Haiti: The saturnalia of emancipation and the vicissitudes of predatory rule

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 27, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 115-133

  Fatton Jr , Robert ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DEMOCRACY; POLITICS;

ATLANTIC ISLANDS; ATLANTIC OCEAN; CARIBBEAN ISLANDS; GREATER ANTILLES; HAITI;

SATURNALIA;

EID: 31344467802     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01436590500369378     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Haiti, State against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990, p 38.
2. Ibid, pp 80-82.
3. Robert Fatton Jr, 'The Haitian authoritarian habitus and the contradictory legacy of 1804', Journal of Haitian Studies, 10(1), 2004, pp 22-43. I derive the concept of habitus from Pierre Bourdieu. Habitus should not be confused with habit or 'political culture'. Habitus is a dialectical phenomenon that simultaneously structures, and is structured by historical realities; it is a 'structured structure'. It engenders habit-forming practices and thoughts that correspond to the strategic possibilities opened to individuals and classes in a given historical moment. The habitus frames the field of the socially possible by generating historically determined expectations about 'life-chances'; thus it erects culturally fabricated limitations to human action and shapes political predispositions. Far from being an innate aptitude, the habitus is rooted in society's material matrix.
4. See Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977, p 95.
5. Francis Fukuyama, State-Building, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004, p ix.
6. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971, p 52.
7. Joseph Femia, Gramsci's Political Thought, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987, p 25.
8. James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, p 335.
9. Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks, p 161.
10. Arthur Stinchombe, Sugar Island Slavery in the Age of Enlightenment, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995, p 239.
11. Ibid.
12. See also Mimi Sheller, Democracy After Slavery, Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2000, pp 80-86;
13. and Michael Dash, Haiti and the United States: National Stereotypes in the Literary Imagination, New York: St Martin's Press, 1997.
14. As Michel-Rolph Trouillot, 'From planters' journals to academia: The Haitian revolution as unthinkable history', Journal of Caribbean History, 25(1/2), 1991, p 92, has emphasized: The international recognition of Haitian independence was even more difficult to gain than military victory over the forces of Napoleon. It took more time and more resources, more than a half century of diplomatic struggles. The United States and the Vatican, notably, recognized Haitian independence only in the second half of the nineteenth century. Diplomatic rejection was only one symptom of an underlying denial. The very deeds of the revolution were incompatible with major tenets of the dominant Western ideologies. They remained so up to at least the first quarter of [the twenty-first century]. Between the Haitian independence and World War I, in spite of the successive abolitions of slavery, little changed within the ontological ladder that ranked humankind in the minds of the majorities in Europe and the Americas. In fact, some views deteriorated . . . Thus in most places outside of Haiti, more than a century after it happened, the Revolution was still largely unthinkable history.
15. After winning its independence, Haiti became an obsessive target of the former white colons who pressured successive French regimes into re-conquering the island. The colonial archives are full of the colons' 'Memoires', 'Rapports' and other documents calling for the reintegration of Haiti into the French empire. See, for example, the microfilm collection at the Centre des Archives d'Outre Mer in Aix-en-Provence, France, particularly CC9A35, CC9A46, CC9A50 and CC9A54.
16. This huge indemnity contributed to the growing debt of the country and to domestic discontent. The USA recognised Haiti only in 1862. See David Nicholls, From Dessalines To Duvalier, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996, pp 62-66;
17. Mimi Sheller, Democracy After Slavery, Grainsville: University Press of Florida, 2000, p 56;
18. and Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004, pp 303-304.
