Press,
2000), 241.
20. Rotberg, Haiti, 9.
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The Violence of Executive Silence 109

21. See the interview with Michèle Pierre-Louis in Harvard International Review,
March 22, 2010, http://www.entrepreneur.com/.
22. Stoekl, Agonies, 160.
23. Christiane Amanpour, “President and Prime Minister of Haiti Speak about
Earthquake Recovery,” my translation, CNN International, January 19, 2010, http://
www.cnn.com.
24. Carrie Kahn, “Haiti a Year Later: Haitians’ Patience for President Préval Wears
Thin,” National Public Radio, All Things Considered, January 21, 2011, http://www
.npr.org/.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Robert Fatton Jr., “Haiti: The Saturnalia of Emancipation and the Vicissi-
tudes of Predatory Rule,” Third World Quarterly 27, no. 1 (2006): 115–33.
28. Robert Fatton Jr., Haiti’s Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democ-
racy (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Reinner, 2002), 37.
29. Ibid., 37–38.
30. Forum Economique Secteur Privé: Introductory Memo, March 23, 2010.
31. Farmer, Haiti, 99.
32. John Rawls, Politics Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993),
300.
33. Ibid., 301.
34. René Préval quoted in Joseph Guyler Delva, “One Month after Quake, Hait-
ians Mourn Dead Together,” Reuters News, February 12, 2010, http://www.reuters
.com/.
35. Yanick Lahens, “Haiti, or The Health of Misery,” in Haiti Rising: Haitian His-
tory, Culture and the Earthquake of 2010, ed. Martin Munro (Kingston: University of
the West Indies Press, 2010), 10.
36. Raoul Peck, “Dead-end in Port-au-Prince,” in Munro, Haiti Rising, 43.
37. Christiane Amanpour, “Haiti’s Former PM Speaks,” CNN International, Jan-
uary 26, 2010, http://www.cnn.com/.
38. Michel Le Bris, “Finding the Words,” in Munro, Haiti Rising, 34.
39. Harold Barrett, Rhetoric and Civility: Human Development, Narcissism, and the
Good Audience (New York: State University of New York Press, 1991), 6.
40. Ibid., 147–48.
41. Lea E. Williams, Servant of the People: The 1960’s Legacy of African American
Leadership (New York: St. Martin’s, 1996), 25–26.
42. Ibid., 26.
43. Heifetz and Linsky, Leadership on the Line, 94.
44. Maguerite Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror (New York: Oxford University Press,
1998), 62.
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Religion at the Epicenter

Agency and Affiliation in Léogâne
after the Earthquake

karen richman

T he earthquake of January 12, 2010, devastated Haiti’s Léogâne Plain

and the capital at its eastern edge, breaking buildings and crushing bod-
ies unable to dodge unearthly torrents of concrete blocks and cloudbursts of
white dust. Whereas an assessment of the material and biological impacts of
the seismic tremors may be undertaken without prior personal familiarity
with the subjects of concern, understanding the effects of the earthquake
on local religious faith and practice requires knowledge of the preexisting
and continuing religious contexts of the communities affected by the disas-
ter. Absence of longitudinal data has, however, unfortunately failed to ham-
per the dissemination of speculative claims about earth-shattering changes
in religious affiliation and faith in Port-au-Prince and Léogâne. A dominant
conjecture is that the earthquake tested Haitians’ faith in their Vodou gods
because these gods failed to prevent the disaster. Many former Vodouists
have allegedly turned away from their traditional religion and converted to
Christianity; they are simultaneously pushed by disappointment and pulled
by admiration for the modern messages and aid proffered by the ubiquitous
Christian nongovernmental organizations, whose members rushed to assist
in the rescue and recovery.
Historical and ethnographic evidence that I present here corrects these
speculations and more broadly calls into question the suppositions underly-
ing them—namely, rigid sectarian boundaries, doctrinal fidelity of ordinary
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112 karen richman

religious actors, and cosmic powers of Vodou spirits. Catholicism, Vodou, and
Protestantism have defined, mediated, and reproduced one another in the
fluid, plural landscape of Haitian religious history for at least three quarters
of a century. A pragmatic, instrumental approach to alleviating suffering and
dodging misfortune has long guided individual religious choices between,
and integrated uses of, Haiti’s three major religions. Religious conversion
may not entail the radical, permanent break that sectarian leaders and some
observers of the postearthquake religious landscape allege.
By drawing on historical research as well as ethnographic fieldwork in
Léogâne, I investigate the accuracy of such claims and more broadly explore
religious continuities and ruptures at the epicenter of the seismic tremors.
Coincidentally, Léogâne holds the ambiguous reputation of being the epicen-
ter of the nation’s exotic and mysterious “traditional” religion. The stereotype,
like all such representations, is only partially accurate. The moniker is loosely
connected to Léogâne’s significant role in the development of the congrega-
tional form of a domestic religion that became known as Vodou, in which
ethnology itself played an important role.1 Léogâne may thus be seen as hav-
ing the dubious role of being the dual epicenter of the geological shocks as
well as the shocking practices ascribed to Vodou.
In contrast to short-term postearthquake observation, my analysis ex-
tends an ongoing case study, informed by fieldwork conducted over the last
three decades, of the religious life and history of the people of Ti Rivyè (Lit-
tle River), a rural, coastal section of Léogâne, which is also the anchor of
a transnational community.2 My inquiry continued after the earthquake of
January 2010 through phone communication and, in 2010 and 2011, three
return visits to Ti Rivyè, the geographical and moral anchor of the commu-
nity, as well as trips to Ti Rivyè’s primary emigrant outpost in Palm Beach
County, Florida.3

Catholic and Protestant Missionization in Haiti

The religious landscape on the eve of the earthquake can be understood in
the context of broader historical processes involving missionization, global
capitalism, and the policies of the Haitian nation-state, processes that reach
back to the religious origins of the French colony. Roman Catholicism was
the official religion of the colony of Saint Domingue, which was established
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Religion at the Epicenter 113

in 1697. After independence in 1804, it remained the sole state religion of

Haiti until 1985, when the Haitian government under Jean-Claude Duva-
lier recognized Protestantism. Recognition occurred at an important juncture
of religious and political change: Protestant numbers (and defections from
Catholicism) in Haiti and Latin America generally had increased to a point
of crisis for the Catholic Church, motivating the first papal visit in history to
Haiti, and an embattled dictator sought to fortify Protestant support for his
weakening grip on absolute power. The elevation of Protestantism’s status in
Haiti in 1985 in turn prompted a campaign by Vodou leaders that succeeded
in 2003 with an acknowledgment of Vodou as an official religion by Presi-
dent Aristide, who had long publically expressed respect for Vodou.
After independence in 1804, when French colonists and their priests fled
the country, Haitians controlled their own church. Toward the end of the
century, however, as Haiti’s Francophile, mulatto elite invited recolonization
by France and Germany and ultimately the United States, authority over the
Church was returned to the Vatican. President Geffrard, Haiti’s tenth presi-
dent, signed the concordat with the Vatican in 1860, declaring, “Let us hasten
to remove from our land these last vestiges of barbarism and slavery, super-
stition and its scandalous practices.”4 Over the next hundred years, a contest
over Haitian state sovereignty and European religious power would be waged,
with Protestantism and Vodou co-opted by both parties as allies, threats, or
scapegoats. A hallmark in that struggle was the hapless antisuperstition cam-
paign of 1942 that was launched by the French Catholic Church in concert
with mulatto president Élie Lescot. La campagne anti-superstitieuse formally
began with a pastoral letter published in the Catholic daily, La Phalange,
decrying “the irreconcilable opposition” between Christianity and “the col-
lection of religious beliefs and practices which came from Africa.”5 Many of
the elements of this collection actually came from Europe, but identifying
them as African better served the Church’s purpose.6 Vodouisants were not
the only targets of the campaign, however; Protestants were occasionally
persecuted as well.
Temporary sharing of a mutual Catholic enemy motivated paradoxical
sympathy between nationalist leaders, proponents of Vodou, and Protestant
missionaries, even though the latter appeared to be more opposed to Vodou
than the Catholic Church. The most productive instance of this tactical
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114 karen richman

alliance transpired between 1957 and 1971, when François Duvalier ruled
Haiti and the percentage of the population identifying as Protestant reached
20 percent.7 Duvalier was the first pro-Vodou, pro-peasant, black nationalist
president.8 A medical doctor and ethnologist who experienced firsthand the
antisuperstition campaign of 1942, Duvalier had been a central member of
the Bureau D’Ethnologie and authored or coauthored several studies of the
peasant religion. The self-declared president for life developed a reputation
not only for practicing Vodou but also for incorporating the practices and
priesthood in his ruthless politics. Duvalier appears to have fostered the myth
of his promotion of Vodou, which only bolstered outsiders’ stereotypes of an
exotic, mysterious religion.
Courlander and Bastien wryly observed that the fact that Duvalier fostered
Protestantism, which publically opposes Vodou even more strongly than the
Catholic Church ever did, demonstrates that “the relationship between Duva-
lier and religion should be viewed not as one of an individual to a faith, but
rather it should be approached from the standpoint of the relations between
church and state.”9 Duvalier finally succeeded in breaking the power of the
foreign-dominated Catholic Church. Although he resorted to violence to
crush the Church, romancing North American evangelical Protestants was
a more effective strategy. The Protestants could be depended upon to avoid
direct involvement in political affairs as much as possible and meanwhile
bring “development’ into the country. By 1965, more than a third of the
schools were run by Protestant missionaries. Duvalier received Oral Roberts
at the palace in 1969.10
Since the 1970s, the expansion of Protestant missionization in Haiti, as
in Latin America generally, especially involved the growth of Pentecostal
groups, which systematically covered the geography of the country and en-
compassed the poorest segments of the population.11 Echoing the findings of
many observers of Pentecostal missionization in the region, Charles-Poisset
Romain asserts that “le take of pentecôtiste [sic]” (the Pentecostals’ takeoff)
in Haiti was the result of their egalitarian promotion of literacy, in the vernac-
ular of the masses, an approach that signified self-improvement and mobility
in opposition to the fixed social hierarchy symbolized by the colonial lan-
guage of French, spoken and written by the elite few.12 Romain furthermore
claims that during the 1970s, Christian missionization was more intense in
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Religion at the Epicenter 115

Haiti than in anywhere else in the hemisphere and that Haiti witnessed more
proliferation of sects during that period than any other country.
Though it would be difficult to provide precise evidence for his claim, sup-
port for it is found in the selection of Port-au-Prince for a March 1983 Latin
American bishops’ meeting with Pope John Paul II, the first and only visit
to date of a pope to Haiti. The conference’s top agenda item was “preparing
actions to stem the rapid growth of Protestant fundamentalist sects in the
region.” Pope John Paul said, “The advance of religious groups, which at times
are lacking the true message of the Gospel and with methods that do not
respect real religious liberty, poses serious obstacles to the mission of the
Catholic Church and to other Christian confessions.” The pope was warn-
ing about misguided Protestants rather than Vodouists, a fact clarified when
the Haitian archbishop announced the start of a national campaign to defend
Catholicism against “the blind proselytizing of Protestants.”13

Individual Religious Agency and Conversion

Complementing Romain’s sociological study of the expansion of Protes-
tant churches in Haiti during the 1970s is Fred Conway’s ethnographic illu-
mination of the religious landscape of rural Haiti during the decade that
culminated with a massive exodus to the source of progress.14 Conway
demonstrates that evangelism oriented people toward North American cap-
italist culture and an American dream. He argues convincingly that “mission-
ary Protestantism in Haiti gives rise less to a Protestant ethic of self-help
than to the idea that the way to worldly success is identified with direct
dependence on the foreign—North American—missionary.”15 He cites vil-
lagers’ discourse, no doubt mediated by their perception or hope that their
North American interlocutor was also a missionary, and thus a source of
jobs or visas. Villagers asserted that Protestant mission churches symbolized
progress, when, while pointing to Protestant missions, people told him, “the
country is becoming more and more civilized,” in contrast to the backward-
ness blamed on peasant Vodou. Several converts further boasted to Conway
that their conversion was a contribution to development.16
Moreover, the Protestant churches signified modern, capitalist principles,
including a belief in quantitative accounting and record keeping.17 Accord-
ing to Conway’s interlocutors, villagers understood that Americans needed
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116 karen richman

quantities of converts, and they were willing to pay for them. No one bene-
fited more from their needs to build missions and count disciples than the
pastors. The clergy was and remains one of the few jobs for men in rural areas,
and the field of candidates was and is still vast. Romain comments that “every
Protestant is at the same time a minister and a missionary” (tout protestant
est à la fois pasteur et missionnaire).18 The success of the pastors reflects the
convergence of the fluid, informal, lay, and entrepreneurial character of the
evangelical practice with local values regarding leadership and spiritual power,
namely, diffuse leadership and charismatic, spontaneous power. The Kreyòl
speech practice of addressing any male evangelical as pastè (pastor) reinforces
the expectation that any man who behaves in this enthusiastic, pious, sober
manner will soon pursue a career as a minister.
Strategic positioning for purposes of personal advancement and/or pro-
tection is the reason many convert to Protestantism, rather than deep con-
viction in the superiority of Protestant doctrine. Alfred Métraux noted the
use of conversion as an act of resistance in his classic ethnography of religion
in and around Port-au-Prince, including Léogâne, more than half a century
ago, before the postwar expansion of Pentecostals in the country.19 Métraux
explained how the act of conversion represented “a magic circle” of protec-
tion from spiritual aggression. He quoted what a Marbial person told him: “If
you want the (spirits) to leave you in peace, become a Protestant.” Métraux
added the insight that “No doubt it is the challenging attitude adopted by
Protestants towards the (spirits) which has finally convinced the peasants
that this religion confers upon its adepts a sort of supernatural immunity.”20
Significantly, the anthropologist’s analysis of the instrumental use of
conversion closely echoed the internal Protestant critique. The Haitian
Protestant theologian, Roger Dorsainville, had previously lamented that a
“true conviction and profound commitment to be saved” were rarely the
reason people converted. “Protestantism,” he asserted, “is pursued as a supe-
rior wanga [magical power], the pastor is like a more powerful sorcerer”
(L’Evangile est alors recherché comme “ouanga” supérieur, le prédicateur est
comme un bocor puissant).21 The magic circle also protects the convert from
very real fear of sorcery, a social weapon long used by peasants throughout
the world to limit individualism and greed and enforce reciprocity. The use
of Protestantism as the antidote to preexisting forms of sorcery reverberates
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Religion at the Epicenter 117

with analyses of many colonized and missionized African societies. In Malawi,

the Watchtower sect entered as a new witchcraft eradication movement, offer-
ing total inoculation to anyone who converted. As Fields explains, Protestant
conversion offered an escape route for young migrant men from an increas-
ingly onerous traditional system.22
The persistence of the belief that conversion offers individuals a useful
defense against sorcery has been reinforced in my own investigations of con-
version in the Ti Rivyè community.23 Denise, who migrated to South Florida
from Ti Rivyè, crystallized this perception when she told me after her con-
version in the mid-1990s, “As soon as you convert, nothing can harm you”
(Depi ou konvèti, anyen pa ka fè ou). Her new religion has neither replaced
nor diminished her belief in the reality of sorcerers’ powers, but rather per-
suaded her that it offers the most protective armor against evil forces.
Many “who are not yet converted” (ki poko konvèti), as people tellingly
often classify others’ current (and flexible) religious identities, nonetheless
refuse to accept the explanation that conversion is merely an escape from
sorcery. They argue the opposite: conversion is a license to sorcery. Thus Ti
Fanm (Little Woman) told me during a conversation in 2003, “People con-
vert precisely so they can do wanga” (konvèti pou yo kapab fè wanga menm).
Converts switch their religious costume so that they can make money illic-
itly—money they won’t have to share or redistribute—and they do it with
impunity. Converts think that their sober, separatist behavior will pre-empt
accusations of patronizing gangan (ritual leader) so that they can secretly
pursue magic and sorcery while removing themselves from obligations to a
social and ritual redistribution system that serving spirits necessarily entails.
It is widely suspected that converts secretly patronize gangan for private
magic or sorcery. While living in a Ti Rivyè village, I had been curious about
the strangers who occasionally walked into the compound I shared with a
matrilineal extended family. They would ask for Joiecius, the local gangan ason
(professional ritual specialist who has received the priestly rattle, or ason). I
finally asked the ritual leader who those strangers were. “They’re Protestants,”
he told me, as if I were the only one who didn’t already know that obvious
fact; “they come from the capital city.”
Pepe, another gangan ason in Ti Rivyè, also frankly admitted to me that
many of his clients are Protestants. He quickly dismissed my query about the
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Protestants’ offer of strong protection against sorcery. “If they say they con-
vert so nothing can harm them,” he responded, “then why do they come to
see gangan? And why do they have sacred things hidden in their houses?” In
a curious echo of Dorsainville’s 1940s lament about converts seeking stronger
wanga from Protestant pastors, Pepe further asserted that “pastors get wanga
(charms and spells) and dyab (money-making powers) which they plant at
the front of their yards so when foreign missionaries pass by they will notice
them and give them money and send them to the States. They have to fill their
churches to satisfy their sponsors. And they are good talkers, too.” Pepe thus
echoed Joiecius’s (and others’) charge that “It’s a business; it’s so they can
make money” (Se yon biznis; se pou yo fè kòb).

Catholics Serving Lwa in the Rural Léogâne Context

In Kreyòl, the term Vodou (or Vodoun) refers to a genre of ritual music and
dance, performed in worship of an important category of spirits. A legacy of
the African cultural past, the term is the Fongbe (Benin) word for “spirit.”
Over time, outsiders applied the term to refer to the religion as a whole, a
usage widely accepted, though foreign to many in the countryside. People
from Ti Rivyè do not say, “I practice Vodou” or “I believe in Vodou.” Rather,
they speak of being Catholic and “serving their spirits” (sèvi lwa). Spirits are
called lwa (pronounced like French loi). Lwa can be thought of as super- (in
the sense of all too human) and hypersensitive human beings, who are inher-
ited through family lines among landholding descent groups. Said to be from
Ginen (Africa) and to dwell there still, they crystallize a deep historical mem-
ory of the violence and displacement of the African ancestors’ past. Their
iconography and naming blends African and European influences; some are
based on Catholic saints, and many have African names.
A Haitian man explained to Alfred Métraux many decades ago, “You have
to be Catholic to serve your (lwa).”24 Thus, despite official condemnation by
the Catholic Church of practices oriented to the lwa, Catholicism is funda-
mental to serving one’s lwa. This pattern is the basis of the Protestant con-
tention that Haitians are not real Catholics because their Catholicism is so
infiltrated by Vodou as to render the faith irrelevant—a misleading allegation
because any given Catholic actor in Haiti falls within a continuum, some
self-described as Katolik fran (straight Catholics), who may know little or
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Religion at the Epicenter 119

nothing of serving the spirits, and some as lwa fanatics, and the vast middle
going through the rites of passage of the Catholic Church while simultane-
ously maintaining contact with the lwa and ritual specialists and healers in
times of crisis. Individuals’ religious involvement runs the gamut from apa-
thy (ignoring their spirits until a crisis looms), to those who are spectators
at others’ rituals but neither contribute nor worship (through prayer, song,
dance), to servants (sèvitè) of the lwa. The last are often initiated into the
ranks (ounsi/ousi) of a congregation headed by a gangan ason or manbo ason
(priestess).
All collective sèvis lwa (services or ceremonies) begin with substantial
Catholic prayer, led by a lay priest. Attendance at Mass and giving alms to
beggars gathered at cathedrals are all requirements of serving one’s lwa. Rit-
ual action entails enthusiastic, spectacular multimedia performance involving
Catholic prayer (in French), drumming, singing (in Kreyòl), dancing, visual
art, parading, spirit possession performance, and offerings of food, drink,
and toiletries, as well as animal sacrifice.
The symbolism of feeding encompasses all ritual discourse and perform-
ance. The very term for worship, sèvi, is “to serve,” as in to offer food. The per-
sonalities of lwa are differentiated by their particular tastes in food and drink.
Additionally, a lwa’s displeasure is cast as hunger, and a ceremony is called a
feeding of the lwa. When lwa are said to be hungry, a metaphor for their feel-
ing neglected or ignored by the heirs, as they often do in their remote home
in Ginen, they retaliate by sending affliction, seizing heirs with somatic illness,
misfortune, and property loss. A successful appeasement or feeding occurs
when the spirit, having been enticed to journey all the way from Ginen, arrives
personally to party with the family and to accept the lavish and copious offer-
ings. The spirit’s enjoyment of the music, dance, and food is an implicit signal
that he or she has let go of the victim and that he or she agrees not to take hold
of others—at least, not in the immediate future. Hence worship by the kin
group is a collective effort to ward off illness by enticing the avenging spirits to
release their victims and to prevent future attacks. As my research in a transna-
tional community anchored in Ti Rivyè demonstrates, migrants do not escape
the mobile lwa’s orbit.25 Indeed, migrants are prime choices for avenging spir-
its, and they are the primary sponsors of rites taking place back home. Because
their society produces migrants more than any other economic value, their
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ritual system is thoroughly adapted to migration. Transnational communi-

ties in Ti Rivyè appropriated audio and videocassette recordings in order to
perpetuate and revitalize the ritual communication practices of their land-
based descent groups.26

The Role of the Lwa in the Earthquake

Shortly after the earthquake, a journalist at a prominent newspaper who had
consulted various experts on Haitian Vodou asked me to endorse the idea
that the cataclysm had tested Haitians’ faith in their lwa. She alleged that Hait-
ians felt betrayed by their Vodou spirits for their failure to prevent the calamity
and were converting in large numbers to Christianity, not only in response
to the gods’ impotence or indifference, but also because of the exemplary role
obviously being played by ubiquitous Christian nongovernmental organiza-
tions in the rescue and recovery.
I presented this assertion to my friend Ti Mafi (My Little Girl), an initiated
servitor (ounsi), whose family is deeply involved with serving spirits. I told her
about some of the questions journalists had been asking me about whether, in
response to the earthquake, Haitians were giving up on (Catholicism and)
their lwa and converting to Protestantism. She scoffed at the absurd idea. “It
is God!” (Se Bondye!), she declared. (God [Bondye] is thought to control
nature in an otiose, random, impersonal way, as opposed to the spirits, who
are intimately involved and interfere in discrete humans’ personal affairs.) She
continued, “The lwa had nothing to do with it. The lwa did not cause the
earthquake” (Lwa pa gen anyen ladan. Lwa pa ka koz tranbleman tè a).
Ti Mafi provided thereby a swift dismissal of the first premise about the
religious response to the earthquake: the erroneous assumption that spirits
were capable of preventing such natural disasters as an earthquake. Contrary
to most outsiders’ representations of their religion, Haitians do not think their
lwa are nature spirits.27 Ritual discourse, mainly in song texts as well as visual
imagery on flour paintings, painted murals, and cloth banners often compare
spirits to aspects or forces of nature—for example, Danbala Wedo’s energy
is linked to that of a water snake and Ogoun’s anger is linked to thunder. It
does not follow, however, that Danbala is an actual water snake or that Ogoun
in fact controls storms. The equation of Danbala Wedo and Ogoun with nat-
ural forces follows, instead, from a simplistic, denotative interpretation of
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Religion at the Epicenter 121

symbolic representation. It is, to invoke Claude Lévi-Strauss’s terminology,

a reductive reading of analogical classification.28 This reading reproduces the
modern representation of the tradition-bound, scientific thought of others
who occupy a different (read: backward) intellectual time and place, and hold
the childish belief that their fickle gods control nature.29 The great religions
of modernity have presumably graduated from the nature-bound beliefs of
their primitive antecedents.
Unfortunately (perhaps for the lwa), servitors like Ti Mafi do not think
that their lwa wield powers to control air, land, or water. The powers of lwa
are far more circumscribed. Their command is primarily confined to protect-
ing or undermining the health and labor power of members of the descent
groups to whom they belong. Yet they are also distinct from ancestors, who
are respected in their own right and whose primary role, in virtue of their
proximity to the other world, is to mediate relations between members of
cognatic descent groups and their inherited lwa. As Karen Brown, Gerald
Murray, and others have shown, the lwa are primarily the protagonists of a
cult of affliction.30 These afflictions are fundamentally relational. The primary
work of religious leaders like Mama Lola, the subject’s of Brown’s mono-
graph, is to help heal—that is, to help heal the ruptured relations whose con-
crete symbolic manifestation is bodily illness and misfortune. Mama Lola
does not treat passive patients but rather, applying pragmatic, instrumental-
ist discourse and performance, empowers the afflicted actively to influence
the threatening lwa. The primary purpose of rituals is to persuade lwa to let
go of a member or members in the lwa’s grasp, and by placating the lwa at the
same time, to prevent recurrence of dis-ease.
In addition to having the power to afflict members of descent groups—no
matter where they reside—lwa are also deemed capable of protecting those
who serve them from harm. Consistent with their concept of spiritual afflic-
tion, spiritual protection is not simply discharged; its realization is contingent
rather on human agency. The hypersensate lwa can sense imminent danger
before their human counterparts. Some lwa are thought to have felt the earth’s
rumblings and tried to warn their human children of the impending danger,
sending alerts in their circumscribed and indirect ways, such as dreams and
possession performance. These embodied acts of protection from the pend-
ing cataclysm constituted the primary mode of the lwa’s involvement during
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the period immediately before the tremors. Far from blaming the lwa for aban-
doning them, those who acknowledged a lwa’s alarm credited that lwa with
saving their lives.
My eighty-five-year-old “uncle,” Faustin Amilcar, for instance, took the
ominous dream he had on the night of January 11 seriously enough to cut
short his medical treatment in the local hospital. (I knew he was hospitalized
in the concrete structure, and one of my first concerns on the evening Janu-
ary 12 was for his safety. I was relieved to discover that he wasn’t in the hos-
pital on January 12.) The morning after the earthquake, he told the nurse he
was leaving. She said, “You can’t leave. You’re not better yet.” He said, “If I
stay here, I’m going to die. Something terrible is going to happen.” He made
his grudging grandchildren come and get him. He concluded his recounting
of how he avoided the disaster: “I hold onto what I serve.”
As Faustin recounted his dream to me, hints of a territorial disaster with
great human tragedy became apparent. In his sleep, he saw chaotic scenes of
the parading local rara, or Lenten, organizations, being led by his late cousins,
the actual former leaders of the bands. The rara processions are strongly asso-
ciated with the earth. Masses of participants’ feet pound the earth as they
transverse the territory, leaving behind clouds of dust. The theme song of
the local rara band, La Ste. Rose, named in honor of the now-ruined Cathe-
dral of Léogâne, includes these lyrics: “Ste. Rose is putting their feet to the
earth; the earth trembles” (Ste. Rose ap mete pye a tè; la tè a tranble). Faustin
attended to the portentous metonymic linkages of a land disaster and left the
concrete block hospital in the nick of time.
Whereas Faustin felt the lwa’s protective message in a dream, his cousins
both saw and heard the forecast of a great earth-shattering disaster through
the spirits’ other standard means of communication: possession performance,
which is known as “speaking in the head” of a person. Three months before
the earthquake, an Ogoun spirit spoke in the head of Mikaèl, predicting that
a huge catastrophe was soon going to devastate the land of Haiti. Mikaèl’s
father, the gangan ason who was conducting the rite, told me that the family
took seriously the lwa’s warning, but they did not know when the event would
happen so they could take action to prepare themselves. Mikaèl’s husband,
who participated in the rite, recounted the same story. He, too, heeded the
signal, but he did not know how to respond.
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Religion at the Epicenter 123

A second warning was transmitted through Mikaèl on the eve of the

looming disaster. Like Faustin, she dreamed on the night of January 11 of
a terrible and imminent calamity. The next morning, she told her relatives
about the dream, announcing that she was afraid to leave the house. They
pressured her to ignore her fears in order to accompany them to visit an
ailing relative in a hospital. She relented and went along to the hospital.
Mikaèl was standing in a stairwell of the structure when it crumbled. She
was able to climb out unharmed. I spoke to Mikaèl in August. She believes,
as do her father and husband, that the lwa tried earnestly to protect their
human family.
The behavior of survivors of the earthquake from Ti Rivyè, at least, dis-
proves the first received postulation about the effect of the earthquake on
religion. They did not reject their lwa for failing to prevent a natural disaster.
The spirits, whose powers of perception is thought to be more sensitive and
developed than that of ordinary mortals, acted within their far more circum-
scribed powers to alert their children to danger. The corollary assumption,
which I turned to next during my research visit, is that having disavowed
their ineffectual spirits, Haitians are converting in large numbers to Christi-
anity, in part due to the exemplary role being played by ubiquitous Christian
nongovernmental organizations in the rescue and recovery.

The Earthquake and the

Phenomenon of Bad Conversion
During my visit to Haiti in July 2010, I interviewed several Protestants whom
I have known for decades to solicit their honest assessments of the post-
earthquake religious landscape of Ti Rivyè, Léogâne. Kanès was born into a
Catholic family who served their lwa, and he converted to Protestantism as
a young man. He was already a member of a small Assembly of God congre-
gation when he assisted me with a land-tenure survey in Ti Rivyè twenty-
eight years ago. I solicited this long-term Protestant’s reflection on the links
between the earthquake and religious conversion. Kanès immediately repu-
diated the then widespread claim that the earthquake was the catalyst for a
major religious realignment. He dismissed the notion that Haitians viewed
either the creation or prevention of seismic shocks as the work of their spirits,
asserting that they saw the quake as a natural occurrence, like hurricanes. He
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stated that the ranks of Protestants swelled right after the cataclysm, although
he did not regard the huge increase as a victory. Many Catholics converted to
Protestant sects after the earthquake out of fear of dying. Unremitting after-
shocks, which persisted for two months after the primary earthquake on Jan-
uary 12, only prolonged the terror. The relentlessness of the seismic shocks
is captured in the repetitive form of goudou-goudou, the new onomatopoetic
word for the event itself. Kanès expected that as their panic subsided, so would
their enthusiasm for their new religious armor. He classified their pragmatic
religious switching as “not good conversions.” Conversions out of fear are
inevitably ephemeral:

A lot of people converted after the goudou-goudou. They were afraid. They had
never experienced anything like it. The earth opened up and then it rose and
fell. People thought it was Bondye [not lwa]. It was a natural occurrence like the
hurricanes that come every year. They believed Bondye wanted them to con-
vert; they thought if they did, it would protect them the next time. But many
have already left it. They weren’t good conversions.

Anpil moun konvèti apre goudou-goudou a. Yo pè. Yo pa janm wè bagay sa a

avan. Tè a louvri epi li monte, desann. Moun yo panse se Bondye. Se te yon
bagay lanati tankou siklòn ki pase chak ane. Yo kwè Bondye vle pou yo konvèti;
yo konprann si yo konvèti li ta pwoteje yo pwochenn fwa. Men plizyè deja
kite. Yo pa byen konvèti.

Precise illustrations of Kanès’s portrayal of postearthquake bad conversions

were provided by several of my long-term friends. Given that Kanès and they
are unrelated and have never spoken to one another (as far as I know), the
continuities between their remarks provide significant evidence of broader
trends in this postearthquake religious landscape.
Fear indeed seems to have motivated Ti Madanm’s (Little Mrs.) shift from
Catholicism and serving family lwa to the Church of God in Christ denom-
ination. After the terrifying seismic tremors, she feared that were there to be
another cataclysm, she might not survive it. She dreaded that she would “go
into the fire” (of hell). She no doubt absorbed some of the ominous lectures
by evangelists broadcast continuously on bullhorns and loudspeakers after
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Religion at the Epicenter 125

the earthquake. When I saw her in 2011, she announced to me (without my

inquiring):

I converted. After the earthquake, I thought [saw] that I didn’t die. I converted.
I didn’t convert before but afterwards; I said if I die I don’t want to go into the
fire [of hell]. So I converted. And if I go Over There, there are Church of God
[churches] all over Orlando and Pampano.

M konvèti. Apre seizm, m wè m pa mouri. M konvèti. M pat konvèti anvan,

men apre, m di si m mouri m pa vle al nan difè. M tou konvèti. E si m al Lòt Bò,
gen Legliz de Dieu nan tout Orlando, Pampano.

Ti Madanm linked her new affiliation with the Protestant (Levanjil) defense
to the bonus tied to her pending migration: the ubiquity of Haitian (Kreyòl-
language) congregations of Church of God in her likely Florida destination
points of Orlando (where her mother settled) and Pampano Beach (where
she has other kin). She expects these ethnic churches to welcome the new
immigrant and boost her efforts to integrate into her new setting. Moreover,
she seems poised on a pragmatic ledge between her religious options, which
include a boost to integrating as a Haitian American in her pending migra-
tion to the United States.
The pragmatic logic of Ti Madanm’s decision to join the Protestants sug-
gests that deep conviction played only a minor role in the process. Indeed,
this pragmatic logic carried over to her assessment of other kin’s religious
choices. Far from expressing the hope that everyone else in her kin group
should “know Jesus,” Ti Madanm suggested that conversion is not for every-
one. She asserted that a “bad/wrong conversion” (mal konvèti) could rebound
on the agent, making the person vulnerable to affliction sent by angry spirits
or jealous sorcerers—a surprising admission for a Protestant.
To illustrate the consequences of a bad conversion, Ti Madanm cited evi-
dence of her uncle Ti Chini’s (Little Caterpillar’s) untimely suffering and
death and her cousin’s mental illness as instances of bad/wrong conversion,
which provoked the wrath of inherited spirits. I chronicled Ti Chini’s life,
friendship, conversion, and tragic death in my 2005 book, Migration and
Vodou.31 According to members of his family, including Ti Madamn, Ti Chini
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was killed by sorcery and by his rejection of his lwa, an action required for
conversion to Levanjil. Lwa are supposed to protect their children from harm
by evildoers. Once Ti Chini converted, an action requiring public disavowal
of inherited spirits, his patron lwa withdrew protection against sorcery:

There are people who convert badly/wrongly, too. It makes them sick. Little
Caterpillar should not have converted. A person who emigrated with a lwa in
his head. It took him only three days to reach Over There. It takes most people
seven or nine days.

Gen moun ki mal konveti tou. Sa a fè yo malad. Ti Chini pa te dwe konvèti.

Yon moun ki pati ak lwa nan tèt li. La l Lòt Bò a li fè twa jou. Gen moun ki fè
sèt jou, nèf jou.

Whereas Ti Madanm believed her beloved uncle’s wrong conversion in-

directly caused his death, her cousin’s bad conversion directly resulted in
madness.

There is someone else in the family who converted. She is crazy [now]. A lwa
made her crazy. She is married and has children. She is the child of Andre, my
mother’s brother.

Gen lòt moun nan fanmi a ki konvèti. Li fou. Lwa a ki fè l fou. Li marye, li gen
pitit. Li se pitit Andre, frè manman m.

Ti Madanm demonstrated through these examples that she is more inter-

ested in the pragmatic consequences of conversion than of the depth of con-
viction. The most important factor seems to be how the lwa reacted. On the
cusp of a migration decision, calculating the utility of conversion to her inte-
gration in the United States, she may not be permanently committed to her
new religion either. Her fundamentally pragmatic approach to life in general
suggests that she would be willing to reconsider her conversion too.
She may one day join the ranks of the many undercounted post-Protestants
in Léogâne, like David, who disavowed his Baptist faith and married a woman
with a “big lwa” in her head. It was this Ogoun lwa who spoke through her in
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Religion at the Epicenter 127

October 2009, warning of the disaster and who returned to her in a dream
the night of January 11, 2010.

Continuities and Discontinuities in

Individual Practices and Institutional Policies
Claims about the impact of the January 12, 2010, earthquake on religious
practice can only be assessed through an appreciation of the historical con-
text of the interplay between Catholicism, Protestantism, Vodou, and the
Haitian nation-state. Claims of doctrinal integrity and autonomy notwith-
standing, Catholicism, Vodou, and Protestantism have defined, mediated, and
reproduced one another in the fluid, plural landscape of Haiti’s religious his-
tory. My previous ethnographic research in Léogâne has revealed the often
blatant fluidity between these religions and calls into question the meaning
and purpose of conversion. Religious conversion may not entail the radical
break that separatist Protestants, and some believing scholars, assert it to
be. Even the assertive, separatist stance of some Protestants cannot disguise
how firmly their congregants remain within a fundamentally integrated spec-
trum of mystical techniques and strategies to hold illness and misfortune
at bay.32
The continuity below individuals’ changes of religious costume is an open
secret among virtually everyone I interviewed in my recent sojourn, regard-
less of their current religious clothing. The religious careers of the sons of the
gangan ason, Joiecius, exemplify the fluid symbiosis between these religious
orientations. ( Joiecius’s service to Protestants who came from the capital to
patronize the country Vodou priest was described above.) Their father ini-
tiated both men into the profession. One son, who has spent most of his adult
life in Montreal, converted to Protestantism after a bout with cancer. His older
brother, Yves, has succeeded his late father as a gangan ason and is well estab-
lished as the head of three shrines. He is also a skilled ritual drummer. Dur-
ing my recent visit, I talked to him and his cousin, Jean, another ritual leader
who was visiting from Florida. I asked them about the effect of Protestant
conversions, before and after the earthquake, on sèvis lwa. Yves portrayed an
interdependent system rather than a competitive one. “Each religious option
has its own role” to play. The Levanjil does not threaten their practice. If the
ritual work is sparse right now, it is because “people don’t have any money,”
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128 karen richman

a result of the wide economic recession and the decline of migrants’ remit-
tances rather than religious competition.
Given the assertive, even aggressive, stance of some Haitian evangelicals,
the Protestants I interviewed were more candid than I had expected them
to be. Whether long-term Protestants like Kanès or recent converts like Ti
Madanm, they endorsed a pragmatic, nondogmatic approach to religious affil-
iation and conversion and deconversion. They went so far as to contradict
the project of universal evangelism, cautioning that conversion could be a bad
and even dangerous religious path for the wrong candidate.
If Kreyòl’s plethora of didactic proverbs and ironic ritual song texts is any
indication, misfortune is the norm in the experience of most Haitians. The
lyrical messages of proverbs and songs normalize catastrophe, and they also
provide images for coping with the lamizè, the misery of poverty, from which
there is no escape.33 “Run to dodge the rain, fall in the river” (Kouri pou lapli,
tonbe larivyè). “Beyond the mountain, more mountains” (Dèyè mòn, gen
mòn). “In times of hunger, a potato has no peel” (Nan tan grangou, pòm pa
gen po). Within a year of the seismic catastrophe, the residents of Léogâne
city faced two disasters that, like the earthquake, resulted from a lethal com-
bination of the human and the natural. Hurricane Tomas’s waist-high waters
rushing through the remains of the ruined streets were followed shortly by
an epidemic of cholera, brought to the country by United Nations “peace-
keeping” troops.
Although the enormity of the suffering and anguish caused by the disaster
must not be underestimated, neither should it be exaggerated. “The stone in
the water doesn’t know the pain of the rock in the sun” (Woch nan dlo pa
konen doulè woch nan solèy). The proverb warns that some opportunists
will try to exploit the spectacle of others’ suffering for their own self-serving
gain. Evidence has emerged from my own and others’ observations that non-
governmental organizations capitalized on the disaster. The organizations
kept most of the funds donated from abroad; only a tiny fraction ever reached
the survivors.34
Individual religious agents made instrumental use of a fluid spectrum to
cope with the earthquake, and this system will in all likelihood outlast the
changes in religious costume tried on in the wake of the catastrophe. The
strategic religious flexibility observed in individual behavior is reflected in
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Religion at the Epicenter 129

recent actions taken by the Haitian Catholic Church in regard to both ritual
practice and religious policy. In a concerted effort to hold on to a wayward
flock drifting toward Protestant denominations, the Church endeavored to
increase the appeal of worship by appropriating musical styles of worship for
lwa. Catholic lyrics are sung using melodies that derive from the Vodou (or
rada) repertoire of sacred songs for the lwa, accompanied by a battery of
Vodou drums.
As for religious policy, just before the earthquake occurred, the Haitian
Catholic Church began a formal rapprochement with Vodou. The rapproche-
ment was extraordinary in light of the Church’s notorious wholesale attack on
Vodou (and haphazard aggression against Protestants) in 1941–42.35 Mem-
ories of the antisuperstition campaign survive today among the elders of
Léogâne.36 In 2008, Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot, the head of the Haitian
Catholic Church, initiated what we might term a pro-superstition campaign.37
Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot took to the countryside to reach out to gan-
gan ason. Significantly, the archbishop selected Léogâne to launch his effort.
“Why Léogâne?” I asked Father Thomas, who is associated with the local
Catholic parish and who attended the inaugural meeting. “Because, as you
know yourself, Karen, Léogâne is the center of Vodou in Haiti,” he responded.
At the meeting in Léogâne, the archbishop entreated the Vodou leaders to
remind their flock that they were still Catholics. The archbishop’s motiva-
tion was not, however, a newfound and deep respect for sèvis lwa, but rather
a strategy to stem the high rate of Catholic defections to Protestantism, which
were said to have reached 40 percent. The archbishop’s pro-superstition cam-
paign signaled that the religious pluralism of Haitians could be a route to the
Church’s salvation from the Protestant danger. Archbishop Miot died tragi-
cally in the central cathedral of Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010. He was
not able to complete the project he began in Léogâne, a project of rapproche-
ment with the Vodouists to staunch the flow of Protestant conversions in
Haiti, though it is doubtful he could have succeeded. His strategy was and
remains far below the attention-grabbing headlines about religion in Haiti
and in Léogâne specifically, the alleged hotbed of Vodou.
Undoubtedly, the most notorious attempt to provide an authoritative
religious explanation for the cataclysm came from television evangelist Pat
Robertson. Leslie Desmangles and Elizabeth McAlister have deconstructed
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130 karen richman

Robertson’s controversial reproduction and revitalization of a preexisting

myth in Haitian Protestant discourse.38 Reverend Robertson claimed that the
earthquake was divine punishment for Haitians’ pact with the devil. I dis-
cussed Robertson’s claim with Ti Mafi, only a few weeks after the earthquake,
in the midst of incalculable suffering and wildly swinging emotions. Ti Mafi
offered a swift retort. Her riposte confronted not only the misguided pastor’s
allegations but also all the speculative claims about the relationship between
the goudou-goudou and her beliefs. It thus seems fitting to give her this dis-
cussion’s last word:

People who want to know if the worship of the devil caused the earthquake—
tell them they should buy a ticket to go to Haiti so they themselves can ask the
devil if he is the one who caused the earthquake!

Moun ki bezwen konen si dyab koz tranbleman te a di yo pou yo achte yon

biye pou yo al Ayiti pou yo mande dyab si se li ki koz tranbleman te a!

