The Haitian People

Somehow we here at the blog have managed to read parts of Leyburn or follow the scholarship of social scientists and historians who are heavily influenced by Leyburn without actually completing his well-known The Haitian People. After finally reading the entire study, one cannot escape how dated it was and incorrect some of its conclusions and predictions were. While perhaps best known for its insistent focus on the theme of a caste nature of Haitian social structure, Leyburn's detailed social history of the 19th century and overview of economics, domestic affairs, politics, Creole, and religion is actually quite researched and occasionally insightful or useful.

However, Leyburn famously did not foresee the reappearance of non-elite noir presidents after Lescot's presidency. And he did not dedicate enough attention to the "middling" sector of Haitian society who were neither the masses (the peasantry) or the elite (educated, urban, wealthy, often light-skinned), the very sector who became so important to Haitian politics after 1946. Perhaps, like Beaulieu, we think Haiti was transitioning from the caste-like social order that may have prevailed in the 19th century (although with so many caveats that calling it caste is probably  misleading) to something else during and after the US Occupation. But fixating too heavily on the color question and lacking enough thorough research on regional and historical social mobility, the "middling" sector that gradually asserted itself in Haitian politics was unforeseen by Leyburn.

For us, Leyburn's view of the Haitian peasant as completely isolated and cut off from the rest of the world contributed to the weaknesses of his analysis. For instance, he ignores the existence and influence of foreigners from other parts of Caribbean and the rest of the world in Haitian towns and the countryside. By insisting on a false view of 19th century Haiti as cut off from the rest of the world, it becomes easier for him to conclude rural Haitians were always resistant to change, new ideas, and complexity. This view is further challeged by the thousands of Haitian migrants who labored in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, often returning with new ideas, consumer spending habits, and ideas of the world which challenged tradition and custom. Leyburn even lets US racial stereotypes of African Americans in the Jim Crow South shape his perception of Haitians, particularly in their alleged submissiveness and acceptance of their plight. This is odd since Leyburn reports contradictory data, such as the use of song and music for political and social critique of politicians. Not to mention Leyburn's omission of the political dimensions of peasant resistance in some caco and piquet movements, which evinces signs of political ideology, awareness, and independent organizing among the peasantry. 

It is a shame, since he was probably one of the least racist American social scientists to write about Haiti in the 1940s yet he could not escape his American background. This is ironic as he asserted US social scientists would be better than Haitian elite scholars for studying Haitian social structure. But in his conclusions on the "ambivalence" experienced by many of the elite, and implied in upwardly mobile Haitians, Leyburn seems to affirm Herskovits and the theory of socialized ambivalence. This may explain part of the reason for the persistence of "caste" in post-occupation Haiti as those of the elite and upwardly mobile remain internally divided, troubled, and disturbed by their contradictory status in the world and must maintain distance from the unlettered masses for psychological, social, and economic reasons. So, despite its flaws and limitations, The Haitian People makes for thought-provoking reading that also exemplifies the transnational aspects of American sociology's approach to race and the "Negro."

El montero

During a sojourn in Paris, Dominican intellectual Pedro Francisco Bonó wrote a short novel, El montero. This short novel, published in 1856, exalted the montero population of the countryside. In spite of its brevity, its detailed realism provides a window for the modern reader eager to envision the lives, habits, customs, landscape, cuisine, and entertainment of campesino populations of the Dominican Republic. As one of the earliest novels in the Dominican literary tradition, it's also an important text to consider in the larger development of the novel and possible trends within the larger Caribbean. For instance, comparisons with other precursors to the "peasant" novel in the Caribbean and Latin America may reveal parallels and continuities with other literatures. For this blog, one thinks of Ignace Nau's short story (or, novella) Isalina as the Haitian equivalent of an early "peasant novel" from the other side of Hispaniola. Nau even wrote a short story set in Los Llanos about monteros, which he defines as hunters of wild boar and cattle. While it is certainly likely and perhaps plausible that any similarities between the texts may derive from the mutual French literary influences on the two writers, it is tempting to consider possible influence from the 1830s Haitian Romantic conteurs on Bonó. 

El montero is a short novel centered on a family that subsists on conuco agriculture. They supplement their sustenance through hunting wild boars and cattle. The novel is particularly rich in detail on cultural and social habits of the Dominican countryside in the 19th century, including cuisine, bohío homes,  and romantic rivalry. Like the case of Isalina, a love triangle is the central cause of the drama, pitting two men against each other for a woman which leads to conflicts. Juan, a peon of Maria’s father who is in love with her, endeavors to kill Manuel because the latter will soon marry her. Long story short, Juan nearly succeeds in murdering Manuel. He later returns on the wedding day, killing Maria's father. The novel concludes with Juan’s death. Throughout the narrative, peasant customs such as the fandango, a site for many types of dances such as the guarapo or sarambo, appear in great detail. Bonó revels in the customs of the Dominican peasantry, showing their beauty and approach to life.