19. Sheller, Democracy After Slavery, p 39.
20. Ibid, p 53.
21. See also François Blancpain, La Condition des Paysans Haitiens, pp 17, 60-61.
22. See Mats Lundhal, 'Toussaint L'Ouverture and the war economy of Saint Domingue, 1796-1802', in Hilary Beckles & Verene Shepherd (eds), Caribbean Freedom, London: James Currey, 1993, pp 2-11. The revolution was a bloody affair with over 185 000 casualties. In addition, it devastated the economy. According to Lundhal (p 4): If the amount exported of the four most important export products in 1789 is assigned an index number of 100, coffee exports were down to a figure of 2.8 in 1795, sugar was down even more, to 1.2, and cotton and indigo exports had fallen to a mere 0.7 and 0.5 percent, respectively, of their former levels. In other words, export agriculture was virtually dead. The economy had become a closed one, based in subsistence production and production for limited, fragmented domestic markets.
23. The commandeur, or driver, was himself a slave; the violence of the master was thus partly mediated and exercised by his own victims. See Caroline Fick, The Making of Haiti, Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press, 1990, pp 28-30.
24. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.
25. The moun andeyo is the Creole phrase for the 'outsiders', those who are not part of the nation and are excluded from its benefits and recognition. See G_eacrard Barthéleémy, Le Pays en Dehors, Port-au-Prince: Editions Henri Deschamps, 1989.
26. Fick, The Making of Haiti, pp 34-39.
27. See also CLR James, The Black Jacobins, London: Allison & Busby, 1980, pp 11-15;
28. and Dubois, Avengers of the New World, p 50. Fick describes thus the masters' atrocities (p 35):THe barbarism of some masters left little to the imagination. While administering the whip, they would stop, place a burning piece of wood on the slave's buttocks, and then continue, rendering the subsequent blows all the more painful. Common was the practice of pouring pepper, salt, lemon, ashes, or quicklime on the slave's open and bleeding wounds, under the pretext of cauterizing the skin, while at the same time increasing the torture. . .Other examples exist of slaves being thrown into ovens and consumed by fire; or of being tied to a skewer above an open fire, there to roast to death; or having white-hot slats applied to their ankles and soles of their feet, this being repeated hour after hour. There were masters who would stuff a slave with gunpowder - like a cannon - and blow him to pieces. Women had their sexual parts burned by a smoldering log; others had hot wax splattered over hands, arms, and backs, or boiling cane syrup poured over their heads.
29. James, The Black Jacobins, p 88.
30. Carolyn Fick, 'Emancipation in Haiti: From plantation labour to peasant proprietorship', in Howard Temperley (ed), After Slavery: Emancipation and its Discontents, London: Frank Cass, 2000, pp 15-16.
31. Claude Möise's description of Toussaint's authoritarian regime is equally valid for the first rulers of an independent Haiti: Le projet social louverturien ne transcende pas les contradictions socials issues du démembrement du régime colonial esclavagiste. Il ne peut concilier les intérêts antagoniques. Il tend à les enfermer dans un régime autoritaire et répressif fortement modelépar le pouvoir personnel absolu que Toussaint a fait institutionaliser. [Les] masses ne trouvent pas leur compte dans la politique économique et sociale de Toussaint Louverture. Les cultivateurs cherchent par tous les moyens à échapper aux contraintes du système: Fuite dans les mornes, refus de travailler. C'est une assez longue histoire qui va de la résistance passive a' la résistance active et qui se confond avec celle de la colonisation et de l'esclavage.
32. Moïse, Le Projet National de Toussaint Louverture, Port-au-Prince: Editions Memoire, p 47.
33. See Lundhal, 'Toussaint L'Ouverture and the war economy of Saint Domingue'. He argues (p 5): [The] transaction costs connected with making a smallholder system produce foreign exchange to the desired extent were exceedingly high. Turning to the restoration of the plantation system, we face a different set of costs. It would be less costly to create incentives for export production. This was to a large extent a result of technological factors. Large units were much better suited to the production of sugar for example . . . Thus, the large estates were able to produce sugar much more profitably than the smallholdings. The income distribution problem would also have been solved. Putting the plantations directly into the hands of the politically important people would make the redistribution problem simply disappear, provided only that labour to man the plantations could be obtained. The collection costs, finally, would be substantially lower than under the smallholder system, because the number of production units in a grande culture system would be lower. With all these three problems being reduced, the need for a trained bureaucracy would be correspondingly reduced.