Notes
1. Karen Richman, “A More Powerful Sorcerer: Conversion and Capital in the
Haitian Diaspora,” New West Indian Guide 81, no. 1–2 (2008): 1–43; Karen Rich-
man, “Peasants, Migrants and the Discovery of the Authentic Africa,” Journal of Reli-
gion in Africa 37, no. 3 (2007): 1–27.
2. Karen Richman, Migration and Vodou (Gainesville: University Press of Florida,
2005).
3. I am grateful to the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies at Uni-
versity of Notre Dame for supporting my recent fieldwork in Léogâne during the
summer of 2010.
4. Cited in David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour, and National
Independence in Haiti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 84.
5. La Phalange, 1941, cited in ibid., 182.
6. Terry Rey and Karen Richman, “The Somatics of Syncretism: Tying Body and
Soul in Haitian Religion,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 39, no. 3 (2010):
379–403.
7. Charles P. Romain, Le Protestantisme dans la Société Haïtien (Port-au-Prince:
Henri Deschamps, 1986).
8. Frederick Conway, “Pentecostalism in the Context of Haitian Religion and
Health Practice” (Ph.D. diss., American University, 1978), 166–67.
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Religion at the Epicenter 131

9. Harold Courlander and Rémy Bastien, Religion and Politics in Haiti (Wash-
ington, D.C.: Institute for Cross-Cultural Research, 1966), 56.
10. David Nicholls, “Politics and Religion in Haiti,” Canadian Journal of Political
Science 3 (1970): 412.
11. David Martin, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Pentecostalism in Latin Amer-
ica (Oxford: Blackwell Press, 1993).
12. Romain, Protestantisme, 190.
13. Marlise Simons, “Pope in Haiti, Assails Inequality, Hunger and Fear,” New
York Times, March 10, 1983.
14. Conway, “Pentecostalism.”
15. Ibid., 193.
16. Ibid., 172. See also Erika Bornstein, The Spirit of Development: Protestant
NGOs, Morality, and Economics in Zimbabwe: Religion in Histories, Societies, and Cul-
ture (New York: Routledge, 2003), and Ted Schwartz, Travesty in Haiti: A True
Account of Christian Missions, Orphanages, Fraud, Food Aid and Drug Trafcking
(Charleston: Book Surge, 2008).
17. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott
Parsons (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 72, 111, 124.
18. Romain, Protestantisme, 144.
19. Alfred Métraux, “Vodou et Protestantisme,” Revue de L’Histoire des Religions
144 (1953): 198–216.
20. Alfred Métraux, Voodoo in Haiti, trans. Hugo Charteris (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1959), 352.
21. Charles P. Pressoir, L’Etat Actuel des Missions Protestantes en Haïti (Port-
au-Prince: Conférence Prononcée au Dimanche de la Bible, à L’Eglise St. Paul,
1942), 8.
22. Karen Fields, Revival and Rebellion in Colonial Central Africa (London:
Heinemann, 1996).
23. Richman, “A More Powerful Sorcerer,” and Karen Richman, “The Protestant
Ethic and the Dis-spirit of Vodou,” in Immigrant Faiths: Transforming Religious Life
in America, ed. Karen Leonard, Alex Stepick, Manuel A. Vasquez, and Jennifer Hold-
away (Lanham, Md.: Alta Mira Press, 2005), 165–87.
24. Métraux, Voodoo in Haiti, 323.
25. Richman, Migration and Vodou.
26. Ibid. Terry Rey and Karen Richman, “Congregating by Cassette,” International
Journal of Cultural Studies 12, no. 1 (2009): 53–70.
27. Gerald Murray, “Bon Dieu and the Rites of Passage in Rural Haiti: Structural
Determinants of Postcolonial Religion,” in The Catholic Church and Religions in Latin
America, ed. Thomas Bruneau, Chester Gabriel, and Mary Mooney (Montreal:
McGill University Press, 1984), 188–231.
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132 karen richman

28. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1966).
29. Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other (New York: Columbia University Press,
1983).
30. Karen M. Brown, Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1991), and Murray, “Bon Dieu.”
31. Richman, Migration and Vodou.
32. Richman, “A More Powerful Sorcerer.”
33. Paul Farmer, AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1993), and Karen M. Brown, “Alourdes: A Case
Study of Moral Leadership in Haitian Vodou,” in Saints and Virtues, ed. John Hawley
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
34. Paul Farmer, Haiti after the Earthquake (New York: Public Affairs, 2011);
Mark Schuller, “Gluing Globalization: NGOs as Intermediaries in Haiti,” Political
and Legal Anthropology Review 32, no. 1 (2009); Mark Schuller, this volume.
35. Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier; Marlene Daut and Karen Richman, “Are
They Mad? Nation and Narration in Tous les Hommes Sont Fous,” Small Axe 26
(2008): 133–48; Kate Ramsey, The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
36. Karen Richman, “The Vodou State and the Protestant Nation: Haiti in the
Long Twentieth Century,” in Obeah and Other Powers: The Politics of Caribbean Reli-
gion and Healing, ed. Maarit Forde and Diana Paton (Durham, N.C.: Duke Univer-
sity Press, 2012), 268–79.
37. Ibid.
38. Leslie Desmangles, “Religion in Post Earthquake Haiti: Continuities and Dis-
continuities,” and Elizabeth McAlister, “The Haiti Earthquake and the Politics of
Religion,” papers presented at the invited session The Earthquake in Motion: Essays
in Honor of Karen McCarthy Brown, 109th Annual Meeting of the American
Anthropological Association, New Orleans, La., November 20, 2010; Elizabeth
McAlister, this volume.
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pa rt I I I

Èd (Aid)
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07chap7_Layout 1 16/04/2013 3:00 PM Page 135

The Alliance for Progress

A Case Study of Failure of
International Commitments to Haiti

W i e n W e i b e rt A rt h u s

T he earthquake of January 12, 2010, generated unprecedented interna-

tional mobilization for Haiti. Three months after this disaster, 150
countries and international organizations participated at the International
Donor’s Conference towards a New Future for Haiti, which took place at
the U.N. headquarters in New York. They pledged to grant Haiti assistance of
$5.3 billion in 18 months. However, more than a year later, Port-au-Prince was
still in ruins, and thousands of Haitians were living in tents. The chairmen
of the Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti (IHRC), former
U.S. president Bill Clinton and Haitian prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive,
begged donors to redouble their efforts. According to Clinton and Bellerive,
only 30 percent of the promised aid had been donated by March 31, 2011,
and only Japan and Spain had fulfilled their pledge. It is certainly too early to
assess the reasons why the international aid for rebuilding Haiti has not pro-
duced the intended effects despite their commitments. Nevertheless, we can
find in history a tentative explanation of today’s challenge. The objective of
this study is to consider the period 1961–63 as a case study regarding the
ineffectiveness of aid pledged to Haiti.
On March 13, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced the concep-
tion of an Alliance for Progress with Latin American countries. The pur-
pose of this inter-American pact was to be a vast economic development
program that would provide roads, schools, hospitals, and public housing in
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136 wien weibert arthus

the region.1 The United States committed to grant Latin American nations
$20 million in ten years (equivalent to $100 billion in 2004 dollars).2 This
fund would serve to create jobs and modernize the hemisphere. The econ-
omy was to grow at a rate of 2.5 percent per capita per year. A total of ninety-
four goals were set forth in the charter adopted at Punta del Este, Uruguay,
in August 1961.3 For some people, the alliance was equivalent to the Marshall
Plan, which was a successful plan established by the United States to help
rebuild the European countries after World War II. However, despite good
intentions and spectacular announcements, the alliance did not bring the
promised progress.
Scholars have analyzed this program carefully and present different argu-
ments to explain its failure.4 They mainly use countries such as Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, and the Dominican Republic as case studies. These four countries
received 60 percent of the total amount of U.S. aid that was for the Alliance
for Progress. Even in these situations, the objective of the charter of Punta del
Este was not fully attained. Historians who are friendly to Kennedy, includ-
ing Arthur Schlesinger Jr., argue that the alliance failed because of the presi-
dent’s assassination two years after launching the program. They claim that
Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, was more concerned with Vietnam
than Latin America. Other scholars, such as Stephen G. Rabe, highlight inher-
ent problems in the Kennedy administration. Rabe shows that the difficulty
to launch the aid was perceptible even under Kennedy. Tony Smith, on the
other hand, emphasizes cognitive factors related to Latin American soci-
eties, particularly the lack of a democratic tradition; in fact, Kennedy linked
economic progress, which means the disbursing of the aid, to democratic pro-
gress in the region.5 Finally, Jeffrey Taffet, in his analysis, places emphasis on
the opposition between the humanitarian objectives of the alliance and its
use by the U.S government as a cold war weapon.
In Haiti, the program’s failure cannot even be considered. Unlike the cases
of Brazil and the Dominican Republic, the promised aid never reached Haiti.
The purpose of this chapter is to help identify the reasons Haiti did not ben-
efit from the Alliance for Progress. It will reinforce the examples cited by
Smith, Rabe, and Taffet to explain the failure of the program. It will particu-
larly show, as Stephen Rabe states, that the program was ineffective before the
assassination of John F. Kennedy. Finally, it will point out the resemblance
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The Alliance for Progress 137

between the Alliance for Progress in 1963 and the International Donor’s Con-
ference in 2011 in terms of the needs, commitments, and failure of interna-
tional aid to Haiti.
The ineffectiveness of the Alliance for Progress in Haiti can be explained
by a set of singular but interconnected elements. First, there were the weak-
nesses of the Haitian administration. Partisanship, corruption, and lack of
experts, all of which undermined the country, made it difficult to achieve the
structural reform necessary for the funds to be disbursed. The second factor
was the internal situation of Haiti, which was characterized by political insta-
bility and dictatorship. Third, there was the impossible cohabitation of the
nationalistic pride of Haitians and the conditions imposed by the donors.
For instance, François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, the president of Haiti, usually
referred to his nationalism when he didn’t want to standardize his action to
the international system; but it was more a nationalisme à la carte, a national-
ism of circumstances. This brings us to the following questions: Did national-
ism go hand in hand with the need for foreign aid? Could Haiti claim a policy
of nonintervention in its internal affairs while it was dependent on interna-
tional aid? Finally, the ineffectiveness of international aid could be related to
the hidden motivation of the donors. During the years 1961–63, the Kennedy
administration used the Alliance for Progress to advance its own agenda.
Consequently, the extent to which the Haitian government contributed to
the progress of the donors’ agenda determined whether the aid would be
withheld or granted.

Administrative Weakness of the Haitian Government

Although Haiti has always been qualified to benefit from international aid,
it frequently struggled to meet the first requirement, which was to come up
with projects in order to receive money. In 1961, countries that were desig-
nated to receive the aid from the Alliance for Progress had to submit their
own projects to a committee of nine experts known as the Wise Men.6 The
main task of this committee was to evaluate whether each project was con-
sistent with the objectives of the charter of Punta del Este and the Act of
Bogota.7 Hence, the projects had to meet specific criteria.8 Haiti had difficulty
in meeting these requirements because of its administrative weaknesses and
lack of expertise. This may be explained by several factors.
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138 wien weibert arthus

When François Duvalier took office in 1957, he started a policy that

would be known as the macoutisation of public administration.9 The presi-
dent had a fundamental problem with the old administration. Most of the
public employees were mulattoes. Holders of the monopoly of knowledge
and richness since the independence, they had undoubted expertise in man-
aging public affairs.10 Nevertheless, they were perceived as Duvalier’s oppo-
nents for two reasons. First, the racial question was an important issue of
the 1957 election.11 Duvalier’s main challenger, Louis Déjoie, was a mulatto.
Second, the former president, Paul Eugène Magloire, whose administra-
tion was deemed pro-mulatto, was one of the fiercest opponents of Duvalier
even though in exile.12 As a result, Duvalier was not at peace with executives
of the former administration. He removed officials with years of experience
and replaced them with his supporters, who were often unqualified for the
positions. Additionally, he centralized all the power in the National Palace.
By doing so, he reduced the prospect for expertise of the new public admin-
istrator. It is clear that Duvalier did not invent the system of centralization of
power in Haiti. But in the history of the country, he was the one who went
the furthest in the process of transforming the presidential palace as the cen-
ter of political, administrative, and military power.13 Decisions to appoint or
dismiss the senior officer of the army, a soldier, the secretary of foreign affairs,
or a government agent all took place in the National Palace. Duvalier granted
only partial authority to even the most faithful servants who occupied key
positions in the government.14 On many occasions, the president personally
interrogated prisoners and led squads to execute convicts whose sentences
were pronounced by special courts in the National Palace. The trias politica
principle (separation of powers) approved by the 1957 constitution was of
no significance to Duvalier. Instead, during his reign, Papa Doc established
a system of subordination of the legislative and judicial powers and the army
to the executive branch, which became hegemonic.15
Moreover, being Duvalierist was not enough to have a long and stable
career in government. Indeed, by the 1960s, macoutisation of public admin-
istration took another dimension with elimination of some Duvalierists. Early
in his presidency, Papa Doc surrounded himself with competent members of
the black elite. There were many intellectuals in his campaign team and first
cabinet. Among them there were Dr. Jean Price-Mars, a former congressman
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The Alliance for Progress 139

and longtime diplomat; Dr. Louis Mars, a psychiatrist and diplomat; Leslie
Manigat, a historian and specialist in international relations; Henock Trouil-
lot, a historian; Roger Dorsinville, a prominent writer and diplomat; Joseph
Chatelain, a respected economist; Vilfort Beauvoir, who held a Ph.D. in law;
and Father Jean-Baptiste Georges, who held a doctorate in canon law. Grad-
ually, the president eliminated most of the influential executives of this ad-
ministration and promoted more submissive personalities. As early as 1958,
Duvalier began using diplomatic missions to displace some famous Duva-
lierists. That was in fact a form of golden exile for the fortunate few;16 others
were brutally imprisoned, exiled, or killed.17
On the other hand, there is evidence that Duvalier, despite his national-
istic and racial policy, preferred conferring some important tasks to foreign
experts, especially individuals and companies from the United States.18 A
few months after his inauguration, three major U.S. companies worked within
Duvalier’s cabinet. His official adviser and lobbyist was John Roosevelt, son
of former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose firm, Summers & Hamil-
ton, was in charge of communication for the Haitian president. Technicians
of Lehman Brothers and Klein & Sacks, who specialized in finance, were
appointed as economic consultants for the government. Among U.S. indi-
viduals who were appointed by the president, Nolle Smith seconded the
finance minister, Philippe Bottfeld was the special adviser for tourism, and
Harlan Tulley was a key expert in the department of agriculture.19 Further-
more, an imposing U.S. naval mission was training the Haitian army. To jus-
tify this policy, Duvalier claimed Haitian professionals were incompetent.20
On the contrary, the president simply made a choice of government. He
decided to expel from Port-au-Prince—the center of power—the few Hait-
ians who could threaten his regime, while he called on foreign experts who
had no interest in the country’s internal policy.
In the 1960s, this lack of local expertise became a real obstacle to Haiti’s
development. The government was a victim of its own policy, which con-
tributed to the acceleration of the brain drain of Haitians outside the coun-
try. According to Robert I. Rotberg, “By 1963, 1000 Haitians were reported
to be employed in the Congo (Kinshasa), and between 1960 and 1962 310
Haitian professionals began working in Guinée for President Sékou Touré
or the United Nations. By the middle 1960’s about 80 per cent of Haiti’s
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140 wien weibert arthus

most qualified physicians, lawyers, engineers, teachers, and other profession-

als had fled to the United States, Canada or Africa.”21 Robert Heinl and Nancy
Heinl add, “By 1970, there were more Haitian physicians in either Montreal
or New York than Haiti. Montreal had ten times more Haitian psychiatrists
than Port-au-Prince. Of 246 medical-school graduates from 1959 to 1969
from the University of Haiti, only three could be found in practice in the
country in 1969. Some 50 public-health nurses, trained by the United States,
were all lost to Africa. The Organization of American States and the U.N. had
more Haitian economists on their payrolls than the government of Haiti.”22
By the end of 1961, the foreign experts that were working within Duvalier’s
government left the country because of the fragile economic situation and
poor practices of the regime. Hence, Haiti became indisputably in need of
specialists to implement sustainable projects to gain the approval of the Wise
Men. The country needed assistance, and the Kennedy administration could
make thousands of dollars available for its development, but there were no
local plans. Therefore, Duvalier’s only choice was to ask the United States to
send specialists to prepare a program for Haiti.
The executive committee of the Alliance for Progress sent nine experts to
Haiti a few weeks after the Punta del Este conference. They quickly reached
the conclusion that Haiti did not have qualified staff to carry out the reforms
prescribed by the charter. In their first report, they recommended the dis-
patch of a considerable inter-American mission to Haiti. In November 1961,
a committee of fourteen members, the Tripartite Commission for Economic
Planning, was sent to Haiti. It was composed of six experts of the Economic
Commission for Latin America (CEPAL), four experts from the Organiza-
tion of American States (OAS), and four experts from the Inter-American
Development Bank. The Tripartite Commission had two principal objectives.
First, they had to make an inventory of the possibilities for development in
Haiti. Thereafter, they were to offer two ways of developing these possibili-
ties. The first objective was to be attained in two years and the second in eight
years.23 In June 1962, the commission submitted the first plan it had prepared
for Haiti to the Wise Men. According to this document, there were four major
projects that could contribute to Haiti’s development: the construction of an
airport in Port-au-Prince, a route between the capital and the southern region,
a medical program, and an education campaign in rural areas. According to
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The Alliance for Progress 141

the commission evaluation, it would cost $70 million to implement this plan.
The construction was slated to begin in 1963 and end two years later. After
their completion, the Wise Men would decide about the second part of the
program. This would focus on economic and social development of Haiti as
stated by the Alliance for Progress.24
In reality, the projects presented in the first plan were not innovative.
Duvalier intended to achieve them before Kennedy launched the Alliance
for Progress. Some of them were even promised during the 1957 campaign.
Furthermore, in January 1962, funding for the airport was, among other proj-
ects, the center of negotiation between the U.S. secretary of state, Dean Rusk,
and the minister of Haitian foreign relations, René Chalmers, as a reward for
Haiti’s vote against Cuba at the Punta del Este conference.25 On this occa-
sion, the estimated cost for the airport was 2.8 million.26 In April, the United
States gave a first disbursement for the construction of the southern route.27
It is obvious that if the experts were from Haiti, they would not spend seven
months finalizing projects that the government had already negotiated. Also,
the qualitative presentation was all that was new in the projects the commis-
sion submitted to the seven Wise Men. Despite all this, no one knew whether
the commission’s plan was tenable because the context was no longer favor-
able to Haiti. By the summer of 1962, before the executive committee of the
Alliance for Progress analyzed the eligibility of the projects, Duvalier’s regime
was already on the U.S. blacklist. The Kennedy administration decided to halt
relations with the Haitian government because of Duvalier’s political prac-
tices. Therefore, the political situation in Haiti was another obstacle to access
the funds of the Alliance for Progress.

Political Practices Out of Phase

with International Standards
International donors always presented aid as a way to help countries in need;
however, international assistance is essentially used as a political instrument.
There is no program that reflects this double purpose more than the Alliance
for Progress. After promising the modernization of Latin American coun-
tries, Kennedy announced that the implementation of the program was a
“pact between democratic governments.” On the surface, Haiti appeared to
be a democratic country because it had a president and a parliament elected
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142 wien weibert arthus

four years prior. For that reason, Kennedy only specifically cited Castro’s Cuba
and Trujillo’s Dominican Republic of nations that were not part of the “soci-
ety of free men of the hemisphere.” Nevertheless, for some of the U.S. pres-
ident’s advisers, there was a third dictatorship in the region: Haiti.28
The most influential anti-Duvalier figure in the Kennedy administration
was Adolph Augustus Berle Jr. He was the former deputy secretary of state
for Latin America under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Kennedy asked him to head
the Task Force on Immediate Latin American Problems, which was supposed
to come up with propositions on how to handle urgent regional troubles.29
It was put in place in November 1960, right after the U.S. presidential elec-
tion. After Kennedy’s inauguration, Adolph Berle became the head of a wider
group of delegates from the White House, Pentagon, state department, and
CIA. As a specialist in Latin American politics, Berle played a leading role in
the conception of the Alliance for Progress.30 Early on, he urged Kennedy to
adopt a straightforward attitude toward Haiti by releasing Duvalier immedi-
ately.31 Berle was in a good position to understand how to utilize the Alliance
for Progress as a means of promoting and sustaining democracy in Latin
America. In this cold war context, the notion of democracy was essentially
the antithesis of communism. It also referred to the functioning of viable
institutions with respect to electoral terms, organization of free elections,
political change, guarantee of free enterprise, respect of human rights, and
freedom for citizens.32 On the basis of these assumptions, Duvalier’s coun-
try was anything but democratic. In fact, at the time of the implementation
of the Alliance for Progress, Duvalier began to show the world the true face
of his regime in three aspects of governing style: systematic elimination of
all forms of opposition to his government, disrespect of private properties,
and conservation of power.
There is abundant literature on Duvalier’s habit of eliminating people
who did not submit completely to his authority by exiling, imprisoning, or
assassinating them.33 It is essential to highlight a few important facts that
occurred between 1961 and 1963 that portray Duvalier’s time in power.
During this period, after neutralizing the most important figures of his
political opposition, Duvalier attacked the organized groups of the society.
Between November 1960 and January 1961, the government deported sev-
eral members of the Catholic clergy, including two archbishops, charging
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The Alliance for Progress 143

them with interference in Haiti’s internal politics. He also brutally sup-

pressed a strike led by the students’ union (L’Union Nationale des Étudiants
Haïtiens, UNEH).34 Several students and professors were jailed for organiz-
ing or supporting the strike. The government accused them of being paid
by “international communism.”35 Under that charge, he closed the Catholic
newspaper, La Phalange, which was the only daily newspaper in Port-au-
Prince that was not subordinate to the government.36 Duvalier also attacked
members of the Forces Army of Haiti (FAD’H). He gave all rights and priv-
ileges to the Tontons Macoutes while he regularly purged the army of its
most capable soldiers.37 During April 1963, more than sixty officers were
expelled from the FAD’H. They all took refuge in foreign embassies. The
Tontons Macoutes murdered those who did not take refuge. The U.S. state
department drew up a list of about 150 people, especially FAD’H officers,
university professors, and professionals from diverse backgrounds—includ-
ing entire families—who took refuge in the Latin American embassies in
Port-au-Prince.38
Kennedy might not have been concerned with Duvalier’s brutality if his
victims were simply left-wing personalities. They would be victims of the cold
war. In the Kennedy administration, it was admitted that to fight commu-
nism subversion in underdeveloped countries, weapons could not be sepa-
rated from roads and schools.39 In other words, to achieve the objectives of
the Alliance for Progress—building roads and schools, containing commu-
nism—a strong government was desirable. However, Duvalier’s actions
exceeded Kennedy’s tolerance level. The Haitian dictator attacked people
from both the left and right—and many more from the right (bourgeoisie,
church, and military) than the left. His politics were obviously contrary to
the idea of the Alliance for Progress, not only in its political considerations
but also in its economic vision.
Since his arrival in power, Duvalier established a system that showed little
respect for individuals’ rights of private property and free enterprise. He con-
fiscated the property of opponents who were jailed or exiled, which was a
good source of fortune for the Duvalierists. The Tontons Macoutes took
advantage of these felonious practices all over the country. Additionally, since
1957 Duvalier used malicious strategies to address the economic problems
facing his government. Because he could not get the international support
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144 wien weibert arthus

needed to balance the budget, Duvalier put financial pressure on the country
for years. The population was forced to suffer silently in penury while obli-
gated by the government to finance obscure programs.40 One of the most
famous internal activities Duvalier’s government set up to replenish the trea-
sury was called Effort National. This consisted of new taxes, improvised tolls,
treasury bills imposed on business, and pay cuts for government officials and
the military.41 It is important to note that Duvalier used the Effort National
program to build the city of Duvalier-Ville (currently called Cabaret) and
the François Duvalier International Airport of Port-au-Prince (now called
Toussaint Louverture International Airport). The Haitian president adopted
extreme measures to find funds to run his government and to implement
programs that were important to him.
Duvalier’s policies significantly victimized numerous foreign individuals
and companies. This had a definite impact on Haitian international relations.
In the U.S. and French archives, there are several diplomatic protests against
the regime’s method of extorting money from foreigners. However, Duvalier
did not plan to change his ways of collecting funds.42 He declared the British
ambassador, Gerard Corley-Smith, persona non grata for denouncing extor-
tion of British citizens by Tontons Macoutes during the collection of “new
taxes” for the construction of Duvalier-Ville.43 Duvalier’s attitude toward for-
eigners was a major obstacle to the disbursement of the international aid. In
the case of the Alliance for Progress, U.S. companies played a significant role
because they had to be the first to receive the contracts for transportation
and construction. The U.S. Congress required that products and services
obtained through U.S. aid should come from the United States, and equip-
ment that came from other countries had to be carried by vessels registered
in the United States.44 This meant that U.S. companies should be free, and
even encouraged, to open or expand their business in countries that received
U.S. aid. Yet in Haiti, it was impossible to do business easily because private
investment was not protected and private property was not respected. In the
meantime, Duvalier also had a reputation for not paying his debts to foreign
companies.45 France, for example, decided not to buy Haitian coffee and
refused to grant any financial assistance to Haiti because Duvalier did not
commit to pay his debts to French companies such as Grands Travaux de
Marseille.46 The United States took similar measures in the summer of 1961
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The Alliance for Progress 145

when the Senate amended the Mutual Security Act, which forbade the United
States from granting financial assistance to governments that owed money
to U.S. citizens.47 The Dirksen Amendment, which was named after Illinois
senator Everett Dirksen, specifically addressed the issue of Duvalier’s debts
to U.S. companies and individuals, which reached $1.5 billion.48
Beyond these fundamental considerations—Duvalier’s dictatorship and
his politics of extortion—Haiti was a politically unstable country. During
Duvalier’s reign, there were at least two attempted military coups or inva-
sions each year. The number would be much larger if we added rumors and
information from the petite histoire (nonscientific history). Just in the year
1963, there were two military coup plots, an attempted kidnapping of Duva-
lier’s children, several invasion attempts from an army of Haitian exiles based
in the Dominican Republic, and a threat of war between Duvalier and Juan
Bosch, president of the Dominican Republic. Duvalier severely repressed
every attempt to overthrow his government. Dead bodies of insurgents
dragged along the street for days became warnings to potential rebels. The
Tontons Macoutes also attacked families of insurgents. They did not even
spare children. Duvalier could commit the worst imaginable crime to retain
his power.49 Instability was also related to the fact that Duvalier’s presidency
was over in 1963, according to the 1957 constitution. Kennedy required the
enforcement of the Haitian constitution, which stated that the president was
elected for a nonrenewal six-year term. Accordingly, a new president should
take office on May 15, 1963.
Initially, the Kennedy administration did not find it urgent to forsake
Duvalier, as Adolph Berle recommended. Secretary of State Dean Rusk,50 as
well as the U.S. ambassador to Haiti, Robert Newbegin, advocated in favor
of the maintenance of a close relationship with Duvalier in order to protect
the U.S. interests in the region.51 By 1962, it became evident that the Haitian
political situation was incompatible with Kennedy’s vision for the region.
Consequently, Duvalier’s regime became a real problem for the United States.
Nevertheless, as a result of strategic considerations, Kennedy did not cut all
the U.S aid to Haiti.52 Until mid-1963, he applied a wait-and-see policy toward
Duvalier. Haiti was considered unstable and, most of all, in transition. Thus,
it could not benefit from long-term investments. The United States decided
to give only occasional aid to Haiti, and under certain conditions.
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The Nationalisme à la Carte of Haitians

Haitians are known for their pride in being the first black nation in the world,
the only successful revolution of slaves in the world, and the second free
nation in the Americas. There are fortresses and statues all over the country
that serve as reminders of the victory of black slaves against the white French
slave owners. Even illiterate Haitians can declaim Dessalines’s oath to never
allow the blan (white man) to lead this country. More than ordinary Haitians,
the leaders of the government always refer to the serment des ancêtres (oath
of the ancestors) to defend national integrity—but mostly their own inter-
est—when faced with international pressure to ameliorate internal Haitian
policy.
In 1962, Kennedy decided to release some aid to Haiti under three condi-
tions: (1) control of the aid by U.S. agencies; (2) dissolution of the Tontons
Macoutes; and (3) Duvalier’s scheduled departure from power in May 1963.53
These conditions underlined the three important components for disbursing
international aid even today; they represent good governance, human rights,
and democracy. They were all related to internal policy. And Haiti, in addition
to its lack of expertise and ongoing instability, had the reputation of being a
highly corrupt country that had a precarious democracy even before Duvalier.
In the 1960s, the Duvalier administration was at the top of a list of cor-
rupt governments in the region. Leslie Péan uses the term ensauvagement
to express how brutal and perversive Duvalier’s regime was.54 Péan details
Duvalier’s practice of diverting international funds. Even when money for
infrastructure was effectively used for building roads and rail networks, all the
lucrative contracts were given to Duvalierist partisans and relatives. Also,
international aid was used to enrich the presidential family and friends, used
to finance secret activities, or used as vouchers to buy support for the regime.
Even Rony Gilot, a dedicated Duvalierist, does not deny this fact.55 The U.S.
government was aware of this.56 After turning a blind eye to Duvalier’s mis-
appropriation of international funds for more than a year, Kennedy decided
to take control over U.S assistance to Haiti. He wanted to be sure that the
money disbursed to Haiti would serve to implement projects submitted by
the Haitian government and accepted by the United States. Accordingly, he
adopted some radical measures. The U.S. Agency for International Develop-
ment (USAID) should manage money disbursed for Haiti in the form of
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The Alliance for Progress 147

donations.57 That was related specifically to $7.2 million promised by the

United States in April 1962 to implement technical assistance and economic
programs in rural areas.58 As for the loans, which the Haitian government
obtained with an interest rate, Kennedy decided they should be placed under
the control of the Development Loan Fund. When Kennedy announced this
measure, Duvalier had just signed a loan of $3.4 million with the United States
for the construction of a southern highway. Although the money was not a
donation, Kennedy wanted the U.S. agencies to be responsible for launching
the request for money and paying contractors that presented proof of their
expenses.59 Also, the Haitian government could no longer have unlimited
access to the money that came from the United States in the form of aid
or loans. Duvalier rejected these conditions, claiming they endangered the
national sovereignty of Haiti.60
Under the same guise of national sovereignty, Duvalier refused to dismiss
the militia and end his term on May 15, 1963. In this Kennedy and Duvalier
had been at loggerheads since April 1961. Two years before the end of his
constitutional mandate, the Haitian president used the parliamentary elec-
tion to reelect himself for an additional six years. In this election, the ballots
were designed as follows: “Vote—Jean Joseph Pierre, Candidate for Deputy
[Representative]—Dr. François Duvalier, President.”61 Hence, the name of
Duvalier was written on each ballot. At the end of the election, the regime
started an extensive campaign to convince the international public opinion
and diplomatic missions in Haiti of the way the population “spontaneously”
turned the vote into a presidential election and used it to “plebiscite Dr. Fran-
çois Duvalier.” The “intellectuals of the regime” used the media to produce
“scholarly analysis” justifying the April 30 election. The public precursor Max
C. Duplessis resuscitated Montesquieu to support his argument:62

Le peuple, lors d’une consultation électorale, est souverain et exprime sa

volonté dans les formes qu’il a choisies et en faveur de qui bon lui semble.
Aucun texte constitutionnel ne peut lui être opposé, car il apporterait une
limitation au libre exercice de la souveraineté nationale.

The people, during an election is sovereign and expresses its will in the manner
it chooses and to whom it pleases. No constitutional text can be opposed be-
cause it would provide a limitation on the free exercise of national sovereignty.63
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This statement served as the main argument for all attempts to justify the
spontaneous reelection of Duvalier. When the official result was announced,
Duvalier was “officially reelected” for six years, the president reactivated the
theory of popular sovereignty.64 He claimed he did not have any choice but
bow down before the will of his people: “My enemies . . . can reproach me for
one crime—of loving my people too much. As a revolutionary, I have no right
to disregard the voice of the people.”65 By saying this, Duvalier wanted the
international community to believe it was not his choice to stay in power,
but that of the nation. In other words, who could blame him? In fact, the
United States did. In a telegram to the state department, the U.S. embassy
concluded, “Efforts to give the election an appearance of constitutionality
should stretch the imagination of even the most credulous of the uneducated
among the Haitians.”66 The Haitian dictator needed a stronger argument to
convince the Kennedy administration, which was committed to democratic
standards.
To express his disapproval of Duvalier’s maneuver to remain in power,
Kennedy recalled his ambassador on the eve of Duvalier’s installation on
May 22.67 In the following year, no U.S. ambassador participated in com-
memorating the date adopted by Duvalier as the day of national recognition.
Every May 22, thousands of people gathered in Port-au-Prince, shouting,
“Vive Duvalier.”68 Most of them were peasants who were forced to leave their
villages and were transported to the capital by buses, military trucks, and ves-
sels in order to enlarge the number of pro-Duvalier demonstrators.69 On these
occasions, the government requisitioned all private and public transportation.
People were also forbidden to leave the capital. During those days, songs,
posters, speeches, and ceremonies were all dedicated to the glorification of
Dr. Duvalier, according to a telegram from the French ambassador.70 The
Haitian president did everything to show the world, especially the U.S. pres-
ident, that he had his people’s support.
If Duvalier tried to persuade Kennedy, it was because the U.S. aid was
essential to the survival of the regime. Since he took power in 1957, the
Haitian president placed his government under the total dependence of the
United States. He even declared that he wanted Haiti to become “the spoiled
child of the United States as it was the case for Puerto Rico.”71 During the last
two years of Eisenhower’s presidency, Duvalier managed to get important
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The Alliance for Progress 149

aid from the United States, sometimes through blackmail. The Eisenhower
administration financed up to 30 percent of the Haitian budget. Accordingly,
when Eisenhower’s successor initiated the Alliance for Progress, Duvalier
had been used to depending significantly on U.S. financial assistance. If he
accepted the first conditions, it was surely due to the enormous needs of Haiti.
A writer friendly to Duvalier described Haiti’s financial situation in this way:

Le pays était confronté à une situation économique exécrable. Les bamboches

et les couteuses concentrations populaires, le laxisme administratif, la corrup-
tion généralisée entretenue par le système des dépouilles post-électorales, la
course effrénée de la classe moyennes aux prébendes, et parfois le gaspillage
inconsidéré des ressources publiques, tout cela avait contribué à vider les
caisses de l’Etat.

The country faced an abysmal economic situation. Expensive debauchery and

popular manifestations, permissiveness in the public administration, the wide-
spread corruption maintained by the spoiled postelectoral system, the rat race
of the middle class to sinecures, and sometimes the reckless waste of public
resources, all contributed to empty the state treasuries.72

Clearly, the Haitian government could not function without U.S. assistance.
However, President Duvalier wanted unconditional aid. He often asked for
massive injections of U.S. dollars into the Haitian economy. But he did not
accept any restriction on his internal policy and management of the aid. He
expected the moon from the Alliance for Progress, but he rejected its polit-
ical conditions.73 When the Inter-American Organization raised the question
of human rights in Haiti, Duvalier accused them of interfering in the internal
affairs of Haiti,74 yet he appealed to them to write the national plan that was
presented to the Wise Men. When the chief of the U.S. naval mission to Haiti
published his position about the militia, Duvalier accused him of interfering
in Haitian policy.75 Nevertheless, the marines were training the Haitian army.
When Kennedy asked him to respect democratic rules, he said that Haitian
democracy was not that of France or England, and less than that of the United
States.76 When Duvalier felt it necessary, he appealed to foreigners and offered
them advantages, such as the possibility for the United States to establish a
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military base in Haiti.77 But when these same foreigners acted in a manner
that endangered his interest, Duvalier pulled his card of “defender of national
sovereignty.” Therefore, Duvalier’s nationalism was made-to-measure atti-
tude: it was nationalisme à la carte. In Duvalier’s vision, even though Haiti
was dependent on international assistance, it should be considered a singu-
lar country—a nation that fully enjoyed its rights of self-determination and
had its own conception of democracy and human rights. These notions were,
nonetheless, defined and enforced by the president according to his objec-
tive of staying indefinitely in power. In this context, and under the Duvalier
regime’s desired conditions, international aid could not be effective.78
It is important to remember that some of Kennedy’s requirements—
management of the aid by USAID and the loans by the Development Loan
Fund—were not included in the charter of Punta del Este. The Alliance for
Progress was presented as a mechanism of the inter-American system; that
meant it was subject to multilateral diplomacy. But in practice, it was an instru-
ment of bilateral diplomacy engaging each country with the United States.
Accordingly, the more friendly a Latin American country was to the United
States, the better its chances of receiving money. As noted previously, since
the fall of 1961, some weeks after signing the charter of Punta del Este, Duva-
lier had not received any financial aid from the Kennedy administration. This
was directly related to the Dirksen amendment. This bilateral decision would
later affect the release of funds from the Alliance for Progress. Duvalier under-
stood this logic. He decided to start paying his debts to U.S. companies.79 But
some months later, the blockage came directly from the heart of the Alliance
for Progress: the White House.
During the summer of 1962, while the Haitian government was prepared
to submit its projects to the Wise Men, it became evident to Kennedy that
Duvalier did not intend to accept the U.S. requirements. He resolved not to
proceed with his promises of aid. He decided Haiti should not receive new
assistance from the United States, and even the disbursement of loans already
signed should be blocked. The staff and budget of USAID in Haiti were re-
duced considerably. The loan of $2.8 million for the construction of the air-
port was maintained because this project met the military condition imposed
by the United States for jets being able to land in Haiti.80 However, the loan
for the construction of the southern route was suspended. The United States
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The Alliance for Progress 151

even blocked disbursement of loans Haiti signed with the Inter-American

Development Bank and the International Development Association, which
was an agency of the World Bank.81 Kennedy adopted these measures know-
ing that Haiti had great need of financial support from international donors,
particularly the United States.82 The truth was that international aid did not
serve a humanitarian purpose.

The Hidden Agenda of the Donors

From a humanitarian point of view, international assistance should not take
the form of a give-and-take business. It should be an act by which wealthy
countries and institutions share with underprivileged countries and people.
Most of the time, the donors never reveal what they hope to receive in return
for their aid. They regularly align their assistance with the popular French
formula, assistance à personne en danger—that is, the international community
has an obligation to assist people in danger. Accordingly, there should be no
hidden agenda in international aid.
President John Kennedy put forth this ideal humanitarian purpose when
he presented his administration’s commitment to help Latin American coun-
tries. In the inaugural speech of the Alliance for Progress, he claimed that
this program would focus on economic development. The limitation of this
statement was carefully demonstrated. Furthermore, the alliance in essence
was not an ordinary political instrument, but rather the main weapon the
United States used to contain the spread of communism in Latin America.
As Melvin Small emphasizes, “American diplomacy, politics, culture, religion,
science and technology, and the institution of the family were all dramatically
affected by the nation’s longest ‘war,’ the Cold War.”83 That explains why the
fight against communism had dominated the 1960 electoral campaign of the
United States. Consequently, by attaining the presidency, Kennedy became
the commander in chief of the cold warriors of the Western Hemisphere.
During the Eisenhower presidency, the United States had developed various
forms of financial assistance to support any government in Latin America,
including dictatorships, which was aligned with the Western bloc by contain-
ing the expansion of communism.84 Kennedy regionalized the containment
of communism in Latin America by establishing an economic program for
the entire hemisphere.
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At the time Kennedy took office, the United States and its Latin Ameri-
can allies considered Fidel Castro a threat to the hemisphere.85 They accused
Cuban broadcasters of “inveighing daily and agents conspiring nightly against
the democratic regimes of Latin America.”86 Castro’s regime was perceived
as a bad example for a region in which there should be no place for commu-
nism, in Kennedy’s view. To bring peace to the hemisphere, the United States
was determined to overthrow Castro. The episode of the Bay of Pigs, which
was prepared under Eisenhower and fulfilled under Kennedy, was one of the
U.S. attempts to attain this goal.87 In the meantime—and more strongly after
the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion—the United States decided to prevent
by any means other countries in the region from following the Cuban exam-
ple. Therefore, pressuring Cuba would be a good way to stop all leftist move-
ment in Latin American and Caribbean countries.
François Duvalier fully supported Kennedy’s policy. In his country, he
chased both real and alleged communists. He arrested and executed many
famous leftist leaders and presented them publically as war trophies. This
was the case with the legendary Marxist leader of the Parti d’Entente Popu-
laire (Party of Popular Agreement), Jacques Stephen Alexis. The author of
the famed novel Compère Général Soleil was executed in April 1961.88 At a
regional level, Duvalier bragged of having associated his government with the
U.S. effort to “curb the spread of communism in the hemisphere and maintain
the unity of the hemispheric family.”89 He gave the United States the decid-
ing vote to ostracize Cuba from the OAS. On many occasions, he offered the
United States Mole St.-Nicolas, a peninsula located less than fifty miles from
Cuba, to install a military base in replacement of the one at Guantánamo.90
After the missile crisis, he allowed the U.S. navy and air force to use Haitian
ports and airports to strengthen quarantine measures against Cuba.91 As a
result, Kennedy’s advisers considered Duvalier an important ally against
Castro and communism. He was therefore in a good position to receive the
alliance’s funds despite his dictatorship.92
By the end of 1962, the Kennedy administration radically changed its posi-
tion regarding Duvalier. Kennedy was certainly concerned about Duvalier’s
dictatorship and his disrespect of Haitian rights. But this was not the main
apprehension of a U.S. president during the cold war. In fact, Kennedy’s advi-
sers concluded, as they did for Castro, that Duvalier’s regime was endangering
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The Alliance for Progress 153

the hemisphere. The very reason they relied on Duvalier—to stem the red
communist menace—became the main reason they wanted him to leave
power. Kennedy’s advisers feared that Duvalier’s dictatorship would induce
the emergence of a communist regime in Haiti, as had been the case in Cuba.
Batista had prepared the way for Castro in Cuba, according to Secretary of
State Dean Rusk.93 Thus, the Haitian president became a stumbling block
that could affect the management of the cold war in the Caribbean. Duvalier
became Kennedy’s foe, and vice versa. The two men had different and incom-
patible agendas. The U.S. president decided to withdraw all support to the
Haitian government and to overthrow Duvalier, who had become an awkward
figure for the stability of the region. This implied the death of the Alliance
for Progress in Haiti, although the program officially ended after Johnson’s
presidency. The United States would never fully resume its assistance to Haiti
until François Duvalier’s death.

Conclusion: Haiti’s Reconstruction—

A Challenge to International Commitments
There is a widening gap between commitment and disbursement of inter-
national aid to Haiti. This analysis of Alliance for Progress shows that the
effectiveness of international aid was determined by a set of factors involving
both the recipient’s compliance and the donor’s expectations. From 1961 to
the present, making commitments has been the action that requires the least
effort in the process of international assistance. However, completion has
been subject to conditions. Four factors must be considered before interna-
tional aid pledged to Haiti can become effective.
The first factor, the administrative weakness of the Haitian government,
has existed since Haiti’s founding, but it has been particularly flagrant since
the earthquake of January 12, 2010. The country lost hundreds of profession-
als during the disaster, adding to the thousands of young intellectuals who
have been leaving the motherland for the last two decades. Despite this lack of
qualified human resources, partisanship still remains in the public administra-
tion. The government is unable to eliminate corruption in the system while
it does not have enough funds to pay its employees. Professionals who stay
in the country are mostly working for private companies and nongovernmen-
tal organizations (NGOs). The latter, which have more financial and human
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capital, tend to replace the government. Three thousand NGOs were oper-
ating in Haiti in 2009, according to the United States Institute of Peace.94 In
2010, after the quake, the number of NGOs in Haiti was estimated to be as
high as ten thousand. Accordingly, some researchers refer to Haiti as the
Republic of NGOs. As an article published in the United States Institute of
Peace’s bulletin states,

Fears of corruption have caused donors to bypass the Haitian government and
funnel financial material assistance through NGOs. For example, in fiscal year
2007–2008, USAID spent $300 million in Haiti, all of which was implemented
through foreign NGOs. These projects often had more money than the entire
Haitian Ministry of Planning. As a result, the Haitian government had little
chance to develop the human or institutional capacity to deliver services. The
Haitian people have learned to look to NGOs, rather than the government,
for provision of essential services.95

This passage demonstrates a paradox in international commitments to Haiti.

The Haitian government needs international help to invest in its human cap-
ital, but it does not receive international assistance because of its administra-
tive weakness, which is, among other reasons, the consequence of the flight
of its human capital. The implication is that, on the one hand, the interna-
tional community should admit that bypassing the assistance through NGOs
is the wrong way to help Haiti strengthen its public service. On the other
hand, the Haitian government must improve its fight against corruption, par-
tisanship, and incompetence in public administration.
Political instability is the second factor that affects the effectiveness of
international commitments to Haiti. Respect of human rights, public secu-
rity, periodic elections, and political alternation are the most common signs
of political stability in a country. For example, the 2010–11 elections were so
significant that international funds had been released much faster for these
elections than for the reconstruction. Moreover, the foreign embassy in Port-
au-Prince denounced the electoral fraud more severely than the stagnation
of the reconstruction. The United States even threatened to revoke visas of
members of the electoral council, the government, and the Party Inite (Pres-
ident Préval’s party) if they did not reverse the November 28 election results,
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The Alliance for Progress 155

which placed Michel Martelly third. It was clear that if these elections led to
a political crisis, the aid for the reconstruction of “the desperately poor coun-
try [would] be cut,” as Mark Weisbrot notes in his analysis.96
Haiti is now facing a new political crisis. Approximately three months after
taking the presidential oath of office, Michel Martelly is unable to find a com-
promise with the parliament in order to form his government. As a result,
the president can only take limited measures to face the difficult situation
of Haiti. The cabinet is simply “liquidating current affairs,” according to the
Haitian constitution. This means that new agreements cannot be signed
between Haiti and members of the international community. New projects
cannot be submitted to donors. When asking about the current political cri-
sis, the U.S. ambassador to Haiti, Kenneth Merten, declared that his country
is impatient to see a government established in Haiti in order to reactivate
the bilateral program between the United States and Haiti.97 A week later,
the Canadian ambassador, Henry Paul Normandin, confirmed “the absence
of government had a negative impact on Canadian-Haitian cooperation.”98
International commitments will be ineffective if the current political crisis
persists and if the political situation remains volatile for years to come.
The third factor is the conflict between the nationalistic pride of Hait-
ians and the conditions imposed for disbursing international funds. Here is
another paradox in the international commitment to Haiti. During the March
2010 conference, the donors required the IHRC to be composed of Haitian
officials and representatives from the international community. Many Haitian
politicians disapprove of this formula for various reasons. They argue that it
is awkward to have Haitians and foreigners in equal numbers and with the
same rights on the board of a commission that is planning Haiti’s reconstruc-
tion. Moreover, the commission is chaired by a Haitian, prime minister Jean-
Max Bellerive, and a foreigner, former U.S. president Bill Clinton. Despite his
long familiarity with Haitian politics, the presence of Clinton at the head of
the IHRC is the object of criticism in Haiti. The mission of the IHRC also has
opponents. This committee will oversee all projects for the reconstruction. To
facilitate its work, the Haitian parliament declared a state of emergency for
eighteen months. Under this law, the IHRC has full power to expropriate any
land in order to facilitate the construction of housing, schools, hospitals, elec-
trification systems, ports, and other economic development projects. There
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is no doubt about the need for these projects. But for the nationalists, giving
so much power to such commission only reinforces Haiti’s dependency.
During the electoral campaign, candidate Michel Martelly was extremely
critical of the IHRC. He even promised to create another institution com-
posed exclusively of Haitians to work on the reconstruction. But since he
became president, Martelly tends to be more pragmatic. Instead of eliminat-
ing the IHRC, he decorated Bill Clinton, renewed his mandate as cochair of
the IHRC, and reinforced the central role of the commission in the recon-
struction process. Without analyzing in details the success or the failure of
the IHRC, it is evident that Martelly has made a smart move by giving up his
revolutionary promises about controlling international aid. Along with Pres-
ident Martelly, more Haitians should realize that donor conditions to release
aid are mandatory most of the time.
The last element that should be considered is the motivation of the donors.
It is obvious that international aid does not only serve humanitarian purposes.
Accordingly, the desire to help a poor country is not all that persuades the
international community to pledge billions of dollars to Haiti. From historical
facts, it is clear that every international donor has at least one of these two dis-
cernible, specific motivations. First of all, being involved in Haiti’s reconstruc-
tion facilitates the defending of economic and geostrategic interests. Second,
committing aid to needy people reinforces a country’s position of prestige in
the international system. Additionally, there is a third motivation that is diffi-
cult to discern because it is hidden; it is part of the unrevealed agenda of the
donors. Are the secret agendas consistent with the desire to help Haiti? What
concealed role is imposed on Haiti, unknown by the Haitian people and gov-
ernment, to advance the donors’ agendas? It will take time to determine that.
International assistance is indispensable in Haiti’s current desperate situ-
ation. For it to be effective, there must be adjustments in both Haitian’s con-
formity with international standards and the donors’ expectations. Otherwise,
aid for reconstruction may suffer the same fate as the Alliance for Progress.