34. Robert K LaCerte, 'The evolution of land and labour in the Haitian revolution, 1791-1820', in Beckles & Shepherd, Caribbean Freedom, pp 42-47. LaCerte points out that Toussaint 'prohibited the sale of parcels of less than fifty carreaux; a stipulation which made it impossible for the ex-slaves to acquire land legally' (p 43). Toussaint's successor, Dessalines, may have wanted a more 'democratic form of landownership', but, according to LaCerte, the 'evidence is strong that he sought to preserve the large plantation' (p 44). Christophe did not depart from the commitment to the plantation system, in fact he 'continued the pattern of large landholding granting concessions of between 400-500 carreaux to his nobles'. Pétion in the south, however, carried out a wider distribution of land; his goal was to co-opt the black majority by offering it the possibility of becoming peasant smallholders. In 1809 he gave land to the veterans of the wars of independence in accordance with their rank. Colonels. . .25 carreaux; Battalion chiefs . . . 15 carreaux; Captains to Second Lieutenants . . . 5 carreaux. It was followed in 1814 by a second distribution of land to all officers below the rank of colonel . . . Exactly how much land was distributed is difficult to say because adequate statistics are lacking. One Haitian scholar, writing in 1888, estimated that 76 000 carreaux were distributed among 2322 civil and military officers. Only 134 of them received entire plantations. The remaining 2188 got grants of 35, 30, 25, and 20 carreaux. They formed an intermediate class of landholders beneath whom were 6000 soldiers who received grants of 5 carreaux (pp 45-46).
35. David Patrick Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002.
36. Blancpain, La Condition des Paysans Haitiens, p 103, gives a description of Toussaint's regime that characterises well the governmental practices that defined much of the politics of the young republic under successive 'founding fathers': La liberté individuelle de la majorité des citoyens est subordonnée à la nécessité d'assurer la puissance de l'̇ tat et de son armée de sorte que le pays puisse resister contre toutes les enterprises des et́rangers. Il en résulte que le cultivateur se retrouve soumis à un régime militaire qui fait de lui un serf, attaché à une habitation, soumis au pouvoir du propriétaire ou du fermier, constraint dans sa vie privée au respect de la religion catholique, apostolique et romaine et interdit de séjour hors de son habitation sans un permis de l'autorité militaire. Sa servitude est permanente et héréditaire car les échappatoires sont exceptionelles qui permettraient à un cultivateur portionnaire de trouver les fonds necessaries à l'acquisition d'une propriété d'au moins 50 carreaux lui donnant accès à la classe des propriétaires fanciers, c'est-à-dire la bourgeoisie.
37. See Moïse, Le Projet National de Toussaint Louverture, pp 43-50;
38. and Blancpain, La Condition des Paysans Haitiens, pp 116-119.
39. Lundhal, 'Toussaint L'Ouverture and the war economy of Saint Domingue', p 3 reports that in 1800: 30 000 muskets plus huge quantities of ammunition had been imported from Britain and the United States. The following year, 4.5 million francs were expended on the army and an unknown amount was used for acquiring military supplies in the United States. At the time of Toussaint's death, different Philadelphia banking institutions contained deposits in his name of more than 6 million francs destined to secure purchases of war material.
40. Trouillot, Haiti, State against Nation, p 43.
41. Fick, 'Emancipation in Haiti', p 23.
42. Gabriel Debien, Plantations et Esclaves à Saint-Domingue, Dakar: Université de Dakar, Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Section d'Histoire, Publications, no 3, 1962, p 161.
43. Blancpain, La Condition des Paysans Haitiens, p 131.
44. Ibid, pp 131-135.
45. Paul Moral, Le Paysan Haitien, Port-au-Prince: Editions Fardin, 1978, pp 31-33.
46. See also Trouillot, Haiti, State against Nation, p 48.
47. Sidney Mintz, Caribbean Transformations, Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Company, 1974. Mintz argues (p 274): The land is invested with considerable affect: Gods live in it; it is the ultimate security against privation; family members are buried in it; food and wealth come from it; and it is good in itself, even if not cultivated. While such attitudes are common in peasant societies, Haiti's history of slavery, and the acquisition of access to land through revolution, has perhaps given a special symbolic significance to landowning. Land is valued above else and is sometimes held 'uneconomically' - that is, even when the capital and labor power to work it are lacking.
48. Eugene D Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution, New York: Vintage Books, 1979, p 89.
49. Mintz, Caribbean Transformations, p 279.
50. The term bossals implies the notion of a primitive, brutal, physical labourer devoid of mental faculty.
51. Mintz, Caribbean Transformations, p 280.
52. As Etzer Charles put it in his important book, Le Pouvoir Politique en Haiti de 1957 à Nos Jours, Paris: Karthala, 1994: The underdevelopment from which Haiti is suffering has transformed the apparatuses of the political system into a veritable field of action in which the elites of the petty bourgeoisie may be found seeking their fortune and social ascension. For these elites, who generally have knowledge at their disposal, the state apparatus becomes the only path that they must follow in order to reach the high spheres of the social hierarchy and enjoy all its privileges. From that point onward, the dialectic of social dynamisms between different classes crystallizes. The political universe seems to be a veritable arena where classes, fragmentary parts of classes, clans, etc confront each other with the principle, 'to each his turn'. (p 24, my translation)
53. Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution, pp 88-89;
54. and Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, p 29.
55. Nicholls, From Dessalines To Duvalier, p 38.
56. See also Blancpain, La Condition des Paysans Haitiens, pp 124-128.
57. Micheline Labelle, Idélogie de Couleur et Classes Sociales en Haïti, Montreal: Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 1978.
58. Charles, Le Pouvoir Politique en Haiti de 1957 à Nos Jours, pp 253-254.
59. Ibid, p 80.
60. Jean François Bayart, L'Etat en Afrique: La Politique du Ventre, Paris: Fayard, 1989. The book was translated in English as The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, New York: Longman, 1993. Bayart's definition of the politics of the belly characterising postcolonial Africa fits well with Haitian realities: It refers chiefly to the food shortages which are still so much part of life in Africa. Getting food is often a problem, a difficulty and a worry. Yet, very often, the term 'eating' conveys desires and practices far removed from gastronomy. Above all, it applies to the idea of accumulation, opening up possibilities of social mobility and enabling the holder of power to 'set himself up.' Women are never very far from the scenario . . . The politics of the belly are also the politics of intimate liaisons, and mistresses are one of the cogs in the wheel of the postcolonial State. 'Belly' also of course refers to corpulence - fashionable in men of power. It refers also to nepotism which is still very much a social reality with considerable political consequences. And, finally, in a rather more sinister way, it refers to the localization of forces of the invisible, control over which is essential for the conquest and exercise of power. (p xviii)
61. Patterns of brutal internecine struggles within the ruling class are as old as the republic. For instance, French agents described how such patterns besieged Toussaint's inner circles: The greatest discord reigns between Toussaint Louverture and the different generals under his orders. General Moyse is on very bad terms with his uncle; he has even a desire to supplant him. Dessalines apparently enjoys Toussaint Louverture's chief confidence, but may shortly form a new party different fromthat of Moyse. In such an event, Maurepas, inclined to revolt like the others, would be ready to join Dessalines. Christophe is excessively disconnected with Toussaint Louverture, and the white inhabitants would be for him . . . The rivalries of Generals Moyse and Dessalines presage newstorms for the colony. Toussaint holds them only by hopes of higher command and greater wealth. Quoted in Lundhal, 'Toussaint L'Ouverture and the war economy of Saint Domingue', p 3
62. Lavalas is the Creole word meaning the flood and symbolising the loosely structured mass movement of the poor that sought to uproot Duvalierism and create a populist regime.