Notes
1. “Address by President Kennedy at a White House Reception for Latin Amer-
ican Diplomats and Members of Congress, March 13, 1961,” Department of State
Bulletin 44, no. 1136 (April 3, 1961): 471–74.
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The Alliance for Progress 157

2. Green Book, cited in Jeffrey F. Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy: The Alliance
for Progress in Latin America (New York, 2007), 5, and note on 252: “A 1961 dollar
is equivalent to 5.08 dollars in 2004 according to AID [U.S. Agency for International
Development].”
3. Organization of American States, Special Meeting of Inter-American Eco-
nomic and Social Council at the Ministerial Level, Punta del Este, Uruguay, August
5–17, 1961.
4. We refer to Arthur Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days: John Kennedy in the
White House (Boston, 1965); William D. Rogers, The Twilight Struggle: The Alliance
for Progress and the Politics of Dependence in Latin America (New York, 1967); Jerome
Levinson and Juan de Onís, The Alliance That Lost Its Way: A Critical Report on the
Alliance for Progress (Chicago, 1970); Robert M. Smetherman and Bobbie Smether-
man, “The Alliance for Progress: Promises Unfulfilled,” American Journal of Eco-
nomics and Sociology 31, no. 1 (1972): 79–86; Tony Smith, America’s Mission: The
United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century
(Princeton, 1994); Stephen G. Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F.
Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill, 1999);
Taffet, Foreign Aid.
5. “Address by President Kennedy,” 473–74: “Our Alliance for Progress is an
alliance of free governments-and it must work to eliminate tyranny from a hemisphere
in which it has no rightful place. . . . Our motto is what it has always been: progress
yes, tyranny no—Progreso si, tirania no!”
6. Organization of American States, The Alliance for Progress and Latin Ameri-
can Development Prospects: A Five-Year Review, 1961–1965 (Baltimore, 1967).
7. The Act of Bogota, which was adopted by the Council of the American States
on September 13, 1960, recommended measures that had to be taken for social
improvement, economic development, and multilateral cooperation for social and
economic progress within the framework of Operation Pan America.
8. Taffet, Foreign Aid, 39.
9. Macoutisation derives from macoutes, which was the name given to members
of François Duvalier’s personal police. In Haiti, the word macoutes or tontons macoutes
is also attributed to anyone who pledged allegiance to the regime. See Leslie F.
Manigat, Statu quo en Haiti? D’un Duvalier à l’autre: L’itinéraire d’un Fascisme de sous-
développement (Paris, 1971); Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Haiti: State against Nation—
The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism (New York, 1990).
10. This question is discussed in David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race,
Colour, and National Independence in Haiti (New Brunswick, 1979); Frantz Voltaire,
dir., Pouvoir noir en Haïti: L’explosion de 1946 (Montreal, 1988); Matthew J. Smith,
Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Confict, and Political Change, 1934–1957 (Chapel
Hill, 2009).
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158 wien weibert arthus

11. Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, “Class Struggle in Contemporary Haitian Politics:

An Interpretative Study of the Campaign of 1957,” Journal of Caribbean Studies 2, no.
1 (1981): 109–27.
12. Archives of the Haitian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (hereafter HMFA), un-
numbered telegram, Arnaud Merceron, Haitian ambassador in Cuba, “Informer de
mes démarches auprès du gouvernement cubain pour la cessation des activités sub-
versives de Louis Déjoie et d’autres haïtiens à Cuba,” April 27, 1959; Gérard Pierre-
Charles, Radiographie d’une dictature (Port-au-Prince, 1987), 135–41.
13. Sauveur Pierre Étienne, in an excellent study about this practice of centraliz-
ing the powers in Haitian history, suggests that this practice caused the failure of
establishing a modern state in Haiti. Sauveur Pierre Étienne, L’Énigme haïtienne: Echec
de l’Etat moderne en Haïti (Montreal, 2007).
14. In his staff meeting, Duvalier was the only one who talked. He read his instruc-
tion to the members of his cabinet and the latter listened carefully. One of the scenes
was shown in Jean-Claude Diserens, L’émission des continents sans visa: François Duva-
lier, a television program transmitted in France in October 1968 (http://archives
.tsr.ch/player/perspectives-duvalier).
15. Kern Delince, Les Forces politiques en Haïti (Paris, 1993), 243.
16. Jean Florival, Duvalier: La face cachée de Papa Doc (Montreal, 2007), 75.
17. See Leslie Manigat, La crise haïtienne contemporaine (Port-au-Prince, 2009),
234–41.
18. Archives of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs (hereafter FMFA), telegram
23/AM, from the French ambassador, Lucien Félix, “Experts économiques et finan-
ciers Nord-américains au service du Président de la République d’Haïti,” Port-au-
Prince, January 6, 1959.
19. FMFA, document 75/AM, from the French Embassy to Port-au-Prince,
“Haiti—Consultation d’experts américains ‘Klein & Sacks’ Politique déflationniste
en Haïti,” Port-au-Prince, February 11, 1959; telegram 477/DE, from Ambassador
Lucien Félix, “2 experts américains, conseillers du Département des Finances,”
Port-au-Prince, September 21, 1959.
20. “Haiti: The Marines Are Back,” Time, November 9, 1959.
21. Robert I. Rothberg, Haiti: The Politics of Squalor (Boston, 1971), 243.
22. Robert D. Heinl and Nancy G. Heinl, Written in Blood: The Story of Haitian
People, 1492–1995 (Lanham, 2005), 587.
23. FMFA, telegram 528/AM, from the French Ambassador to Haiti Charles le
Genissel, “Haïti et l’Alliance pour le Progrès,” Port-au-Prince, November 29, 1961.
24. FMFA, telegram 279/DE, from the French Ambassador to Haiti Charles le
Genissel, “Programme de l’Alliance pour le Progrès en Haïti,” Port-au-Prince, June
5, 1962.
25. According to Time magazine (February 2, 1962), at the Punta del Este con-
ference, the United States decided to pay some countries, including Haiti, to vote in
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The Alliance for Progress 159

favor the exclusion of Cuba to the OAS. The U.S.–Haitian negotiation at Punta del
Este is discussed in Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Thousand Days, 782–83; François Duva-
lier, Mémoires d’un leader du Tiers Monde (Paris, 1969), 197–98.
26. Heinl and Heinl, Written in Blood, 565.
27. FMFA, telegram 162/AM, from the French Ambassador to Haiti Charles le
Genissel, “Programme d’assistance américaine en Haïti,” Port-au-Prince, April 6,
1962.
28. Adolf A. Berle Jr., “Interview by Joseph E. O’Connor,” John F. Kennedy Library
Oral History Program, July 6, 1967, 26.
29. Ibid., 21.
30. Jordan A. Schwarz, Liberal: Adolf A. Berle and the Vision of an American Era
(New York, 1987).
31. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, vol. 12 (hereafter FRUS),
Pre-Presidential Papers, Transition Series, Task Force Reports, 1960.
32. We refer to the classical definition of Philippe Boudreau et Claude Perron,
Lexique de Science Politique (Montreal, 2002).
33. This issue is particularly addressed by John Marquis, Papa Doc: Portrait of
a Tyrant Haitian (Kingston, 2007); Bernard Diederich and Al Burt, Papa Doc: The
Truth about Haiti’s Today (New York, 1969); Bernard Diederich, Le Prix du sang
(Port-au-Prince, 2005); and Gérard Pierre-Charles, Radiographie d’une dictature
(Montreal, 1969), and Haïti: Jamais plus! Violations des droits de l’homme à l’époque
des Duvalier (Port-au-Prince, 2000).
34. Claude B. Auguste, “L’Union Nationale des Étudiants Haïtiens (U.N.E.H.),”
Revue de la Société haïtienne d’histoire et de Géographie, 67e Année 58, no. 174 (Decem-
ber 1992): 65–91.
35. Tribune des Etudiants, 3rd ser., no. 1, January 15, 1961, and no. 4, January 24,
1961.
36. Duvalier, Mémoires, 78–85.
37. U.S. National Archives (hereafter USNA), Mission Navale Américaine, Lettre
035-rlb 5400, du chef de la Mission Navale au Chef d’Etat-Major des Forces Armées,
“Estimation des implications de la Milice Civile sur le progrès et le développement
des Forces Armées d’Haïti,” Port-au-Prince, July 20, 1962.
38. USNA, Department of State airgram, Norman Warner, Political Officer, “List
of Asylees,” Washington, D.C., May 31, 1963.
39. U.S. General Services Administration, Public Papers of the Presidents of the
United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961 (Washington, D.C., 1962), 1–3.
40. New York Times, October 2, 1962.
41. Florival, Duvalier, 95–96.
42. FMFA, note JM/MP, “Difficultés en Haïti,” Port-au-Prince, November 15,
1962.
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160 wien weibert arthus

43. FMFA, telegram 115/AM, from the French Ambassador to Haiti Charles le
Genissel, “Départ de l’Ambassadeur de Grande Bretagne,” Port-au-Prince, March
14, 1962.
44. Foreign Assistance Act of 1962, cited in Taffet, Foreign Aid, 42.
45. FMFA, note for the minister 125/AM, “La situation en Haïti et les relations
franco-haïtiennes,” December 1, 1962.
46. FMFA, telegram 4/AM, from the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Minister
of Finances and Economic Affairs, “Suspension de nos achats de café en Haïti,”
Paris, December 14, 1962.
47. HMFA, telegram AM/RC, 501–60, from the Haitian Embassy in Washing-
ton, D.C., “Opposition à l’aide américaine à Haïti au sein du Comité Sénatorial des
Affaires Etrangères.”
48. FMFA, telegram 162/AM, from the French ambassador to the United States,
Hervé Alphand, transmitted for information to the French Embassy in Port-au-
Prince, “Opinion du Département d’Etat sur le président Duvalier,” Washington,
D.C., January 19, 1962.
49. See Diederich, Le Prix du sang, 251–91
50. FRUS, Doc. 368, Department of State, Central Files, 738.00/6-261, “Telegram
from Secretary Rusk to the Department of State,” Paris, June 2, 1961.
51. FRUS, Doc. 367, Washington National Records Center, RG 330, OASD/ISA
Files, FRC 64 A. 2382, Haiti, 1961, 000.1, “White House Conference on Haiti,”
Washington, D.C., May 26, 1961.
52. FRUS, Doc. 372, “Background information for the meeting with the Presi-
dent on Haiti, which is scheduled for Thursday August 9.”
53. Miami Herald, May 13, 1962.
54. Leslie J. R. Péan, Haïti, économie politique de la corruption, t. IV, L’ensauvage-
ment macoute et ses conséquences, 1957–2000 (Paris, 2007).
55. Rony Gilot, Au gré de la mémoire, 215.
56. FRUS, Doc. 372, National Security Files, Countries Series, Haiti, 7/62–8/62,
“Memorandum From the Executive Secretary of the Department of State (Brubeck)
to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy),” Washing-
ton, D.C., August 8, 1962.
57. FMFA, telegram 162/AM, from the French Ambassador to Haiti Charles
le Genissel, “Programme d’assistance américaine en Haïti,” Port-au-Prince, April 6,
1962.
58. Le Nouvelliste, April 10, 1962.
59. FMFA, telegram R.10, from the French Ambassador to Haiti Charles le Genis-
sel, “Modalités de l’aide américaine,” Port-au-Prince, April 25, 1962.
60. Charles T. Williamson, The U.S. Naval Mission to Haiti, 1959–1963 (Annapo-
lis, 1999), 239.
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The Alliance for Progress 161

61. FMFA, telegram 210/AM, from the French Ambassador to Haiti Charles le
Genissel, “Le nouveau mandat présidentiel du Docteur Duvalier,” Port-au-Prince,
May 17, 1961.
62. MAE, telegram 210/AM, from the French Ambassador to Haiti Charles le
Genissel, “Le nouveau mandat présidentiel du Docteur Duvalier,” Port-au-Prince,
May 17, 1961.
63. Word-by-word translation by the author.
64. Le Matin, May 16, 1961.
65. Heinl and Heinl, Written in Blood, 562.
66. USNA, Department of State, Central Files, 611.38/5/961, telegram 469, Port-
au-Prince, May 9, 1961.
67. FRUS, Doc. 366, Central Files, 738.00/5-2361, “Memorandum from the
Assistant Secretary of State of Inter-American Affairs Wemberley Coerr to the Sec-
retary of State Dean Rusk,” Washington, D.C., May 23, 1961.
68. Elizabeth Abbott, Haiti: The Duvaliers and Their Legacy (New York, 1988),
110.
69. For a detailed account on the role of the crowd in Duvalier’s policy, we refer to
our previous study, “Welcome OEA: François Duvalier et la foule accueillentla mis-
sion d’enquête de l’Organisation des États-américains, le 30 avril 1963,” in Hypotheses
2010, Travaux de l’École doctorale d’Histoire de l’Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
(Paris, 2011), 27–38.
70. FMFA, telegram R10, from the French ambassador, Charles le Génissel,
“Prestation de serment du Docteur Duvalier,” Port-au-Prince, May 25, 1961.
71. Leslie F. Manigat, Eventail d’histoire vivante d’Haïti: Des préludes à la révolu-
tion de St-Domingue jusqu’à nos jours (1973–2003), t 3: La crise de dépérissement de la
société traditionnelle haïtienne (1896–2003) (Port-au-Prince, 2003), 236.
72. Rony Gilot, Au gré de la mémoire, 215; word-by-word translation by the author.
73. FMFA, telegram 141/AM, from the French Ambassador to Haiti Charles le
Genissel, “Reunion du Conseil Economique et Social Interaméricain à Mexico,”
Port-au-Prince, March 20, 1963.
74. Organization of American States Archives, OEA.Sec.G/III C-SA-397–C-
SA-528, “Activities of the Inter-American Peace Committee, Fifth Session, Septem-
ber 24 to October 26, 1962.”
75. HMFA, Département des Affaires étrangères, République d’Haïti, telegram
SG/CONF, from the Secretary of Foreign Affairs René Charlmers, “Note au Départe-
ment d’Etat, Port-au-Prince,” April 26, 1963.
76. Heinl and Heinl, Written in Blood, 562.
77. USNA, Département des Affaires étrangères, République d’Haïti, telegram
SG/CONF.A-INT:47, Port-au-Prince, July 1959.
78. Schlesinger, Thousand Days, 783; Florival, Duvalier, 95.
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162 wien weibert arthus

79. Le Matin, March 20, 1962; FMFA, telegram 146/AM, from the French
Ambassador to Haiti Charles le Genissel, “Déclarations du Président Duvalier au
Vice-Président de la United Press [Harold Jones],” Port-au-Prince, March 30, 1962.
80. FRUS, National Security Files, Countries Series, Haiti, 7/62–8/62.
81. FRUS, Doc. 374, National Security Files, Countries Series, Haiti, 9/62–2/63,
“Memorandum prepared in the Department of State as background information for
a Presidential meeting on Haiti, on January 22, 1963.”
82. FRUS, Doc. 375, paper prepared in the Department of State, “Haiti Plan of
Action from February 15 to September 15, 1963.”
83. Melvin Small, “Presidential Elections and the Cold War,” in A Companion to
American Foreign Relations, ed. Robert D. Schulzinger (Malden, 2006), 419.
84. Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anti-
communism (Chapel Hill, 1988).
85. USNA, telegram sent to the governments of the hemisphere in the eve of the
Sixth and Seventh OAS Conferences of Ministers of Foreign Affairs at San José,
Costa Rica, “Aide-mémoire,” 1960.
86. Schlesinger, Thousand Days, 779.
87. Piero Gleijeses, “Ships in the Night: The CIA, the White House, and the Bay
of Pigs,” Journal of Latin American Studies 27 (1995); Thomas G. Paterson, “Fixation
with Cuba: The Bay of Pigs, Missile Crisis, and Covert War against Fidel Castro,” in
Kennedy’s Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961–1963, ed. Thomas G. Pater-
son (New York, 1989), 127–31; James Blight, Peter Kornbluh: Politics of Illusion—
The Bay of Pigs Invasion Re-examined (Boulder, 1989), 1–42; Trumbull Higgins, The
Perfect Failure: Kennedy, Eisenhower, and the CIA at the Bay of Pigs (New York, 1987).
88. Diederich, Le Prix du sang, 129–40.
89. Duvalier, Mémoires, 211.
90. HMFA, Département des Affaires Etrangères, République d’Haïti, Secret:
150, Port-au-Prince, October 25, 1962; [NA], Note 67, U.S. Embassy, Port-au-Prince,
October 26, 1962; SG/CONF:85, Département des Affaires étrangères, République
d’Haïti, Port-au-Prince, November 29, 1962.
91. FRUS, Doc. 367, Washington National Records Center, RG 330, OASD/ISA
Files: FRC 64 A. 2382, “White House Conference on Haiti,” Washington, D.C., May
26, 1961.
92. USNA, National Security Files, Countries Series, Haiti, 7/62–8/62. Central
Files, 738.008-862.
93. Loch K. Johnson, A Season of Inquiry: The Senate Intelligence Investigation
(Lexington, 1985); Heinl and Heinl, Written in Blood, 566.
94. United States Institute of Peace, “Haiti: A Republic of NGOs?” Peace Brief 23
(2010).
95. Ibid.
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The Alliance for Progress 163

96. Center for Economic and Policy Research, “‘Sad Day for Haitian Democracy’
as U.S. Threatens to Cut Off Aid to Haiti in Order to Reverse Its Election Results,
CEPR Co-Director Says,” January 25, 2011.
97. Hpnhaiti.com, July 13, 2011.
98. Radio Metropole, July 20, 2011.
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Urban Planning and the

Rebuilding of Port-au-Prince
H a r l e y F. E t i e n n e

I n the fall of 2011, a meeting of Haitian government officials, community

leaders, foreign diplomats, and representatives from the international non-
governmental organization (INGO) community was held at a Pétionville
hotel. After one panel, several attendees came to the microphone to express
their anger about the extent to which Americans seemed to be leading the
reconstruction efforts. They shouted about a lack of coordination among
Haitians that had allowed this unwelcome influence to enter their nation. By
the end, some called for the establishment of a state-level ministry of urban
affairs or policy to assist in the redevelopment of Haiti’s urban centers. In
other contexts, urban affairs and policy has relied on professions and disci-
plines that work for egalitarian outcomes in the design and development of
urban places. However, without the similar legacy of the reform and Progres-
sive eras that shaped many service professions such as social work and plan-
ning in both Western Europe and North America, Haiti has not enjoyed the
endogenous growth of these fields.1
Planning can be summarized as an activity that organizes land use for
human settlement. However, an important feature of this definition is the
communal nature of the exercise of planning. A market-based approach to
the design of human settlements focuses not on human needs but on capital
accumulation. There are thus inherent egalitarian and public ends embedded
in the very definition of what planning does as a field and profession. One
theory is that political disruptions throughout Haiti’s history have prevented
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166 h a r l e y f. e t i e n n e

sustained and vigorous public action. To institutionalize the planning pro-

fession in Haiti as it exists in other parts of the world is to create a sustainable
public interest, and an egalitarian Haitian way or life. The course of Haitian
history is not tangential to a definition of planning that makes sense in this
context. It is perhaps why planning has never been well defined in Haiti or
by the Haitian people. Vigorous public action has not been sustained for long
periods of time without violence and political repression. That is to say, the
egalitarian ends of planning have often eluded the Haitian nation-state.
This chapter seeks to describe the current framework for city planning that
is operating in Haiti after the 7.0 earthquake of 2010. In many ways, planning
is simultaneously desperately needed in postdisaster Haiti and difficult to find
in any coordinated or sustained way. For the purposes of this essay, I am sep-
arating the acts of shelter provision and housing development from the larger
rubric of planning. It is not that shelter and housing are not planning, but that
they are parts of planning. It is the coordination of policy, design, engineering,
resources, sound decision making, and politics that makes planning what it
is in other parts of the world. All of this depends, in part, in the state’s ability
to govern and marshal the confidence (or compliance) of its people through
the just execution of the law and sound governance practices. Without it, the
practice of planning struggles to create and execute future visions of human
settlement.
An important feature of planning is that it depends on the legitimacy and
capacity of the state to function. This is not to mean that planning cannot
happen in local contexts; rather, vigorous public action requires the govern-
ment’s ability to forecast and pursue egalitarian public ends. Haitian history
and critiques of its recent crises would suggest that Haitian leaders have often
governed how they were themselves governed. The legacy of the brutality
of French colonialism lasted long into the twentieth century, only to be sur-
passed by the brutality of the American occupation.
Disasters are catastrophic in many ways, but they do provide an oppor-
tunity to address long-standing problems and rebuild communities in ways
that would have been impossible without the disaster.2 Haiti’s earthquake was
unique in that it was far more catastrophic in Haiti than similar and larger
earthquakes have been in other parts of the world. The documented geog-
raphy of destruction reveals that the greatest damage was inflicted on central
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Urban Planning 167

Port-au-Prince, Carrefour, and Léogâne. Initial estimates placed the death toll
at 260,000. This number was revised several times downward to 220,000. The
economic toll of the devastation is estimated to be $14 billion. Although the
focus of the earthquake’s impact has largely centered on housing the more
than 1.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) affected by the initial
event and subsequent aftershocks, there are several other issues that have not
received the same attention. For example, IDPs were not only residents of the
affected communities but workers, suppliers, and entrepreneurs in both the
informal and formal sectors. Even two years later, estimates of postearthquake
unemployment are still estimated to be near 80 percent.
Reports from U.N.–Habitat reflect the destruction of close to 260,000
structures in the earthquake zone.3 The damage in central Port-au-Prince and
in the informal settlements in the hills around the city was among the worst.
There was also considerable damage to the city’s ports and airports. More
important than the amount and geographic distribution of the earthquake-
related destruction is the damage done to key buildings and monuments in
and around Port-au-Prince. Among the most notable is the complete destruc-
tion of the National Palace, Palais Justice, the Port-au-Prince Cathedral, and
Holy Trinité Cathedral, along with several other key government buildings
and other sites of patrimony.
As of this writing, more than half a million IDPs remain on the streets of
Port-au-Prince two years after the earthquake of 2010.4 Cholera continues
to plague the nation, and deteriorating conditions in IDP camps has placed
greater urgency on returning the displaced to long-term settlements and
communities. Haiti is currently poorly prepared to respond to the cyclical
nature of disease and the funding streams directed to its resolution.5

Defining Planning for Postrecovery Haiti

Planning is simultaneously a profession and an area of inquiry. This duality
exists in the many specializations that compose the larger field, which can be
seen to do several things. For example, planning can be understood as the
physical design of communities and places, but it can also be understood as
the study of how urban design shapes humans’ interaction with their envi-
ronment. Economic development planning can make routine work of imple-
menting interventions that will grow local or regional economies or study
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168 h a r l e y f. e t i e n n e

how the policy choices have affected economic conditions. In almost all
senses, it is an intervention meant to change an existing course of events.6
The comprehensive planning that guided the modernization of many global
cities incorporated all of those specialties into one agenda that was shaped by
technical experts who intended to carry out their plans on behalf of a strong
central authority.
Planning (community development, economic development, coordina-
tion, and organization) is dependent on strong government, land conveyance
and tenure systems, and adaptable and aspirational ways of settling land dis-
putes and organizing visions for human settlement. It is possible that since
the founding of the republic, Haitians have never had a unified vision for
how their country was to be constructed, nor supported any sustained lead-
ership that did. Planning is often engaged by a variety of individuals; how-
ever, when planning is done by the public sector, its success depends on the
ability of the government to control and organize land uses. Government
can create options for future development when it formulates aspirations
or must respond to crises. Earthquakes and other natural disasters create
opportunities for such planning. Some of the most notable examples of
great planning and urbanism have come after governments found them-
selves having to respond to the need to reconstruct what had fallen into
disrepair.
The mantra of “building back better” has dominated the recovery dis-
course since January 2010. I argue here that the legacy of French colonialism,
U.S. imperialism, and unstable leadership has starved Haiti of the planning
framework that would have allowed Port-au-Prince and other Haitian cities
to develop along with the nation. The vestiges of this starvation have led to
an urban crisis of sorts that defines the urban form of Haiti’s major cities. In
almost all cases, Haitian cities consist of centers with street grids that are arti-
facts of French colonialism and U.S. imperialism, and baroque suburbs that
trace Haiti’s turbulent political history as well as the natural landscape.
The activity of planning involves a bit of both transaction and conformity
costs on the part of the consumers of urban places. Transaction costs involve
individuals having to depend on themselves for their needs. Conformity costs
involve some deference to the state and allowing the state to coordinate cer-
tain policy. In environments where transaction costs are high, individuals
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Urban Planning 169

must act to secure their own property, food, and services. Where the con-
formity costs are high, the state provides individuals with their needs in
exchange for their conformity to the state.
In the case of Haiti, planning is simultaneously possible and impossible.
The longer history of the central government’s relationship with its depart-
ments (regions) and secondary cities such as Cap-Haïtien, Léogâne, Jacmel,
Jeremie, and Les Cayes has been one of a continuous power struggle. Plan-
ning in Haiti is difficult given the larger context of political instability that
has shaped the republic since its founding. Using Howell Baum’s idea of plan-
ning being about the organization of hope, a planning framework in Haiti
would have to consider the highest and best uses of land and other scarce
resources, as it does in other contexts.7 The lack of confidence in the Haitian
government makes a scenario where the Haitian people have confidence in
the government’s ability to dispense land equitably, fairly, and transparently
almost impossible. This is not to say that Haitians lack hope. In fact, the hope
that Haitians have for better futures is what has sustained them through
decades of suffering and calamity.
If nothing else, planning is also inherently political. This inescapable fea-
ture of the practice of planning makes it difficult to implement anywhere.
The battles over Haussman’s and Le Corbusier’s plans for Paris and urban
renewal and the abuse of eminent domain in the United States were tied
directly to strong central government regimes and laws that favored central
command of land—either nationally or locally—over the rights and inter-
ests of community-level interests and property rights. However, the roots
of modern European and American planning stem from the Progressive era
and attempts to contain poverty and create order in chaotic urban spaces.
A survey of Haitian history can point to a number of dictators who
attempted to rule Haiti with iron fists and other instruments of control. In
some cases, that rule brought quite brutal results. However, these despots
were rarely ever able to create the sustained momentum needed to fully orga-
nize Port-au-Prince and Haiti’s other urban centers beyond what had been
left by colonists. In the cases where they were, the capital improvements fell
into disrepair within a generation or two and never matured to make Port-
au-Prince a dominant city with the infrastructure needed to do more than
export Haiti’s products and import foreign goods.
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170 h a r l e y f. e t i e n n e

A central feature of Haiti’s present circumstances and its history is foreign

intervention that replaces or erodes confidence in the government’s capac-
ity. Just before the 2010 earthquake, it was reported that 60 percent of the
Haitian government’s budget came directly from nongovernmental organi-
zations (NGOs).8 The World Bank’s estimate is that before the earthquake,
approximately 10,000 NGOs were in operation in Haiti, earning it the dubi-
ous title of Republic of NGOs.9 This relationship between Haiti, foreign
governments, and INGOs is problematic for many Haitians for many rea-
sons. First, this entanglement between the Haitian government and foreign
capital is reminiscent of the colonial era and U.S. occupation of Haiti in the
early twentieth century. Second, the presence of NGOs, foreign militaries,
and investors deflects investment in the Haitian government’s capacity and
casts a long shadow over Haiti’s sovereignty and its ability to envision a
future for itself.

The Colonial and Postcolonial Construction

of Planning of Port-au-Prince
Like many primary metropoles in the Global South, Port-au-Prince is a highly
centralized capital of a developing country. Between 1940 and the present,
Port-au-Prince’s population has grown tenfold. Although there is evidence
of planning at Port-au-Prince’s central core, the suburbs surrounding that core
are baroque and uncoordinated in design.10 Although Port-au-Prince was
selected as the capital of the colony by the French before their final defeat in
1804, it wasn’t until more than a century later that the features that defined
Port-au-Prince as the capital region were installed under the U.S. occupation
that started in 1915.
The French viewed Saint Domingue as a revenue generator, not a settle-
ment colony.11 Thus, even early in its history, neither Le Cap (Cap-François
or Cap-Haïtien) nor Port-au-Prince was ever installed with adequate infra-
structure to accommodate large populations or the physical plant to serve
as the political center of an independent nation. For most of Haiti’s history,
the connections between Haiti’s various cities and departments (regions) was
entirely facilitated by the sea. Most of what is now known as Port-au-Prince
were suburbs that grew up around the central core in the foothills of the
mountains that surround the city.12
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The Port-au-Prince of the early twentieth century was an artifact of nearly

a century of political revolutions and squandered resources. Three Haitian
presidents were responsible for building some of the infrastructure that
predated the U.S. occupation, Fabre-Nicolas Geffrard (1859–67), Lysius
Salomon (1879–88), and Florvil Hyppolite (1889–96).13 One of the most
enduring projects of this era was the completion of the iconic Marche en Fer
(Iron Market). In the wake of the U.S. departure, several Haitian presidents
attempted to maintain and improve on those capital improvements, but they
were often never in power long enough to do so.
The U.S. occupation between 1915 and 1934 was, and continues to be, a
chapter of Haitian history that arouses disgust and contempt among many
Haitians. However, the United States oversaw the completion of the beloved
National Palace, whose construction had been halted as a result of fire dam-
age that occurred during the gruesome death of Guillaume Sam in 1914.14 In
all, more than 210 bridges and 1,000 miles of road were built during the 1920s
at the height of the occupation. In addition, many private companies oper-
ated rail lines during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When
ridership fell on some of these lines, they were incorporated as units of the
government. There were two primary lines. The first ran northward along
the coast toward the town of St. Marc. The second ran westward toward
Léogâne. Rail service had been terminated on all lines in the 1950s, and the
lines themselves fell into disrepair during the 1980s. Some of the government
officials interviewed for this study reported that the lines may have been delib-
erately destroyed as symbols of American imperialism and capitalism with
the downfall of the Jean-Claude Duvalier regime.

Current Planning Framework

Although planning existed in Haiti as it did elsewhere before the twenti-
eth century, it has not and still not does exist as a profession. Where plan-
ning does exist within the Government of Haiti, it falls under the purview
of the Directorate des Planification et Affairs Externe (DPE).15 Beyond the
DPE, seven other ministries or government units engage in planning in some
way at the national level. In the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, there are
more than fifty government entities that manage land or planning. It is diffi-
cult for insiders and outsiders to ascertain how comprehensive each ministry’s
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172 h a r l e y f. e t i e n n e

engagement is. A significant challenge for planning in Haiti is the division

of labor between and within ministries. Although the DPE would appear to
be largely in control of Haiti’s planning apparatus, several other ministries
appear to be in much greater control of the actual work of planning. The most
important of the other seven units is the Ministry of Public Works, Trans-
port, and Telecommunications (MTPTC). Under this ministry fall several
almost autonomous units that manage, among other things, bridges and
roads, the formerly government-run telephone company, and the municipal
trash collection system.
There are other units that engage planning and development. The Con-
seil National de Developpment et de Planification (CONADEP) was created
to lead and implement economic policy planning.16 Almost immediately
after the earthquake, the government of Haiti invited the World Bank to
host a postdisaster needs assessment. The results of this work led to the cre-
ation of the Comité Interim pour la Reconstruction de Haiti (Interim Hait-
ian Reconstruction Commission, or IHRC). The IHRC was established by
the government of Haiti with the then prime minister and former U.S. pres-
ident Bill Clinton. Although this is technically a unit of the government of
Haiti, many regard this as a Clinton-led initiative. This is partially the result
of the former U.S. president’s leadership role as cochair of the commission.
Aid from foreign governments was intended to flow through the IHRC and
be vetted by a board comprised of Haitian and foreign diplomats and lead-
ers. With only $2 billion of the $9 billion of pledged foreign aid on hand,
most NGOs are opting to bypass the IHRC altogether with some positive
results.
The Digicel Corporation, Haiti’s leading provider of mobile telephone
service, helped reconstruct the historic Marche en Fer in central Port-au-
Prince. Habitat for Humanity is building a new village on the outskirts of
Léogâne and another as an expansion to their existing development in the
town of Cabaret. The commune of Croix-des-Bouquets is also actively build-
ing new housing within their borders. Another example is the partnership
between the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti and the architectural firm Duany,
Plater, and Zyberk, which released a plan to redevelop large segments of cen-
tral Port-au-Prince in 2011. The diocese is one of the largest landowners in
central Port-au-Prince and is working with the government to acquire land
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Urban Planning 173

to rebuild some of its facilities. The plan includes the reconstruction of the
Episcopal cathedral, Holy Trinity, which was destroyed by the earthquake.
Before the earthquake, the diocese oversaw a constellation of institutions in
central Port-au-Prince, including a university, art museum, and several ele-
mentary schools. The new plan would replace the affected properties and
provide new spaces for the expected growth of the Episcopal institutions.
Alongside these structures is the United Nations Cluster System, which
is technically responding to the initial disaster in the form of relief.17 By
design, NGOs who are working in Haiti in order to respond to the disaster
will work through the Cluster System to ensure that their efforts are coordi-
nated with other NGOs and relief organizations. The clusters that are pri-
marily connected to housing and planning are the Shelter Cluster and the
Camp Organization and Camp Management Cluster. The Shelter Cluster
has also created a Working Group on Land Rights in response to the evic-
tions of IDPs from public areas and private property. Although these NGOs
are working to provide temporary shelter and relief to IDPs, they are often
providing tarps, tents, and provisional housing to renters and property own-
ers in circumstances where land ownership is unclear, thus inhibiting re-
construction efforts. Therefore, the temporary and transitional housing is
embedded in the planning and reconstruction process and cannot be viewed
separately.

Challenges in Recovery Planning

Although there have been some small successes, some larger structural prob-
lems remain while others are emerging. Perhaps the most significant hurdle
to the reconstruction of Port-au-Prince is Haiti’s long-troubled land tenure
system. Recent reports of forced evictions have highlighted the challenges
created by a lack of reliable property records and a more formal land tenure
system. The history of the earthquake that rocked Mexico City in 1985 may
provide some context for how this may transpire in Haiti. The Mexican gov-
ernment made an almost immediate plan to extend property rights to the
affected. Within two years, the city had almost fully recovered.18
At present, Haiti lacks a modern and updated cadastre. Cadastre systems
allow governments to understand land ownership patterns, spatial relation-
ships between properties and natural features, and land use. They also can
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174 h a r l e y f. e t i e n n e

serve as alternative documentation systems for land ownership records. The

current civil land tenure system requires surveyors and notaries to verify land
transactions and property limits, create land titles, and register them with
the Direction General des Impots (DGI). Each commune maintains its own
DGI office and unique record-keeping system. Notaries are responsible for
sending copies of titles to the central DGI office, where they are registered
chronologically. The DGI’s principal purpose is tax collection, not land reg-
istration for data analysis or planning.
There are several efforts underway to remedy this situation. First, the
Office Nationale du Cadastre (ONACA) is working with the Organization
of the American States (OAS) to modernize the current cadastre. ONACA’s
intent is to raise $70 million for the project over the next several years.
ONACA-OAS sees the modernization project as a delineation and geogra-
phic mapping of property lines and not a reform of the larger land tenure
system. The connections between the need for an updated cadastre, the DGI,
local commune offices, MTPTC, and others is the result of the emergence
of the Comité Interministériel d’Aménagement du Territoire (CIAT).
After Martelly’s election, CIAT was drafting a report outlining the central
government’s plans for remedying the most significant problems with the
civil land tenure system since 2010. However, no report has been publicly
released. A central problem is CIAT’s ability to manage the various ministries
that contribute to CIAT’s work. The transition between the Préval adminis-
tration to the Martelly administration and the difficulty of seating a prime
minister has brought challenges to how each ministry is led and how CIAT
functions. ONACA is not an independent ministry, and it lacks the standing
to coordinate land that is above its purview. It also lacks the financial resources
to modernize the cadastre without substantial assistance from the central gov-
ernment and the international community. OAS’s commitment to the mod-
ernization project is clear; however, their fund-raising goals are high and long
term, and may hinder the feasibility of the project.
A formal cadastre is necessary, but it threatens to challenge the domain of
local mayors who understand their role in the civil land tenure system as
being the custodians of all state-owned land in their jurisdiction. The effort
to reform the cadastre is viewed by many stakeholders as an attempt to wrest
control and political influence away from local authorities. Custom follows
policy in that informal use of land in the rural areas seems to dominate the
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Urban Planning 175

norms around conveyance. A common practice throughout Haitian history

has been the pork barreling of land to curry political loyalty and favor. This
occurs at both a local and national level. Many respondents spoke to how
presidents Duvalier and later Aristide used land gifts during their tenures to
reward loyalty or earn favor with the recipients of their gifts. Both François
and Jean-Claude Duvalier rewarded generals and members of the Tontons
Macoutes with such gifts. In the post-Duvalier era, with no formal cadastre
or land titles, and/or a fear of confronting politically connected landowners,
land disputes often go unresolved. When challenged, landowners sometimes
create or use proxy documents, such as endorsements from local and national
politicians, that verify their land claims.
The formal accounting of private and public land would make such prac-
tices difficult, if not impossible. The emergence of bidonvilles in the late
1980s and after were a symptom of the government not regulating land use
after it had been designated private or developed as the government had
intended. A considerable portion of Delmas 32, which is now largely a bidon-
ville, was slated to be an in-town development developed by François Duva-
lier. Political instability and a lack of funding stalled the project, and the
bidonville grew up in its place. Much the same has occurred after the 2010
earthquake in Canaan in the Croix-des-Bouquets commune area. This pre-
viously undeveloped land has attracted hundreds of families who are seek-
ing to escape devastated Port-au-Prince but still have access to markets and
employment opportunities located in the central city.
As of this writing, the DGI is still operating as it had before the earthquake.
Property conveyance still involves a limited set of actors and is recorded
locally in the commune-based branches of the DGI. In many cases, they
operate with different record-keeping systems, and they often do not com-
municate with each other or the central office. Creating opportunities for
low-income families to become renters and expanding opportunities for
employment and entrepreneurial activity are two important features of post-
earthquake recovery. Updating the cadastre and land tenure system reforms
will become essential elements of this process as well.

Forced Evictions and the Persistence of Camps

In the midst of this research, the mayor of Delmas engaged in the forced
eviction of IDPs from three camps in that commune. This event followed a
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176 h a r l e y f. e t i e n n e

series of forced evictions of IDPs from private spaces over the course of the
preceding months. In some instances, the forced evictions were accompanied
with violence, and in one particular case, the death of a child.
Commune and government officials are not attempting to regulate public
spaces for a variety of reasons. The destruction of Centreville (Central Port-
au-Prince) has forced vendors (machann) and vehicular traffic southeastward
toward Delmas and Pétionville. Several challenges to the legitimacy of the
IDPs and their behavior are decreasing sympathy for their plight. First, the
International Organization on Migration engaged in a comprehensive survey
of IDPs that helped create the original statistic of 1.5 million IDPs after the
initial earthquake. Identification cards were issued to each individual that con-
tained information such as the Haitian fiscal identity number, or NIF, and
fingerprints. Several updates have shown how that number has decreased over
time to 369,000, or 94,000 households.
The emergence of businesses inside the camps has proven that the tents
have evolved into serving as much more than shelter. The ability to run an
informal business out of a tent with no ground rent challenges the notion
that the charity is only helping people survive. Public challenges to the actual
residence of IDPs have become a significant issue. Those involved in camp
management commented on watching provisions arrive at 6 AM and seeing
IDPs emerge from homes, not tents. Delmas Mairie (Mayor) Wilson Jeudy
used his claims that criminal activity was taking place in the camps as justi-
fication for their removal.
On private property, Haitian law is fairly clear that legitimate property
owners have the right to remove squatters. This issue is fairly complex in that
in some cases the private property owners are schools and churches who
desire to use their land for socially beneficial purposes. Many stakeholders
also see some large property owners and IDPs as taking advantage of NGO
largesse. The idea is that some are waiting in camps in the hopes that an NGO
will eventually fe mwen kado kay (give me a gift house). The issue is not really
the house, but more the land that the house will sit on. Many NGOs are for-
bidden through internal rules from purchasing land. The implications of this
are that the land they build on must be gifted by a private party or the gov-
ernment itself.
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Urban Planning 177

The Surge of INGOs and the Competition to Recover

Haiti has been notorious for the density of NGOs, even before the earth-
quake. Some estimates place the number of NGOs in Haiti at 10,000. This
number has not been updated since the earthquake, but it was likely much
higher for a period of time. In addition to the $9 billion pledged by foreign
governments, NGOs received $2 billion in donations to provide direct assis-
tance to the Haitian people. As of this writing, a great number of these NGOs
have expended the funds they received for immediate relief. More alarmingly,
there are accusations of fraud, corruption, and overall ineffectiveness trail-
ing NGOs working in Haiti. This is especially true of the more established
NGOs that have been working in Haiti for several decades.
The crowded streets and restaurants of Pétionville are metaphors for
how the recovery is progressing. There is an unfortunate overload of visitors,
consultants, and researchers crowding Haiti, and an inherent problem is
the crossover between the INGO community and the Haitian government.
The reasons for this disconnect are multiple. The first is well documented
in many volumes of Haitian history, including this one. The presence of
NGOs in Haiti can be understood as an alternative and more modern form
of colonialism.
In the wake of the earthquake, many people refer to the proliferation of
NGOs in the recovery process as the surge. In accordance with the framework
established by the U.N. and the government of Haiti itself, the recovery
process was divided into three distinct phases: relief, recovery, and recon-
struction. As indicated by the Haitian government’s action plan, the first
phase was intended to last six months and provide relief to the affected
through basic services, temporary shelter, food provision, and medical ser-
vices. The second phase, recovery, moved beyond relief into the beginnings
of reconstruction: completion of debris removal, restoration of basic gov-
ernment services, and elevation of affected populations into transitional and
permanent housing.
The current conventional wisdom is that the recovery process has stalled
on relief and only partially transitioned into recovery. The coordination of
NGO activity was supposed to occur within the U.N. Cluster System frame-
work and through the IHRC. In both cases, foreign groups were able to bypass
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178 h a r l e y f. e t i e n n e

these organizations and provide direct relief to the affected beyond the Clus-
ter System.19 The challenges here are several. The surge of NGO activity here
was so great that many are not even aware that the U.N. Cluster System
existed, or when they did they saw it as a hindrance to their objectives and
work.

Violence and Land Security

A related and important additional aspect of the planning and recovery pro-
cess is creating an environment for investment, both domestic and foreign.
In both cases, the overall lack of public safety has created an urban form that
isolates and discourages shared public space. In recent months, Haitian pres-
ident Michel Martelly has made public statements about creating safer con-
ditions for incumbent Haitians and members of the Haitian diaspora who
are interested in returning to Haiti to assist with the nation’s recovery.
Planning depends on the rule of law and the ability of the state to inter-
vene. In a theoretical sense, individual property owners have to allow the state
to coordinate land uses and not cling to transaction costs. In the Belvil sec-
tion of the Tabarre commune, this is exactly what has happened. To create
an orderly, relatively safe area, the home owners in this community have
created an American-style subdivision, complete with a staffed security gate
and cul-de-sacs throughout. This is one of the few areas of Port-au-Prince
where the streets are not filled with pedestrians and timachann. The prop-
erty interests here have created the orderly urban environment in which they
want to live outside of the traditional government apparatus. There are other
examples too in Delmas and Croix-des-Bouquets where local planning is
occurring.

Moving Forward
Perhaps what is lacking—and perhaps most needed—is citywide and re-
gional planning that connects the various sections of individual communes
to themselves and to the larger Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. It is clear
that a significant challenge in this area is the lack of planning in Haiti. There
are a number of American, Canadian, and European trained planners work-
ing in Haiti on disaster recovery. However, a significant challenge will be to
find places within the Haitian government for them to operate and bridge
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Urban Planning 179

projects across ministries. If planning is to become a postdisaster profession,

it must be considered to be more than an extension of architecture or civil
engineering. It should be viewed as a hybrid of those fields and as an interven-
tion to the natural devolution of urban space into chaos. It requires activities
related to property conveyance, land disputes, security, transportation, hous-
ing development, and economic development to be operationally linked. It
also requires individual communes to see the reconstruction of central Port-
au-Prince as being critical to their own recovery—and to that of the nation.
Above all, there is the significant challenge of momentum transfer. The
Haitian government needs to assume the energy created by the interna-
tional community to support its recovery and create confidence among
Haitian people in its capacity. One view of Haitian history is that the coun-
try has experienced many leaders who have tried to force momentum trans-
fer through autocratic leadership. In the area of planning and development,
conformity and oppression create a fragile stage on which long-term plan-
ning can take place. The benefits of long-term planning must build on earlier
successes.
There are theoretical and political considerations as well. It is unlikely that
Haiti can sustain long-term planning efforts without political and economic
stability. This is perhaps also true if Haiti’s sovereignty and independence
from foreign influence comes either directly from foreign governments or
through their proxies in the NGO community. That is not to rule out the
important role that allies can play in supporting Haiti by purchasing its goods
and services. Higher incomes and standards of living in Haiti would ideally
feed the government and its ability to coordinate planning action.

Notes
1. Depending on the context, the term planning may be accompanied by prefixes
such as city, urban, town, or city; and regional, urban, or both. For the sake of clarity,
this chapter will simply refer to planning. For more on the emergence of the emer-
gence of social work and planning, see Roy Lubove, The Professional Altruist: The
Emergence of Social Work as a Career, 1880–1930 (New York: Macmillan, 1969), and
The Urban Community: Housing and Planning in the Progressive Era (Upper Saddle
River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967).
2. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York:
Picador, 2007).
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180 h a r l e y f. e t i e n n e

3. Robert Olshanky and Harley Etienne, “Setting the Stage for Long-Term
Recovery in Haiti,” Earthquake Spectra 27, no. 3 (2011): 463–86.
4. United Nations, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Human-
itarian Bulletin, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, October 2011.
5. Medecins Sans Frontieres, “Haiti Unprepared in the Face of Resurgent
Cholera,” May 9, 2012, http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org.
6. Scott Campbell and Susan S. Fainstein, “The Structure and Debates of Plan-
ning Theory,” in Readings in Planning Theory (London: Blackwell, 1996).
7. Howell Baum, The Organization of Hope: Communities Planning Themselves
(Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1987).
8. Philippe Girard, Haiti: The Tumultuous History—From Pearl of the Caribbean
to Broken Nation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 8.
9. Paul Collier, “How to Fix Haiti’s Fixers,” Foreign Policy, February 28, 2010,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com.
10. Baroque design in urban street layouts is often signified by streets and features
that follow natural contours and topography and follows no strict scheme or rationale.
11. Leslie Voltaire, “Port-au-Prince: Growth of a Caribbean Primate City” (M.A.
thesis, Cornell University, 1982).
12. Georges Corvington, Port-au-Prince: Au Cours des Ans (Port-au-Prince:
Imprimerie Henri Deschamps, 1991).
13. Girard, Haiti, 78–79.
14. Robert Debs Heinl Jr. and Nancy Gordon Heinl, Written in Blood: The Story
of the Haitian People, 1492–1971 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978).
15. Programme d’Initiatives Urbaines pour Port-au-Prince, Plan-Programme de
Développement de la Zone Métropolitaine de Port-au-Prince (Port-au-Prince: Repub-
lique d’Haiti, 2003).
16. Conseil National de Développment et de Planification, A Businessman’s Guide
to Haiti (Port-au-Prince: Conseil National de Développment et de Planification,
1978).
17. Olshanky and Etienne, “Setting the Stage.”
18. Aseem Inam, Planning for the Unplanned: Recovering from Crises in Megacities
(New York: Routledge, 2005).
19. Jose De Cordoba, “Aid Spawns Backlash in Haiti,” Wall Street Journal, Novem-
ber 12, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/; Alex Dupuy, “One Year after the Earthquake
Foreign Help Is Actually Hurting Haiti,” Washington Post, January 7, 2011, http://
www.washingtonpost.com/.
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Cholera and the Camps

Reaping the Republic of NGOs

Mark schuller

A fter Haiti’s devastating earthquake, the international community re-

sponded with a generous outpouring of aid. According to the Chron-
icle of Philanthropy,1 $1.3 billion was contributed by private U.S. citizens
to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) within six months, $1 billion
by March 1. Furthermore, at a March 31, 2010, U.N. conference, donors
pledged $5.6 billion for the next 18 months. Former U.S. president Bill Clin-
ton, named U.N. special envoy in 2009, marshaled foreign aid, cochairing the
Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission. Despite the enormous infusion
of postquake aid to Haiti, mostly channeled through NGOs, why was Haiti
totally unprepared for a deadly epidemic of cholera? The earthquake did
not magically transform Haiti, despite Clinton’s cheerful slogan of “building
back better.” By the same token, neither did Haiti’s social ills begin on Janu-
ary 12, 2010. Social exclusion—moun andeyò—has been woven into Haiti’s
social fabric since before its independence in 1804.
One obvious change to Haiti’s social landscape specifically brought by the
earthquake serves as its most powerful symbol, a constant reminder of the
continued impotence of the Haitian state and failures of international aid.
Called tent cities or camps, the city of Port-au-Prince now bears on full pub-
lic display scars of the extended misery. At the peak in the summer of 2010,
the International Organization for Migration (IOM) registered 1.3 million
internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in 1,300 camps, with over 800
within the greater Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. As of September 2011,
when this chapter was submitted, there were still 600,000 people living in
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182 mark schuller

the camps, according to IOM estimates. The camps remain visual reminders
of the failures within the international aid response, eyesores that get in the
way of selling Haiti as being “now open for business,” as President Michel
Martelly boasted in May 2011. More fundamentally, the people struggling to
survive under the heat of the tarps or temporary shelters were committing
the ultimate indignity: they existed. IDPs’ mere existence brought visibility
to profound social problems, such as the extreme depravity and deep class
hostility that has always beset Haiti but had been swept under the rug; they
were what Hardt and Negri called disposable people.2 The hypocrisy, mis-
ery, and inequality could no longer be ignored, now that it was in plain view,
even prominently at the Champs de Mars—a visible demand to be seen.
One shudders to think of this new reality becoming a permanent fixture
in Haiti’s urban landscape. As Valerie Kaussen argues, Haiti’s IDP camps are
what Agamben called states of exception.3 At their best, camps are planned
relocation sites with temporary shelters, known as T-shelters, made of treated
plywood, as well as social services such as security patrols, water, maintained
toilets, clinics, and some simulation of a school. This describes barely a hand-
ful, as the contracts for services such as water and sanitation began to run
out in the first part of 2011. What remained of the clinics were empty and
ripped tents emblazoned with fading NGO or U.N. agency logos. Unfortu-
nately, the residents themselves also remained—some 600,000 at the time.
According to research I conducted in the summer of 2011, more than 92 per-
cent of camp residents wanted to leave, but they had nowhere to go. Over 80
percent were renters before the earthquake. In addition to the slow pace of
rubble removal and house repair or construction (of the more than 175,000
housing units in need of repair or demolition, only 10,464 were built by the
end of 2011),4 disaster capitalism on an individual level combined with the
invasion of NGOs in need of housing have driven rental prices for safe hous-
ing through the roof.5 In other words, Haiti’s remaining IDPs and the thou-
sand camps are not going away anytime soon, except for those IDPs who are
forcibly removed.
Fully describing the myriad realities in Haiti’s IDP camps is impossible.
The camps differ quite significantly: some are veritable cities, well on their
way to becoming permanent shantytowns with rows of timachann selling
cooked foods and school supplies, used clothing and plumbing. Others are
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Cholera and the Camps 183

cobbled together with only people’s wit and endurance, with ripped-up tarps
not even holding back the torrential rains or tropical sun.

Shortcomings in the Aid

This chapter follows six weeks of research during the summer of 2010, fol-
lowed by three weeks in January 2011 and six weeks in the summer of 2011.
With a team of eight students and a colleague at the Faculté d’Ethnologie,
Université d’État d’Haïti, this study covers more than 100 camps for IDPs, a
random sample of one in eight of the 861 in the metropolitan area.6 Students
conducted quantitative and qualitative surveys in three interrelated areas:
conditions and services within the camps; residents’ level of understanding
and involvement in the camp committees; and interviews with committee
representatives. I followed up with a visit to over forty camps.
The results show that despite the billions in aid pledged to Haiti, most of
the estimated 1.5 million IDPs at the time were living in substandard condi-
tions. For example, seven months after the earthquake, 40 percent of IDP
camps did not have access to water, and 30 percent did not have toilets of
any kind. An estimated 10 percent of families had a tent; the rest slept under
tarps or even bedsheets. In the midst of the hurricane season, with torrential
rains and heavy winds a regular occurrence, many tents were ripped beyond
repair. Only a fifth of camps had education, health care, or psychosocial facil-
ities on site. One refrain from humanitarian agencies was to point to pre-
existing depravity, particularly in the bidonvilles, or shantytowns, the largest
and most visible being Cité Soleil, which foreign filmmakers have termed the
most dangerous place on earth. However, the billions in aid entrusted to
NGOs to “build back better” did not translate to progress across the board.
The services provided in the camps varied quite significantly according
to a range of factors. Camps managed by NGOs (20 percent of the sample)
were twice as likely to have services. Camps in Cité Soleil had almost no ser-
vices, while those in Pétionville were better managed. Camps that are not on
major roads or far from the city center in Croix-des-Bouquets or Carrefour
had little to no services. Camps situated on private land—71 percent of the
sample—were significantly worse off than those on public land.
Although many NGOs empowered camp committees to select recipients
and distribute aid—most notably food, until the government stopped general
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distribution in April 2010—most official committees did not involve the pop-
ulation. Less than a third of people living in camps were aware of the strategy
or even the name of the committees. Two-thirds of members were men,
despite well-documented concerns about gender-based violence. Although
to most NGOs managing camps or offering services these committees rep-
resent their local participation, it is clear that the structure that NGOs cre-
ated was ripe for abuse.
Although many committees sprang up organically immediately after the
earthquake as an expression of solidarity and unity in an effort to survive,
NGOs’ relationships with them had several negative consequences, whether
intended or unintended. First, most NGOs did not inquire about local par-
ticipation, leadership, needs deliberation, or legitimacy. As a result, in several
cases, the NGOs and self-named committees excluded preexisting grassroots
organizations. Some NGOs, the government, and even the landowners them-
selves created these committees. This was the root of several conflicts. In most
cases, the camp committees—many of which were active in the earthquake’s
immediate aftermath—reported not doing anything because of lack of funds,
testifying to an increasing dependency on foreign aid.
These failures are not isolated incidents but symptoms of larger struc-
tural problems that require immediate, sustained, and profound reflection and
attention. Solutions include involving IDP populations in large community
meetings; assessing levels of democracy and participation within commit-
tees; and ensuring greater NGO accountability, coordination, and submis-
sion to a fully funded local and national government. Housing needs to be
recognized as a human right (guaranteed by Article 22 of Haiti’s constitution
and Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), with concrete,
immediate steps to empower people to return to a safe home and basic ser-
vices (such as water, sanitation, health care, and education) made available
to all, regardless of residency status.

Physical Conditions of the Camps

One is immediately struck by the physical conditions inside the camps, par-
ticularly after a rainstorm (an unfortunately quite common occurrence in the
summer months). Without exception, sanitation and drainage for rainwater
were serious issues. On the morning after a rainstorm, it is common to find
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Cholera and the Camps 185

large pools of standing, muddy water—often stretching twenty yards—over

which mosquitoes, flies, and other potential disease vectors circle. The state
of sanitation is manifested in numerous cases of serious skin problems. In at
least one camp, Noailles, the researcher estimated that almost all the children
had a rash on their bodies because of the heat trapped inside the tents, com-
bined with disease vectors. I myself contracted a rash after repeated exposure
to these unsanitary conditions.
Bracketing the health consequences, this lack of proper drainage and sani-
tation still represents serious environmental hazards, most notably the smell.
Even in camps with latrines, the standing rainwater and mud are pungent,
with a scent reminiscent of pig farms. Often, as documented by research assis-
tants and myself, the mud seeps underneath people’s tents or tarps, render-
ing it impossible to sleep or keep personal effects (like voter ID cards, birth
certificates, marriage licenses, or photos) dry and intact. “It is also impossi-
ble to sleep when the mud seeps in. Imagine; everything around you moves,”
said one resident.
Those whose houses were destroyed or seriously damaged but nonethe-
less have their lakou, or yard, intact, and those with more than the average
economic resources or other means, stay in tents elevated from the ground
by cinder blocks recovered from the houses. But those who have these sleep-
ing berths are the distinct minority.

Sanitation
People staying at or near their houses and not inside one of the 800 camps
within the capital do not have to contend with the problems associated with
sharing a bathroom with neighbors. At even the best-managed camps, this is
a widespread concern. The Sphere Minimum Standards are clear about how
many people should share a toilet: no more than twenty. These conditions are
not even being met right in front of the National Palace, where foreign NGOs,
dignitaries like former U.S. presidents, and journalists visit. The toilets line
the outside of the camp, presenting the appearance of plenty. Hidden from
view are rows and rows of tarps and tents.
And this is in a camp that is relatively well taken care of. Away from the
glaring gaze of foreigners, there are camps that are far worse off. In Place de la
Paix (Peace Plaza), in the Delmas 2 neighborhood, also lining the perimeter,
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there was a row of toilets next to the trash receptacles, which was next to the
water distribution and the site for the mobile clinic. Strikingly, there were
only thirty toilets for 30,400 people. In a small camp in Carrefour, to go to
the bathroom people have to ask a neighbor whose house is still standing.
Camp leader Carline explains, “It’s embarrassing. And even though they are
neighbors, it’s starting to strain our relationship.” They have to buy water
and carry it back into the camp.
According to a June 2010 Displacement Tracking Matrix, 6,820 people
lived in the soccer field outside of the rectory in Solino. Despite this density,
residents had to wait for almost five months for the first toilets to arrive. When
asked how people defecate, a resident held up a small plastic bag usually used
to sell half cups of sugar or penny candy. “We throw it in the ravine across the
street.” In the recently discovered camp in Impasse Thomas (CAJIT), hous-
ing almost 2,500 people in Paloma, a far-off neighborhood in Carrefour, there
were no toilets—either portable or latrines—at least as of August 12, seven
months after the earthquake.
These cases are unfortunately not isolated. According to even the most
conservative estimates, with some large camps in which assistants had to esti-
mate taken out of the sample, the average number of people sharing a single
toilet in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area is 273 people. Thirty percent
of camps (twenty-seven out of eighty-nine) with verified information did
not have any toilets at all. Another investigation from LAMP, IJDH, LERN,
and the University of San Francisco Law School found similar results, that
27 percent of families had to defecate in a plastic container or an open area.
These data were collected seven months after the earthquake, despite the per-
sistent narrative that people are swelling the camps—or faking it, just using
the camps during the daytime—primarily in search of services.
Unfortunately, residents’ needs don’t stop with the installation of toilet
facilities; many of those that do exist are not cleaned regularly. Although res-
idents of twenty-five camps reported that their toilets were cleaned every
day (37 percent, mostly those with portable toilets), ten camps (15 percent)
reported that they are cleaned less often than once per month, and seven-
teen (25 percent) report not having the toilets cleaned at all (figure 9.1).
“They treat us like animals!” said an exasperated resident. She was inter-
rupted by a neighbor: “Worse! Animals live better than us.” Some members
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Cholera and the Camps 187

Figure 9.1 Condition of a toilet that had not been serviced for six months, Kolonbi
camp, January 2012. Photograph by Mark Schuller.

of the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Cluster are frustrated at what
they see as the irresponsibility of NGOs: “We call and call and write report
after report. Some just flatly ignore us.”

Water
Central to any public health effort is the provision of safe, clean water. In
several reports, the United Nations highlights the distribution of water to
1.2 million people as a success of the ensemble of agencies and NGOs. Like
sanitation, there were still large gaps in water distribution to IDP camps
seven months after the earthquake. Take, for example, the case of Bobin, in
a ravine outside of Pétionville, in a popular neighborhood off of Route des
Frères. As of seven months after the earthquake, the 2,775 residents still had
no water. A single PVC pipe that had cracked offers some people a couple of
buckets whenever the government turns on the tap for paying clients. Many
people use the rainwater in the trash-filled ravine. Some individuals had the
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opportunity to fetch water from a nearby tap, either privately owned or at

a nearby camp. Residents mentioned that NGOs had talked about installing
a water system, but seven months after the earthquake, it still had yet to
materialize.
Several other camps, particularly in Cité Soleil and CAJIT in the hills
above Carrefour noted above, were without water as the research team inves-
tigated. Said Olga Ulysse, CAJIT leader, “Carrefour is blessed with many little
springs. But the problem is that they are running under the destroyed houses
and the decomposing bodies.” The other choice is to walk downhill to the
adjacent camp, pay for a bucket of water, and carry it back up the hill.
Of the camps where assistants could obtain reliable information, thirty out
of seventy-one, or 40.5 percent, of camps did not have a water supply, and
three others (4.1 percent) had a nearby PVC pipe that was tapped outside
the camp. With the notable exception of the WASH Cluster—which is dis-
tinguished as the only U.N. cluster cofacilitated by the Haitian government,
accountable to the people and not the NGOs, and characterized by an activist,
hands-on approach to filling the gaps in services—people from all levels of
the aid industry repeated the refrain that providing life-saving necessities
encourages dependency. A possibility that seemed not to have been consid-
ered was to work with the Haitian government to provide lower-cost, sus-
tainable water lines and taps that, even though not free, could have been
maintained by community groups as they existed before the earthquake.
“People are only living in the camps in order to get the free services,” said
a particular NGO worker, but it could have been one of many. This dis-
course has wide currency in aid circles and foreign parliaments, including
the U.S. Congress. In addition to this issue, several commentators pointed
to the issue of profit making. According to a person who works at a foreign
development agency, private water company owners persuaded President
René Préval to stop free water distribution because it was cutting into their
profits.

Health Care
Several gaps remained within the coverage of health care facilities inside the
IDP camps. At its peak, only one camp in five had any sort of clinic facility on
site. This number does not account for quality. For example, in one camp,
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Cholera and the Camps 189

Carradeux, a tent was provided by UNICEF that resembles a clinic, but it was
completely empty as of July 2010: no medicines, no first aid supplies, and no
nurse practitioners were present on researchers’ five visits to this camp. “I’m
a nurse,” executive committee member Elvire Constant began. “But we don’t
have the means to serve the population. UNICEF knows the tent is here, but
they have never come by, not even one day, to negotiate with us, to tell us
whether it could be a mobile clinic or a health center.”
A couple hundred meters inside the camp, a tent from U.S. NGO Save the
Children, whose purpose eluded everyone I asked, was empty and ripped
past the point of providing any shelter as early as July 2010 (figure 9.2). Car-
radeux is an officially managed, planned relocation site, and it was therefore
supposed to be an example for others. Indeed, the researcher who visited
the camp gave this camp a score of 3 out of 10 in overall quality, with 1 being
acceptable and 10 being the worst imaginable. Most other camps were given
higher scores, meaning the conditions were worse.

Figure 9.2 NGO clinic abandoned by July 2010, Carradeux camp. Photograph by
Mark Schuller.
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According to residents, the median time to walk to the nearest clinic was
twenty minutes, with the mean being twenty-seven minutes. Five camps were
so isolated that residents told researchers that it took ninety minutes to reach
the nearest clinic. The same could be said of pharmacies. Although in the
earthquake’s immediate aftermath, medications were given to residents free
of charge, this practice stopped early on in most camps’ neighborhoods. Nine
out of eighty-five responses, 10 percent, of camps had some form of a phar-
macy on site. The mean time to walk to the nearest pharmacy was twenty-five
minutes, with the farthest being two hours. To borrow Agamben’s words,
Haiti’s IDP camps are only repositories of bare life.7

Cholera
The lack of sanitation services became the prime breeding grounds for ill-
nesses such as cholera, which struck Haiti with great force. Cholera claimed
over 6,300 lives as of the summer of 2011, nine months after the outbreak.
Despite the millions of dollars in new pledged aid to Haiti to combat the dis-
ease, little progress was made during the first several months after the out-
break. Using the same random sample of 108 IDP camps, a team of three
Université d’État d’Haïti students investigated forty-five camps in January
2011 that, as per the previous August 2010 study, had lacked either water or
toilets. The results show a minimum of progress: 37.6 percent instead of 40.5
percent still did not have water, and 25.8 instead of 30.3 percent of camps
still did not have a toilet. Cité Soleil, which had demonstrably fewer WASH
services as of August, showed the most dramatic improvement. The pri-
mary reason was that the WASH Cluster, cochaired by the Haitian govern-
ment agency Direction Nationale de l’Eau Potable et de l’Assainissement
(DINEPA), took a hands-on approach to problem solving. Although the
other eleven U.N. clusters met in the U.N. logistics base, where Haitians
were prevented entry and meetings were held in English, a foreign language,
a DINEPA official met with local government and NGO staff in the various
city halls across the metropolitan area. After the cholera outbreak, DINEPA
set a goal of 100 percent coverage within Cité Soleil.
The cholera outbreak—combined with the continued lack of services—
was a key factor in the rapid depopulation of the IDP camps. According to
the IOM, only 810,000 remained in camps as of January 7, 2011, down from
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Cholera and the Camps 191

almost twice that before the cholera outbreak. One in four of the camps that
researchers visited had disappeared since the summer of 2010, eight because
of IDPs’ fear of cholera and three because of landowner pressure. Given little
progress since the outbreak, most of the patterns remained. Camps with
NGO management agencies were still far more likely to have needed ser-
vices, resulting from NGOs’ primary roles to convene service actors; this
became increasingly evident by 2011.8 Municipality involvement was still
a factor in services, with far-flung Croix-des-Bouquets and Carrefour still
lagging far behind in service provision; however, some progress was made
in Cité Soleil IDP camps because of a concerted effort led by the Haitian
government.
At the time of writing, people were still dying of cholera. In fact, the 2011
rainy season heralded a recrudescence in the waterborne illness. Despite this,
NGOs pulled out of providing WASH services in the camps; as of October
2011, only 7 percent of camps had water services.9 What explained the out-
break in a country that hadn’t had one in over a century? Fingers were pointed
every which way. Unfortunately the structure of the humanitarian response
to the earthquake bears significant responsibility.

NGOs’ Responsibilities in Cholera

As is generally known in Haiti (evidenced by graffiti), U.N. troops brought
cholera to Haiti. One of the world’s leading experts on cholera, French epi-
demiologist Renaud Piarroux, said clearly that the first cases of cholera were
immediately downstream from the U.N. base in Mirebalais.10 This report was
suppressed but was finally published in July 2011. This thesis was proven with
genetic evidence in another independent, peer-reviewed article in August
2011 comparing the genetic makeup of the cholera strain in Haiti with that
of Nepal.11
Despite the U.N. troops’ clear signature on the epidemic, generally the
international response failed to protect IDPs and other Haitian people from
the outbreak. Haiti’s increased vulnerability to the disease was predictable,
especially after the gaps in services in the IDP camps and the surrounding
poor communities. According to the WASH Cluster’s own database, not
even a majority of residents had regular access to WASH services before the
cholera outbreak. Only a third of the camps had access to water.
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Why, given this information, was more prevention work not done? Why,
despite the figures put out by NGOs and the international community and
dutifully reported in the media about service delivery, was there a systemic
failure? “In short, a lack of accountability,” said one international aid worker.
Even before the earthquake, donors’ reward structure worked against col-
laboration, coordination, communication, and participation. The earthquake
didn’t solve these structural problems. By infusing the system with ever-
increasing cash, it only got worse. A solution proposed after the posttsunami
experience was the so-called cluster system introduced by the U.N. There
are twelve clusters, each responsible for ensuring effective and coordinated
action in a sector (for example, education, health care, and water and sanita-
tion). Despite the promises, the cluster meetings excluded local voices: all
but the WASH Cluster were held in a U.N. base where access was closely
guarded, and many were held in English. They were also performative, not
deliberative: instead of focusing on problem solving, the meetings tended to
be spaces to communicate messages or to promote an NGO or for-profit
service, for example. Again, the notable exception was the WASH Cluster.
In the end, no single individual agency could take the blame for the collec-
tive failure. No individual agency could be compelled to provide needed
services in the camps. The one agency that could, the Haitian government
(national or local), was still underresourced despite the billions in aid sent
to Haiti. Despite public discourse by both U.N. Special envoy Bill Clinton
and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton about the importance of
rebuilding Haiti’s government infrastructure, it only received 1 percent of
the emergency funds.12
Several NGOs, including Médecins Sans Frontièrs and Partners in Health,
individually led valiant efforts to bring lifesaving services to the IDP camps.
There are lessons in their best practices, such as the latter’s explicit coordi-
nation with the Haitian government, but the failures, particularly to close
the huge gaps, require attention and analysis if the epidemic is to be stopped
in Haiti or prevented in other disaster situations. Neither international nor
national NGOs are structurally accountable to the Haitian population. They
have no incentive or requirement to go outside their turf even though the
disease does not respect camp boundaries (figure 9.3). The gaps in services
persisted, and people’s response was to flee: in November 2010, all 546 people
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Cholera and the Camps 193

Figure 9.3 Carradeux camp, highlighting the boundaries of haves—served by an

NGO—and have-nots. Photograph by Mark Schuller.

staying at an Adventist church in Carrefour fled the day that eight people had
contracted cholera. No water or sanitation services were in this camp; church
officials had also pressured residents to leave. Closing this gap would require
a greater role and resources flowing to the government, at least minimally.
With very little capacity to even adequately play an oversight role, not to
mention offering incentives to NGOs, the Haitian government has little
ability to help. To sum up, according to a Haitian government WASH offi-
cial, “The bottom line is we have no carrots and sticks. NGOs are private
agencies and pretty much can do what they want.” Many in Haiti speculate
that this is exactly the way the international community wants it: with for-
eign agencies in control, and the Haitian people and even the government
on the sidelines.13
Although it might be argued that the response to the cholera outbreak was
actually better in the camps, the data are inconclusive and subject to interpre-
tation. Even if true, the lack of services within the neighborhoods directly
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resulted from the weakened capacity of the government to provide what

would be the most cost-effective and permanent, sustainable solution. With
the exception of Spain, which had funded DINEPA (the Haitian government
WASH agency), donors—with the complicity of NGOs receiving donors’
aid—did not invest in the public capacity to provide water and sanitation
services in the neighborhoods, for reasons discussed above.

History of NGOs in Haiti

Many Haitian scholars have written about the history of development associ-
ations, including NGOs and peasants associations.14 Arguably the most influ-
ential work was an M.A. thesis by ethnology student Sauveur Pierre Étienne,
who qualified international governmental organizations’ implantation as an
invasion.15 Borrowing heavily from a previous work by Mathurin and collab-
orators, Étienne discusses the history of NGOs in the country. The political
climate under the Duvalier dictatorship, particularly François Duvalier, was
hostile to NGOs, but a small group of foreign agencies worked in the country.
As Richman’s and McAlister’s chapters in this volume argue, religious NGOs
were tolerated. In exchange for U.S. support for the succession of power to
Jean-Claude Duvalier, the United States demanded acceptance of NGOs,
particularly Protestant groups.16 The ouster of Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986
provided an opening for foreign agencies—international financial institutions
such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as well as
bilateral agencies such as the United States Agency for International Develop-
ment (USAID) (see also Arthur’s chapter in this volume on the connection
between USAID and Duvalier)—to implement neoliberal policy reforms
such as trade liberalization, floating the currency, and privatization.17 Duva-
lier’s ouster, supported if not engineered by the United States, was also an
opening for NGOs. According to official records, only forty NGOs were
legally registered and recognized before 1971, when Baby Doc took over from
his dead father; by contrast, from 1986 (when Duvalier fled) to 1990 (the
first democratic election), at least thirty-one NGOs opened offices in Haiti.18
By 2005, the Ministère de la Planification et de Coopération Externe (Min-
istry of Planning and Foreign Cooperation) officially recognized 343 national
and international NGOs, inching up to 400 just before the earthquake.19 Min-
istry staff estimated double this number as of August 2010, seven months after
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the earthquake. In 2009, U.N. special envoy Bill Clinton declared there to be
10,000 NGOs in Haiti, blurring the distinction from community-based orga-
nizations to international nongovernmental organizations, a number that has
since become true through its continued repetition.
Critiques of this invasion abound from across the political spectrum in
Haiti. Étienne and Lwijis had a public argument, each trying to outflank one
another in terms of whose critique of NGOs was more radical.20 Both were
also vocal critics of Aristide. Aristide supporter Paul Farmer offered a note
of caution about NGOs, saying that they “aren’t necessarily more democratic
than elected governments.”21 In addition to these critiques from the left, Hait-
ians on the right are similarly critical. A general mistrust is reflected and struc-
tured in the two foundational regulatory documents of the NGO system,
Jean-Claude Duvalier’s decree about NGOs on December 13, 1982, and the
revision decree of military dictator General Henri Namphy of September
14, 1989. The preamble to both decrees declared the legislation necessary to
protect national sovereignty.
Ordinary citizens were also critical of what they saw as corruption—how
NGOs got rich off people’s misery. Said one, “When they come to give the
country aid, only the bigwigs see it. They only give us a coating of dust.” Many
people began speaking of an insular, privileged NGO class who acted as inter-
mediaries.22 Since the earthquake, these critiques have only gotten louder.
Graffiti denouncing NGOs have become a common occurrence in Port-au-
Prince after the earthquake, particularly after the cholera outbreak in October
2010. NGOs appear to many to lack the will to help. Said one frustrated youth,
“NGOs know the problems to resolve, but they want you to be in misery
before they give [it to] you, make you suffer.” And another: “They have the
means to help. If they don’t help, NGOs wouldn’t exist. And it’s because of
these problems that they exist. If all problems were resolved there would
never be NGOs.” How did NGOs that began as private voluntary agencies
with a shared mission and commitment to service become these behemoths
roundly trashed and distrusted by the Haitian people?

Changes to NGOs
As many scholars noted, NGOs as a structure began as private, voluntary
associations—most tied to faith-based communities, but some secular—that
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raised the majority of funds for their work.23 Many practitioners recall that
these nonprofit associations were close-knit and self-sacrificing, as well as
focused on a shared mission. It is arguably still true for grassroots organiza-
tions that raise most of their money from members.
The system was remade after shifts in donor discourses, policies, and prac-
tices. After the end of the cold war, donors like USAID and the World Bank
did not need strong centralized states to compete against the Soviet bloc. In
fact, they discovered that states were too strong, centralized, corrupt, and
removed from the people. So they began directly financing NGOs instead:
the 1990s saw a tenfold increase in NGOs, from 6,000 worldwide in 1990
to an estimated 60,000 by 1998.24 Currently, there are so many NGOs that
we can’t even guess at their number.25 This rise in the number of NGOs is
matched with an increase in funding through them. Globally, in 2005, NGOs
channeled anywhere from $3.7 to $7.8 billion of humanitarian assistance,26
and $24 billion in overall development funding.27
In addition to the general economic model favoring NGOs, foreign aid is
often caught up in geopolitical struggles, such as Haiti in 1995. Republicans
who had just taken over Congress were looking to expose President Clinton’s
inexperience in foreign policy. Returning exiled president Aristide to power
was his only success story to date, unlike Rwanda and Somalia. So Congress
forbade USAID to fund Aristide: all USAID funds were to go toward NGOs.
Other bilateral donors such as Canada and multilaterals such as the U.N. and
the European Union followed suit. More generally, Haiti is often a laboratory
for new donor policies, from eradicating the Haitian pig population after a
swine fever outbreak and structural adjustment in the 1980s to the Cadre de
Coopération Intérimaire and the performance monitoring in the first decade
of this century—not to mention U.N. clusters after the earthquake.28
I conducted a multiyear ethnographic analysis of two local women’s NGOs
both working in HIV/AIDS prevention. One received primarily private fund-
ing from an array of European NGOs and the other strictly public funding.
The differences in the two NGOs’ management and relationship with their
recipient populations was striking: the publicly funded NGO offered far less
space for participation than the NGO with private NGO partners.29 From
this basis and on the basis of secondary research, hypotheses about the
shifts in NGOs as a result of donor policies are possible—for example, that
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donor policies and the huge infusion of cash have corrupted NGOs. Policies
like results- or performance-based management have centralized decision-
making authority and closed off avenues for meaningful local participation.
Rather than an open, participative, democratic process, NGOs are increas-
ingly rewarded for a bean-counting approach that reduces people to statistics.
On top of this, pressures of upward accountability and the pressures to spend
(and get more contracts from the donor) undermine the relationship with
local communities. Consequently, corrections and changes made from on-
the-ground experience are increasingly difficult.
The byzantine reporting requirements also cut off intra-NGO communi-
cation. Staff who work in the field and who are the direct points of contact
with aid recipients are increasingly removed from decision-making authority.
Local needs deliberation has become increasingly irrelevant, as NGOs have
to follow the project cycle and do exactly as they’re told to implement donor
priorities, or they risk their funding being pulled. The reporting requirements
create top-heavy NGOs with more resources directed toward higher-paid
full-time administrative staff to keep up with them, with at least one full-
time accountant versed in USAID or other donor reporting requirements
and software. Job ads—often written in English—explicitly ask for these
competencies.30
Despite much rhetoric on accountability to beneficiaries and the emer-
gence of principles and standards such as Humanitarian Accountability
Partnership and Sphere, the reward structure actively discourages local par-
ticipation, open lines of communication with aid recipients and within the
office, and collaboration and coordination with the state or other NGOs. The
reporting and other requirements imposed by donors reorient NGOs to be
more concerned with accountability from above, not from below. If an NGO
fails a community, the community has no recourse. Beneficiaries have no
direct contact with the donors or even NGO directors. If a state-sponsored
development project failed or lined the pockets of insiders, citizens would
be in the streets protesting, because there is at least in theory some account-
ability, some responsibility, to the citizenry and politicians can be voted out
of office. But at the base, NGOs cannot be compelled to work better or work
in underserviced areas, because they are first and foremost private voluntary
initiatives. This is why any NGO can point to individual successes after the
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earthquake while huge gaps in water and sanitation services remained a year
after the earthquake.
Because donors’ relationships with NGOs trump others through ever-
powerful reporting and management regimes, there is little incentive to coop-
erate with one another. NGOs are, structurally speaking, competitors with
one another and the Haitian government itself. Why share information or
coordinate with an entity that is competing for the same resources? Often
these relationships erupt in hostilities, but is it any surprise that given this, and
donors’ systematic undermining of the state’s oversight/coordination capac-
ity, only a fraction of NGOs in Haiti even bother to submit the bare minimum,
annual reports, to the Haitian government? According to staff at the Minis-
ter of Planning and Foreign Cooperation, only 10 to 20 percent gave their
reports to the government. In many cases, donors’ policies actually encour-
age NGOs to disregard the authority of the state. NGOs often pay employ-
ees three times as much as the equivalent government ministry, what World
Bank researcher Alice Morton termed raiding.31
Therefore, far from representing individual moral failures, or a Haitian
mentality, as Schwartz would suggest,32 actors within the system are in fact
behaving in a quite understandable fashion responding to the power struc-
ture, inequality, and the rewards system of the aid enterprise.33 Official
donors’ reward structure works against collaboration, coordination, com-
munication, and participation. This reward structure is within the purview
of international aid agencies to change.

Conclusion
As this is a volume on the idea of Haiti, the rapid spread of cholera is a
reminder that ideas have material consequences. The idea of Haiti being a
paradigmatic failed state and having been dubbed the Republic of NGOs by
the Economist became a self-fulfilling prophesy, writing the Haitian govern-
ment out of any responsibility in the emergency response. At the end of the
day, no one was responsible for ensuring adequate WASH services to stop
the spread of the disease, ironically except in Cité Soleil, where the govern-
ment took a hands-on role and declared 100 percent coverage. Although this
success—because the government asserted a role as coordinator and policy
maker—may be dismissed as symbolic, it is an important symbol. Even in
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Cholera and the Camps 199

Cité Soleil, progress can be made if the NGOs work to support the govern-
ment’s plan. A full year after the outbreak of cholera, it was announced that
the government would be working with NGOs to vaccinate against the dis-
ease, an idea that was long in coming. Again, this could symbolize new artic-
ulations of how the international aid apparatus can work with the Haitian
government. It is only sad that this new discourse is written with the lives of
6,500 people who perished while these ideas were finally being sorted out.

Notes
1. Chronicle of Philanthropy, How Charities Are Helping Haiti: How Much They
Raised and Spent (Washington, D.C.: Chronicle on Philanthropy, 2010).
2. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2001), 294.
3. Valerie Kaussen, “States of Exception: Haiti’s IDP Camps,” Monthly Review
(2011): 37–42.
4. See the International Organization for Migration December 2011 Haiti Shel-
ter Report, http://www.iom.int/.
5. I have seen documentation of at least eight NGOs that paid $2,500 per
month on housing allowance for their foreign staff; by contrast, my rent was less
than $350 for a three-bedroom flat.
6. Mark Schuller, “Unstable Foundations: The Impact of NGOs on Human
Rights for Port-au-Prince’s 1.5 Million Homeless” (New York and Port-au-Prince:
City University of New York and the Université d’État d’Haïti, 2010).
7. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1998).
8. See Schuller and Levey, n.d., for a discussion of this.
9. See OCHA Humanitarian Bulletin, September 21–October 18, 2011.
10. Renaud Piarroux et al., “Understanding the Cholera Epidemic, Haiti,” Emerg-
ing Infectious Diseases 17, no. 7 (2011): 1161–67.
11. Rene Hendriksen et al., “Population Genetics of Vibrio cholerae from Nepal
in 2010: Evidence on the Origin of the Haitian Outbreak,” mBIO 2, no. 4 (2011):
1–6.
12. Jonathan Katz, “Billions for Haiti, a Criticism for Every Dollar,” Associated
Press, March 6, 2010; Kevin Edmonds, “NGOs and the Business of Poverty in
Haiti,” presented at the North American Congress on Latin America, April 5, 2010,
https://nacla.org/node/6501.
13. Janil Lwijis, ONG: Ki gouvènman ou ye? (Pòtoprens: Asosyasyon Inivèsite ak
Inivèsitèz Desalinyèn—ASID, 2009); James Petras, “Imperialism and NGOs in Latin
America,” Monthly Review 49, no. 7 (1997): 10–17.
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200 mark schuller

14. See, for example, Calixte Clerisme, “Organizations Paysannes Dans Le Devel-
oppement Rural,” Conjonction 140 (1978): 5–45; Pierre Simpson Gabaud, Associa-
tionnisme Paysan En Haïti: Efets De Permanence Et De Rupture (Port-au-Prince:
Editions des Antilles, 2000); Janil Lwijis ( Jean-Anile Louis-Juste), “Haïti, L’invasion
des ONG: La Thèse n’Est Pas Aussi Radicale Que Son Sujet” (Port-au-Prince: Fac-
ulté des Sciences Humaines, Université d’État d’Haïti, 2007); Janil Lwijis, Entè OPD:
Kalfou Pwojè (Pòtoprens: Imprimateur II, 1993); Janil Lwijis, ONG: Ki Gouvènman
Ou Yè? (Pòtoprens: Asosyasyon Inivèsite ak Inivèsitèz Desalinyèn—ASID, 2009);
Alliette Mathurin, Ernst Mathurin, and Bernard Zaugg, Implantation et Impact des
Organisations non Gouvernementales: Contexte Général et Étude de Cas (Port-au-
Prince: GRAMIR, 1989); Maguy Mathurin, “La Participation Dans Le Développe-
ment en Haiti: Bilan et Perspective,” in Defnition, Rôle et Fonction des ONG: Cahier
2, ed. HAVA (Port-au-Prince: HAVA, 1991), 13–16.
15. Sauveur Pierre Étienne, Haiti: L’Invasion des ONG (Port-au-Prince: Centre
de Recherche Sociale et de Formation Economique pour le Développement, 1997).
16. Lwijis, ONG.
17. Fritz Deshommes, Néo-libéralisme: Crise économique et alternative de dévelop-
pement, 2nd ed. (Port-au-Prince: Presses des Imprimateur II, 1995); Alex Dupuy,
Haiti in the New World Order: The Limits of the Democratic Revolution (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press, 1997); “Globalization, the World Bank, and the Haitian Economy,”
in Contemporary Caribbean Cultures and Societies in a Global Context, ed. Franklin
Knight and Teresita Martinez-Vergne (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2005), 43–70.
18. Mark Schuller, “Invasion or Infusion? Understanding the Role of NGOs in
Contemporary Haiti,” Journal of Haitian Studies 13, no. 2 (2007): 96–119.
19. Ibid.
20. See, for example, Jean Anil Louis-Juste, “Haïti, L’Invasion des ONG: la thèse
n’est pas aussi radicale que son sujet” (Port-au-Prince: Faculté des Sciences Humaines,
Université d’État d’Haïti, 2007).
21. Paul Farmer, The Uses of Haiti, 2nd ed. (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage
Press, 2003), 368.
22. Mark Schuller, “Gluing Globalization: NGOs as Intermediaries in Haiti,” Polit-
ical and Legal Anthropology Review 32, no. 1 (2009): 84–104.
23. For example, Erica Bornstein, The Spirit of Development: Protestant NGOs,
Morality, and Economics in Zimbabwe (New York: Routledge, 2003); William Fisher,
“Doing Good? The Politics and Antipolitics of NGO Practices,” Annual Reviews in
Anthropology 26 (1997): 439–64; Tara Hefferan, Twinning Faith and Development:
Catholic Parish Partnering in the U.S. and Haiti (Bloomfield, Conn.: Kumarian Press,
2007); Alliette Mathurin, Ernst Mathurin, and Bernard Zaugg, Implantation et Impact
des Organisations non Gouvernementales: Contexte Général et Étude de Cas (Port-au-
Prince: GRAMIR, 1989).
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Cholera and the Camps 201

24. Economist, cited in Regan Jane Regan and Institute Culturel Karl Lévèque
(ICKL), “ONG ‘altènatif ’—zanmi oswa ennmi lit radikal?” (Port-au-Prince: Insti-
tute Culturel Karl Leveque, 2003), 3.
25. Roger Riddell, Does Foreign Aid Really Work? (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2007), 53.
26. Development Initiatives, “Global Humanitarian Assistance 2006” (London:
Development Initiatives, 2006), 47; Riddell, Does Foreign Aid Really Work?
27. Riddell, Does Foreign Aid Really Work?, 259.
28. Bernard Diederich, “Swine Fever Ironies: the Slaughter of the Haitian Black
Pig,” Caribbean Review 14, no. 1 (1985) 16–17, 41.
29. Mark Schuller, Killing with Kindness: NGOs and International Aid in Haiti (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2012).
30. Schuller, “Gluing Globalization.”
31. Alice Morton, Haiti: NGO Sector Study (Washington, D.C.: World Bank,
1997), 25.
32. Timothy Schwartz, Travesty in Haiti: A True Account of Christian Missions,
Orphanages, Fraud, Food Aid and Drug Trafcking (Charleston, S.C.: Book Surge,
2008).
33. See also Erica Caple James, Democratic Insecurities: Violence, Trauma, and
Intervention in Haiti, ed. Robert Borofsky (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2010).
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10

From Slave Revolt

to a Blood Pact with Satan
The Evangelical Rewriting of Haitian History

elizabeth mcalister

History belongs to the intercessors.