63. The Creole expression 'tout moun se moun' can be translated as 'every human being is a human being'.
64. Anthony Smith, 'The origins of nations', in John Hutchinson & Anthony D Smith (eds), Nationalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, p 153.
65. Ernest Gellner, 'Nationalism and modernization', in Hutchinson & Smith (eds), Nationalism, p 55.
66. Robert Fatton Jr, Haiti's Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democracy, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002.
67. Ibid.
68. Tabarre is the area in Port-au-Prince where Aristide's private residence was located. The expression became a code word denoting the real site of Haitian political power.
69. Many key figures who had supported Aristide's election to the presidency and his restoration to power after the military coup of 1991 abandoned and criticised him for his 'dérive totalitaire'. Among the most important were Gérard Pierre-Charles, the leader of Organisation du Peuple en Lutte (OPL); Evans Paul, leader of the Front National pour le Changement et la Démocratie (FNCD); Micha Gaillard of Kongré Nasyonal Mouvman Demokratik (KONAKOM); Chavannes Jean Baptiste, the head of the Mouvement des Paysans de Papaye (MPP); Hervé Denis, a former prime minister designate; Jean Casimir, formerly Aristide's ambassador to the USA; and Paul Dé jean, a cabinet member in Aristide's own government. Raoul Peck, a former minister of culture in the Préval administration condemned what he perceived to be Aristide's corruption and authoritarianism in a biting book that captured the views of many erstwhile comrades of 'Titid'. Peck, Monsieur le Ministre: Jusqu'au Bout de la Patience, Port-au-Prince: Editions Velvet, 1999.
70. A critical but less vitriolic analysis of Aristide's politics and style can be found in the important book by Robert Malval, who was Aristide's prime minister during his years in exile in Washington. Malval, L'Année de toutes les Duperies, Port-au-Prince: Editions Regain, 1996.
71. US officials estimated that in 2000 over 15% of all the cocaine consumed in the USA was transiting through Haiti. See New York Times, 27 October 1998; 30 July 2000.
72. Anthony V Catanese, Haitians: Migration and Diaspora, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999, pp 113- 120.
73. According to Catanese, international remittances to Haiti amounted to 10% - 15% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product (p 118). A more recent estimate by the Multilateral Investment Fund puts the level of remittances at 17% of the GDP. 'Migrants spur growth in remittances', Financial Times, 16 May 2001, at www.FT.com.
74. Claude Moïse, Many Crosses to Bear, Montreal: Mémoire d'Encrier, pp 60-85.
75. Amy Goodman (ed), Getting Haiti Right This Time: The US and the Coup, Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2004.
76. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 'Statement on Haiti', 28 February 2004, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/02/ 20040228-2.html.
77. Fatton, Haiti's Predatory Republic.
78. 'Brazil rejects US call for Haiti crackdown', Reuters, 8 December 2004.
79. Reed Lindsay, 'Discord grows over Latortue government', Washington Times, 11 June 2005.
80. See, for example, Reed Lindsay, 'Flames and pools of blood: Calling cards of the Haitian police', San Francisco Bay View, 8 June 2005.
81. Gabriel Marcella, 'The international community and Haiti: A proposal for cooperative sovereignty', paper presented at 'The Future of Democracy and Development in Haiti' symposium, 17-18 March 2005, Washington, DC.
82. 'An international protectorate could bring stability to Haiti', Miami Herald, 23 November 2004.
83. As Francis Fukuyuma, State-Building, p 38, has pointed out: 'if nation-building means the creation of self-sustaining state capacity that can survive once foreign advice and support are withdrawn, then the number of historical cases where this has happened successfully drops to a depressingly small handful'.
84. Ibid, p 103.
85. The Creole word blancs does not merely imply 'white', it encompasses the idea of the foreigner, the non-Haitian.