— C . P e t e r Wa g n e r , Warfare Prayer

T he deadly earthquake that shook the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince

and its environs on January 12, 2010, killed an estimated 300,000 peo-
ple, making it the worst disaster in the history of the Americas. The next day,
television evangelist Pat Robertson, while hosting his news talk show, The 700
Club, on the Christian Broadcast Network, said that the earthquake could be
best understood by a little-known event that “people might not want to talk
about.” Haitians were cursed, he said, because they long ago “swore a pact to
the devil.” His exact words were:

Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to
talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, you know, Napoleon the
Third and whatever . . . and they got together and swore a pact to the devil.
They said we will serve you if you get us free from the prince . . . true story . . .
so the devil said okay, it’s a deal. And they kicked the French out. Ever since,
they have been cursed by one thing after another.1

A media outcry ensued, and a White House spokesman called Robertson’s

comments “utterly stupid.” Experts and commentators pointed out that
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204 elizabeth mcalister

Robertson’s ideas were outrageous and obscured the scientific and social
truths that the quake was a natural disaster made even more lethal by social
factors: overcrowded, inadequate housing and dire poverty. Even the Rev-
erend Franklin Graham disavowed the remarks, saying he thought Robertson
misspoke. In the view of most who spoke out, Robertson’s offensive story
was callous and racist, an embarrassment to America and even to Christianity.
Yet one branch of Christianity—the Spiritual Mapping movement—had
been working actively for twenty years to promote this very story. Robertson
had absorbed the idea through his affiliation with the movement and repeated
it on the broadcast. Spiritual Mapping, which will be discussed at length in
the second part of this essay, is premised on a recent evangelical understand-
ing of world history as an ongoing battle between the devil and God; this
battle is fought in spiritual ways but in the earthly, concrete places where
humans live. Further, God has opened up the present time as a new oppor-
tunity for Christians to become warriors in this cosmic battle and act as inter-
cessors and spiritual warriors on assignment to fight the devil. They do this
by mapping his activities and undoing his pacts, casting out his demons, and
reclaiming the earth and its peoples for Jesus. So Pat Robertson’s comments
sounded perfectly reasonable to his audience of believers, who understand
the world in terms of demonic activity that must be countered by Christian
prayer. He was referring to an event that was indeed written into Haitian his-
tory and schoolbooks as a founding moment in the national story: the cere-
mony at Bois Caïman.
The story of Bois Caïman—an iconic one for Haitian patriots, national-
ists, and artists—has been written about, painted, dramatized, and rendered
in poetry countless times. It is said that during a nighttime gathering at a
place called Bois Caïman (Alligator Woods) in the north of colonial Saint
Domingue on August 14, 1791, several hundred slaves from different ethnic
groups united under a leader named Boukman and vowed to fight the
French who ruled the colony and used forced labor to fuel the sugar indus-
try. Haitian writer Stephen Alexis wrote this dramatic version of the occa-
sion in 1949:

[Boukman] wore the long garment of papa-loi [spirit-priest], the red robe of
sacrifice, and in his right hand glittered a heavy sword. In a deep, hollow voice,
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From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan 205

he began to chant his savage hymn of doom, calling down on the Negroes all the
blessings of the invisible powers. . . . At a sign from Boukman, acolytes brought
him a gazelle, a pig, and a goat which were killed and disemboweled, and the
entrails poured out. Each man present slowly approached, plunged his hands
into the entrails, and raised them, vowing aloud as he did so that he would suffer
death rather than continue to be a slave.2

Standard histories of Haiti recount that two weeks later the slaves rebelled,
set fire to sugar plantations, and launched the revolution. After eleven years
of war, during which slavery was abolished, the Haitian nation broke free from
French colonial rule and declared independence on January 1, 1804. Driven
by the initial religiopolitical catalyst of resolve and unity at the ceremony
at Bois Caïman, Haiti became the first independent black republic in the
Americas.
The story of the ceremony at Bois Caïman was taken up by an aggressive
wave of evangelical missionaries in the 1990s, who recast the narrative with
a new Christian interpretation. I will elaborate its logics below, but the gist
of it is this: The enslaved Africans appealed to their ancestral gods and not
to Jesus Christ, and since the African gods are pagan gods, they must have
been demonic forces—in effect, devils. Boukman’s vow to the invisible pow-
ers to be free and the sacrifice of the pig made up the components of a pact
with Satan. According to this logic, the pact was understandable in the sense
that the enslaved people were victims of terrible injustice at the hands of the
French. They naturally reached for freedom by any means. But biblical, spir-
itual law being what it is, and founding national events being what they are,
the slaves had (perhaps unwittingly) inaugurated Satan as the ruler of Haiti.
Moreover, to this very day, Haitians who continue Afro-Creole traditional
religious practices ratify that initial covenant every time they address the spirit
world. It is this terrible diplomatic deal and its ongoing activation that explain
the downward political and economic spiral of the country. Initially theolo-
gized in the 1980s by Argentinean and North American evangelicals who
inaugurated the Spiritual Mapping movement, this logic came to make sense
to a vocal minority of Haitians. Haitian theologians and pastors then went
on to elaborate the idea and have filled in interpretive details from their own
cultural perspective. (This branch of neoevangelicalism is also called the
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206 elizabeth mcalister

Third Wave movement, and it is this movement I will reference by the terms
neoevangelical and evangelical throughout this chapter.)3
Pastor Yvette is one such Haitian evangelical who understands Haiti in
terms of Christians’ battle with Satan and his legions of demons. When I vis-
ited her neo-Pentecostal, 2,500-person congregation six months after the
earthquake, they were living in an encampment for internally displaced per-
sons on a soccer field in Port-au-Prince. Through their sanctified condition
and strict codes of holiness, including daily prayer, modesty, sharing, obedi-
ence, and fasting, they were in direct communication with the Holy Spirit.
Twelve prophets in the congregation were anointed with gifts of the spirit
and could speak in tongues, heal, and prophesy. God repeatedly gave the
church a message: He loved Haiti and was shaking it in judgment for the sins
of its people. Their sins included not only Haitians’ worship of idols in Vodou,
but also corruption, thievery, sexual iniquities, and the prideful divisions
within the body of Christ, the Christian community. The prophets explained
that God loves Haiti and wants the nation to experience a Christian revival
before the imminent end of time. The whole nation must repent before
God, take possession of Haiti for Jesus, and thereby undo the fateful pact
with the devil.
This essay first explores the origin of the story of Bois Caïman (fascinating
in itself ) and the ways Haitian intellectuals and artists found inspiration in
the story of the slaves’ unity and determination to fight for freedom; this sec-
tion relies on the painstaking scholarship of others. Next, through fieldwork,
interviews, and the use of archival missions’ sources, I trace the evangelical
history of the concept of the Haitian pact with the devil and reconstruct the
way Protestants formed it out of a nationalist mythology already in place.
Although the neoevangelical story circulates on Web sites and blogs, nobody
has yet pieced together how, precisely, it came about. Here I trace the politics,
transnational flows, and neoevangelical logic that gave rise to this narrative
of extreme demonization.
The contest over the meaning of Bois Caïman pits the political afterlife of
a slave revolt against the political afterlife of biblical scripture. It is a case, in
part, of competing national mythographies about a country long in crisis and
the efforts of some citizens to rewrite national history as a way to create a more
empowering identity for the present and the sense of a more secure future.
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From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan 207

Yet the empowerment they seek comes at the expense of others—those affil-
iated with the traditional Afro-Creole religion known as Vodou. The evangel-
ical project appropriates core symbols of Haitian nationalism and of Vodou,
and reworks them in a Christian register to give the story a new meaning.
Evangelicals do not dispute the facts of the story or deploy professional his-
toriographic arguments to recast its meaning. Rather, they resignify the ele-
ments of the story theologically, putting in place the logic of biblical laws and
the mythic grammar of evangelical Christianity’s dualistic categories of good
and evil. Simply put, for evangelicals, the ceremony may have birthed polit-
ical independence, but it also inaugurated an epoch of spiritual slavery.
The images of the past thus offer themselves to neoevangelical spiritual
mappers as a tool in uncovering the demonic “motor of history”4 that they
believe has driven the course of events in Haiti. Once uncovered, historical
events that are “discerned” to have been “legal spiritual transactions” must
be undone in order to save Haiti. These historical events, in a process some-
what akin to Taussig’s formulation of history as sorcery, are “sometimes objec-
tified as magically empowered imagery capable of causing misfortune.”5 The
task of the spiritual warrior is to undo history by exorcizing it.
It is worth noting that this new evangelical demonization of Vodou is not
actually new in its essence. Many scholars have written about how Catholic
missionaries in the colonial period and after linked African ancestral spirits
to the devil.6 Elsewhere, I have written about how Europeans even triangu-
lated their ideas about Africans with their preexisting anti-Judaism, equating
Vodouists with “the Jews who killed Christ” and demonizing Africans by
analogy with the Hebrews who had supposedly refused to accept the mes-
siah.7 But the contemporary “satanic pact” story was produced out of differ-
ent historical circumstances, operates according to a distinct logic in a new
tone, and circulates with new digital technologies for use in a new political
landscape.
The evangelical version of the Bois Caïman narrative is highly controver-
sial, judging by the scores of commentators who reacted against Pat Robert-
son repeating it on the air. It stresses that Haitian actions—reaching into the
unseen world—were not the catalyst of the first successful slave revolt, but
rather the cause of all that is negative in Haiti, even the earthquake. The story
punishes the slaves already wronged by injustice, rather than the French (who
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208 elizabeth mcalister

are cast as sinners in the evangelical story, yet go unpunished). And the story
demonizes the iconic ceremony at Bois Caïman, thereby attacking a central
source of Haitian national pride—the achievement of the first successful
national slave revolt and the first black independent republic. It also epito-
mizes racist thought, as it equates African religiosity with evil. The recast nar-
rative forecloses a major source of empowerment long elaborated by Haitian
intellectuals and everyday nationalists alike: pride in an identity firmly rooted
in African culture, linked to a politics of black liberation and decolonization.8
It is indeed a puzzle for many onlookers that any Haitians would them-
selves subscribe to the demonization of their national culture and assist in
crafting a counternarrative that would seem so illogical and disempowering.
This was a guiding question for me in watching this story unfold over the
last twenty years and in interviewing some of its proponents. Some have
argued to me that Haitians who hold Third Wave beliefs are dupes of Amer-
ican neoimperialism. Perhaps that is the end of the matter for some, but my
assumption must be that born-again Haitians who hold this view are both
intelligent and able to decide for themselves how to theologize the world. I
decided to take seriously the Spiritual Mapping movement narrative and
delve into its production. This essay aims to present a satisfying answer to
the question of how, and what it means that, some Haitian evangelicals would
take this alternative, Christian nationalist stand.
Michel-Rolph Trouillot writes in Silencing the Past that “theories of his-
tory rarely examine in detail the concrete production of specific narratives.”9
The case of the evangelical story of Bois Caïman provides the opportunity
for such a study, where we “discover artisans of different kinds,” who work to
“deflect, or reorganize the work of the professionals.” Indeed, this new story
is not a production of professional history written by academic historians,
but rather a historical narrative generated by theologians, evangelical pas-
tors, and everyday people. It is a form of nationalism from below, produced
through a kind of “vernacular historical sensibility” that is simultaneously
an evangelical historical sensibility.10
The competing narratives that neoevangelicals and some Haitian nation-
alists tell about Bois Caïman make certain kinds of claims that rest on the
assumption that the originary event that brings into being a people, a nation,
or the like, is somehow paradigmatic and revelatory of the ongoing identity
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From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan 209

of the group. Such origin narratives that make important claims can usefully
be understood as myths, which, I want to say at the outset, is not meant to
belittle the stories—either nationalist, Vodouist, or evangelical—as false and
silly. Rather, I make use of the intellectual tools of scholars of religion who
link mythmaking and social formation. For them, myths are “that small class
of stories that possess both credibility and authority . . . akin to that of char-
ters, models, templates, and blueprints.”11 Myths are best viewed as “active
processes akin to verbs.”12 Through mythmaking, people evoke the senti-
ments through which they can construct society, either to preserve the status
quo or to “advance novel interpretations for an established myth and thereby
change the sentiments (and society) it evokes.”13 So mythmaking is the ordi-
nary, everyday process of constructing, authorizing, and also contesting social
identities or social formations.14 In looking at the process of mythmaking
here, I peel back the story’s many layers and take note of how people recast
older discourses and symbols, whom the story empowers, and the ways that
knowledge is disseminated. It is a case of mythmaking in the making.15
The question of who gets to mythmake is akin to the question of who
writes history. It is telling that Frenchmen published the first accounts of Bois
Caïman. The enslaved in the colony of Saint Domingue enter into the his-
torical record only during interrogations by French superiors.16 The writers
of the historical record, through their use of literacy and publishing technol-
ogy, are in significant positions of authority. Similarly, the class of successful
mythmakers is restricted to those who can assert their narrative forcefully
and repeatedly, often also in writing. But mythmakers have additional tech-
niques at their disposal, including rumor, song, dance, poetry, art, drama, and
the very powerful strategy of ritual. Ritual allows ordinary people to partic-
ipate in mythmaking. Nationalist mythmakers ritualize remembering when
children line up to sing and chant for flag days, memorial days, and inde-
pendence days, and when Pastor Yvette and others led their congregations
in prayer and song to clear their tent camps of lwa (spirits), to reclaim Haiti
in the name of Jesus after the earthquake, they ritualized evangelical nation-
alist mythmaking.
As evangelical mythmaking about Haitian history gains traction, it pres-
ents a case of competing nationalist identity formations, achieved through
narrative and cast through religion, but with raced, gendered, and foreign
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210 elizabeth mcalister

relations dimensions (all of which I cannot explore here). Although I have

just called the new version a story “from below,” it is crucial to keep in mind
that the new narrative is being crafted in partnership with powerful transna-
tional allies—American and other Christians. The transnational dimension
of the evangelical narrative reveals that Protestants have opened a space for a
global religious informal economy, which provides an opportunity for cross-
fertilization and mutual identity construction. I have written elsewhere that
the story about Haiti’s demonic genesis is a backward mirror image of the
evangelical historical sensibility in which the United States is a righteous
nation, founded by Christians as a Christian nation, and blessed to be cho-
sen by God for a special destiny. In contrast, Haiti, announced an American
missionary in 1993, is “the only nation to be dedicated to Satan.” In this sense,
the neoevangelical story aligns squarely with a strand of right-wing American
civil religious mythmaking. Third Wave evangelicals in each country produce
themselves through an Old Testament sensibility that calculates the relation-
ship of each nation to the favor of God.17

Writing National History in Haiti:

The Oath and the Blood
The Haitian nation came into existence when slaves and free persons fought
an eleven-year revolutionary war, abolished slavery, and proclaimed inde-
pendence on January 1, 1804. Michel-Rolph Trouillot writes that the Haitian
revolution was so radically an overturning of European ontological assump-
tions and political order that it was unthinkable even as it was happening. All
its elements fell outside the European conceptual frame of reference and
therefore outside the realm of possibility. Europeans’ racial assumptions of
the fundamentally lower state of civilization of Africans, for example, made
it impossible for blacks to overthrow whites.18
I want to add to Trouillot’s argument that the revolution was unthinkable
also because pagans could not vanquish Christians. A corollary to the politics
of race, the reversal of Christian historical teleology—in which Christianity
will spread to the far corners of the earth and inaugurate the millennium—
was impossible to think. Spiritual Mapping evangelicals underscore that
impossibility anew, when they effectively assert that the revolution was only
possible with the help of the prince of darkness.
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From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan 211

The historical conditions out of which the Haitian nation struggled to

form itself were similar to the conditions under which Haitian historians
had to labor: power, technology, literacy, and publishing and the circulation
of information had all been disproportionately owned by the French slave-
holding colonists, who in turn used them against the Haitian rebels. Similarly
obstructive, other nations in the world refused to recognize Haiti and insti-
tuted a series of embargoes and punitive measures that would handicap the
nation for decades. So the project of representing their nation was made par-
ticularly difficult for Haitians, whose historians and nationalist mythmakers
alike faced the task of creating for the new nation what Anderson calls an
“imagined community.”19 In addition, national representations had, as every-
where, at least two audiences: those inside Haiti and an international commu-
nity, still engaged in slavery, which looked on in hopes that Haiti would fail.
The questions of how to understand the role of enslaved African leaders
and their ground troops and how to represent their culturally specific modes
of acting and speaking became charged ones. This was especially true when
it came to the unseen world of African spirits, said to have been invoked at
Bois Caïman. In her book The Spirits and the Law, on Afro-Creole religion
and the law in Haitian history, Kate Ramsey points out that colonists were
not able to fathom what we now term African-based religion as religion and
spoke instead of superstition, fetishism, and sorcery. However, colonists were
afraid enough of the empowering potential of the slaves’ spiritual practices
that they took them seriously and promulgated a set of laws against them.
Even after independence, the second Haitian president, Alexandre Pétion, in
1814 prohibited the gathering of “all dance groups . . . or associations which
foster an esprit de corps and a hierarchy of position.” Ramsey makes the point
that it was “because popular religious organizations and leadership played a
role in empowering rebels who first overthrew slavery, and ultimately French
colonialism, that the new authorities placed them outside of the law.”20
Since the first days after independence, Haitians understood that they
embodied the anomalous example of black leadership and self-determination
in the Americas: “At the ideological level, the early leaders of Haiti defined
themselves as ‘regenerators’ or ‘rehabilitators’ of Africa; that is, they saw
themselves as black representatives of Western civilization for black popula-
tions still under white domination.”21 The intellectual piece of this project
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212 elizabeth mcalister

demanded an accounting and reconciling of the role of African-based cul-

ture and religion with the new, modern nation. Struggling to come into its
own in an international arena dominated by nominally Christian nations, the
project was, in effect, to create a civil religion for Haiti whose mythic sym-
bols would both harness Roman Catholicism and reconcile it to the Afro-
Creole cultural matrix of the people. As Terry Rey writes in an essay on the
symbolic chain of memory linking history and cosmology in Haiti, politics
and religion are deeply cross-layered. He points out that not only was August
14–15 the date of Bois Caïman, but it is also deeply significant as the Feast
Day of Our Lady of the Assumption, one of the most popular saints in Haiti
and namesake of both the Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haïtien cathedrals. “Pop-
ular Haitian history is thus mythologized in ways that inscribe saints (espe-
cially the Virgin Mary), ancestors, spirits, revolutionaries, and politicians alike
in important dates such as August 14–15.”22
The question of how to narrate the ceremony at Bois Caïman has seemed
to crystalize, in symbolic shorthand, the politics of political and religious
meaning making from the early days of the revolution until the present. The
historical record has been the subject of countless writings by historians and
anthropologists. Ironically, the first written account of the ceremony was by
Antoine Dalmas, a French doctor who fled Saint Domingue during the insur-
rection. Written in the United States two years after the ceremony in the
winter of 1793–94, it was his report that was based on the interrogation of
prisoners. He wrote:

[They] celebrated a sort of feast or sacrifice in the middle of a wooded untilled

plot on the Choiseul plantation, called le Caïman, where a very large number
of Negroes assembled. An entirely black pig, surrounded by fetishes (fétiches),
loaded with offerings each more bizarre than the other was the holocaust
offered to the all-powerful spirit (génie) of the black race. The religious rituals
that the negroes conducted while cutting its throat, the avidity with which they
drank of his blood, the value they set in possessing a few of his bristles, a sort
of talisman which, according to them, was to render them invulnerable, all serve
to characterize Africans. That such an ignorant and besotted caste would make
the superstitious rituals of an absurd and sanguinary religion serve as a prelude
to the most frightful crimes was to be expected.23
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Dalmas’s haughty tone disparages its subjects. Joan Dayan comments that
although his account “seems an unlikely source for the spirits of liberation,
what matters is how necessary the story remains to Haitians who continue
to construct their identity not only by turning to the revolution of 1791 but
by seeking its origins in a service quite possibly imagined by those who dis-
dain it.”24 Dayan points to two important points for our purposes here: that
Haitians have worked against the grain of French and Catholic attitudes to
cull knowledge about their history, and that nationalist mythmakers have
nevertheless looked to Bois Caïman as a cornerstone on which to build their
national identity.
One can also see that in Dalmas there is no mention of Boukman, a speech,
an oath, renunciation of the Christian god, a priestess, a tree, or a thunder-
storm; these elements would be added later by people farther removed across
both history and geography. It is the blood, and especially the oath, that inter-
est us here because of the way neoevangelicals would seize on the idea of a
pact in the contemporary era. It is one of the many ironies of this story that
the speech, the renunciation of God, and the oath do not appear until an
account published twenty-eight years after the event, in Paris in 1819 by a
Frenchman who had yet to visit Haiti. His writings would nevertheless circu-
late into the postcolony and throughout the French Antilles. Unlike Dalmas,
Civique de Gastine meant his account as an antislavery testament, writing:
“This speech [of the Orator] drew tears from all the listeners, and kindled in
their hearts the desire for vengeance. The Orator ended with the account of
general Ogé’s martyrdom; they all swore to avenge his death and to perish
rather than return to slavery. Then, they renounced the religion of their mas-
ters and, in order to gain the favor of the gods of their homeland (patrie), they
sacrificed to them.”25 According to historian David Geggus, “Gastine, a young
French radical who had never visited Haiti, was the first writer to give the
prerevolutionary ceremony a specifically anti-Christian coloring and to asso-
ciate it with a storm, an oath, and divination from entrails, in his case, a black
ram’s.”26 Later, neoevangelicals will work to undo what some have argued was
a fabulation by a French abolitionist in the first place.27
The oath to avenge injustice, the animal sacrifice, the renunciation of the
whites’ (Christian) god, and invoking the gods of the homeland all became
elements of the mythic grammar through which subsequent Haitian thinkers
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214 elizabeth mcalister

would work to construct what we might call a civil religious imaginary for
the new nation. These elements signified proactive and collective agency,
unity, self-determination, and an anti-European stance that would be admired
by later actors struggling against the continued hegemony of France, and then
America. Ironically, the oath and the blood—as well as a tree pictured as a
gathering spot—would also become key parts of the Christian mythic gram-
mar promoted by Spiritual Mapping evangelicals at the end of the twentieth
century.28 All of these mythic images would become tools in the exorcism of
history itself, and none would be more powerful than the performative pro-
nouncement of the oath.29
The oath in particular carries ritual weight for both Christianity and
national politics. To take an oath, to confess Christ, and to cast out demons
in the name of Jesus are all instances of speech acts. Such speech acts carry
illocutionary force; that is, they produce an effect by and through the speak-
ing of the statement. Very much like a sacrament, a speech act creates a change
in the world; “it is itself the deed that it effects.”30 The moment in which the
revolutionaries vowed by their gods to claim their freedom became, for
some evangelicals, the same moment in which the devil was engaged to rule
over Haiti. And even at the same time that the oath is resignified as part of
a pact with the devil, the African gods of Bois Caïman are implicitly cast as
demons.
In any case, through the centuries, Haitian intellectuals and artists have
worked to incorporate the story of the oath and the African gods at Bois Caï-
man into the revolution as part of a Haitian civil religion that would carve
out a respectable place for ancestral religious practices. Michael Largey help-
fully notes: “As a practice of lower-class Haitians that has been put to use by
elite Haitians in a variety of contexts, Vodou provides a look into the workings
of elite historiographic constructions.”31 As Roman Catholics, many elites
have been ambivalent about Vodou, and this ambivalence has worked itself
into discourses of Haitian nationalism. “In its capacity to instill revulsion
in Haitian elites and fear in foreigners while providing a potential rallying
point for Haitians wanting to distinguish themselves from outsiders, Vodou
invokes what Michael Hertzfeld calls ‘cultural intimacy,’ or ‘the recognition
of those aspects of a cultural identity that are considered a source of external
embarrassment but that nevertheless provide insiders with their assurance
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From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan 215

of common sociality.’”32 If the awe-inspiring revolution had been kicked off

by a Vodou ceremony, then surely ancestral spirits were a driving force for
self-determination; they helped generate heroic collective action and could
be written into civil religion as a positive feature of culture.
As a response to the U.S. marine occupation of 1915–34, and in step with
decolonizing cultural movements throughout the Americas, including negri-
tude and Pan-Africanism, Haitian nationalists contributed to the general
effort to shift African cultural traits to occupy a position of positive value.
The Haitian government opened its Bureau of Ethnology in the 1940s, task-
ing it with studying African-based traditional culture. In the postwar period,
Haitian ethnologists would work to fashion a normative place for Vodou
in national culture. Ethnologists valorized the “heroic slave revolution” in a
“counter-narrative to European cultural hegemony and North American colo-
nialism.”33 President François Duvalier, who would become a brutal dictator,
began his career as an ethnologist who invested in efforts to recuperate a
Haitian identity that would be pro-black and identified with African culture.
Although he repressed the adherents of traditional practices, Duvalier pro-
moted stylized representations of Vodou in folklore productions. The state
invested in folkloric music and dance troupes that attracted tourists, anthro-
pologists, and artists alike. Duvalier himself was famous for his impersonation
of the Vodou spirit of the cemetery, Baron Samedi, during public speech
making. His use of Vodou ended up as an instrument of control over the pop-
ulation rather than an affirmation of the culture. His son, who succeeded him,
was ousted in 1986, and as the 1991 bicentennial of the revolution drew close,
Haiti had entered a period of political tumult and uncertainty.
The bicentennial of the Haitian revolution, and thus of Bois Caïman, coin-
cided with important political events of the 1990s and invited Haitians con-
sciously to read the two periods, one against the other. In 1991, Jean-Bertrand
Aristide was inaugurated president after a landslide election. He had been a
Roman Catholic Salesian priest in the liberation theology tradition and spoke
out forcefully against U.S. structural readjustment programs. Against a politi-
cal backdrop of opposition from elites and the business class that would even-
tually oust him, his administration worked to normalize Afro-Creole practices
and to incorporate Vodou into development plans, civic life, and official his-
torical memory.
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216 elizabeth mcalister

In 1991 the Aristide government sponsored a bicentennial commemora-

tion of Bois Caïman at the National Palace, and the Haitian parliament voted
to make Boukman a national hero and the site a national landmark. After
Aristide was ousted in a military coup d’état nine months into his presidency
in September 1991, Haitians protesting in the diaspora reminded themselves
of the painful symbolism of the timing of the coup and the anniversary of
Bois Caïman. At a rally in Brooklyn protesting the coup, Haitians declared
they had a “‘rendez-vous’ with Lady Liberty, that constant companion since
that liberating night of August 14th, 1791, until that liberating morning of
February 7, 1991. The first date marks the Bois Caïman ceremony and the
second, Aristide’s inauguration, which some Haitians called ‘Haiti’s second
independence.”’34
After Aristide returned to Haiti in 1994, he held a conference for 400
Vodouists at the National Palace, marking the first time in Haitian history that
Vodou was publicly legitimated and formally recognized at a state ceremony.
The president’s opening speech was a poetic rendering evoking vèvè, the corn-
meal drawings used in Vodou ceremonies, to call for democracy and justice:

Let us make a vèvè of democracy so that the lwa of justice comes and dances
in all of our heads. Make a vèvè of reconciliation so that the lwa of respect comes
and dances in all of our heads. In the same way that we take flour to trace a
vèvè on the ground, let us take the flour of justice and trace a vèvè of respect.
So that I respect you and you respect me. We’ll use our hands to trace democ-
racy everywhere in this country. In this way we will have schools for the chil-
dren. There will be food for everyone to eat, houses for everyone to live in,
land for everyone to work. Our ancestors, it is for this they died, and we, their
children, it is for this we work, to heal this ailing body. So that Haiti can stand
up straight and tall, so that everyone feels that the spirit of our ancestors is
alive and dancing in our heads. It is for this we continue tracing the vèvè of jus-
tice in the four corners of Haiti.35

Aristide was the first leader since François Duvalier to so explicitly harness
Vodou to politics, but unlike Duvalier, his public mythmaking discourse
attempted to incorporate the religion as part of a democratic, plural civil reli-
gion, intelligible to the majority for whom vèvè are stylized forms of spirit
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From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan 217

writing. To cast the image of a vèvè for democracy would be, in the ritual
grammar of Vodou, to call down and become possessed by democracy. Aris-
tide did this as part of a strategy to incorporate Vodouists into the nation offi-
cially and to make links between Vodou and state-sponsored development.36
However, as I will show in the following section, evangelicals in the United
States and in Haiti decried the positive value the government was showing
toward Vodouists. The more Aristide worked to incorporate and enfranchise
Vodou, the more his opponents spoke out. The political stage became polar-
ized into anti-Aristide and pro-Aristide camps struggling for economic power.
Meanwhile, his opponents charged the president with committing nefari-
ous acts of sorcery. Rumors circulated that the national commemoration of
the Bois Caïman ceremony in 1991 would be a reenactment of the original
event, complete with the renunciation of God and the drinking of pig’s blood.
According to rumor, the oungan (priest) chosen to officiate died suddenly,
and a second oungan was chosen, who accidentally stabbed himself to death
during a sacrifice. Finally, the ceremony went forward, but was cut short by
heavy rain.
Longtime Haiti missionary Clinton Lane would elaborate on the anniver-
sary ceremony in his missiology dissertation, writing:

During a prayer meeting on the night of the [anniversary] ceremony, one young
Protestant in La Suisse Church claimed a vision. He believed he saw Satan
standing over the great tree of Caïman reaching out to take Haiti again. Sud-
denly, the voices of a great multitude of Christ-serving people began to quote
the Scripture. They said that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.
At the sound of this voice Satan turned and fled.37

Two years later, in 1993, word of this young person’s prophetic vision would
be reworked and cited as fact by evangelicals outside of Haiti, such as Patrick
Johnston, compiler of the reference book Operation World, published by the
organization Worldwide Evangelization for Christ. In Johnston’s interpreta-
tion and that of other evangelicals in the Spiritual Mapping movement, the
Aristide government’s bicentennial commemoration of the ceremony at Bois
Caïman was effectively a second “legal spiritual transaction” that rededicated
the nation to the devil. Johnston wrote:
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218 elizabeth mcalister

In 1791 Haiti was dedicated to Satan. Voodooism is a pervasive evil that

affects every level of Haitian society. The official recognition of Voodooism,
the National Registration of Voodoo Practitioners and nationalistic spirits
have led to intimidation of Christians—especially those who speak out against
Voodooism. President Aristide re-dedicated the country to Voodooism in 1991
as its “cultural heritage”; shortly afterwards he was deposed.38

The bicentennial of the revolution, juxtaposed against the inclusive policies

of the Aristide government, underscored for people a way to link history to
the political events of the present. For some evangelicals, political events
could best be understood using what they considered to be biblical logic—
that is, biblical ideas that they extrapolated into the present. A new evangelical
narrative that was a form of myth in the making was aimed at the Aristide
administration and also at the genesis of the Haitian nation: the ceremony
at Bois Caïman.

Evangelical Countermythmaking: Exorcizing History

Evangelicals did not formulate the idea that Bois Caïman consisted of a
“blood pact with Satan” suddenly out of thin air. Just as with the original
story, several historical processes merged to give rise to new mythmaking and
a new social formation. At least five interrelated factors were at work. First,
as I have indicated, was the political contest revolving around Aristide’s efforts
to enfranchise the Haitian majority and to institute land redistribution and
tax reforms, and the business class’s opposition, ending in a coup d’état. The
second factor was the Haitian and foreign evangelical community’s reaction
against the Aristide government’s efforts to normalize Vodou and incorpo-
rate Vodouists. Third was that these current events were unfolding against
the backdrop of the bicentennial of the revolution, making the elements of
national religiopolitical mythography stand out in relief, available for every-
one to use in new forms of meaning making. Fourth, these processes coin-
cided with the rise of a new branch of thought within global evangelical
missiology called the Church Growth Movement, together with its contro-
versial offshoot, Spiritual Mapping. Fifth, the creation of e-mail technology,
which became broadly available in the 1990s, allowed the “blood pact with
the devil” story to go viral and, later, to be reproduced on scores of evangelical
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From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan 219

Web sites, often as a fund-raising tool. To begin to account for how these fac-
tors converged to produce the new demonic narrative of Bois Caïman, it may
help to back up briefly to take in the long view of Protestantism in Haiti.
Protestantism was a presence in the colonial period and has woven an
increasingly important thread throughout Haitian history. The first active
Protestant mission was established in 1817. After a lull, the period from 1822
to 1945 saw thirty-seven different missions build bases in Haiti.39 These mis-
sions originated in the North, outgrowths of the earlier faith revival in the
United States, and were dispatched by traditional Protestant denominations,
mostly Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist. They presented an alternative
political, cultural, and theological power to Catholicism. It was an American
Methodist pastor, for example, who devised the first orthography of Haitian
Kreyòl, thus disrupting the hegemony of French language and culture.
The United States marine occupation of the country from 1915 to 1934
accelerated Protestant growth, and ten new denominations came to Haiti;
the two fastest growing were the Adventist and Pentecostal.40 Mission activ-
ity increased dramatically in 1957, when François Duvalier took power.
Fredrick Conway notes wryly that Duvalier may as well have been called the
Father of Protestantism in Haiti, because while he conspicuously identified
with Vodou, he also promoted and supported foreign missionaries from the
United States. American Protestants were known to avoid involvement in
political affairs and would draw believers away from the Catholic Church
while remaining pliant in the face of military rule.41 Protestants embraced
the use of technology to evangelize, and in 1958 the Oriental Missionary
Society founded Radio 4VEH, followed in 1959 by the West Indies Mis-
sion’s founding of Radio Lumière, both of which are major radio stations to
the present day.42
From the middle of the century to the present, evangelicalism has become
especially popular in Haiti as a religious movement independent of mission
Christianity, leading some to estimate that a third of the population is now
Protestant.43 Linked historically, culturally, and often institutionally to U.S.
missions, evangelicalism creates extensive networks that reach throughout
the world. By the 1970s, the American Baptists, World Vision International,
Campus Crusade for Christ, Youth With a Mission, and others were launch-
ing what they termed “major saturation evangelism campaigns” throughout
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220 elizabeth mcalister

Haiti with names such as “Christ for All” and “Christ in Every Home,” and
distributing transistor radios by the thousands.44 From both directions—
Haiti and the United States—evangelicals participated eagerly in the increas-
ing transnationalization of the Haitian social sphere.
Haitian pastors went frequently to the United States and beyond to study
in seminaries and Bible colleges, often returning to plant churches and to
participate in politics. Notable examples include Charles Poisset Romain,
who studied at the Baptist Theological Seminary in Haiti and then earned a
doctorate in sociology at the Sorbonne; he wrote Le Protestantisme dans la
Société Haïtienne in 1986. He was a minister of education and ran for presi-
dent in 2005. Chavannes Jeune studied development and communication
at Chicago’s Wheaton College in 1983 and did postdoctoral study in theol-
ogy, sociology, and development administration at Columbia Bible School
in North Carolina. Jeune was vice president of Haiti in the de facto govern-
ment of 1988–89 after the fall of Duvalier and campaigned for president in
2005 and again in 2010 after the earthquake. As I will elaborate below, Cha-
vannes Jeune and his cousin, Joel Jeune, have been perhaps the most promi-
nent and activist evangelical Haitians to promote the “pact with Satan” story.
The Jeunes, like many other Haitian pastors, are members of the Haitian
Protestant Federation and have enjoyed transnational fellowship and partner-
ship with a great number of evangelicals worldwide, such as the Reverend
Billy Graham, Reverend Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse, Thomas
Fortson of Promise Keepers, David Paul Yonggi Cho of the Yoiddo Full
Gospel Church in Seoul, Korea, Vernon Brewer of World Help, and Bishop
Ezra Sarganum of the Evangelical Church of India.
With the increase in evangelical cross-fertilization throughout the hemi-
sphere came the more typical evangelical understanding of spiritual energy.
One main difference between evangelicals and traditional Protestants was
their orientation toward the cosmology and ontology of Vodou. Protestants
arriving in Haiti were confirmed in their anti-Catholicism when they wit-
nessed the creolized correspondences between Catholicism and Vodou—
what Haitians called le mélange. The majority of the population that claimed
Catholicism as its national religion was also oriented to African ancestral
practices, which included an elaborately developed priesthood, a pantheon
of spirits, and cyclical and personal rites of passage including funerary rites,
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From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan 221

supported by a cosmology and basic worldview foundational to Vodou and

not Catholicism. Characteristic of mainline Protestants was the view that
belief in non-Christian spirits is a superstitious, ontologically false belief
standing in the way of modern progress and a proper understanding of Christ.
Evangelicals, on the other hand, were likely to engage with the spirit entities
of Vodou as if they were real adversaries populating the spiritual plane.
Through the lens of evangelicalism, missionaries and Haitians together
crafted new narratives about Haitian history and traditional culture. These
narratives, while using the same scriptures as the Catholic clergy, were
weighted differently in Protestantism. Whereas the saints had lent them-
selves to syncretism with Vodou spirits, Protestants would stress the absolute
authority of Jesus Christ and the absolute irreconcilability—even oppo-
sition—of Vodou with Christianity. For Pentecostals in particular, Vodou
spirits were as real as Christ himself, and were in fact demons working as
the foot soldiers of Satan. Though they are all Christian, then, the theologies
and goals of Catholics, traditional Protestants, and evangelicals in Haiti are
not the same. Their stories and the stories they created about Haiti, its past,
and its religion also have a different effect on their Haitian converts.
Making converts—evangelizing—is a priority of evangelical missions. It
is not enough to offer the good works of charity, mercy, education, relief aid,
or simple solidarity, as has been the thrust of many mainline Protestant mis-
sions in Haiti and elsewhere. Evangelicals are defined, even in their very name,
by the burden placed on their hearts to spread the good news of the Gospel.
Starting in the 1960s, Bible colleges and seminaries began to emphasize the
necessity to convert large numbers of souls to Christianity as part God’s plan
for the Second Coming and the new millennium. The Church Growth Move-
ment, begun by Yale graduate and longtime missionary to India Donald A.
McGavran, became a major influence in seminaries and concerned itself with
understanding the conditions necessary for people to accept Christ and con-
vert to Christianity. One factor that aids receptivity, wrote McGavran, is to
influence large groups, such that collective decisions and actions would lead
to conversions of “people movements.” A paramount strategy was to apply a
social scientific approach, studying the anthropology and sociology of the
people they were evangelizing, with the aim of converting people in large
numbers.45
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222 elizabeth mcalister

The doctoral dissertations in missiology and ministry of several Ameri-

can missionaries reveal the links between Haiti and the Church Growth and
Spiritual Mapping movements. Missionaries put a fair amount of energy into
trying to understand the ancestral religious practices of Haitians. They cite
ethnographic accounts of Alfred Métraux, Harold Courlander, and others,
and reproduce several of those postwar-era scholars’ analyses of the African
content of Vodou. Clinton Lane is one such missionary, who spent more than
twenty years at the Christian Center of the North starting in the 1970s. In
his missiology dissertation from Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore,
Kentucky, he paraphrases folklorist Harold Courlander saying, “Voodoo is
the glue that holds Haiti together,” and works to outline both its positive
aspects (its guidelines for social behavior, its herbal medicine) and its nega-
tive aspects (its basis in fear, distrust, and a drive for power).”46
Lane and other students quote Charles Kraft and C. Peter Wagner, the
most prominent proponents of the techniques of Spiritual Mapping. Both
were on faculty at the Fuller Theological Seminary, and Wagner was partic-
ularly influential as a professor of Church Growth who was also a prolific
writer and speaker. Wagner taught courses on Spiritual Mapping at Fuller in
the 1990s, which were likely attended by missionaries working in Haiti.47
Together, Wagner and Kraft worked out an approach that would prove con-
troversial, even in evangelical circles. They extended the pragmatic, manage-
rial, and social scientific approach to Church Growth from the visible world
to the unseen world. Wagner and Kraft read scholarship in anthropology in
order to understand the specific spiritual forces that they believed affected—
and afflicted—the people they were working to convert. This process cen-
tered on reading history, ethnography, and sociology, and attending to the
spiritual forces working in a given locale, and then mapping them so that mis-
sionaries could understand—and do battle with—any demonic activity that
might be working to thwart Church Growth and large-scale evangelization.
By using spiritual warfare as leverage to convert large numbers of people,
Spiritual Mappers could change social structures and hasten the return of
Christ. “This is why I believe that history belongs to the intercessors,” wrote
Wagner.48
Wagner taught that believers can play an active role in bringing about
the Second Coming of Christ by aggressively and strategically spreading the
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From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan 223

Gospel. In areas where people were Christianized but still not living Chris-
tian lives, were suffering, or were experiencing extreme poverty or violence,
the church was faced with a situation of “demonic entrenchment,” where
demonic “territorial spirits” may be holding “people groups” in a form of
spiritual slavery. In his books Engaging the Enemy (1991) and Warfare Prayer
(1992), Wagner explains the premises of Spiritual Mapping: that Satan and
his demons are real, that Satan is engaged in a spiritual war against God in
the unseen world, that Satan’s hosts include territorial spirits that may be
identified by name, and that some Christians are called to be intercessors, to
engage in battle with territorial spirits by name in aggressive spiritual war-
fare.49 As in the case of African slaves in Haiti, the origins of these demonic
territorial spirits may be collective trauma, which may have led people, in des-
peration, to enter into pacts with ancestral spirits. Says George Otis Jr., a
developer of Spiritual Mapping: “In return for a particular deity’s consent
to resolve their immediate traumas, they have offered up their singular and
ongoing allegiance. It is through the placement of these ancient welcome
mats, then, that demonic territorial strongholds are established.”50 Mission-
aries would come to apply these ideas directly to the ceremony at Bois Caï-
man. Wrote missionary Lane, “Haiti’s oral tradition tells us that Boukman,
looking to heaven, denounced God because He could not deliver them from
slavery and then gave the country of Haiti to the Voodoo spirits if they would
deliver Haiti.”51
The first explicit application of Spiritual Mapping theology to Bois Caï-
man that I have found so far is by North American David Taylor writing a
1993 Ph.D. dissertation in missiology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
Like Haitian nationalists, he discusses the Bois Caïman ceremony as the foun-
dational moment of the Haitian nation, quoting the 1949 account of Alexis,
as I have done at the opening of this essay. In a telling passage, he reveals that
it was North Americans such as himself who pressed the idea of a satanic pact
on Haitian seminarians and tells of the resistance Haitians had to the idea.
Applying Wagner’s idea of territorial demons, he writes:

There are Haitians who have argued with me that the Bois Caïman experience
should not be interpreted as a demonic incident. Rather it should be viewed
politically or socially. It is very awkward for a white foreigner to present the
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224 elizabeth mcalister

case for a Satanic origin to their country since their independence is such a vital
part of what precious little national pride they have. A Satanic origin naturally
would be viewed negatively, particularly by ministerial candidates! Neverthe-
less, the weight of evidence is in the Satanic direction. My suggestion is that
during this ceremony a host of territorial demons was let loose in Haiti that
not only gained for it its independence but also created for it the ecological,
economic, moral and political disasters it is infamous for around the globe
today.52

Taylor cites anthropological works to discuss the history and ethnography

of Haitian Vodou, and in the legal language typical of the Third Wave move-
ment, stresses the satanic weight of evidence. Ironically, he quotes a 1984 text
by Weinstein and Segal titled Haiti: Political Failures, Cultural Successes, saying:
“Even secular writers such as Weinstein and Segal can make the following con-
clusion: ‘Out of slavery into other forms of oppression, Haitians have fash-
ioned their own responses to the cruelty of fate. It is a response that reaffirms
their ties to their Haitian and African ancestors.’”53 Once African ancestors
were redescribed as demonic, even ethnographic writings—especially those
linking Haitian religious culture to African sources—confirmed the Spiritual
Mapping premise that anything non-Christian was evil. It was through these
neoevangelical logics of Spiritual Mapping, taught at seminaries and Bible
colleges, that both American and Haitian seminarians worked intellectually
to connect Haitian Afro-Creole religion and Bois Caïman to the demonic,
and thus to a neoevangelical paradigm centered on the battle between evil
and good.
The flow of information and people involved in Spiritual Mapping ran
from the United States to Haiti to the United States and back again. One
Haitian Protestant intellectual, André Jeantil Louis, wrote a doctoral disser-
tation in 1998 at Fuller Theological Seminary under the direction of Charles
Kraft, author of Defeating Dark Angels (1992), who taught and promoted Spir-
itual Mapping along with Wagner. Kraft was particularly interested in anthro-
pological works on animism and became convinced that animism and biblical
figures share the same worldview. This is to say that both for animists and
in biblical stories, there are invisible spirits who are actively involved in the
human sphere.54 Kraft taught that Christians must use what was termed the
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power encounter—the visible, dramatic display of Christ’s power over ele-

ments of the human world. Miracles, healings, and other gifts of the Holy
Spirit such as deliverance from personal demons, speaking in tongues, and
prophecy were all tools Christ gave believers to fight the devil and win con-
verts. He drew from the Gospel to encourage missionaries to face local
demons and cast them out, reminding them that when Jesus sent out his
twelve disciples: “He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them
out” (Matthew 10:1). Kraft taught that evangelization is most effective when
carried out not through reason, but by demonstrating that “the old religion
had lost its powers and fears.”55
The dissertation that Haitian seminarian Louis wrote under Kraft follows
Kraft’s ethnographic method to outline the elements of the demonic in Hait-
ian Vodou. He draws from classic sources on Vodou such as Milo Rigaud
and Alfred Métraux to outline Vodou practices at length and then applies
Christian interpretations using Kraft, Wagner, and Christian works on the
occult such as Rodger Bufford’s Counseling and the Demonic. He writes of
Vodou solving the medical problems of its followers and works to prescribe
ministry methods for demon-possessed people, as well as for the nonpos-
sessed but still demon afflicted.56 He stresses the importance of education and
reaching the poor and nonliterate through culturally appropriate methods
of storytelling, drama, and music. He concerns himself with community-
level, contemporary mission work. Returning to Haiti, he worked as a pastor
and a lawyer in the evangelical social circles around Port-au-Prince. But he
does not focus on Haitian history and stops short at addressing himself to
Bois Caïman. Although some Haitian evangelical theologians viewed the
Bois Caïman ceremony as a demonic pact, not all did by any means. In fact,
many, if not most, resisted the idea.
Those who were drawn to the Spiritual Mapping and spiritual warfare
approach joined an international network of intercessors and prayer warriors.
In addition to the transnational circuits of seminarians doing intellectual
labor, pastors were traveling across emerging global networks, learning, fel-
lowshipping, praying, and exchanging viewpoints and techniques. Pastor
Joel Jeune was a prominent Haitian evangelical, active on Protestant radio
throughout Haiti since the 1970s. In 1991, Paul Yonggi Cho invited Pastor
Jeune to visit the Yoidi Full Gospel Church in Seoul. This megachurch was
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already the biggest in the world, boasting half a million members. Pastor
Cho himself was said to have preached two services each day, seven days
a week, and was known for his charismatic style as well as his promotion of
a spiritual warfare worldview. Cho made a deep impression on Jeune, who
began to reflect on what God might be saying about Haiti’s territorial spirits.
Throughout the 1990s, Pastor Joel Jeune attended workshops and confer-
ences in the United States and elsewhere on various aspects of ministry,
Church Growth, and Spiritual Mapping. He learned of other ministers’ and
missionaries’ approaches to conversion in places in the developing world
where non-Christian religions, including animism and paganism, prevailed.
The idea, developed by Wagner, Kraft, and others, that some places, cities,
or nations were both suffering and particularly difficult to evangelize, and that
the reason was to be found in embedded spiritual forces working invisibly in
the culture, made sense to him. Others working in the mission field were
convinced that the best remedy for such cases of demonic entrenchment was
to wage spiritual warfare.57
The Spiritual Mapping movement teaches that Christian intercessors,
known as prayer warriors, can choose to accept assignments to do battle
with territorial spirits if they feel called to such work by the Holy Spirit. An
intercessor may call together a prayer team for a prophetic prayer action on
the spiritual battlefield. The warfare is not supposed to be aggressive to any-
one or anything in the material world, but rather consists of round-the-clock
fasting and prayer in the spiritual realm. Drawing on Ephesians 6, prayer
warriors “put on the whole armor of God,” that they may be able to “stand
against” the “wiles of the devil.” Working “in the spirit,” they “gird their loins
with truth,” and “don the breastplate of righteousness.” They “take up the
shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit” and mount
“prayer marches,” walking around demonic spots rebuking the devil and his
army in order to “pull down strongholds”—that is, places where demons live
and operate. If they know the names of ancestral spirits, they cast out demons
by name. Most importantly, the Holy Spirit is invited to enter the space and
spread His healing grace. The results of such prayer warfare would be trans-
formative: people would be healed, crops would grow, social unrest and
division would resolve, and the group or nation would finally experience
abundance and prosperity.
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Pastor Joel Jeune had been vocal in his opposition to Afro-Creole reli-
gious practices for many years on the radio. He decided in the mid-1990s
that it was time to do something more concrete. “This is when I felt that
God was talking to my spirit to do something more significant,” he told me
in an interview.58 Others in the Spiritual Mapping movement had developed
a strategy of large-scale, public crusades featuring believers marching to a spot
infested with demons and praying publicly. The technique was used as an
example in workshops and conferences and was said to have been particu-
larly successful in spiritual warfare efforts in Argentina in the 1980s. After
several televised rituals, including one in which he burned a picture of the
pig symbolizing the sacrifice at Bois Caïman, Pastor Jeune felt it was time to
stage a larger prayer action. In 1997, Jeune’s church members put up notices
around the National Palace and the downtown area announcing they would
be dedicating Bois Caïman to Jesus on August 14.
Gathering the people who came forward, including several Haitian Amer-
icans, the evangelicals took buses and trucks from Port-au-Prince to the
north, to the site commonly known to be Bois Caïman. There, the church
and their guests staged a spiritual warfare crusade and exorcism of the land
that would come to international attention and effectively remythologize the
Bois Caïman story, first for the evangelical public in Haiti, then for evangel-
icals worldwide. The dramatic public revival would recombine the elements
of the nationalist mythic grammar of Bois Caïman into a powerful ritual
reversal in the Christian register. The story of the ritual bled from evangeli-
cal networks into the broader public sphere through countless repetitions
on e-mails, then Web sites. It would be reiterated at points of political crisis
in the decade of the 2000s and again by Pat Robertson after the catastrophic
2010 quake.
Jeune had studied the techniques developed by other warriors elsewhere
and performed one particularly powerful ritual: a Jericho March. The Jeri-
cho March draws its symbolism from the Book of Joshua, when the Israelites
entered Canaan at God’s command and demolished the city of Jericho by
walking seven times around the city blowing trumpets. The technique was
therefore to replicate the Israelite action by encircling a city, building, or spot
believed to be a demonic stronghold, marching around it seven times, and
through prayer and exhortation, dissolve the stronghold in the name of Jesus.
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This spiritual warfare battle maneuver would exorcize the devil from the tree
standing as a focusing spot at Bois Caïman.59
After the event, Bishop Jeune would write up his account for another pas-
tor, Reverend Gerry Seale, when both were sharing a room while attending
a Promise Keeper rally in Washington, D.C. Reverend Seale was general sec-
retary of the Evangelical Association of the Caribbean and the Caribbean
coordinator of a campaign called March for Jesus. He was also the regional
coordinator of the AD2000 and Beyond Movement, a global network of
Spiritual Mapping movement evangelicals with a headquarters in Colorado
Springs and under the supervision of Peter Wagner. The goal of AD2000 was
to “break principalities and powers” by the year 2000, and by 1997, momen-
tum was building throughout the Spiritual Mapping movement and beyond.
Reverend Seale was thrilled to hear of Bishop Jeune’s crusade and success in
declaring Bois Caïman for Christ. He circulated Jeune’s report to numerous
Spiritual Mapping organizations, several of which published it on their List-
servs. Through this ritual exorcism and its wide circulation via the publicity
efforts of Spiritual Mapping movement members, the new evangelical myth-
making about the Haitian revolution made its way into the written record,
and thus into popular history.
Pastor Jeune used logic consistent with Kraft, Wagner, and Otis in describ-
ing how the slaves at Bois Caïman ended up doing business with the devil.
His report stated:

The slaves brought from Africa went through many, many years of so much
cruel treatment and atrocious sufferings from the slave masters in complicity
with the Catholic Church who blessed the slave market and thought that black
was the colour of the devil, therefore black slaves didn’t have a soul. That ter-
rible situation caused the slaves to turn away from our loving God in heaven
to their tribal gods of Africa for help.60

In Jeune’s reasoning, the enslaved Africans were the double victims of French
slavery and Roman Catholic racism and complicity. It was this double sin,
this terrible situation, that forced the Africans into their spiritual deal with
their tribal gods. Jeune went on to explain that at Bois Caïman “they had a
satanic ceremony, killed a pig, and drank the blood, swearing and dedicating
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From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan 229

Haiti to serve the devil. All Haitian historians believe and teach that Haiti’s
independence in 1804 came from that satanic ceremony.” Eliding the nation-
alist valorization of Vodou, Jeune presented the satanic as a natural and self-
evident category. His dramatic report continued:

As we approached that satanic field where no Christian has ever before been, it
was not easy for us. The power of witchcraft was so strong and the air so heavy.
As we pushed our way towards that big tree where the pig had been slain, we
really had to be violent in the Spirit, praying, rebuking, fighting, and casting
out the devil and all his spirits. The battle raged until we broke into a Jericho
March seven times around that big witchcraft tree . . . and . . . the seventh time
we all felt that the heavy power of the devil had been lifted and God gave many
people a vision of the devil flying and leaving that place. Joyful noises and vic-
tory shouts went up to God as we rejoiced over God’s victory.
We took communion together and applied the blood of Jesus to the land
under that same tree where the blood of the pig had been shed. We canceled the
satanic contract and broke the curse. We consecrated the place to Jesus Christ
as a prayer center, claimed Haiti back to God forever, and claimed August 14 as
a National Day of Prayer. After the day of fasting, prayer, marching, and the big
crusade with many thousands attending and many decisions for Christ (includ-
ing some of the witch doctors) we went back to Port-au-Prince rejoicing.61

We can notice, once again, that the oath, a key element of mythic grammar
for standard Haitian history makers, is also at the center of the struggle to
name reality on the part of the spiritual warriors. Assuming that the original
oath of Boukman had actually dedicated Haiti to the devil, a second oath was
necessary to undo the pact. The prayer warfare method of rebuking the devil
entails a strong Christian believer speaking aloud to castigate, shame, and
discipline the demons by denying their right to occupy the space. Casting
out the devil and his spirits is a speech act with sacramental force, as the
believer, acting under the authority of Jesus, and “in the name of Jesus,” is
“legally” empowered, by God’s cosmic law, to evict the spirits in the unseen
world. The group “cancelled the contract,” “broke the curse,” “consecrated
the place to Jesus” and “claimed August 14th as a national day of prayer.”
These statements name, identify, and change the world through the process
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of their uttering. In their ritual spectacle, even in its description afterward,

they seek to convince the world that they effected the change they named.
By performing this spectacular ritual at the original site and on its anniver-
sary, the evangelicals were counting on their privileged understanding of
biblical law to move Haiti forward and for themselves to be anointed leaders
of the new era.
But not everybody appreciated the spiritual warriors’ efforts, and people
from nearby Cap-Haïtien protested this invasion of out-of-towners and their
aggressive proselytizing, especially when they preached against Vodou from
street corners in the city.62 The crusade also caused an uproar in the capi-
tal, and many considered it an insult to national pride. A coalition of popular
organizations called the Initiative Group for the Commemoration of 207
Years of Bois Caïman revealed on the radio that the crusade was funded
by Americans at the International Republican Institute to erode Haitian
national sovereignty.63 The government issued an order prohibiting the Prot-
estants from assembling at Bois Caïman again.
Bishop Jeune would not be discouraged, however, and in 1998 he collab-
orated with two other pastors from Cap-Haïtien. Along with pastors Gregory
Joseph and Berthony Paul, they announced their intention to hold another
prayer meeting at the famous revolutionary site. These northern pastors too
had transnational Spiritual Mapping connections; Pastor Paul worked closely
with the Christian Center of the North, where Lane, whose seminary disser-
tation had worked out the Spiritual Mapping of Bois Caïman, was a longtime
missionary.64 Going to pray at the site before the August 14 anniversary, the
three pastors were arrested. It was reported in several places that the Amer-
ican ambassador intervened to secure permission for the church to exercise
its religious rights there. In their statements to the press, the pastors pro-
nounced a victory, “a breakthrough. Haiti has reached a historical turning
point.”
The arrest of the pastors allowed evangelicals to claim religious persecu-
tion, and they made a documentary video describing their ordeal that circu-
lated in Haitian evangelical households and throughout the diaspora. The
pastors are filmed in the back of a flatbed truck holding their handcuffed
wrists aloft proudly, and the caption below announces “Pastors Handcuffed
for Christ!” Through the public and performative attack on the spirits living
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at the revolutionary site, evangelicals attempted at once to rewrite Haiti’s past

and turn a corner to a new future.
But after several years, Haiti had not experienced the peace and abundance
the neoevangelicals were hoping for. The year 2004 would mark the bicen-
tennial of independence itself, and just as during the 1991 bicentennial of
Bois Caïman, many evangelicals wove sacred and secular history into a nar-
rative about the nation that cast Aristide as, once again, opening the door to
demonic influence. In 2003, Aristide’s government had moved to recognize
Vodou as an official religion of Haiti (in addition to Roman Catholicism),
stating that Vodou is “an ancestral religion” and “an essential part of national
identity.” Vodou priests were invited to register with the Ministry of Culture
and Religious Affairs in order to be able to perform legally binding marriages,
baptisms, and funerals. Newspapers reported that “the authorities consider
that it is the duty of the State to protect the cultural heritage of the nation,”
and went on to portray Vodou practitioners as agents of “the social, political
and moral development of the Haitian people.”65 Meanwhile, as the bicen-
tennial of the independence of 1804 drew near, the political climate heated
up and polarized around Aristide’s progressive economic policies and vari-
ous attempts were made to destabilize the government. For many Catholics
and Protestants alike, recognizing Vodou was anti-Christian and unwise. Not
only that, but many suspected Aristide of enfranchising Vodouists in order
to empower his popular base of political supporters. Once again, religious
and political mythmaking went hand in hand.
Pastor Chavannes Jeune, Joel Jeune’s cousin, launched a year-long prayer
movement in 2003 to take Haiti back from Satan, which culminated in a spec-
tacular revival in the national stadium. Produced by Reverend J. L. Williams
of New Directions International (NDI) in North Carolina, an all-star Amer-
ican team joined the event, including Thomas Fortson and Joe White of
Promise Keepers and baseball pitcher Dave Dravekey. Teams were present
from World Vision, World Help, and Campus Crusade for Christ, and Frank-
lin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse sent a brief video greeting. The revival was
videotaped by NDI, and several versions were released to the group’s mem-
bers and beyond. As at Promise Keepers events and other stadium revivals
throughout the world, this extravaganza made use of audio and visual technol-
ogy and was produced with a sophisticated attention to ritual mythic detail,
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with music, lighting, props, sermons, and a live dramatization by Joe White
playing the role of a Roman carpenter building Jesus’ cross.
The theme of the revival was Breaking the Blood Pact, and the breaking
of the pact was ritually effected, once again, as it had been in 1997 and 1998.
God gave Reverend J. L. Williams the method in a vision: “I was to have two
tables on the stage—one representing ‘the cup and table of the Lord’ and
the other ‘the cup and table of demons.’”66 From the stage, Williams spelled
out the biblical law that had landed Haiti in its cursed state until the present
moment: “Exodus 20 says that worshipping other gods results in punish-
ment for four generations. Each fifty years is two hundred years.” Referring
to the commandment against bowing down to images, Williams reminded
the crowd that God would punish the children for the sin of the parents to
the third and fourth generation. He then gave a message from I Corinthians
10:20–21. There the Apostle Paul exhorted the saints at Corinth: “I do not
want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the
Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord
and the table of demons.” Williams made use of his gift for preaching and
boomed authoritatively from the stage in a climactic moment: “This event
is to break the blood pact of the devil, and bring Haiti under the blood of Jesus
Christ!” He and Pastor Jeune took an ax and broke the table of demons, and
then held aloft the “cup of blessing” invoked in I Corinthians as the crowd
cheered with joy.67 Using material objects to perform the biblical concepts,
Reverend Williams imparted to the assembled crowd the revelation he had
received from God in a dramatic and compelling ritual performance. The
message was clear: ancestral religion and Christianity were incompatible and
opposed. Like Boukman at the original ceremony at Bois Caïman, Williams
worked to unify those present by rejecting one divine force and swearing
allegiance to another, and by sealing the oath with blood.
Chavannes Jeune’s speech at the revival also resignified several of the key
elements of the mythic grammar of Vodou, beginning with his striking open-
ing statement: “Haiti is at the crossroads of decision.” In Haitian Vodou, the
crossroads can be a mystical place where spirit energies are invoked, because
different crossroads are owned by specific spirits. Discursively setting the
nation in the metaphysical crossroads, he evoked a powerful cultural meta-
phor, ironically one associated with the very tradition he sought to erase. He
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made Williams’s point clear again: “We must choose God or choose Satan.”
The message of his sermon was simple and elegant: “the wood of the cross
at Calvary will replace the wood (bois) of Bois Caïman. The blood of Christ
will replace the blood of the pig.” Like Williams, Jeune presented himself as
a figure with privileged biblical knowledge, but more than Williams, as a
native Haitian, Jeune spoke using insider symbols and images from the cul-
ture. A sort of mediator, Jeune was fully immersed in local culture, but he
also had traveled, studied, and formed partnerships with others elsewhere,
to come home a politician who would run for president. He spoke with dou-
ble authority, fluent in multiple symbolic languages. Through this ritualized
drama of invoking traditional culture in order to exorcize it, the pastors taught
the lessons of spiritual warfare.68
Always thinking strategically, the leaders of Spiritual Mapping in Haiti
staged spectacular rituals to the crowd in dramatic language and music that
the nonliterate majority can easily apprehend. Like conservative nationalist
mythmakers in the United States, evangelical Haitian leaders use both ritual
and media by design to disseminate their story. During commemorations and
anniversaries, they combine dramatic symbolic narrative performance, per-
formative speech acts, and audience participation with a sense of historic,
ultimately cosmic, occasion.
The pastors of the Spiritual Mapping movement are working to renarrate
Haitian history, resignify religiopolitical mythmaking, and therefore recast
Haitian civil religion and change the culture of the country. They claim to
understand the cause of Haiti’s problems—a curse derived from the revolu-
tionaries’ breaking of God’s commandment by calling on pagan gods and
shedding pig’s blood—and its precise time limit, or expiration date, the 200-
year mark. They also offer a powerful answer to Haiti’s problems, which is the
transforming power of Jesus Christ, who would bless the nation through his
sacred blood, shed on the cross to for pay the sins of all humanity. In emplot-
ting Haitian history onto the biblical narrative, the pastors and church lead-
ers claim not only an ultimate, cosmic authority, but also an authority that
any believer can share. By staging performative spectacles with technology,
color, music, lighting, and drama, as well as the offer of a more powerful and
true interpretation of reality, spiritual warriors work to bring about the events
they narrate.
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Captivity Narratives and Colonial Powers

People have reached for the imagery and power of the Bois Caïman myth
in historical moments of great pressure from the outside: first during the
struggle to recognize and maintain Haitian sovereignty, then during the U.S.
marine occupation, the contest over Aristide’s presidency, and more recently
after the earthquake. (At the time of writing, the new president, Michel
Martelly, has just said that he wants to make the site of Bois Caïman a tourist
attraction and turn the story of the ceremony into something like a Broad-
way show.) The neoevangelical story of Haiti’s pact with Satan is vocifer-
ously contested by people holding a wide range of positions. Those who
have stepped forward as public leaders of Vodou decry the explicit demon-
ization of their traditions and identify the aspects of evangelicalism that are
foreign imports, serving American political interests channeled through evan-
gelicals linked to the religious right in the United States. In her thorough
study of the history and contemporary community surrounding Bois Caï-
man, Rachel Beauvoir-Dominique cites with alarm the Protestant intellec-
tual Romain as saying that Protestantism “will try to desacralize and destroy
the spatio-temporal frame of Vodou . . . and will propose Protestant counter-
symbols adapted to Western civilization” in its place.69
Opposition to the blood pact theology also comes from fellow Pente-
costals, such as Haitian Church of God pastor Jean R. Gelin, who outlines
various historical and Christian reasons why the satanic pact does not make
sense. “I would not be surprised if the satanic pact idea (followed by the
divine curse message) was put together first by foreign missionaries and later
on picked up by local leaders,” he astutely guesses.70 Likewise, the founder
of the oldest Haitian Protestant church in the United States, Pastor Philius
Nicolas, disavows the story and explains that it causes division in the body
of Christ where there should be unity.71
Although it is the belief of only a minority of adherents, the story of the
blood pact with Satan has proliferated on the English-language Internet. It is
repeated more frequently (and matter-of-factly) by Americans than by Hait-
ians, Francophone Antilleans, or French. The story is often repeated as a
fund-raising tool for missionaries. Said one Web site, the Heart of God Min-
istries, “We believe with all our hearts that we are part of a spiritual war for
the heart of the nation, and that one day we will see the murderous and
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destructive demons of Satan ejected from the nation by the prayers of the
people.” The idea of an entire nation being held captive by Satan seems to
inspire in American evangelicals a longing to help the spiritually afflicted and
provide support for prayer warriors on the front lines of a kind of modern-
day captivity narrative. One cannot help but see the parallels between this
longing to help and the more general Americanism celebrated by American
civil religion, in which the United States publicizes its leadership in spread-
ing democracy and freedom throughout the world.
For Haitians, “breaking the blood pact” is part of a neoevangelical nation-
alism in the making that is in profound tension with previous nationalist
mythmaking. At issue for nonevangelical nationalists is a respect for ancestral
tradition and the inspirational vision of unity the ceremony at Bois Caïman
offers that might still serve the ongoing project of decolonization. At issue for
evangelicals is the very soul of the nation and its people’s salvation. For those
with both kinds of investments, the ultimate stakes are in determining the
cultural identity by which Haiti will move in a positive direction and prosper.
While no nationalist narrative is consistent and unambiguous, there are
various interesting—and painful—ironies in the present case. Nationalists
anywhere generally gather their mythic elements from what is culturally dis-
tinct in their country. Indeed, the Haitian state since the 1990s has moved to
commemorate, celebrate, and enfranchise the folk culture distinct to Haiti.
In their alternative rewriting, however, evangelicals ascribe negative value to
much of what is African or traditional about Haitian culture. Haitian evan-
gelicals lean toward a transcendent Christian nationalism, a Christendom,
whose mythical grammar in fact stems from the medieval church.72 They
disavow much of their own culture as they seek to exorcize their national
history. Theirs is an impassioned new Christian nationalism.
The impulse to reach back and undo the past—to release the country from
its magical trap and dedicate the nation to the Christian God—is part of a
longing for justice, for an end to suffering, and for an orderly and plentiful
world. Yet in another of the many painful ironies to be considered here, the
present-day evangelicals seek to exorcize from history their own ancestors,
the enslaved Africans and Creoles in the colony (and their ancestral spirits
in turn), whose own longing for justice and the end of suffering gave rise to
the revolution, ended legal slavery, and brought forth the new nation.
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Spiritual Mapping evangelicals’ techniques of fighting demonic fetish-

ism—of resignifying traditional symbols and ritually performing spiritual
work in large-scale spectacles—are, in another ironic way, components of
another kind of fetishism. They work against the Enlightenment idea of
rational progress and effectively reenchant the nation with spirits and de-
mons.73 Casting out demons at Bois Caïman, breaking the table of demons,
and holding up the cup of blessings are all performances of a kind of enchant-
ment that would seem to run counter to modern nationalist discourse. Yet
they are just the tools evangelicals use to instantiate their mythmaking and
to grow its attendant formation of Christian nationalism.
Perhaps the deepest irony of all is in the tension between the anticolonial-
ist narrative of the nationalist Bois Caïman story and the (many say neo-
colonialist) new evangelical mythmaking. The original story of Bois Caïman
has been put to use in various ways in anticolonial, and then decolonizing,
movements in Haiti. Ironically, the neoevangelicals construct an anticolonial-
ist narrative in which Satan is the colonial power who must be overthrown.
If we look a bit more closely at the blood pact story as an anticolonialist nar-
rative, we may gain insight into why some Haitians would adopt the story as
their own. In the new story, the passion of fighting the colonizer is harnessed,
but it is redirected to an invisible realm. Still, the issue remains that of slav-
ery and freedom. Viewed in these terms, the project to free all of Haiti in a
second, Christian revival-revolution is consistent with the original national-
ism, but in a radical new way. What is more, while evangelical mythmaking
in Haiti is constructed in active dialogue with Americans, it allows for a
recombination of mythic elements that are beyond the control of the Hait-
ian elite.74 Within the hemisphere, the movement may be neocolonialist, but
within Haiti, it is a vision of nationalism from below.
The neoevangelical version of the Bois Caïman story writes the Bible and
its patterns and tropes into the national history of Haiti. Just as the story of
the fall of Adam and Eve from the Garden explains suffering and death to
Christians, the Bois Caïman story provides an account of the genesis of the
nation, together with a diagnosis of where the nation went wrong and why
it cannot prosper. Like Eve, whom the serpent convinces to taste the fruit
and share it with Adam, Boukman sacrificed to demons, drank sacrificial
blood, and shared the sacrifice with the rebel slaves and the nation to be. In
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From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan 237

both myths, this original human interaction with evil creates and explains all
subsequent suffering. And just as the remedy for humanity’s original sin is in
the crucifixion of Christ, the hope for Haiti’s prosperity lies in its citizens
“coming under the blood” and accepting the new covenant with Jesus. In an
ironic parallel with the figure of Boukman, the pastors reunite the new crowds
and attempt to lead them to the new oath, to be saved and thus free, with the
new blood—not of the pig but of Christ. Christianity can explain the creation
of the earth and the suffering of humanity, the root cause of Haiti’s many
problems, as well as the future end of the world and the afterlife. It can offer
a complete picture of reality and of power, the ultimate power of God. neo-
evangelicalism captures the symbolic grammar of the national story, reenacts
it and converts it, and in the process offers a recognizable and intelligible
version of reality for Haitian converts to accept as their own.
In taking on the rhetorical and ritual work of mythmaking to break the
blood pact and win Haiti for Jesus, any citizen can stand in the stream of his-
tory and act on behalf of the entire nation in the great cosmic battle between
good and evil. Pastor Yvette, carving out a small space of Christian sanctifi-
cation and holiness with her congregation in a Red Cross camp for the inter-
nally displaced, can dedicate every Friday morning to pray and prophesy for
the nation. As their country fights chaos and crisis after the earthquake, the
members of Pastor Yvette’s congregation live as everyday prayer warriors tak-
ing up the profoundly meaningful work of mythmaking in the making.

Notes
I thank Pastor Chavannes Jeune, Bishop Joel Jeune, Pastor Gregory Joseph, Pas-
tor Berthony Paul, Rev. J. L. Williams, Pastor Philius Nicolas, and Pastor Yvette,
whose name I have changed for her own privacy, as she is a less public figure, for
sharing their stories and points of view in interviews. Thanks to Rachel Beauvoir-
Dominique, Kate Ramsey, and Nina Schnall for their generosity in sharing unpub-
lished work with me. For helpful and generous critique, I thank my Wesleyan religion
working group colleagues Attiya Ahmad, Annalise Glauz-Todrank, Laura Harrington,
and Mary-Jane Rubenstein, as well as Leslie Desmangles, David Frankfurter, Jason
Craige Harris, Nick Marshall, Holly Nicolas, Kristen Olson, Millery Polyné, Terry
Rey, Kenneth Routon, and Bob Corbett and the many members of his Haiti Listserv,
for the lively discussion and information sharing over the years.
1. Pat Robertson, “Haiti’s Pact w/Devil Created Earthquake,” YouTube video.
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238 elizabeth mcalister

2. Stéphen Alexis, Black Liberator: The Life of Toussaint Louverture, trans.

William Sterling (New York: Macmillan, 1949), 71.
3. Some observers classify the Third Wave Spiritual Mapping movement as
Pentecostal, and indeed its adherents are charismatics who, like Pentecostals, stress
the primacy of communication with the Holy Spirit as well as prophesy and inter-
cessory prayer. But Spiritual Mapping leader Peter Wagner and others who self-
identify as evangelicals do not consider themselves Pentecostal; this movement is a
loose network of people from many denominational homes.
4. Laurent Dubois, “The Citizen’s Trance: The Haitian Revolution and the
Motor of History,” in Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment,
ed. Birgit and Peter Pels Meyer (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003).
5. Michael Taussig, “History as Sorcery,” Representations 7 (Summer 1984): 87.
6. Joan Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1995); Kate Ramsey, The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
7. Elizabeth McAlister, “The Jew in the Haitian Imagination: A Popular History
of Anti-Judaism and Proto-Racism,” in Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas, ed.
Henry and Elizabeth McAlister Goldschmidt (New York: Oxford University Press,
2004).
8. Max Beauvoir, “Slavery, Boukman, and Independence,” in Revolutionary Free-
doms: A History of Survival, Strength, and Imagination in Haiti, ed. Cécile Accilien, Jes-
sica Adams, and Elmide Méléance (Coconut Creek, Fla.: Caribbean Studies Press,
2006).
9. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 22.
10. O’Brien, Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians out of Existence in New England
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), xvii.
11. Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992).
12. Russell T. McCutcheon, “Myth,” in Guide to the Study of Religion, ed. Willi
Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon (London: Cassell, 2000), 200.
13. Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society, 25–26.
14. McCutcheon, “Myth,” 202.
15. Burton Mack, Myth and the Christian Nation: A Social Theory of Religion (Lon-
don: Equinox, 2008).
16. David Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies (Bloomington: Indiana Univer-
sity Press, 2002), 82.
17. Elizabeth McAlister, “Globalization and the Religious Production of Space,”
Journal for the Scientifc Study of Religion 44, no. 3 (2005).
18. Trouillot, Silencing the Past.
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From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan 239

19. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Refections on the Origin and

Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), 6.
20. Ramsey, Spirits, 52.
21. David Nichols, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour, and National Inde-
pendence in Haiti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 35. Cited in
Gérarde Magloire-Danton, “Anténor Firmin and Jean Price-Mars: Revolution, Mem-
ory, Humanism,” Small Axe 18 (2005): 154.
22. Terry Rey, “Vodou, Water, and Exile: Symbolizing Spirits and Pain in Port-
Au-Prince,” in Religion, Violence, Memory, and Place, ed. Oren Baruch and J. Shawn
Landres Stier (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 208.
23. Dalmas, translated and cited in Léon-François Hoffmann, “The Ceremony at
Bois Caïman,” in Haitian Fiction Revisited, ed. Léon-François Hoffman (Pueblo, Colo.:
Passeggiata Press, 1999), 161.
24. Dayan, Haiti, History, 29.
25. Hoffmann, “Ceremony,” 164.
26. Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, 89.
27. The details of this rebel meeting have been the subject of passionate debates.
It is certain that there was a nighttime assembly of slaves who planned to set fires in
a widespread insurrection; this was the recorded testimony on August 17, 1791, of
slaves arrested by French authorities. Conducting oral histories and song analyses,
Rachel Beauvoir presents evidence that there was likely a politicoreligious ceremony
on August 14, the Catholic feast day of Our Lady of the Assumption, when slaves,
many of whom were Kongolese Christians, had the day off and would likely have
gathered to celebrate. It was simultaneously the feast day of Ezili Kawoulo, a spirit—
who requires a pig sacrifice—in the early Kongo–Petwo–Lemba secret societies
whose members fought in the revolt. Rachel with Eddy Lubin Beauvoir-Dominique,
Investigations Autour Du Site Historique Du Bois Caïman (Cap-Haïtien: ISPAN, 2000).
Taking a wider view, Lucien Smarthe concludes that the Bois Caïman ceremony was
a shorthand amalgamation of all the individual ceremonies performed in the differ-
ent seats of the rebellion. Cited in Hoffmann, “Ceremony,” 179.
28. Mack, Myth.
29. Some observers posit that Boukman was a Muslim. Rachel Beauvoir notes in
her 2000 study that the Morne Rouge, where the Bois Caïman ceremony would have
happened, retained the Islamic religious influence of the Senegambian wave of slave
migration; they also founded secret societies that would have enabled conspiratorial
planning networks. Attiya Ahmad points out that the uniting of a group through
oath taking under a tree is also an element of the story of the Bayan in Islam, when
the prophet united a group of followers under a tree through a pact (Ahmad, per-
sonal communication). The Islamic influence in Haiti bears further research.
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240 elizabeth mcalister

30. J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Unver-
sity Press, 1962), 52, cited in Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Perfor-
mative (New York: Routledge, 1997), 3.
31. Michael Largey, Vodou Nation: Haitian Art Music and Cultural Nationalism
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 13.
32. Ibid.
33. Karen E. Richman, “Peasants, Migrants and the Discovery of African Tradi-
tions: Ritual and Social Change in Lowland Haiti,” Journal of Religion in Africa 37
(2007): 372.
34. Götz-Dietrich Opitz, Haitian Refugees Forced to Return: Transnationalism and
State Politics, 1991–1994 (London: LIT Verlag, 1999).
35. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, “Mounting Vodou: Power and Polyphony in the Hait-
ian Public Sphere,” trans. and cited by Nina Schnall (Santa Cruz, Calif.: UC–Santa
Cruz, 1997).
36. Ibid.
37. Clinton Eugene Lane, “Church Growth and Evangelism in Haiti: Needs, Prob-
lems, and Methods” (diss., Asbury Theological Seminary, 1998), 71.
38. Patrick Johnston, Operation World (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1993);
also cited in André Jeantil Louis, “Catholicism, Protestantism and a Model of Effec-
tive Ministry in the Context of Voodoo in Haiti” (diss., Fuller Theological Seminary,
1998), 94.
39. Charles Poisset Romain, Le Protestantisme Dans La Société Haitienne (Port-
au-Prince: Imprimerie Henri Deschamps, 1986).
40. Ibid., 346.
41. Frederick J. Conway, “Pentecostalism in the Context of Haitian Religion and
Health Practice” (Ph.D. diss., American University, 1978), 166.
42. World-Vision/MARC, “Newsletter Report: Haiti” (Monrovia, Calif.: Mis-
sions Advanced Research and Communications Center, Fuller Theological Seminary
School of World Mission, 1971).
43. Laënnec Hurbon, “Current Evolution of Relations between Religion and Pol-
itics in Haiti,” in Nation Dance: Religion, Identity, and Cultural Diference in the Carib-
bean, ed. Patrick Taylor (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 122.
44. World-Vision/MARC, “Newsletter Report: Haiti.”
45. René Holvast, Spiritual Mapping in the United States and Argentina, 1989–2005
(Leiden: Brill, 2009), 17–18.
46. Lane, “Church Growth,” 55–56.
47. Holvast, Spiritual Mapping, 40.
48. C. Peter Wagner, Warfare Prayer: What the Bible Says about Spiritual Warfare
(Ventura, Calif.: Regal Books, 1992), 93.
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From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan 241

49. C. Peter Wagner, Engaging the Enemy: How to Fight and Defeat Territorial Spir-
its (Ventura, Calif.: Regal Books, 1991).
50. George Jr. Otis, “An Overview of Spiritual Mapping,” in Breaking Strongholds
in Your City, ed. C. Peter Wagner (Ventura, Calif.: Regal Books, 1993), 30–31.
51. Lane, “Church Growth,” 32.
52. David W. Taylor, “Spiritual Conflict Resolution in a Haitian Context” (Ph.D.
diss., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1993), 101–2.
53. Cited in ibid., 102.
54. Charles H. Kraft, Confronting Powerless Christianity: Evangelicals and the Miss-
ing Dimension (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Chosen Books, 2002), 244. Cited in Holvast,
Spiritual Mapping.
55. Holvast, Spiritual Mapping, 21–33.
56. Louis, “Catholicism, Protestantism,” 300.
57. Interview with Bishop Joel Jeune conducted by the author, Carrefour, Haiti,
2001.
58. Interview with Bishop Joel Jeune conducted by the author, Carrefour, Haiti,
2010.
59. Interview with Bishop Joel Jeune conducted by the author, Carrefour, Haiti,
2001.
60. Joel Jeune, “Miracle in Haiti,” Cornerstone Ministries, http://cornerstone
ministries.org and http://www.jesus.org.uk.
61. Ibid.
62. Beauvoir-Dominique, Investigations Autour, 57–58.
63. “Exorcising Boukman,” Haiti Progrès, 1998.
64. Lane, “Church Growth,” 13.
65. AHP, “Vodou Is Fully Recognised as a Religion in Haiti,” Agence haïtienne de
presse, April 5, 2003.
66. Interview with Reverend J. L. Williams by the author, Burlington, N.C., 2005.
67. J. L. Williams, “On the Cutting Edge: Breaking the Blood Pact” (Burlington,
N.C.: New Directions International, 2004).
68. David Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic
Abuse in History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), 37.
69. Beauvoir-Dominique, Investigations Autour, 59, citing Romain, Protestantisme,
55–56.
70. Jean R. Gelen, “God, Satan, and the Birth of Haiti,” BlackandChristian.com,
http://blackandchristian.com/articles/academy/gelin-10-05.shtml. See also J. R.
Gelen, “La Malédiction Divine Sur Haiti: Un Message Ambigu Et Forcément Caduc,”
AlterPresse, http://www.alterpresse.org/.
71. Pastor Philius Nicolas, interview with the author, 2005.
72. Mack, Myth.
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242 elizabeth mcalister

73. Anne McClintock, “Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism and the Family,” Fem-
inist Review 44 (1993).
74. André Corten, “Transnationalised Religious Needs and Political Delegitimi-
sation in Latin America,” in Between Babel and Pentecost, ed. André Corten and Ruth
Marshall Fratani (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 106.
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11

Twenty-First-Century Haiti—
A New Normal?
A Conversation with Four Scholars of Haiti
A l e x D u p u y, R o b e rt Fat t o n J r . , É v e ly n e
T r o u i l l o t, a n d Tat i a n a Wa h

A few weeks after the January 12 earthquake and for most of the year of
2010–11, common mantras among politicians, strategists, and donors
have been to “build back better” or to establish “a new Haiti.” How would you
or have you been unpacking these phrases? What does “a new Haiti” mean
to you? Who or what are the forces that are informing those aspirations?

Évelyne Trouillot (ET): This is not the first time they have talked about
a new Haiti. Even after the presidency of Jean-Claude Duvalier (1971–
86) they were talking about a new Haiti. When Aristide came in 1991
they were talking about a new Haiti. Every president, every government
mentions a new Haiti. The thing is, I don’t know if it is because I am inter-
ested in history, but when talking about a new Haiti you should know
what the old Haiti is about. We have a tendency as a society to forget what
happened before. And since we don’t look at what happened, you have a
supposedly new Haiti when Jean-Claude Duvalier came back (2010) and
some people were saying, “Well, it was better under Duvalier,” because
they forgot what Duvalier was all about. Or some people who were really
young did not even know how dictators repressed people and how many
lives were lost under that regime. So I think we should go beyond that
mantra, which has been used before. The old Haiti is still here. We don’t
have a new Haiti yet.
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244 d u p u y, fat t o n, t r o u i l l o t, wa h

I don’t want to be cynical, but there are a lot of people making money,
big money, in Haiti—many locals and foreigners with all their economic
interests in Haiti, for the construction, notably. The politicians in Haiti
keep on saying “a new Haiti” to bring back the people’s trust in them. The
people in Haiti, the majority of the people, have lost trust in the politi-
cians. And when people talk about a new Haiti, it is a way for them to say:
“Well, we are promising you something new, something better.” But I don’t
think it is that easy now to fool the people. I think the concept of a new
Haiti should really be deeper than that. It should go to an understanding
of why Haiti is the way it is now, an understanding of the relations between
the different groups and the role played by the foreign powers. A new Haiti
is not going to come out of the blue. The new Haiti has to take into account
all the factors that brought Haiti to where it is now.
I don’t think the people talk about a new Haiti. That’s why I thought it
was something brought up by the international community and the politi-
cians. The majority of the population is so involved in the day-to-day sur-
vival that they don’t think about a new Haiti, they think about the new
day coming. What are they going to do about that new day to survive?
When I talk with my students, since they have the capacity and the priv-
ilege to be able to think and reflect upon the situation, they will mention
a new Haiti, but it is something very far, very remote from the reality,
their reality. They see it as an ideal. But for the moment, they will address
concrete problems: to complete their studies, to find a job, to live some-
where, to buy food, to help their parents, to be able to have a brighter
future. And those are very concrete problems. In fact, it’s not the concept
of a new Haiti that is more popular now; it is the concept of youth. Youth
versus old. I don’t think it is exclusive to Haiti, I think the youth syn-
drome is everywhere. In France, in the United States and other countries,
there is the youth versus the old movement. But in Haiti, young people
are a large part of the population and they are really affected by the coun-
try’s economic difficulties and other problems: the school system’s defi-
ciencies, the unemployment, and the lack of opportunities. The young
feel they do not have any future, any prospects. For them, it is very cru-
cial. Therefore, they believe that somebody who is young will be more
able to understand their problems. And they have developed a sense of
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Twenty-First-Century Haiti 245

mistrust against the old politician class. They feel betrayed. For me, that’s
the term that comes to mind when you think about new terms—not a
new Haiti, but the youth. Of course, deep down, it is not a question of
youth or old because during the Duvalier regime you had a lot of young
people in Duvalier’s administration. Jean-Claude had a lot of young min-
isters, younger than forty years old with him, and look at what they did.
It’s not a question of young, it is a question of political and economic
interests, and it is a question of vision. But that’s the narrative you will
find, old versus youth.
Robert Fatton Jr. (RFJ): Immediately after the earthquake there was a
sense that things could change. The disaster was of such huge proportions
and people were so shocked that it was not unthinkable to believe that a
new solidarity among all Haitians could be established. The problem is
that very quickly after that fateful day in January, the old reflexes and divi-
sions reasserted themselves very quickly. This is now very evident as both
the political and economic elites are again showing that they are not pre-
pared to abandon their past behavior. The rhetoric of change is loud, but
the substance of politics and the deep structures of society continue to be
the same. In addition, what has been done since the earthquake is so dra-
matically insufficient that it shows the optimism that might have paradox-
ically crystallized as a result of the earthquake. So the question is whether
there are forces that we don’t see that are in the making or whether, what
you might call the popular sector in Haiti is so exhausted by the past twenty
or thirty years that its demobilization would indicate that nothing is going
to change. This sense of paralysis is accentuated by the reality that many
of the promises of the international community have failed to materialize.
In short, the international community seems to be playing the same old
unproductive games, and the new political figures of Haiti are still prison-
ers of the old politics. There is thus a tragic question: are we going to be
waiting for the “new Haiti” at every major historical moment, be it after
the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier or after the coming to power in 1991 of
Lavalas, or after 1994 with the restoration of Aristide, only to be utterly
disappointed, because that new Haiti is nowhere to be seen. Are we con-
demned to recreate again and again the old decomposed and dysfunctional
political body?
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246 d u p u y, fat t o n, t r o u i l l o t, wa h

There is a sense, at least in my own mind, of pessimism about the future.

But as I have said, there might be forces that are being created as a result of
the current predicament. We may not see them very clearly, but they might
just crystallize suddenly, and I think this is where you have to find hope.
I don’t think you are going to find hope in parliament, I don’t think you’re
going to find it in the new Martelly regime, which is not even a regime yet,
capable of having its own government. So I think there is a sense of exhaus-
tion, after the failures of Lavalas, after the catastrophic earthquake, and
after the failure of reconstruction. Moreover, the desperate situation of the
camps has aggravated the plight of the marginalized, who are now facing
forced eviction from their tents without any guarantee of new lodging or
jobs. To that extent, I think you see an attempt on the part of some reac-
tionary forces to reestablish the old sense of subservience which excluded
from the moral community of the nation the vast majority of the pop-
ulation, transforming them into the quintessential moun andeyò. We are
moving backward, and frankly, as far as I can see, there is no fundamental
change in the making, at least in the immediate future.
Alex Dupuy (AD): The phrases “building a new Haiti” and “building back
a better Haiti” were not coined by the Haitians, the elite, or the politicians.
They were coined by the international community. They had several con-
ferences around that theme. To me, the Haitian elite, both the economic
and political elite, are completely bankrupt ideologically, in terms of their
views of what Haiti could become. I don’t think they even think in those
terms. They are incapable of thinking in those terms. And what the earth-
quake showed after the trauma was a complete capitulation of the govern-
ment to the international community, and principally the United States
and the state department, which ran the show from that point on. That
was very clear in the reconstruction plan that was developed after the earth-
quake. Most of it containing ideas that had been developed long before
the earthquake, but were repackaged in the reconstruction plans for Haiti.
Many of the ideas came from the state department itself. Sheryl Mills was
largely responsible for creating the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission
and how it would be comprised. And so, in my view, there was a complete
abdication of responsibility to these international actors and that has been
going on for quite some time. The only time there was a glimmer of hope,
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Twenty-First-Century Haiti 247

a time when the people thought that there might be a different Haiti was
between 1986 and 1990 when Duvalier was overthrown and forced out of
Haiti and there was a mass movement that resisted the reimposition of a
military dictatorship and brought Aristide to power in 1990. There were
some fresh, very new ideas—not necessarily new in terms of what other
actors and other movements have been thinking about all over the world,
especially in Central America and the Caribbean, but certainly new in
terms of their introduction and application by a popular movement in
Haiti, for a more independent, more self-sufficient Haiti, a Haiti that would
be more just, more egalitarian, and more democratic. But unfortunately
those ideas never panned out because of both the contradictions in Aris-
tide’s first administration, but certainly the coup d’etat of 1991 that erad-
icated as much as possible the leaders of those grassroots movements that
brought Aristide to power and ruled the country for three years until Clin-
ton brought Aristide back in 1994. By the time Aristide came back, how-
ever, he had completely abandoned whatever progressive ideas he had in
order to embrace the neoliberal policies of the Clinton administration, and
that’s been the name of the game ever since. There has never been any devi-
ation; there’s never been any movement, serious movement, on the part
of elected officials, be it in parliament or in the government, to rethink
those priorities. There was some resistance to neoliberalism in 1995 and
1996, but after Préval came to power and disbanded parliament, it has been
smooth sailing from that point on in terms of implementing neoliberal
policies. So I don’t see where within the Haitian elite or the political class,
and certainly not the economic elite of Haiti, where there is any rethinking
of Haiti other than maintaining the status quo. If there is going to be any
new thinking done it’s going to have to be done by, as Robert has men-
tioned, the forces from below. It’s not going to come from above. And right
now the left or progressive movement is pretty much weakened. Its mem-
bers have been decimated, or they have left, or they’ve been killed. And
there are very few of those progressive forces left and they are not suffi-
ciently organized to make much of a presence politically, so unless there
is a resurgence of a mass movement, I don’t see where a so-called new Haiti
would emerge. For me personally, if there were going to be such a thing as
a new Haiti, it would have to be both democratic and socialist. And I don’t
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248 d u p u y, fat t o n, t r o u i l l o t, wa h

see any forces on the horizon, other than isolated individuals, like me and
Robert, and those in Haiti who think along those lines. But they are not
sufficiently grounded in any mass movement in Haiti to be able to translate
those ideas into concrete actions for change. There are peasant organiza-
tions, there are labor organizations, there are think tanks that are thinking
along those lines, but they are weak and disorganized, so unless that were
to change, I don’t see where that alternative will be coming from.
Tatiana Wah (TW): I think to build back better presupposes that the state
and the private sector leaders have a vision for what better is. A vision for
Haiti has never been defined for a very long time—arguably for eighty to
ninety years. There’s no stated preferred role or function for the country
and arguably the Caribbean region. There’s no planning that’s done by any
of the governmental entities. Structures are slapped together, segmented,
sort of disaggregated, disintegrated projects that carry no weight, which
have a time span from eighteen to twenty months and fail to attack the
fundamental development issues of the country. I agree with Robert that
the state has sort of given up its role, almost washed its hands and saying
it is just too much to do. Some Haitians have stated that “it’s the blancs’
money anyway, they are going to do whatever they want with it.” That does
not help the situation at all. Although, at the same time, there are pilot proj-
ects to deal with the camp situation, to relocate them into neighborhoods
and to rehabilitate the neighborhoods from which they came. In fact, that
work requires them to govern better.
There is an element of democracy here that is burgeoning, believe it or
not, but it is still the old ways of doing things. The harder questions about
agriculture and neighborhood rehabilitation are not being answered. So
all of the difficult policy and territorial questions that deal with reconstruc-
tion are more difficult now during this long transition period without a
government. Meanwhile, we are in the middle of the hurricane season
and we have cholera; at the end of August 2011 the Haitian government
won’t have any money to clean toilets in the 1,000 camps, and the donors
are saying, “We are done with the emergency phase, we need to do recov-
ery and development.” And so you have a whole mix of reasons why “build
back better” could not even be thought of beyond the understanding that
the terminology is imported to Haiti. To me, the fact the government did
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Twenty-First-Century Haiti 249

not take care of leading the donors is crucial. Their reaction has always
been, “Well, it’s your money, you will do what you want to do with it.”
This has to stop because the potential billions of dollars would have been
spent for naught, and the state will be unable to make the crucial impact
that we need on livelihoods in this country. It’s really disconcerting.

What has lead to this insufficient leadership? Are these forces or obstacles
external or internal?

AD: The dominant sectors of Haitian society, particularly the private sector
elite and the Haitian political class, generally speaking, have never had any
other vision for Haiti than what has been the status quo for a very long
time. Mainly, the complete dependence upon foreign capital, complete
dependence on the United States, and to a lesser extent Europe, for invest-
ments in Haiti and for access to the markets of the United States and to a
lesser extent Europe, and increasingly now the Dominican Republic. It is
in the matter of the interest of the dominant classes of Haiti who are ben-
efiting as much as they can from the status quo and have always opposed
any systematic change to the ways things are in Haiti. One could go back
to the time of Dessalines and Pétion, and especially after Boyer’s agree-
ment to pay an indemnity to France to renew trade and diplomatic rela-
tions with the rest of the developed capitalist world, to find the roots of
Haitian dependence. And the Haitian bourgeoisie and the rulers of the
state have always been tied to these external interests, and so this is what
we see playing itself out in Haiti now. It’s nothing really new, except that
is has taken on more urgency now since the earthquake because Haiti is
utterly incapable of rebuilding itself with its own resources. If it were to
rebuild itself differently, it would have to be done on very different grounds,
under very different conditions, which would mean basically empowering
the majority of the Haitian people to determine their own agenda and push
for it. But politically, that is not currently an option on the table. And so
what we have is a ruling class that is utterly incapable of thinking anything
other than what is has always thought about, which is basically tying itself
to the goodwill and to the politics and interests of the foreign investors,
and principally to the United States.
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250 d u p u y, fat t o n, t r o u i l l o t, wa h

TW: I would tend to disagree a little bit. The option is on the table. Leader-
ship is something taken, not given. From where I stand and from where I
have been operating for the last two years, the option has always been on
the table. And, of course, some parts of it have to be negotiated. We are rot-
ten at negotiating and we are rotten at saying what we need. When we do
say what we need, it is usually very petty or based upon self-interests. We
are satisfied with $1 million when we can ask for $5 million, and it’s because
there’s a petty interest somewhere. We’ve never been able to muster enough
leadership, and I think it is because of the lack of educated people in this
country. Our entire middle class is gone, and when you do have a concen-
tration of able, skilled people, much of that work has turned toward NGOs,
which does not bode well for our economy.
We need very strong, disciplined, consensual leaders. They are in need
of a strong team effort to go and get these options that are open to this
country and to push forward with them. We tend to continually operate
at an individual level—the president is God, or the minister is God, and
no one else is around him or her to push an agenda forward.
RFJ: I think that we are dealing with a profound systemic crisis. I don’t think
the question of the utter failure of the elite is disputable, so I agree with
Alex. But I think there is also a failure of the popular movement. I mean
the experience of Lavalas is, to a large extent, a very hard experience for
the popular movement because the popular movement ultimately disin-
tegrated, not only under pressure from the local elite, the military, and the
international community, principally the French and the Americans. But
it disintegrated also because of its own demons. In other words, the same
type of individualized competition between key figures contributed to the
collapse of that movement. And there is this structural factor—you know,
politics in Haiti is really a business. So the popular movement came to
power with some very principled people, but there were also a lot of oppor-
tunists in the movement who looked at the capture of power as a means
of not only achieving political power, but also achieving economic power.
This is why corruption very quickly settled amidst the popular movement.
Also, this is why we see among many popular groups shifts in allegiances
that were to a large extent a function of what we call la politique du ventre,
the politics of the belly. In other words, in an environment of utter scarcity,
politicians and aspiring leaders have a tendency to sell their services to
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Twenty-First-Century Haiti 251

any moneyed force. You see that with the creation of the chimères, you see
that with the creation of other paramilitary groups. I think when you look
at all those phenomena, you can see that there is an economic crisis, there’s
a political crisis, and I think there’s also a moral crisis. And the whole sys-
tem is really rotten. So this is where the idea that a providential leader can
resolve Haiti’s problems is deficient. You may have capable, progressive
leaders, but once they take power, they are faced with the systemic crisis.
They have neither the local or international resources to deal effectively
with the crisis, and very quickly they become exhausted. They either fight
amongst themselves or the movement disintegrates into opportunism.
And there is a structural problem here. One of the tragedies of the Lavalas
movement is obviously the coup of 1991, which was clearly the coup of
the elites. On the other hand, the coup symbolized at the same time the
incapacity of the popular movement to fight back. The popular movement
was decimated by the military, the incapacity of the popular movement to
rebuild itself internally because of repression, and because of its own defi-
ciencies led to the return of Aristide on the back of 20,000 marines. And
once you had that, it was inevitable that fundamental change would be
aborted. And that again is a symptom of the massive dependence of Haiti.
Haiti for all practical purposes is a virtual trusteeship of the international
community. The MINUSTAH [United Nations Stabilization Mission in
Haiti] is the repressive police force in Haiti. The budget is 60 to 70 percent
funded by external sources. The economic plans are not generated from
within; they emanate from the financial organizations, World Bank, etc.,
and they are old programs. So we have been to a large degree completely
infantilized, and there is no easy way out of our predicament. However
you look at the situation, the structures that are responsible for the coun-
try’s plight seem to be overpowering. And that is really the tragedy. I really
don’t see a way out in the foreseeable future. This is why the popular move-
ment is also in crisis—because there is a feeling that ultimately Préval’s
infamous bon mot, se naje pou’n soti—you have to leave the country in
order to survive—may sadly reflect the Haitian reality.

Speaking of the centrality of Haitian migration to individual and familial sur-

vival, what role do you see the Haitian diaspora playing in homeland devel-
opment? Do you see the Haitian diaspora in the United States, Canada, and
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252 d u p u y, fat t o n, t r o u i l l o t, wa h

Europe reasserting Western notions of modernization, or do you believe they

possess alternative visions of development? Will incumbent Haitians allow
them to have much of an impact at all?

TW: I don’t see a major impact by the Haitian diaspora because you need
quantity to make a qualitative change. You know sending one or two dias-
pora experts in one sector, [then] sending a couple more to another sector
is not going to do it. The diaspora itself is so disparate, so all over the place.
And the amenities that these people have received or earned from the
United States, Canada or Europe, with the exception of the diaspora in
the Dominican Republic, and even then, they are migrating slowly to go
to Puerto Rico or other places, Haitians abroad are not going to have them
in Haiti unless the Haitian government or the private sector pays them a
whole hell of a lot. Then, a whole slew of them will come at the same time.
The diaspora is like a great, beautiful word. Haitians say that they love
the diaspora, but intrinsically they don’t. They see them as taking their
jobs. They believe that there will be nothing left for them. So politically,
unless the leadership makes an effort of getting massive of diasporans back
and providing a clear vision or plan of what it wants to obtain, I don’t see
the diaspora being able to do anything for this country. Second-generation
Haitians abroad are so disconnected from the realities of this country, the
realities of uneducated people who need education across a whole variety
of arenas. They need their hands held.
Robert is so right about systemic change. At the same time, we need to
recreate a whole system. The same system of governance, whether it was
Aristide or Préval, is still in place from the Duvalier years and has not
changed at all. It is unclear to me on how politically or practically the Hait-
ian diaspora could aid development, unless you have a clear vision/plan
and a concentration of good people who want to produce.
AD: The concept of diaspora is misleading because the diaspora does not
constitute a unified or homogeneous set of actors. There are many differ-
ent views, interests, and objectives coming from different sectors, different
individuals within the so-called diaspora. So I don’t think we can use the
term diaspora as a unified concept or a force that we can tap into to bring
about solutions with one voice, so to speak, for Haiti. I agree with Tatiana
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Twenty-First-Century Haiti 253

that whatever role individuals in the diaspora can play can only come from
initiatives that stem from Haiti itself, rather than those imposed by out-
siders from the diaspora. In other words, the diaspora is not, say, like the
World Bank, or the state department, or nongovernmental agencies that
have a specific mission, that have a specific set of interests that they articu-
late and can push to have implemented. That doesn’t exist among the Hait-
ian diaspora, or any other diaspora for that matter.
You can look at the example of those who opposed and supported Aris-
tide in the diaspora. There were those who were vehemently opposed to
him and supported the coup d’etat, and there were those who were strong
supporters of him and who condemned the coup d’etat and mobilized
demonstrations against the coup and so on. What I am saying is that the
diaspora cannot, does not, speak with one voice because it is not a unified
and homogeneous group with a unified and homogeneous set of interests.
It is just as divided as you would find the Haitian population divided in
terms of what they would consider to be best for Haiti and the interest
they would fight for. The only way individuals may contribute to a new,
reconstructed Haiti would be in the context of priorities and policies that
would be articulated, generated, and developed in Haiti itself. The initia-
tive must come from within Haiti and not from outside.
RFJ: I agree with both Tatiana and Alex about the division within the dias-
pora. Ultimately, the diaspora is very much like the wider Haitian society
with all of its class, and race divisions and I think that those have been
replicated in the United States, Canada, or France. In addition, I think there
is a real tension between the diaspora and the people in Haiti. In spite of
all the nice talk about the tenth department, I think the people in Haiti to
some extent resent the diaspora because they see the diaspora as rather
arrogant and telling them how to fix the country while being outside of
the daily Haitian reality. So there is that tension, and there is a tension
for jobs because people in Haiti live in an environment of scarcity, and
when they see people from the diaspora parachuting into Haitian jobs,
they look at it as if, “Well, that’s a job that was stolen from us in Haiti,”
and this intensifies the tensions between diaspora and Haitians in Haiti.
Those tensions should really be looked at very carefully. And, in the past,
I think the diaspora tended to tell people on the ground in Haiti what
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254 d u p u y, fat t o n, t r o u i l l o t, wa h

they ought to do, without really understanding the fundamental structures

of the country.
On the other hand, the diaspora is indispensable for the very survival
of the country. If it weren’t for the remittances of the diaspora, Haiti would
really be a total disaster area. It is estimated that $2 billion is sent annually
from the diaspora to Haiti. Just imagine what Haiti would be without that
capital. The very survival of the country is largely dependent upon these
remittances. So you have contradictions again between the existence of
the diaspora as some sort of conflicted group in the exterior of Haiti, as
fundamental to the survival of Haiti, and Haitians in Haiti looking at the
diaspora as too aggressive, arrogant, and all-knowing. Finally, many peo-
ple in the diaspora, in particular those who have made it, as it were, would
have a hard time abandoning their jobs and moving to Haiti, and that’s
another obstacle. Haitians who have made it in the United States and
elsewhere have become worried about the political situation, the health
situation, etc., so you have another barrier to an easy movement of the
diaspora into Haiti.
AD: I think Robert makes a good point. The diaspora is basically a cash cow
for Haiti. While its true that the remittances contribute more to Haiti’s
GNP than any other sector of the Haitian economy—it represents about
20 percent of the GNP of the Haitian economy—much of that money
is not funneled into development projects. It goes to maintain families. If
that money somehow could be tapped, as it has been properly done in
other countries, then there could be funds used for other development
purposes. But then again, that would presuppose an organized govern-
ment, a democratic government, and a government that is serious about
investing in the country rather than being exploited by foreign interests.
The diaspora is crucial to the survival of tens and thousands of families
in Haiti.
ET: [Similarly] I don’t like to speak of the Haitian diaspora as a homogeneous
thing. The more I meet people living in the United States, in Canada, or
in France, the more I see different groups and types of people. This is like
Haiti; there is a diversity of mentalities, of points of view. For me, the
diaspora is not one big happy family sharing the same ideas about Haiti.
That’s not the way it goes for me. I think that some people who live in the
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Twenty-First-Century Haiti 255

diaspora are more aware of the problems of Haiti then some people living
in Haiti, sometimes. But at the same time, some of the diaspora are com-
pletely unaware and have an idea of Haiti that has nothing to do with real-
ity, to comfort their own insecurities or sense of guilt.
I think the diaspora is a group of different people with different things
to offer. Some of them, most of them, are doing a lot for their families in
Haiti, and that is a fact. But to be beneficial on a long and durable term, the
actions of the diaspora have to be included in a Haitian national agenda.
For example, I know people who come from a small province in Haiti and
they have a hometown association very active in that area. But these types
of actions will always be limited if they are not included in the national
agenda, where you have a global vision for Haiti’s development.
A very common notion is that since the diaspora knows other coun-
tries, other ways, they will have more logical and modern views. This is
not necessarily the case. Some in the diaspora think about Haiti as a place
where they could transport the ways and customs of their new place of liv-
ing. They see all of Haiti’s specificities as negative and to be changed. Out
of nostalgia, others want to go back to a place that existed only in their
imagination, where everything was fine and everybody was happy. Let’s
take the education system, for example. I’m going to be a little sarcastic
now, but unfortunately I truly heard comments like that from people from
the diaspora, and from people living in Haiti too, to be honest. They think
that if Haitian students have computers in the classroom, everything will
be fine. Haiti will enter the modern world. Well, for me, the answer is clear:
If all the children of Haiti learn how to read and write and possess basic
skills, then I think many problems will be resolved on a long-term basis,
and without computers in the classroom. The basics of learning how to
read and write and the elimination of illiteracy are more important than
the empty symbolism of a computer in the classroom—empty and artifi-
cial since it does not connect with other tools of learning.
What happened is that some people associate the concept of education
to the views, for the most part limited, that they have of developed coun-
tries. Their idea of development is to follow blindly all what is going on
in the United States or other countries. For me, to develop the country,
you have to ensure that the citizens of the country are living in decent
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256 d u p u y, fat t o n, t r o u i l l o t, wa h

conditions, that they can go to school, have the basic necessities that guar-
antee their dignity and respect their humanity. It is not only economic
growth that is important. Because economic growth can very well be ben-
eficial only to a minority. I’m thinking about India, for example; everyone
is talking about India as the perfect example of an emerging country, but
a good majority of the population is going through very difficult situations,
even though, in economic terms, India has made an enormous jump. And
I would not want that for Haiti. What I want for Haiti is that even though
we have a small peanut butter jar, that peanut butter jar could be shared
with everyone. For me, that is important. It is not to have 50,000 peanut
butter jars in somebody’s room.

What would the Haitian government/civil society need to do to be more self-

sustaining and independent in order to provide for its citizenry? Is a vision
of an independent Haiti even possible—now or ever? How do you under-
stand the terms sovereign, independent, interdependent in the context of Haiti’s
state and society?

TW: You resolve the issue by first knowing what you want. I go back to my
same premise. Unless a government, unless a nation, unless a people know
what they want, then no one can plan for you. You are the only one who
can plan for yourself and say rightly “This is what I want.” And based on
what you want, then you know how and what to negotiate. You can be
partly independent in some areas, interdependent in some others. Some
will be a bilateral agreement, and some others will be multilateral agree-
ments. Socially, Haiti will have to be multidependent in other areas because
of their lack of resources. The Haitian government is still talking about
quick wins, about things that could be done tomorrow, patching and band-
aid approaches. With band-aid approaches you can’t even think about all
of the beautiful things you just talked about, like how do you become a
sovereign and independent country or even an interdependent country.
You can’t because there’s no basis for dialogue.
AD: I agree with some of what Tatiana said. The concept of sovereignty is
relational. It’s a question ultimately of relations of force between actors
who are differently located and situated within a society or in terms of
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Twenty-First-Century Haiti 257

global/international relations. Haiti is not interdependent. It is simply

and utterly a dependent country. One can talk about the interdependency
between the United States and the European Union, the United States and
Canada, and so on. But one cannot talk about the interdependence of the
United States and Haiti; one should rather talk about the dependency of
Haiti on the United States and other foreign countries. Haiti is weak, not
only because it has a weak and underdeveloped economy, but also because
it has political and economic actors who themselves are dependent on
their ties with those foreign interests for their own survival and their own
functioning. And they are the ones who, through these international forces,
are able to stay and maintain themselves in power in Haiti. So if Haiti
were to move to become more independent and move towards greater
interdependency, then I would agree with Tatiana, that the Haitians them-
selves would have to be in the position to determine their own priori-
ties. If they were to set those priorities when they negotiated with foreign
actors in terms of what they want and what they will and will not accept,
that would require a fairly fundamental, radical restructuring of the Hait-
ian political economy. Only then could the Haitian people articulate their
interest, determine the agenda that would determine the politics of the
country. But that could only happen if and only if a much more radical
democratic, more egalitarian and socialist structure was created, as I’ve
said before. That’s not in the cards today. There are no movements from
below that are capable of bringing that transformation about, and so as
long as that remains the case, as long as you have a political and economic
class that are completely subservient to foreign interests, then Haiti will
always continue to be subservient and dependent.
TW: And I agree with that. I want to provide a clear example of how we can
move from dependency to interdependency. In Haiti, nobody pays taxes.
NGO organizations don’t pay taxes either. They don’t register as labor.
Just take me, for example. I came from the United States and started work-
ing, and I have not paid any taxes whatsoever. There are a whole slew of
organizations—and this is the republic of 10,000 NGOs—not one of these
NGO workers and expatriates is paying taxes. In Haiti, there is the prob-
lem of a lack of housing. It is because these houses are being rented for tens
of thousands of dollars to NGOs—nobody is paying real estate taxes that
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258 d u p u y, fat t o n, t r o u i l l o t, wa h

relate to the type of capital that is being spent on these homes across the
city. We need those taxes from them in order to support the basic services
for Haitians. We are talking about very clear examples where we can move
towards interdependency, and we are very reluctant to do so.
ET: Since the earthquake, but even before, a lot of other countries are pres-
ent in Haiti—as part of the U.N. force, Brazil for example. Brazil is trying
to situate itself as a power on the international scene, and this is fine. But
as a citizen of Haiti, I don’t feel confident that our rulers’ first priorities
are the country’s interests and the population’s welfare. Haiti is there for
countries or individuals to use as a pawn. Because unfortunately, since we
don’t have a strong state, we don’t have a government that is capable of
representing Haitian interests and Haitians’ point of view, we are here for
everyone to use for their own agenda. It is very difficult for a country now
to be completely independent of any other, the way trade relationships and
political powers have evolved. But Haiti is particularly vulnerable because
we are like what we call in Kreyòl, pitimi san gadò, like crops of barley or
rice that nobody’s watching so anyone can come and grab some.
After the earthquake, it was particularly flagrant for everyone to see that
no one was in charge of anything in Haiti; there was no local power, no
local government really capable or willing to deal with the situation. Even
though our resources are limited and Haiti is a poor country, if the state
were strong and responsible, the situation would have been much differ-
ent. And the organization of the international aid and support would have
been much more efficient.
We have to have some dignity while dealing with other countries, with
the international organizations and associations. And for that, we have to
have some leverage. For example, you cannot be completely dependent
for your food supply. If you don’t have a national production that can, at
least, sustain your population for a while, you cannot negotiate with dig-
nity; you have to submit to what everyone else dictates. We have to ensure
national production at a minimal level, have a government that is capable
and trusted by the population. Otherwise, it is very difficult to deal with
other countries. People mention sometimes what they have called civil
society. However, I have some concerns about that. This is fine, for the
country to have a strong civil society, private associations, a private sector
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Twenty-First-Century Haiti 259

that is strong and willing to invest, but the state has to be stronger. Because
the civil society can very well represent a minority, and the situation of
flagrant inequality will continue. We need a strong state with a social vision
towards the welfare of the majority of the people. The civil society can only
represent a minority of the population. And that may constitute a risk.
To be strong and able to negotiate with other countries, first the gov-
ernment has to start building a healthier relationship with the popula-
tion. If I take what is going on in the Dominican Republic where there are
many abuses against Haitians working and living there, what is happening
now? Even though the government wants to protest, they can’t really do
it. First of all, their reactions or absence of reactions depend on the nature
of the deal the Haitian state made with the Dominicans. Other economic
interests and also political interests are taken into account. In cases like
that, the civil society can play a role, especially when you have activists
groups like GARR [Groupe d’Appui aux Réfugiés et Rapatriés] that rep-
resent Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic. GARR can put a lot
of pressure on the government, on both sides, because they are strong
and they have been there for years [since 1999]. They have been working
actively in those communities. Even then, their actions are limited. You can
put pressure on the government and the Haitian government can put pres-
sure on the Dominican government for a while. But they can’t really change
the dynamics too much. It comes back to the relations between the two
states and the internal situation here. Why do Haitians keep on going
there? They cannot find work at home. They are desperate. They know
that it is not good for them, but they still go to the Dominican Republic.
And they know very well that the Haitian government is not going to pro-
tect them. The action of the activist groups are nevertheless important,
but I just want to point out that without state involvement, the dynamics
behind the situation will not be altered.
It is a question of negotiation, of a power struggle, and to put yourself
in a situation where you can benefit from a given situation. For example,
if other countries want to be a part of the most powerful countries in the
world, you have to play with that. This is a question of strategic maneu-
vers—to use what little advantages you have and strengthen your posi-
tion, to play within the realm of the interests, of the strengths and of the
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260 d u p u y, fat t o n, t r o u i l l o t, wa h

weaknesses of each partner to reinforce one’s position. You have to put

yourself in a position where you can benefit from that. Now the situation
in the world is so complicated, and all the small countries have their own
interests, of course, and that’s fine. But Haiti has to diversify its ties and not
be dependent upon one country. It is important to change the way our
relationship has evolved with the United States or France. The U.S. occu-
pation of Haiti [1915–34] is the basis for Haiti’s current dependency. And
Haiti is completely dependent upon the United States as a consequence
of the nineteen years of U.S. occupation. People tend to forget that too.
We need a government capable of putting Haiti’s interests as the number
one priority.
RFJ: I think ultimately the word dependence doesn’t characterize the real sit-
uation in Haiti. Haiti for all practical purposes is a trusteeship of the inter-
national community, and that was so evident during the earthquake. This
is a country that was incapable of dealing with the earthquake. There was
no state to talk about, and what you had was the United States coming and
taking over. That was a necessary move, but one that really indicated that
there was no sovereignty. We have no sovereignty when the president has
to come back to power on the backs of 20,000 marines. We have no sov-
ereignty when elections are decided really by external actors. We have no
sovereignty when the electoral process is all organized and paid for by the
international community. You have no sovereignty when your borders are
guaranteed only by MINUSTAH and when they are violated whenever.
I mean the French and the Americans just took over when Aristide was
forced to leave for a second time. So the notion of sovereignty in Haiti
is really a myth. There is no sovereignty in Haiti. Haiti is a trusteeship,
whether we like it or not. And that, I think, is symptomatic of the utter
collapse of the state, which is in part the responsibility of the Haitian elite,
and, on the other hand, which is a reflection of the neoliberal policies that
have been in place since the late 1970s. The state was seen as the enemy
and the international financial institutions sought to create NGOs, which
were supposed to replace the state. And when you do that, you don’t have
a society. A society cannot work properly when the state is utterly emas-
culated and unaccountable to the population. The result is a new version
of the typical historical marronage that has typified Haitian behavior, an
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Twenty-First-Century Haiti 261

individualistic attempt to escape from public problems, a sauve qui peut

and a chacun pour soi et Dieu pour tous (every man for himself and God for
all) attitude that destroys civic responsibility. Moreover, these problems
must be added to the reality of class conflicts and the resurgence of racial
tensions. In fact, the issue of race has resurfaced in Haiti with the failed
ratification of Gerard Rouzier as prime minister; race, however, is a distrac-
tion from the utter failure of the political class and the fact that there is no
economic development. So, yes, what we are talking about is a domestic
systemic failure and the added problem of being a de facto trusteeship. This
de facto trusteeship brings all of the disadvantages of acute dependence
without any of the benefits of accountability for what is going on in Haiti.
And you see that with the interim commission that was set up after the
earthquake. This is a commission that is supposed to be accountable, but
ultimately it is accountable to no one. So it seems to me that the idea of
Haitian sovereignty is purely mythical. Haiti has become a trusteeship.

Typically, discussions of development and modernization focus on the trade

policy, urban planning and investment. Yet what role do you see art, literature,
and culture (i.e., sports and religion) playing in development?

AD: I don’t see how you divorce cultural ideas, artistic expressions, and other
forms of cultural productions from what’s going on in the country and
the role that they play, either in reinforcing or challenging the existing real-
ities. I’ll give you an example. From 1986 to 1990, Haiti was, if you will, an
experiment/an explosion of different forms of cultural, artistic and politi-
cal expressions. The art that came out (e.g., on murals and walls), the music
of that period, the discussions that went on radios, and so on, were all a
pouring of energy, expectations, ideas from the population after thirty
years of a repressive dictatorship that silenced the population. So there’s
no question that these play an important role in any political context. And
so what has happened since then, obviously, is a sort of silencing of that
outpouring of expression, even with the movement toward democracy
that has been going for the past two decades or so because there is no con-
nection between the outpouring of ideas and the political realities of the
country. Put differently, whereas during the period from 1986 to 1990 the
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262 d u p u y, fat t o n, t r o u i l l o t, wa h

explosion of multiple forms of cultural productions was directly linked to

a collective, mass movement for social change, today, such productions
have become more individualistic and particularistic because they are no
longer tied to a mass movement. But I think that if you were to see a resur-
gence of a popular movement, a movement of people coming forth with
different ideas of how Haiti could change, you would see that being accom-
panied by all sorts of cultural and artistic expressions that are different from
what is being produced today. You would also see a renewed discourse, a
renewed vitality in that process. I see culture as an integral part of the polit-
ical and economic landscape of any society. I don’t see that being divorced
at all. So of course, it has a role to play, but that role can only be, itself, a
product of people mobilizing themselves, or at least having the opportu-
nity to not only express their ideas, but see them being born out in terms
of concrete kinds of political and other social and economic practices. So
there is no way to divorce, in my view, political, cultural, artistic expres-
sions from the realities that people live under on a daily basis.
RFJ: I think when you look at, for instance, certain artistic forms, in a para-
doxical way, they are thriving in Haiti. When you look at some paintings,
from artists like Philippe Daudard or Edouard Duval Carrié, or you look
at the literary scene with Gary Victor, Frankétienne, I think you have a
rather remarkable vitality. But it is also deeply connected to the daily envi-
ronment. I remember a few years back, when Gary Victor wrote his novel,
A L’Angle Des Rues Parallèles, whose very title and substance symbolized
Haiti’s madness. The novel showed clearly that Haiti was indeed tèt anba
(upside down). So the culture, to some extent, reflects the crisis.
The most recent paintings that you see in Haiti are all now deeply etched
into the catastrophe of the earthquake. They are absolutely remarkable
productions. But that is not necessarily something that is going to extri-
cate us from the current predicament. Now if you look at sports—well, it
has collapsed in Haiti. The infrastructure is not there. Like most Haitians,
I am a maniac for football, and I see the shape of what’s happening in Haiti
and it is a catastrophe. It’s sad to say that forty years ago under Duvalier the
sports structure was better. It’s really an indictment of what has happened
in the past decades. So the crisis is generalized, and our increasing depen-
dence on outside forces may ultimately create some sort of déplacement
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Twenty-First-Century Haiti 263

of the cultural phenomenon. In other words, the danger is that we may

come to merely duplicate “the outside” instead of creating and generating
our own culture. On the other hand, the crisis, paradoxically, can fuel
major literary productions and magnificent work of painters. And, in many
instances, great literary figures are very much part of the crisis of their
times and milieu, so Haiti is no exception.
AD: Right, but what you see in comparison, I mean Frankétienne’s plays
also portrayed a sort of irrationality of Haitian society. But if you look at
it again, the period between 1986 and 1990—there was such an outpour-
ing of expression and hope, of new creative artistic expressions that were
in fact capturing the mood of the population for something different.
RFJ: Oh, I agree with you.
AD: So, I agree with you that artistic and cultural expressions, even sports in
many ways, echo or, if you will, accompany or contribute to either por-
traying a situation of despair or of hope if there is a situation that rekindles
people’s creativity. That’s the point I was trying to make.
ET: Well, after the earthquake and even before, a lot of people were saying
Haiti has its culture and the culture of Haiti is so strong, and that’s true.
Indeed, Haitian painting, our music and our writers as well as the folk art
are well represented on the national and international scene. But at the
same time, when you think about it, I’m especially talking about literature
now, you see that you have a population who doesn’t know how to write
or read, for the most part. You have a school system that is so bad that it
keeps on forming people who don’t know too much. Every year, I observe
that the level of education is going further down. So you wonder despite
those few people who are writing and representing Haiti, if something is
not done to consolidate the bases, what is going to happen in the future?
RFJ: The other thing we haven’t talked about when we talk about culture
is religion. And here, what you have again is an escape from the realities
of the country. You pointed out, for instance, the question of hope, and
indeed during the period immediately before the fall of Jean-Claude Duva-
lier and after, you had a very progressive wing of the Church, which was
the dominant way. Now, religion has become an escape, and not only that
it has become a point of contention. What happened the last few days in
Cap-Haïtien between the Protestant sect and the Catholic Church is an
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264 d u p u y, fat t o n, t r o u i l l o t, wa h

indication that the struggle is no longer the struggle to change Haiti; it is

a struggle about the mystical, about the afterlife, and it is no longer the
struggle about the current situation. And I think you are absolutely cor-
rect when you say that when you have that popular movement at its apex,
that there was hope and that has disappeared. And this is the tragedy of it.
AD: In fact, one of the leaders in the popular movement was the Ti Legliz
movement and the radio programs they used to allow the people to speak
openly about their realities, their hopes, and their interests. These avenues
for free and popular expression were among the first things that the mili-
tary shut down when they took power. So there’s no question on the con-
nection between those phenomena and processes.
ET: Vodou as a religion and a way of life is part of Haitian history and Hait-
ian culture. The people who write, the people who paint, everybody who
creates in Haiti carries some of that culture even when they are not prac-
titioners. And when elements of that culture cannot express itself because
of economic reasons, we have to feel concerned. So it will be very unwise
to feel good about Haitian culture without thinking about the whole sit-
uation. Otherwise we are going to reach a stage in a few years where we
will realize that our culture is in bad shape, like everything else.
And I think the diaspora will play its part to contribute to a larger diffu-
sion of Haiti’s cultural elements. It will play out naturally because people
who go to live in other countries carry the culture with them, and they will
transmit it one way or the other. But also, on a much more concrete and
individual basis, many people from the diaspora travel back to Haiti to par-
ticipate in the regional festivities in their hometown, les fêtes champêtres,
religious festivities like Saut d’eau. People come from the United States and
Canada, from Europe, from the Antilles Françaises. Of course, it is bene-
ficial for the country because they come and they spend money and they
contribute to the vitality of the events.

There has been much to criticize during the past eighteen months [since
the January 12, 2010, earthquake]—from the structural devastation, the re-
implementation of neoliberal policies, the presidential election process to
the conditions in the tent camps and the aggressive displacement without
resettlement of residents. But what gives you hope? What inspires you to
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Twenty-First-Century Haiti 265

continue to do the work you do, for and about the people of Haiti? What, if
anything, suggests that new narratives and improved realities are possible for
Haiti?

AD: Well, I don’t write for the people of Haiti. I write mostly for myself and
whoever wants to listen to what I have to say. So I want to clarify now that
I am not writing for anybody, much less the Haitian people. I am not speak-
ing for the Haitian people at all. And I don’t represent the Haitian people
in any capacity. So the only thing that gives me hope is that despite the
grim situation that exists in Haiti, there are voices out there that are insist-
ing on putting forth alternatives—progressive, democratic, socialist alter-
natives—and on the need to organize to make this change possible. And
as feeble as they may be at present, they are still there. And so as long as
that is the case, there is hope that it can develop into something more
meaningful, more significant, and that it can take Haiti in a different direc-
tion. That is the only glimmer of hope that I still have, and that’s why I
continue to write what I write and contribute in some minimal way to that
process.
RFJ: I would agree with Alex. When we write books, we are essentially intel-
lectuals looking at a particular situation and offering our critical comments.
Now the question of hope, especially after what we have been saying,
which is rather grim, I think has to be put into context. It’s not that every-
thing is absolutely bleak. In fact, I think there have been a few achievements
that are important even if we don’t really celebrate it, as we should. One is
the fact that I don’t think we can go back in any way to a dictatorship. I think
it would be extremely difficult for anyone to assume absolute power in
Haiti now; I can’t conceive of a return to another period similar to the Papa
Doc dictatorship, and I think this is one of the major accomplishments of
the popular movement. Also, the fact that in spite of all its deficiencies, the
press is quite free in Haiti. When you listen to the radio, when you read
the newspapers, you can criticize openly, you can say what you want, and
this indeed is a major achievement. It’s not going to fill your stomach, but
it does give you the capacity to look at the situation and say what is in
your mind, the capacity to speak truth to power, as it were. That is a great
achievement. The fact that we have elections, however bad they may be,
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266 d u p u y, fat t o n, t r o u i l l o t, wa h

but the ritual of election is now implanted in Haiti. A new authoritarian

moment may crystallize, but it seems to me that it would not hold for the
longue dureé. And the slogan of Lavalas, the tout moun se moun, I think has
changed much of Haitian society, in the sense that the submissiveness that
existed prior to the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier, has all but vanished. So
I think there are achievements, so that is something that gives hope.
The other thing that gives hope really is the capacity of the average Hait-
ian to survive in an environment that is so damn difficult. I mean, I just can’t
conceive personally of surviving in an environment like that. There is a cer-
tain ingenuity about survival, but on the other hand, one shouldn’t idealize
it because it is survival, but it is something that can give you an element of
hope. Then you have the reality that whenever there is too much authori-
tarian power that resurfaces, there is a reaction, a popular reaction against
it. So I think those are achievements and they can give you some hope. And
finally, as an intellectual, I think this may be my own existentialist position
that we ought to be like Sisyphus: even though the rock can crush you, you
have to stand up again and push it. Otherwise there is absolutely no mean-
ing in life. There is pessimism in that position because you know ultimately
that the rock is going to crush you, but you have to stand up again. This
is why we are human beings; it is precisely our capacity to stand up and to
try to fight an old fight, even if we are pessimistic about it that makes us
human beings. So that’s what is driving me, because when you look not
only at Haiti but when you look at the structures of the global economy,
there’s very little to give you great optimism, so you have to get to the very
stuff of what makes a human being, and it’s stand up and try again.
TW: My work is inspired by the character of the Haitian people. My hope is
rooted in their deep capacity and commitment to maintain their courage,
dignity, resourcefulness—and, above all, a fundamental goodness—amid
relentless tragedy. There is now a growing recognition that this character
cannot be taken for granted. There is now a growing opportunity to mean-
ingfully share, discuss, and implement science-based policies to subvert
the trap of charity and create sustainable paths out of poverty. I, along with
many others, remain eager to fully support a government and a range of
institutions worthy of the Haitian people that can finally help them satisfy
their basic needs and aspirations.
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Twenty-First-Century Haiti 267

ET: I am still amazed by the vitality of the population and the people that
I meet every day. I’m thinking about my students, about colleagues and
other professionals, about unemployed people or men and women getting
by with odd jobs, little street merchants who live day by day. The children,
numerous, eager to learn and to live. Despite the overwhelming difficult
conditions, there is a deep desire to live and to enjoy life.
There is a word that has been used repeatedly to describe Haitians since
January 12, 2010. Resilience. Like some other Haitians and some foreign-
ers, I am reticent to use that word. Saying that Haitians are resilient can
imply that we are so used to dire conditions, to catastrophes, natural or
man made, that this is not so bad, that although the situation is deplorable,
Haitians will survive. Well, I think that the word resilient sometimes,
although not always, carries these connotations. I would rather use more
than one word to try to describe Haitians’ attitudes towards poverty and
tragedy: courage, dignity, and resourcefulness. Some may choose different
terms to describe the same behaviors and attitudes. I think what is more
important is to say that despite these strong and lasting traits, the popu-
lation should not be asked to go through more tragedies. There is a limit
to human endurance. The courage that I see around me does not totally
cover the anger, the despair, and the frustrations. Most of the time, I feel
very humble in front of the courage and dignity of people I see. Their
courage makes me more determined than ever to work in my capacity and
try to give voice to various types of people, the majority whose voice is
not often heard.
For me, I think this is my duty as a writer, my responsibility—to give
voice to people who otherwise would not be heard. The challenge for me
is to arrive through my writing to make them alive, to remind all of us that
they exist. Giving them voice, giving them importance, can make a differ-
ence in the perception we have of ourselves and of others. After all, that’s
what art should be and do, to give us a wider perspective of humanity.

Note
Phone interview with Alex Dupuy, Robert Fatton Jr., and Tatiana Wah, conducted
on August 12, 2011, by Millery Polyné, New York. Évelyne Trouillot’s interview was
conducted on August 17, 2011, by Chantalle F. Verna.
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Contributors

Yveline A le xis is a postdoctoral fellow in the Africana Studies

department at Rutgers University. She received her Ph.D. in history with a
certificate in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino/a studies at the Uni-
versity of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is completing a book about Haitian
resistance to the U.S. occupation of Haiti in the twentieth century.

Wien Weibert A rthus is professor of international relations at the

State University of Haiti. He is the author of La machine diplomatique fran-
caise en Haiti, 1945–1958, and coauthor of Radiographie de la communaute
haitienne de France.

G r e g B e ck et t is assistant professor of anthropology at Bowdoin Col-

lege. He has published articles on environmental, urban, and political crises
in Haiti and on the ethical and political dimensions of international inter-
vention and emergency response.

A le x D u p u y is the John E. Andrus Professor of Sociology at Wesleyan

University. He has published broadly on social, economic, and political devel-
opments in Haiti and the Caribbean. He is the author of Haiti in the World
Economy: Class, Race, and Underdevelopment since 1700; Haiti in the New World
Order: The Limits of the Democratic Revolution; The Prophet and Power: Jean-
Bertrand Aristide, the International Community, and Haiti, and several reports
for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Harley F. Etienne is assistant professor of urban planning at the

University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He is the author of Pushing Back the
12Cont_Layout 1 17/04/2013 3:20 PM Page 270

270 Contributors

Gates: Neighborhood Perspectives on University-Driven Revitalization in West

Philadelphia.

R obert Fatton Jr . is the Julia A. Cooper Professor of Government

and Foreign Affairs in the department of politics at the University of Virginia.
His publications include Black Consciousness in South Africa; The Making of a
Liberal Democracy; Senegal’s Passive Revolution, 1975–1985; Predatory Rule:
State and Civil Society in Africa; Haiti’s Predatory Republic: The Unending
Transition to Democracy; and The Roots of Haitian Despotism. He is also coed-
itor with R. K. Ramazani of The Future of Liberal Democracy: Thomas Jeferson
and the Contemporary World and Religion, State, and Society.

Sibylle Fischer teaches in the department of Spanish and Portuguese,

the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Africana Studies at
New York University. She is the author of the award-winning Modernity Dis-
avowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution and the editor
of Cirilo Villaverde’s Cecilia Valdés or El Angel Hill. She is currently working on
a book on Simón Bolívar and the politics of race in the revolutionary Atlantic.

Eliz abeth McA lister is associate professor of religion at Wesleyan

University. She is the author of Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti
and Its Diaspora, an ethnography of musical, religious, and political festival
practiced by the poor black majority in Haiti. Her second book, Race, Nation,
and Religion in the Americas, coedited with Henry Goldschmidt, theorizes race
and religion as linked constructs. Her learning Web site on Rara festivals is
http://www.rara.wesleyan.edu.

Nick Ne sbitt’s work in Francophone studies focuses on the intellec-

tual history of the black Atlantic world. He is professor of French and Italian
at Princeton University and the author of Voicing Memory: History and Sub-
jectivity in French Caribbean Literature and Universal Emancipation: The Hait-
ian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment; editor of Toussaint Louverture:
The Haitian Revolution; and coeditor with Brian Hulse of Sounding the Vir-
tual: Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Music.
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Contributors 271

Millery Polyné is assistant professor at New York University’s Gal-

latin School of Individualized Study. He is the author of From Douglass to
Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti, and Pan Americanism, 1870–1964.
Polyné has published several articles in the leading journals of Caribbean
and African diaspora studies.

Ka r e n R ichma n, a cultural anthropologist, is the author of Migration

and Vodou and of numerous articles and book chapters on Haitian and Mex-
ican transnational migration, family, religion, and expressive culture. She won
the 2009 Heizer Award for the best article in ethnohistory for “Innocent
Imitations? Mimesis and Alterity in Haitian Vodou Art.” She is academic
director of the Institute for Latino Studies at University of Notre Dame, a
member of the anthropology and Romance languages and literatures depart-
ments, and a fellow of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the
university.

M a r k Schuller is assistant professor of anthropology and NGO Lead-

ership and Development at Northern Illinois University, and affiliate at the
Faculté d’Ethnologie, l’Université d’État d’Haïti. Schuller’s research on glob-
alization, NGOs, gender, and disasters in Haiti has been published in book
chapters and peer-reviewed articles as well as public media, including a col-
umn in Hufngton Post. He is the author of Killing with Kindness: Haiti, Inter-
national Aid, and NGOs and coeditor of four volumes, including Tectonic
Shifts: Haiti since the Earthquake. He is codirector/coproducer of the docu-
mentary Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy.

Patrick Sylvain is a poet, writer, and faculty member at Brown Uni-

versity’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies as well as a lecturer
in anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. A contributing
editor to the Boston Haitian Reporter, his work has been published in several
publications, including Agni, Callaloo, Caribbean Writers, Haiti Noir, Human
Architecture: A Sociology Journal, Poets for Haiti, Fixing Haiti and Beyond, The
Butterfy’s Way, Tectonic Shifts, The Best of Beacon Press, and The Oxford Book
of Caribbean Verse. Recently he has been featured in PBS’s NewsHour and in
NPR’s Here and Now and The Story.
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272 Contributors

Év elyne Trouillot is professor of French at the State University in

Haiti and cofounder and director of the firm Pré-texte. She also works as a
consultant for international agencies in writing pedagogical documents and
organizing training for school staff. Her latest novel, La mémoire aux abois,
presents a compelling view of dictatorship in Haiti. After the January 2010
earthquake, Trouillot and her siblings created Le centre culturel Anne-Marie
Morisset, a cultural center in Delmas, Port-au-Prince.

Tati a na Wa h directs the Haiti Policy Program at the Earth Institute,

Columbia University, and is the development policy adviser to the govern-
ment of Haiti. She has also served as a professor of urban policy and devel-
opment at Milano Graduate School, the New School for Management and
Urban Policy. Her publications include Haiti’s Development through Expatriate
Reconnection: Conditions and Challenges and In Search of Consensus after 200
Years: Haiti’s Social System Structure and Development Challenge.
13Index_Layout 1 16/04/2013 3:02 PM Page 273

Index

abolitionist ideology, U.S. fear of, Agonies of the Intellectual (Stoekl),

52–53 87–88
abstraction, politics of, 21 Ahmad, Attiya, 239n.29
accountability paradigm, NGO pro- Alexis, Jacques Stephen, 152, 204–5,
grams undermined by, 196–98 223
Acker, Kathy, 70 Alexis, Yveline, xxvi, 51–65
Act of Bogota, 157n.7 Alliance for Progress: establishment
AD2000 and Beyond Movement, 228 of, 142; Haiti and politics of, 135–
Adventist missions in Haiti, 114–15, 56; hidden agenda of, 151–53;
219–20 nationalisme à la carte of Duvalier
affliction, lwa and cult of, 121–23 regime and, 147–51; project criteria
Africa, Haitian professionals in, 139–41 for, 137–38; Wise Men committee
African Americans, images of Haiti for, 137, 140–41, 149–51
among, xiii, xxiii–xxiv. See also alterity, Haiti as embodiment of,
United States xviii–xix, xxvi
African-descended peoples: diaspora Amanpour, Christiane, 98, 104
in U.S. of, xxiii-xxiv; evangelical American Baptists, 219–20
demonization of religions of, 224– American studies, Haiti and, xxv
33; Haitian nationalism and link to, Amilcar, Faustin, 122–23
xii, 70, 208, 212–18; Haitian reli- Anderson, Benedict, 211
gious practices linked to, 118–20, animism, Christian evangelical view of,
205–7; international discourse 224–25
concerning, xv; United Nations anti-Semitism, Haitian Vodou linked
Stabilization Mission in Haiti and, to, 207
57–63; Vodou and influence of, 222. Ardouin, Beaubrun, 33–37
See also slavery Arendt, Hannah, 85n.17
Agamben, Giorgio, 69, 71–76, 190 Argentinian evangelicalism, 205, 227
agency, individual religious agency and Aristide, Jean-Bertrand: cholera
conversion, 115–18 outbreaks and, 104; election of,
13Index_Layout 1 16/04/2013 3:02 PM Page 274

274 Index

xxii; elimination of Haitian army by, Bellerive, Jean-Max, 135, 155

12; land tenure abuses and, 175, Berle, Adolph Augustus Jr., 142, 145
218; nongovernmental organizations Berlinski, Mischa, xiv
and, 195; presidency and exile of, bidonvilles, 175, 183–84
57–63, 77–78; return to power of, Bizonton Affair, 31–32
196, 216; U.S. and, xxx, 25n.9; Black Haiti (Niles), 70
Vodou incorporated by, 215–18, Black Jacobins ( James), 21–24
231–33 black self-determination, slave revolt
Arthus, Wien Weibert, xxviii, 135–56 and revolution linked to, 53, 70,
Asbury Theological Seminary, 222 118–20, 145, 204–18
Assembly of God churches, 123 blood imagery, in Bois Caïman story,
assistance à personne en danger, 151 213–18
Australia, earthquakes in, xviii blood pact theology. See Satanic pact
authoritarianism, Haitian political story
institutions and, 35–37 blueprint imagery, new Haiti discourse
Avril, Prosper, 77 and, xxi, xxix–xxx
Bois Caïman story: bicentennial
bad conversion phenomenon, 123–27 commemoration of, 215–18;
Baptist Theological Seminary (Haiti), captivity narratives and, 234–37;
220 early published accounts of, 209–10,
barbarism: Haitian slave revolt 212–13; evangelical narratives of,
depicted as, 52–53; stereotyping of 204–9, 211–12, 223–33; narrative
Haitian culture and, 30–33 politics of, 212–18, 239n.27
bare life (nuda vita): Agamben’s Bonaparte, Napoleon, 13–14, 17
fantasies of, 71–76; etymological Bonjour Blanc (Thomson), 78, 86n.21
roots of, 84n.12; Haitian IDP camps Bosch, Juan, 145
and, 190; photographic images of Bosnal, Stephen, 32
Haiti as, 69–83 Bossale slaves, 17
Baron Samedi, 215 Boston Review, xx
Barrett, Harold, 105 Bottfeld, Philippe, 139
Barthélémy, Gérard, 10, 24n.4 Boyer, Jean-Pierre, xxi, 15–16, 91
Batista, Fulgencio, 153 brain drain of Haitians, 139–41,
Batraville, Benoit, 62–63 153–54
Baum, Howell, 169 Brazil: Alliance for Progress failures
Bay of Pigs invasion, 152 in, 136; historical paradigms
Beauvoir, Vilfort, 139 concerning, xix
Beauvoir-Dominique, Rachel, 234, Brewer, Vernon, 220
239n.27, 239n.29 Brodwin, Paul, 41
Beck, Ulrich, 29 Brown, Karen, 121
Beckett, Greg, xiv, xxvi, 27–44, 52 Buck-Morss, Susan, 19–21
13Index_Layout 1 16/04/2013 3:02 PM Page 275

Index 275

Bufford, Rodger, 225 of, 30–33; Pan-Americanism and,

“building back better” paradigm: camp xxiii–xxiv; research paradigms con-
cities and failure of, 183–84; cholera cerning, xvii–xix
outbreak and, 181; post-earthquake Carlyle, Thomas, 31
reconstruction planning and, Cartier-Bresson, Henri, 77
168–70 Casarino, Cesare, 84n.12
Bureau D’Ethnologie, 114, 215 Casimir, Jean, 10, 24n.4
Burke, Edmund, 18 Castor, Suzy, 92
Castro, Fidel, 142, 152–53
cacos (guerrilla fighters), xxvii, 55–63 Catholic Church: continuum in Haiti
cadastre system, post-earthquake of, 118–20; Duvalier’s attack
recovery and lack of, 173–78 on, 142–43; earthquake effects
Cadre de Coopération Intémaire, 196 on, 120–24, 129–30; Haitian
Calhoun, Craig, 39–40 nation-state and, 127–30; lwa
camp cities: cholera outbreak and (spirit) and, 118–20; missionization
depopulation of, 190–91; forced in Haiti by, 112–15, 207; Protestant
evictions and creation of, 173, 175– rivalry in Haiti with, 219–20;
76; physical conditions in, 184–90; rapprochement with Vodou, 129–
post-earthquake statistics on, 167, 30, 212–21; superstition campaign
176, 181–82; research methodology of, 113
about, 183–84; semi-permanence of, Célestin, Jude, xxxi, 94–95
182–83; water facilities in, 187–88 centralization of power, administrative
Camp Organization and Camp weakness in Haitian government
Management Cluster, 173 and, 138–41
Campus Crusade for Christ, 219–20, Césaire, Aimé, 3, 18
231 chache levi, ontological insecurity and,
Canada: donations to Haiti from, 196; 42–44
Haitian professionals in, 139–41; chante-pwen (pointed songs), xvi–xvii
Haitian relations with, 155; images Charlmers, René, 141
of Haiti in, xiii Charte du Mandingue, 9–10
Capa, Robert, 85n.19 Chatelain, Joseph, 139
capitalism: history of Haiti and, xxvi; Chile: Alliance for Progress failures in,
post-earthquake reconstruction 136; earthquake of 2010 in, xvii–xx
and ideology of, 165–79; religious Cho, David Paul Yonggi, 220, 225–26
conversions linked to embrace of, cholera outbreaks, 104, 128; non-
115–18 governmental organization role in,
captivity narratives, colonialism and, 181–82, 191–94, 198–99; research
234–37 on, xxix; statistics on, 190–91
Caribbean: Haitian relations in, xxv, Christian Broadcast Network, 203
xxviii–xxix; historical emergence Christian Center of the North, 230
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276 Index

Christian evangelicalism: Bois Caïman Progress and, 142–45; hidden

story appropriated by, 204–9, agenda of aid donors and, 151–53;
217–18; countermythmaking by, international aid and, 136; non-
218–33; Duvalier’s support for, governmental organization changes
114–15; emergence in Haiti of, after demise of, 196–98
205–6; Haitian humanity and role Colombia, Alliance for Progress
of, xxvii–xxx; Haitian slave revolt failures in, 136
as threat to, 210–18; individual colonialism: captivity narratives of,
agency and conversion in Haiti and, 234–37; colonial and postcolonial
115–18; nongovernmental organi- construction history in Port-au-
zations and, 194–95; oath-taking in, Prince and, 170–71; discourse of
214; post-earthquake influence of, grotesque and, 71–76; Haitian slave
111–12, 120–27; radio broadcasts revolt as threat to, 211–18;non-
in Haiti as tool of, 225–27; religious governmental organizations and
fluidity in Haiti and, 127–30; legacy of, 177–78; planning for
rewriting of Haitian history by, 203– postrecovery Haiti and, 168–70;
37; studies of, xxv; transnational Protestantism in Haiti and, 219–20
dimensions of, 209–10, 220–21 Comay, Rebecca, 20, 26n.23
Christophe, Henri, 14–18 Comedians, The (Green), 70
Chronicle of Philanthropy, 181 Comité Interministériel d’Aménage-
Church Growth Movement, 218–19, ment du Territoire (CIAT), 174
221–33 communism: Alliance for Progress as
Church of God congregations, 125 weapon against, 142–45; hidden
Cité Soleil camp: cholera outbreak at, agenda of aid donors and, 151–53;
190–91, 198–99; establishment of, international aid and, 136
183–84; water distribution in, 188 Compère Général Soleil (Alexis), 152
class divisions: internally displaced Condorcet, Marquis de (Nicolas
persons as symbol of, 182; non- Caritat), 16
governmental organizations and, conformity costs, post-earthquake
195; structural vulnerability and, Haitian development and, 168–70
99–102 Congo, Haitians employed in, 139–40
clientilism, U.S. occupation of Haiti conseil electoral provisoire, 12
and, xxvii Conseil National de Developpment
Clinton, Bill, 135, 155–56, 172, 181, et de Planification (CONADEP),
192, 195–96 172–73
Clinton, Hillary Rodham, 192 Constant, Elvire, 189
CNN: Pierre-Louis interview on, 104; conversion: bad conversion, in post-
Préval’s appearance on, 98 earthquake period, 123–27;
Code rural (Boyer), 15–16 evangelical prioritization of, 221–33;
cold war ideology: Alliance for as protection from sorcery, 116–18
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Conway, Frederick, 115–18, 219 Declaration of the Rights of Man and

Cooper, Frederick, xvi Citizen, 7–8
Corley-Smith, Gerard, 144 Defeating Dark Angels (Draft), 224
Council of American States, 157n.7 DeGaulle, Charles, 5
Counseling and the Demonic De Gouges, Olympe, 7–8
(Bufford), 225 Déjoie, Louis, 138
counterplantation society, in Haiti, De l’Égalité des Races Humaines
24n.4 (Firmin), xii
Courlander, Harold, 114, 222 Delgrès, Louis, 8, 13
Créole Patriote, 11, 25n.7 Delorme, Demesvar, xii
crisis: as embodied experience, 40–44; democracy: Alliance for Progress and
in Haiti, reconstruction of, 27– promotion of, 142–45; Haitian
44; history of, 29–33; ideology of, history and, xxiii; Haitian political
28–29; intervention and, 37–40. disconnect from, 141–45; Haiti as
See also revolisyon (revolution)/kriz antithesis of, 5–12; international aid
(crisis) and promotion of, 136; nationalisme
Critique of Dialectical Reason (Sartre), à la carte of Duvalier regime and,
12–17 147–51; promotion in Haiti of, xii–
Croix-des-Bouquets commune, 172– xiii; Vodou incorporation in Haiti
73, 175, 191 into, 216–17
Cuba: Bay of Pigs invasion and, 152; Desmangles, Leslie, 129–30
exclusion from OAS of, 152, Dessalines, Jean-Jacques, 14, 17–18,
158n.25; historical paradigms 21–24, 34, 52–53, 146; historical
concerning, xix, xxiv; sovereignty of, legacy of, 64–65
xxvi–xxvii; United States and, 142 Development Loan Fund, 147, 150
cultural representations of Haiti, xiv–xv; development studies: administrative
developmental paradigms and, weaknesses of Haitian government
xvi–xvii; evangelical rewriting of, and, 138–41; Haitian underdevelop-
221–33; historical analysis and, ment historiography and, 4–12;
30–33; kriz as embodied experience Haiti in context of, xv; history of
in, 41–44; Vodou and, 214–18 Haiti in context of, xxi; new Haiti
paradigm and, xvi; planning for
Dalmas, Antoine, 212–13 postrecovery Haiti and, 167–70;
Danbala Wedo (spirit), 120–21 post-earthquake Haiti and, xxiv
Danticat, Edwidge, 92 deviance, Haiti and discourse of,
Dartiguenave, Philippe Sudre, 54 xx–xxi
Dash, Michael, 71 Diaz, Junot, xx
Dayan, Joan, 213 Diderot, Denis, 24n.3
debt burden in Haiti: Duvalier regime Digicel Corporation, 172–73
and, 144–45; ensauvagement in Direction General des Impots (DGI),
Duvalier regime and, 147–51 174–75
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Direction Nationale de l’Eau Potable et under, 219–20; United States

de l’Assainissement (DINEPA), relations with, 142–45
190–91, 194 Duvalier, Jean-Claude: earthquake of
Directorate des Planification and 2010 and, 104; genocide of Haitians
Affairs Externe (DPE), 171–73 and, 92; Gilden’s photographs
Dirks, Nicholas, 32–33 in regime of, 77–83; land tenure
Dirksen, Everett, 145 abuses of, 175; nongovernmental
Dirksen Amendment, 145, 150 organizations and, 194–95;
disaster capitalism: post-earthquake ontological insecurity in regime of,
reconstruction and ideology of, 42–44; recognition of Protestantism
165–79, 179n.1; tent cities and, by, 113; urban construction and, 171
182–83
Displacement Tracking Matrix, 186 earthquake in Haiti (2010): bad
disrespect, politics of, 102–3 conversions in wake of, 123–27;
Documenta exhibition, 84n.10 Bois Caïman story linked to, 204–8;
Dominican Republic: Alliance for brain drain from Haiti in wake of,
Progress failures in, 136; genocide of 153–54; comparison with other
Haitians by, 91–92; Haitian army earthquakes, xvii–xviii, 173; devel-
exiles in, 145; historical paradigms opmental paradigms in wake of, xvii,
concerning, xix, xxv; sovereignty of, xxxi–xxxiii, 167–70; earthquake
xxvi–xxvii; United States and, 142 in 1842 and, 91; environmental
Dominicans, images of Haiti among, xiii implications of, xx; geopolitics of
Dominique, Jean, 97 knowledge and, xv–xvi; impact on
Dorsainville, Roger, 116, 118, 139 political elections of, 104; interna-
Douglass, Frederick, xxiii tional aid mobilization following,
Dravekey, Dave, 231 135–56; Léogâne Plain devastation
Duany, Plater, and Zyberk, 172–73 in, 111–12; lwa (spirit) role during,
Dubois, Laurent, xiv 120–23; media images of Haiti
Du Bois, W. E. B., xxiii during, xi; new Haiti discourse in
Duplessis, Max C., 147–48 wake of, 243–67; NGO operations
Dupuy, Alex, xxx, 243–67 in wake of, 170, 173, 177–78, 194–
Duvalier, François, 115; African 95; Préval’s leadership failure during,
culture-national identity links 89–91, 94–108; religious flexibility
fostered by, 215; anticommunist in wake of, 128–30; statistics on
ideology of, 152–53; ensauvagement destruction from, 166–67; Vodou
in regime of, 146–51, 158n.12; and impact of, 111–12, 120–23
foreign experts hired by, 138–41, Economic Commission for Latin
144, 194; government centralization America (CEPAL), 140–41
under, 137–38; land tenure abuses Economist magazine, 198–99
of, 175; Protestant mission activities èd (aid): aid shortcomings and,
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183–84; Alliance for Progress case Episcopal Diocese of Haiti, 172–73

study and, 135–56; donors’ hidden esprits scientifiques, xii
agenda and, 151–53, 156; Haitian Essay Concerning Human Understand-
reconstruction challenges and, 153– ing (Locke), 85n.16
56; Haitian scholarship concerning, Estimé, Dumarsais, 92
xiii–xiv, xxx; international standards Etienne, Harley F., xxviii–xxix, 165–79,
disconnected from, 141–45; 195
nationalisme à la carte and, 146–51; Étienne, Sauveur Pierre, 194–95
politics of, xxv; religion and, xxix– Eurasian Minerals Inc., xxiv, xxxvn.41
xxx, 111–12; research on, xxix; Europe: Haitian discourse in, xii, xiv–
statistics on international donations xv, xix, 207; Haitian ties with, xvi,
to Haiti, 181 29–33, 33–37
Edelstein, Dan, 18, 21 Evangelical Association of the
Effort National, 144 Caribbean, 228
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 148–49, Evangelical Church of India, 220
151–52 Evans, Walker, 77
electoral politics in Haiti: instability exclusionary politics: disrespect in,
of, 154–55; nationalisme à la carte 102–3; silence and, 93–95
of Duvalier regime and, 147–51; executive silence: politics of incivility
politics of incivility and, 104–8 and, 103–8; violence in Haiti of,
elites in Haiti: French and German 87–108
ties of, 113; Haitian independence exiled Haitians, history of, xxii
and, xxi; silence of, 91. See also intel- extortion, Duvalier’s politics of, 143–45
lectuals of Haiti Eze, Emmanuel Chukwudi, 30–31
emancipation, universality of, 7–8
embodied experience, crisis as, 40–44 Fanon, Frantz, 21
emergency imaginary paradigm, Farmer, Paul, 101–2, 195, 94–95
interventionist policies and, 39–40 Farming of Bones (Danticat), 92–93
Encyclopédistes, 17 Fatton, Robert Jr., xxx, 100–101,
Engaging the Enemy (Wagner), 223 243–67
Enlightenment: Haiti and historiogra- fear of Haiti, ideology of, 52–53
phy of, xxvi, 29–33; slavery and Feitlowitz, Marguerite, 107–8
political theory of, 74–76; Spiritual Ferrer, Ada, xix
Mapping Movement and, 236–37 Fields, Karen, 117
ensauvagement of Duvalier regime, Filmer, Robert (Sir), 74
146–51 Firmin, Anténor, xii, 84n.3
ensekirite (insecurity), 41–42 fiscal identity number (NIF), 176
environmental disaster: earthquakes as, Fischer, Sibylle, xiv–xv, xxvii, 18; on
xx; Haitian life and, xiv, xviii, 128– Haitian revolution, 3, 18; on
30; social constructions of, xviii photographic images of Haiti, 69–83
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folkloric culture, Vodou linked to, gender issues in Haiti, xxix, 184
215–18 genocide of Haitians (1937), 91–92
food sovereignty, 12 geopolitics of knowledge: growth of
forced evictions, internally displaced NGOs and, 196–98; Haiti in context
persons as result of, 173, 175–76 of, xi–xii, xv–xvi
Forces Army of Haiti (FAD’H), 143 Georges, Jean-Baptiste, 139
foreign aid institutions: developmental Germany, ties to Haiti, 113
paradigms of Haiti and, xv–xvi; Giddens, Anthony, 42, 94
growth of NGOs and, 196–98 Gilden, Bruce, xiv–xv, 76–83, 85nn.18–
Fortson, Thomas, 220, 231 20
France: amnesia about Haiti in, xiii, xvii, Gilot, Rony, 146
xxxin.2; destruction of Haiti by, Global North paradigm: Haitian
4–12; Duvalier’s relations with, 144– diaspora and, xx–xxi; images of
45, 148; Haitian independence and, Haiti and, 8
3–17, 53, 213–14; Haitian repara- Global Renewable Energy, xxiv
tions paid to, 53; Haitian ties with, Global South paradigm, peasants and
112–13; international aid ideology marginalized groups and, xvii
in, 151; Nazi collaborators in, 87– Gobineau, Joseph Arthur (Comte de),
88; royalist governments in, 15; U.S. xii, 30–32, 84n.3
occupation of Haiti and, 37–40 Goldstein, Alyssa, xxxin.2
freedom, terror and, Hegel’s discussion goudou-goudou (seismic shock), 124,
of, 19–21 130
French historical studies, racist government structures in Haiti:
assumptions about Haiti in, xi–xii administrative weaknesses in, 137–
French Revolution: Haitian slave revolt 41, 153–54; current planning
and, 7–8, 11–12, 18–21; Hegel’s framework in, 171–73; inequality
analysis of, 19–21 of institutions and, xxviii; lack of
Froude, James Anthony, 31 NGO coordination with, 181–99;
Fuller Theological Seminary, 222, 224 leadership failures and, 89–91, 94–
Fundamental Constitutions for the 108; legitimation of Vodou and, 113,
Government of Carolina (Locke), 74 127–30, 215–16; NGO disregard
Furet, F., 18 of, 195–98; post-earthquake Haitian
development and, 168–70;
gangan/gangan ason (ritual leader), post-earthquake reconstruction
117–18, 122, 127; Catholics and, and, 165–79. See also nation-state
119, 129 integrality
Gastine, Civique de, 213–18 Graham, Billy (Rev.), 220
Geffrard, Fabre-Nicolas, 113, 171 Graham, Franklin, 204, 220, 231
Geggus, David P., xxi, 213 Grands Travaux de Marseille, 144–45
Gelin, Jean R., 234 grassroots organizations: in camp
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cities, 183–84; donor sources for, 231–33; Catholic Church and,

196–98 113; developmental discourse con-
Green, Graham, 70 cerning, xxi–xxii; European
Gross, Jean-Pierre, 16–17 dismissal of, 30–33; eyewitness
grotesque, Haiti and discourse of, accounts of, 83n.2; historical legacy
71–76 of, 63–65; national identity linked
Guadeloupe, 8 to, 210–18; Péralte’s defense of,
Guatemala, sovereignty of, xxvi–xxvii 51–53, 57–63; politicization of, 33–
Guinée, 139–40 37; Vodou practices during, xxx;
Western European paradigms
Habermas, Jürgen, 40–41 concerning, 4–12. See also second
Habitat for Humanity, 172 Haitian revolution (1946)
Haiti: comparisons of Chile with, Haiti Liberte, 25n.9
xvii–xx; dystopian images of, xx; Haiti: Political Failures, Cultural
failure of Alliance for Progress in, Successes (Weinstein and Segal),
136–56; history of crisis in, 29–33; 224
reconstruction commitments, Haiti Support Group, 79
challenges for, 153–56; resistance Hardt, Michael, 182
narratives in, silencing of, 52–53; Harrison, Lawrence, 33
Sartre’s discussion of, 12–17; U.S. Haussman, G. E., 169
occupation of, xxiii–xxiv, xxvi–xxvii, Hayti, or The Black Republic (St. John),
37–40, 51–52, 53–55, 215–20 70
Haiti (Gilden), 76–83 health assistance: in camp cities, 185–
Haiti: After the Earthquake (Farmer), 90; research on impact of, xxix
94–95 Heart of God Ministries, 234–35
Haitian-American Advisory Board for Hegel, G. F. W., 19–21, 44n.11
the Economic Development of Heifitz, A. Ronald, 88, 106–7
Haiti, xxiii Heinl, Robert and Nancy, 140
Haitian army: Aristide’s elimination of, Hertzfield, Michael, 214
12; Duvalier’s purge of, 138, 143; Hippocrates, 28
U.S. Marine training program for, history of Haiti: crisis in, 33–37;
149–50 cultural stereotyping in, 30–33;
Haitian diaspora, scholarship evangelical rewriting of, 203–37,
concerning, xx–xxi 218–33; gaps in, xi–xii; national
Haiti and United States (Dash), 71 identity linked to, 210–18; new Haiti
Haitian historiography, crisis in, 33–37 discourse and, xxi–xxii; structural
Haitian Protestant Federation, 220 vulnerability linked to, 99–102;
Haitian Republic, founding of, 3 vocalization of agency through, 93
Haitian revolution, xiii; bicentennial HIV/AIDS prevention, NGO pro-
commemoration of, 215–18, grams for, 196–98
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Hollywood images of Haiti, 70 Inter-American Development Bank,

homo sacer, Agamben’s concept of, 140–41, 151
71–76 Inter-American Organization, 149
housing rights, recognition of, 184 Interim Commission for the
Humanitarian Accountability Partner- Reconstruction of Haiti (IHRC),
ship and Sphere, 197–98 135, 155–56, 172–73, 177–78, 181
humanitarian interventionism: camp internally displaced persons (IDPs):
cities and shortcomings of, 183–84; cholera outbreak among, 191–94;
donors’ hidden agenda and, 151–53, Christian evangelicalism among,
156; lack of international aid for, 206; forced evictions of, 173, 175–
150–51; necessity in Haiti for, 4–12 76; post-earthquake statistics
human rights violations in Haiti: on, 167, 176, 181–82; research
Duvalier regime and, 143–51; methodology about, 183–84;
international commitments affected semi-permanence of, 181–83
by, 154–55 International Development
Hurbon, Laënnec, 71 Association, 151
Hurricane Katrina, natural disaster international discourse on Haiti:
research and, xxxivn.24 developmental change and, xv;
Hurricane Tomas, 128 Haitian political institutions and,
Hyppolite, Florvil, 171 35–37; visual narratives and, 70–83
International Donor’s Conference
imagined community, Haiti as, 211 towards a New Future for Haiti,
imperialism, planning for postrecovery 135, 137
Haiti and, 168–70 international financial institutions,
incivility, politics of, 103–8 neoliberal policies in Haiti and,
inequality: Haitian governance and, 194–95
xxviii; Haitian slave revolt and, 30–33 International Organization on Migra-
Inequality of Human Races, The (De tion, 176, 181
Gobineau), 30–33 International Republican Institution,
Initiative Group for the Commemora- xxxi
tion of 207 Years of Bois Caïman, 230 international standards: Haitian
intellectuals of Haiti: Bois Caïman political disconnect with, 141–
story and, 214–18; brain drain of, 45; sanitation in camp cities and,
139–41, 153–54; Dominican 185–90
massacre of Haitians described by, Internet, Haitian Satanic pact myth on,
92–93; Haitian crises and, 33–37; 234–37
narrative of, xi–xii; nationalism as interventionism: Haitian crisis and,
inspiration for, 70, 208; slave revolt 37–40; post-earthquake Haitian
as inspiration for, 206, 208 reconstruction and, 169–70; U.S.
Inter-American Conference, 92 hegemony and, xxvi–xxvii, 47n.39
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Islam, Bois Caïman story and influence justice in, 24; kriz (crises)
of, 239n.29 etymology in, 41; orthography
of, 219; religious conversions in
Jacobinism, Haitian slave revolt and, Haiti and, 116, 128–30; research
16–21, 25n.7, 26n.23 methodology using, 65n.9
James, C. L. R., 16–17, 21–24 kriz, as embodied experience, 41–44
James, Erica, 41–42
Janvier, Louis-Joseph, xii, 35 Labadie Corporation, xxiv
Japan: aid to Haiti from, 135; La barbare imaginaire (Hurbon), 71
earthquakes in, xviii labor movement in Haiti, emergence
Jean, Carlos, 98–99 of, xxii
Jean-Baptiste, Chavannes, 12 La Gonâve Development Authority
Jefferson, Thomas, 52–53 (LGDA) project, xxiv
Jenson, Deborah, 15, 18 Lahens, Yanick, 103–4
Jericho March, 227–28 lakou (social nerve center), xi
Jeudy, Wilson, 176 lamizè (poverty), 128
Jeune, Chavannes, 220, 231–33 land tenure system: Aristide’s reform
Jeune, Joel, 220, 225–29 efforts for, 175, 218; post-
John Paul II (Pope), 115 earthquake recovery and, 173–78;
Johnson, Lyndon, 136 violence involving, 178
Johnston, Patrick, 217–18 Lane, Clinton, 217, 222, 230
Joseph, Gregory, 230 language: politics of incivility and,
107–8; violent use of, 87–88
Kahn, Carrie, 98–99 Lansing, Robert, 38–39
Kathy Goes to Haiti (Acker), 70 La Phalange (Catholic newspaper),
Katolik fran (straight Catholic), 113, 143
118–19 Largey, Michael, 214
Kaussen, Valerie, 182 La Ste. Rose (rara band), 122
Kennedy, John F.: Alliance for Progress Latin America: Alliance for Progress
and, xxviii, 135–37, 140–45; hidden and, 135–36, 142; Haitian relations
agenda in aid programs of, 151–53; in, xxv, xxviii–xxix; images of Haiti
nationalisme à la carte and, 146–51 in, xvii; Pan-Americanism and,
Klein & Sacks, 139 xxiii–xxiv; peasants and marginal-
koumbit/koumbitaj system: leadership ized groups in, xvii; Protestant
challenges and, 96; politics of dis- missionization in, 114; threat of
respect and, 103; politics of incivility communism in, 151–53
and, 106–8; structural vulnerability leadership: challenges in Haiti for, 95–
and, 100–102 99; politics of incivility and absence
Kraft, Charles, 222, 224–26, 228 of, 104–8
Kreyòl language and culture: infinite Le Bris, Michel, 105
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Le Corbusier (Charles-Eduard Madiou, Thomas, 33–37

Jeanneret), 169 madness, bad conversions linked to,
Lehman Brothers, 139 125–27
Lenin, Nikolai, 17 Magloire, Paul Eugène, 92, 138
Léogâne Plain (Haiti): Catholic Magnum Web Gallery, 80–82
rapprochement efforts in, 129–30; Makandal, 10
earthquake devastation of, 111–12; Malawi, Watchtower sect in, 116–17
post-earthquake reconstruction in, Mama Lola (religious leader), 121–23
172–73; Protestant conversions in, manbo ason (priestess), 119
124–27; religious ethnographic Manigat, Leslie, 139
study of, 115–18; religious fluidity manufacturing industries, privileging
in, 127–30; as Vodou epicenter, 112 of, in development studies, xxv, 12
Le Protestantisme dans la Société Marche en Fer (Iron Market) project,
Haïtienne, 220 171–73
Les amis des noirs, 16 March for Jesus, 228
Léscot, Élie, 92, 113 Mars, Louis, 139
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 120–21 Marshall Plan, 136
Lexicon of Terror, A (Feitlowitz),107–8 Martelly, Michel J., xxxi, 100, 155–56,
liberation theology in Haiti, 57 174, 178, 182, 234
Liberté générale, 8 Marxism, Haitian antislavery rebellion
Linsky, Marty, 88, 106–7 and, 13–17
local governance in Haiti: absence of Mathurin, Alliette and Ernst, 194–95
NGO links to, 197–98; camp cities McAlister, Elizabeth, xxx, 129–30, 194,
and links to, 183–84; studies of, xxv 203–37
Locke, John, justification of slavery by, McGavran, Donald A., 221
73–76, 85n.16 Médecins Sans Frontières, 192–93
Louis, André Jeantil, 224–25 media images of Haiti: during 2010
Louverture, Toussaint, 8, 13–15, 17, earthquake, xi, xvii–xviii, xxxiin.3; in
20–24; historical legacy of, 60 American and European media,
L’Union Nationale des Étudiants xiii–xiv; Chilean earthquake cover-
Haïtiens (UNEH), 143 age compared with, xix–xx; Chris-
lwa (spirit), 41; bad conversions and, tian evangelism’s use of, 203–5, 226–
123–27; Catholics serving as, 118– 27, 231–33; Haitian slave revolt and,
20; earthquake and role of, 120–23; 52–53
musical worship of, 129; powers of, memory, geopolitics and systems of, xvi
121–23; rituals surrounding, 209 men anpil chay pa lou (when the hands
Lwijis, Janil, 195 are many, the burden is light) adage,
xi
macoutisation of public administration, Merten, Kenneth, 155
138–41, 157n.9 Métraux, Alfred, 116, 118, 222, 225
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Mexico City, earthquake in, 173 Mudimbe, V. Y., xvi

Mignolo, Walter D., xi mulattoes: in Haitian history, 33–
Migration and Vodou (Richman), 37; political hierarchy and position
125–26 of, 138
migration of Haitians, studies of, xxv– multinational corporations: Duvalier
xxvi and, 138–41, 144; post-earthquake
military coups in Haiti: in Duvalier Haiti and, xxiv
regime, 145; Préval regime and, 97– Murray, Gerald, 121–23
98; U.S. coup against Aristide, 25n.9 Mutual Security Act (United States),
Ministry of Culture and Religious 145
Affairs, 231 mythmaking, social formation and,
Ministry of Planning and Foreign 209–10
Cooperation, 194–95, 198
Ministry of Public Works, Transport, NAACP, Haitian development and, xxiii
and Telecommunications Naipaul, V. S., 18
(MTPTC), 172–73 Namphy, Henri, 77, 195
Miot, Joseph Serge (Archbishop), 129 narratives of Haiti: eyewitness
modernity, Haiti as antithesis of, 6–12 accounts of the Haitian revolution,
Mole St. Nicolas peninsula, 152 83n.2; history as vocalization of,
momentum transfer, post-earthquake 93; resistance narratives, suppres-
recovery and, 179 sion of, 52–55; visual narratives of,
Montesquieu (Charles-Louis 70–83
Secondat), 147 national governance in Haiti, xxv;
Morton, Alice, 198 inequality of institutions and, xxviii
moun anba (bottom dwellers), 96 nationalisme à la carte, 137, 146–51
moun andeyò (marginalized Haitians), nationalism in Haiti: African-based
xiv, 10; history of, 181; leadership culture valorized by, 215–18; Bois
challenges and, 95–96; politics of Caïman story linked to, 212–18;
incivility and, 103–8 Christian evangelical appropriation
moun anwo (upper crust), 96 of, 207–10, 235–37; historical roots
moun (person, humanity)/demouniza- of, 146, 204–9; international aid
tion (dehumanization): Agamben’s failures and role of, 137–41; in post-
bare life and, 72–76; Haitian revolution era, 53
scholarship concerning, xiii–xv; National Palace, construction of, 171
leadership challenges and, 95–97; nation-state integrality: current
photographic representations of planning framework and, 171–
Haiti and, xxvii 73; international aid failures and,
moun lavil (urban folk), 96 137–41; religious continuities
moun lespri (educated folk), 96 and discontinuities and, 127–30;
moun sòt (uneducated folk), 96 structural vulnerability and, 99–102
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nature, Vodou spirits compared with, xxix; statistics on contributions to,

120–21 181; water distribution by, 187–88
Negri, Antonio, 182 Normandin, Henry Paul, 155
neoevangelicalism: Bois Caïman story North American hegemony, Haitian
and, 213–18, 236–37; influence in history in context of, xix
Haiti of, 205–6, 231–33; Satanic
pact and, 234–37 oath imagery, in Bois Caïman story,
neoliberal capitalism, Haitian life and, 213–18
xiv “Odd and the Ordinary, The”
Nesbitt, Nick, xxvi, 3–24, 52 (Trouillot), 71
Newbegin, Robert, 145 Office Nationale du Cadastre
Newell, William, 32 (ONACA), 174–78
new Haiti discourse: American racial Ogé, Vincent, 7–8
differences and, xxxvn.38; current Ogoun (spirit), 120–22, 126–27
development paradigms and, xvi–xvii, On Afections (Hippocrates), 28
243–67; post-earthquake paradigms ontological insecurity, Haitian crisis
in, 243–67; post-earthquake and, 42–44
reconstruction and, xviii, xxii–xxiii; Operation Pan America, 157n.7
unification of Haitian north and Operation World ( Johnston), 217
south and, xxi–xxii Organization of American States, xxxi,
Nicolas, Philius, 234 104, 140, 152, 174
Niles, Blaire, 70 Oriental Missionary Society, 219
noirisme, xxii Otis, George Jr., 223, 228
nongovernmental organizations ounsi (initiated servitor), 120
(NGOs): camp cities run by,
183–84; changes and evolution of, Packard, Randall, xvi
195–98; cholera outbreak linked to, Pakistan, earthquake in, xviii
181–82, 191–94, 199; Christian Pan-Africanism, 215
NGOs, earthquake assistance from, Pan-Americanism, xxiii–xxiv
111–12; donor relationships with, pardos, ideology of, xvii
151–53, 156, 196–98; global growth Parti d’Entente Populaire (Party of
of, 196–98; health services from, Popular Agreement), 152
189–90; history in Haiti of, xv, 5, Partners in Health, 192–94
194–95; housing allowances for, Pastor Yvette, 206, 209, 237
199n.5; internally displaced persons Patriarcha (Filmer), 74
and, 176; intervention in Haiti by, Paul, Berthony, 230
39–40; post-earthquake operations Paulhan, Jean, 91
of, 153–54, 170, 173, 177–78, 194– Péan, Leslie, 146
95; reporting requirements for, 197– Peck, Raoul, 104
98; social health risks amplified by, Pentecostal groups, 234–37;
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missionization in Haiti by, 114–15, Popkin, Jeremy D., 83n.2

219–20 Port-au-Prince, Haiti: colonial and
“people movement” ideology, postcolonial construction history
evangelical conversion and, 221 in, 170–71; post-earthquake
Péralte, Charlemagne, xxvi, 38, 51– reconstruction in, 172–73
53; capture and killing of, 55–57; possession performance, 122–23
historical legacy of, 57–65; U.S. post-earthquake reconstruction:
occupation of Haiti and, 53–55 capitalist ideology and, 165–79;
Pétion, Alexandre, 211 government instability and, xvii–xviii,
peyizan (peasant) majority: devel- 168–70; interventionist ideology
opmental paradigms and, xvi–xvii; and, 168–70; nongovernmental
Haitian historiography concerning, organization surge and competitive-
34–37; leadership challenges and, ness and, 177–78; persistence of
95–96; ontological insecurity for, camp cities and shortcomings of,
42–44 181–84; urban planning and, 165–79
Phenomenology (Hegel), 19–21 power, Christian evangelical power
Philoctète, René, 92 encounter and, 224–25
photographic images of Haiti, xxvii, prayer warriors, xxx, 225–26, 228–30
69–83 Préval, René, xxiv–xxvii; electoral fraud
Piarroux, Renaud, 191 in regime of, 154–55; leadership fail-
Pierre-Louis, Michèle, 97, 104 ure during earthquake of, 89–91,
planning for postrecovery Haiti: 93–99, 188; military coup in regime
current framework for, 171–73; of, 97–98; politics of disrespect and,
definitions of, 167–70, 179n.1 103; politics of incivility and, 104–8;
Point Four program, xxiii speeches and rhetoric of, 87–108
political parties: emergence in Haiti of, Price-Mars, Jean, 92–93, 138–39
xxii; Haitian elections and, xxxi private property, Duvalier’s confiscation
politics: of disrespect, 102–3; in of, 143–45
Gilden’s photography, 81–83; Promise Keepers, 220, 228, 231
Haitian logic of emergency and, 38– property rights: Duvalier’s property
40; Haitian revolution and, 33–37; confiscation and, 143–45; forced
history of subjectivation in Haiti evictions and, 175–76; post-
and, 6–12; of incivility, 103–8; earthquake recovery and, 173–78
international aid failures and role of, Protestant Church: anti-Catholic
137–41; international standards and ideology of, 220–21; bad conversion
disconnect with, 141–45; language phenomenon and, 123–27; Catholic
of, 87–88; leadership challenges and, aggression against, 129; Haitian
95–96; post-earthquake Haitian nation-state and, 113, 127–30;
reconstruction and, 168–70; religion history in Haiti of, xxx, 219–33;
in Haiti linked to, 212–18 individual agency and conversion in
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Haiti to, 115–18; lwa (spirit) and, representation: structural vulnerability

118–20; missionization in Haiti and, 99–102; of Vodou spirits,
by, 112–15, 219; nongovernmental 121–23
organizations of, 194–95; post- resistance narratives of Haiti: resistance
earthquake influence of, 120–23 to U.S. occupation of Haiti, 53–55;
public policy, religious continuities and silencing of slave revolt narrative,
discontinuities and, 127–30 52–53
revolisyon (revolution)/kriz (crisis),
Rabe, Stephen G., 136 27–44; Haitian scholarship concern-
racial science, history of Haiti and, xxvi ing, xiii–xiv; historical/theoretical
racism: administrative weakness of framework for, xxvi; ideology of,
Haitian government and, 138–41; 28–29
Christian evangelicalism and, 208; revolutionary studies of Haiti, xxv
Haitian historiography and, 33–37; Rey, Terry, 212
Haitian slave revolt in context of, rhetoric, leadership and role of, 95–99
30–33 Rice, Fred, xxiv
rada (sacred songs), 129 Richman, Karen, xxvii–xxviii, 43, 111–
radical culture in Haiti, history of, xxii 30, 194
Radio 4VEH, 219 Rigaud, Milo, 225
railway construction in Haiti, 171 risk, crisis and, 28–29
Ramsey, Kate, 211 road construction in Haiti, 171
rara (Lenten organizations), 122 Roberts, Oral, 114
Rawls, John, 102–3 Robertson, Pat, 129–30, 203–4, 207
Raynal, Guillaume Thomas, 24n.3 Robespierre, Maximilien, 20, 23–24
reconstruction efforts. See post- Romain, Charles-Poisset, 114–15,
earthquake reconstruction 220, 234
Redmond, Christine, 77 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 139, 142
religion in Haiti: bad conversion Roosevelt, John, 139
phenomenon and, 123–27; crisis Rothberg, Robert, 96–97, 139–40
and, 41–44; cultural role of, xxv, Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 17, 21
xxvii–xxx; earthquake effects on, Royal Caribbean, xxiv
111–12; fluidity of, 127–30; history rural Haiti: absence in Haitian history
of, 112–15; individual agency and of, xi–xiii; studies of, xxv. See also
conversion and, 115–18; politics peyizan (peasant) majority
linked to, 212–18; post-earthquake Rusk, Dean, 141, 145
changes in, 120–23; racialization of, Rwanda, 196
by Christian evangelicalism, 208,
211–18; ritual continuities and Saint Domingue colony: Bois Caïman
discontinuities in, 127–30. See also ceremony at, 204–5, 209–10;
specific religions, e.g., Protestant Catholic missionization in, 112–15;
Church; Vodou construction history in, 170–71;
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establishment of, xix; slave revolt in, discourse of grotesque and, 71–76;
8–19 European development fueled by,
Salgado, Sebastião, 79, 83 29–33; Haitian nationalism tied
Salomon, Lysius, 171 to abolition of, 146–51, 210–18;
Sam, Jean Vilbrun Guillaume, 38–39, Haitian revolution and abolition of,
57, 171 3, 6–12, 19–21, 52–53, 205; Islamic
Samaritan’s Purse, 220, 231 ties in, 239n.29; Locke’s justification
sanitation, in camp cities, 185–90 of, 73–76, 85n.16; Marxism and,
Sarganum, Ezra, 220 16–17; post-revolution growth of,
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 12–17 13–14; in United States, 4–5
Satanic pact story, Christian evangelical Small, Melvin, 151
mythology concerning, 205–37 Smith, Jennie M., xvi
Save the Children, 189–90 Smith, Matthew, xxii
Schlesinger, Arthur Jr., 136 Smith, Nolle, 139
Schmitt, Carl, 37 Smith, Tony, 136
Schuller, Mark, xxix, 181–99 social engagement, politics of
Schwartz, Ted, 198 disrespect as barrier to, 102–3
Seale, Gerry, 228 socialism, Sartre’s discussion of, 14–17
second Haitian revolution (1946), xxii social services, research on Haitian
Second Treatise on Government (Locke), provision of, xxv, xxviii–xxix
73–76 Somalia, 196
security paradigm, interventionist sorcery: Haitian fear of, 116–17, 125–
policies and, 39–40 26; history as, 207
Sékou Touré, 139–40 sovereignty: Agamben’s bare life
“sent sickness,” 43 and, 71–76; in Caribbean, U.S.
serment des ancêtres, 146 dominance and, xxvi–xxvii; Chris-
700 Club, The (television program), 203 tian evangelism as threat to, 230;
sèvis lwa (services or ceremonies), 118– European religious power in Haiti
20, 127–29 and, 113; in Haiti, restoration of,
sezisman (shock), 41 xxii; Haitian politics and, xxxi;
Sheller, Mimi, 96 Haitian slave revolt and, 10–12;
Shelter Cluster, 173 nationalisme à la carte of Duvalier
silence: exclusionary politics and, regime and, 146–51
93–95; leadership challenges and, Soviet Union, Sartre’s discussion of,
95–99; violence of, 89–90 12–17
Silencing the Past: Power and the Spain, aid to Haiti from, 135
Production of History (Trouillot), Sphere Minimum Standards, sanitation
52–53 in camp cities and, 185–90
slavery: Christian evangelical counter- Spirits and the Law, The (Ramsey), 211
mythology concerning, 228–33; spirituality, aid to Haiti and, xxx
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Spiritual Mapping Movement, xxx, transaction costs, post-earthquake

204–8, 214, 217–19, 222–33, 236– Haitian development and, 168–70
37, 238n.3 Treatise on Government (Locke),
Stalin, Josef, 12–17 74–76
St. John, Spencer, 31, 70 trias politica principle (separation of
Stoekl, Allan, 87–88, 91, 97 powers), 138–41
structural vulnerability of Haiti: Trinidad, sovereignty of, xxvi–xxvii
internal conflicts and, 99–102; Tripartite Commission for Economic
violence of executive silence and, Planning (Alliance for Progress),
89–108 140–41
Summers & Hamilton, 139 Trotsky, Leon, 13–17
superstition campaign in Haiti, Trouillot, Èvelyne, xxx, 243–67
Catholic instigation of, 113–14, Trouillot, Henock, 139
129–30 Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, xiii, xix, 8; on
Sylvain, Patrick, xxvii, 87–108 Haitian revolution, 10–12, 30–33,
symbolic feeding of lwa, 119–20 210; on historical narrative, 93, 208;
on images of Haiti, 70–71; resistance
Taffet, Jeffrey, 136 narratives in Haiti and, 52–53; on
Task Force on Immediate Latin structural vulnerability in Haiti, 100
American Problems, 142 Trujillo, Rafael, 92, 142
Taussig, Michael, 207 Truman, Harry, xxiii
Taylor, David, 223–24 T-shelters, 182
terror: Haitian slave revolt and, 16–19; Tulley, Harlan, 139
Hegel’s discussion of, 19–21
Terror of Natural Right (Edelstein), 18 Ulysse, Gina, xxix
Third Wave evangelical movement, Ulysse, Olga, 188
205–6, 208, 210, 224, 238n.3 UNICEF, health services in camp cities
Thomson, Ian, 77–78, 86n.21 from, 188–89
Ti Chini, 125–26 United Kingdom: Duvalier’s relations
Ti Legliz movement, 57 with, 144–45; Haiti and, 16
Ti Rivyè (Little River), Haitian United Nations: cholera outbreak
community: bad conversion linked to troops from, 191–94;
phenomenon in, 123–27; religious Haitian aid from, 5, 196–98; Haitian
practices in, 112, 117–18; Vodou in, professionals employed by, 139–40;
118–23 intervention in Haiti, 39–40
Tontons Macoutes, 143–45, 157n.9, United Nations Cluster System, 173,
175 177–78, 186–87; cholera outbreak
tourism in Haiti: history of, xxii, xxiv; and, 192–94
privileging of, in development United Nations Stabilization Mission
studies, xxv in Haiti (MINUSTAH), 51–52,
Tragédie du roi Christophe, 18 57–65
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United States: Alliance for Progress cholera outbreak and, 194–95;

and, 135–36, 140–41; Caribbean funding of NGOs by, 196–98
sovereignty and hegemony of, xxvi–
xxvii; Christian evangelicalism in Vatican: Haitian concordat with, 113;
Haiti from, 209–10, 219–20, 224– images of Haiti in, xvii. See also
33; coup against Aristide and, 25n.9; Catholic Church
destruction of Haiti by, 4–12; vèvè (cornmeal drawings), 216–17
Duvalier’s relations with, 139–45; Vincent, Sténio, 62, 91–92
ensauvagement in Duvalier regime violence: in Haiti, 89–91; land security
and, 146–51; geopolitics in, 196– and, 178; politics of incivility and,
98; Haitian professionals in, 139– 103–8; of silence, 89–108
41; Haitian relations with, xxv–xxvii, Vodou: Aristide’s incorporation of,
3–12, 16–17, 47n.39; images of 175, 215–18, 231–33; backwardness
Haiti in, xiii, xvii, xxxiin.3; military associated with, 115–18; Bizonton
withdrawal from Haiti by, xxii; Affair and, 31–32; Catholic
occupation of Haiti by, xxiii–xxiv, rapprochement with, 129–30,
xxvi–xxvii, 37–40, 51–52, 53–55, 212–21; Christian evangelical
171, 219–20; political instability in countermythology concerning,
Haiti and role of, 154–55; post- 205–7, 221–33; definition of, 118;
earthquake Haitian development denigration and suppression of, 71;
and, xxiv, 168–70; post-revolutionary Duvalier’s support of, 114; earth-
surveillance of, 53; slavery in, 4–5 quake’s impact on, 111–12, 120–23;
United States Institute of Peace, 154 elite ambivalence concerning, 214;
Unity party (Haiti), xxxi government legitimation of, 113,
Universal Declaration of Human 127–30, 215–16; Haitian humanity
Rights, 184 and role of, xxvii–xxx; Haitian
universal emancipation, Haitian revolt national identity linked to, 215–18;
and, 7–10 kriz as embodied experience in, 41–
University of Haiti, 140 44; Léogâne Plain as epicenter of,
urban planning: colonial and post- 112; mythical imagery in, 232–33;
colonial construction history in Newell’s defense of, 32–33; studies
Port-au-Prince and, 170–71; current of, xxv; superstition campaign
framework for, 171–73; Haitian life against, 113–14
and, xiv, xxv, xxviii–xxix; land tenure Volk, Steven, xix
system and, 173–78; post-earthquake
reconstruction and, 165–79; recov- Wagner, C. Peter, 203, 222–23, 225–26,
ery planning challenges in, 173–78; 228, 238n.3
regional planning and, 178–79 Wah, Tatiana, xxx, 243–67
U.S. Agency for International Develop- wanga (magical power), Protestantism
ment (USAID), 146–47, 150; viewed as, 116–18
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Warfare Prayer (Wagner), 223 witchcraft. See sorcery

water, in camp cities, 187–88 women: Haitian independence and,
Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene 7–8; as voices of Haiti, xxix
(WASH) Cluster, 186–88; cholera Working Group on Land Rights, 173
outbreaks and, 190–94, 198–99 World Bank, 151, 170, 172–73, 196
weather conditions, camp cities and World Help, 220, 231
effects of, 184–90 World Vision International, 219–20,
Weingarten, Kaethe, 90 231
Weisbrot, Mark, 155 Worldwide Evangelization for Christ,
Western militarism, Haitian life and, xiv 217
White, Joe, 231–32
White, Walter, xxiii–xxiv Yoiddo Full Gospel Church, 220,
Wilentz, Amy, 95 225–26
Williams, J. L., 231–33 Youth With a Mission, 219–20
Williams, Lea, 106