Unlike Manuel de Jesús Galván, whose later Enriquillo focused on the encounter of the Taino and the Spanish while elevating the latter's colonial legacy, Bonó’s novel is centered on the contemporary Dominican population, the predominantly mixed-race campesinos of the mountainous interior. And while he is largely silent on the "race" of the characters (except for a reference to the bronzed skin of Maria), it is clear these people are neither European nor Taino. They are, as in the case of the Haitian workers on the Digneron estate in Isalina, creoles. Moreover, an allusion is made to peasant resistance to the French in 1809, situating these monteros in the nationalist ethos as defenders of the patria. Bonó recycled this theme for En el cantón de Bermejo, where the montero is key to ousting the Spanish during the War of Restoration. Hence, the montero not only symbolizes the nation, but dies to protect it.

Yet Bonó avoids idealizing monteros. For example, some of their traditions represent a fundamental challenge to creating a modern nation-state. Alcohol, specifically consumption of aguardiente, is a vice that retards the progress of the countryside. Their taste for violence and squabbles also presents a problem. Case in point, the physical violence of Juan leads to the death of one person and attacks on Manuel and Maria. In short, their "natural" or "wild" habits have not yet been tamed by civilization.  The representatives of state authority likewise set negative examples for society, with the narrator referring to the titles of alcalde, comandante de armas, presidente, and congreso as a parodies in the Dominican Republic. Thus, the rural society of the free and idyllic montero is also one held back by their own traditions and the state, which mimics the political system of the civilized world but becomes a farce. Such attitudes can be found in Bonó's non-fiction essays as well, where he was critical of the role of the state in subverting the lifestyles of the peasantry while also critiquing peasant customs of communal labor like the convite or junta. The author's own interest in utopian socialism and later alternative ideas of progress put him at odds with positivism and dominant trends of Dominican liberalism, but this early novel might be more representative of how Dominican intellectuals wrestled with the dilemma of their largely rural population during the First Republic.

Due to the Dominican montero's similarities with the Haitian peasant, and a common heritage of marronage uniting the two populations, one cannot but think of the works of Ignace Nau and other Haitian authors of the 1830s. Indeed, Ignace Nau was undoubtedly a precursor of Haitian indigenist literature who incorporated Vodou, popular belief, the Creole language, and the history of the the Haitian Revolution into his works. These narratives are rooted in a form of cultural nationalism that sought to use Haiti's African, European, and indigenous pasts to develop a uniquely Haitian aesthetic. In Isalina, published in the 1830s, Nau did all of the aforementioned by bringing the reader to the world of rural Haiti, and their beliefs and customs. Their music, dances (calinda), belief in sorcery, proverbs, conflicts over women (the love triangle of Isalina, Jean-Julien, and Paul), and labor practices paint a vivid picture of the countryside on the Cul-de-Sac plain. While Isalina takes place on the Digneron sugar estate, the short tale hints at smallholder farmers who do not have to work at the mill (like Paul and Isalina, who "placer" at the conclusion of the story. 

Nau and his contemporaries also included the East (what is today the Dominican Republic) in their works, as the entire island was unified under Boyer. A nod to this can be found in the Spanish candles inside Galba's home, blessed by the Virgin of Higuey, where Haitian pilgrimage to the site was already underway by the 1830s. Nau's brother became a historian of the indigenous past of the island, finding commonality between the pre-colonial past and the independent, unified island of Haiti of his day. Nau's other works of fiction about the Haitian Revolution or rural life further cement this, including his Une anecdote set in the East, which takes the reader to Los Llanos, to the east of Santo Domingo, where uncouth monteros frighten the narrator, thinking them to be bandits. The Haitian narrator's description of the residents of the commune indicates a relatively underdeveloped state of agriculture but a thriving cattle industry where "wild" monteros exemplify some of the differences and commonalities between east and west rural populations. The rustic monteros are worthy of the narrator's son reading about their exploits, just as they were a worthy subject manner to Bonó. Like neighboring 19th century Romantic authors of Haiti, Dominican authors seemed to share the same anxieties and concerns about their respective national symbols.

Works Consulted

Bonó, Pedro F. El montero ; Epistolario. Santo Domingo, R.D.: Ediciones de la Fundación

Corripio, 2000.

Fischer, Sibylle. Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of 

Revolution. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.

Garcia, Francisco Antonio Avelino. “La interpretación de Bonó sobre la dominicanidad y la 

haitianidad.” CLIO 172 (2006): 197-222.

González, Raymundo. Bonó, un intelectual de los pobres, Santo Domingo, R.D.: Centro de Estudios Sociales P. Juan Montalvo, 1994.

Hoetink, H. The Dominican People, 1850-1900: Notes for a Historical Sociology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982

Edmond Paul

  

Sometimes, the internet will surprise you. This short video does a nice job explaining the thought of one of the most important minds of 19th century Haiti. Edmond Paul's influence lingers into the present day, and the more we read of his work, the easier it becomes to spot his influence in various schools of thought in Haiti. While David Nicholls has written perhaps the most extensively in English on Paul's writings on political economy, this video is a great addition, particularly as it avoids the problematic or controversial "mulatto legend" theory associated with Nicholls. 

While perusing some of Paul's essays, one sees even more clearly how he diverged from others in the Liberal Party, agreed with people like Delorme on some issues (such as the need for an elite to guide the nation and the masses, but more of a technocratic elite), and influenced people like Alix Lamaute, Jacques Stephen Alexis, Etienne Charlier, Christian Beaulieu, Jacques Roumain, and various others in the annals of Haitian economic and social thought. For instance, already in the 1860s, Paul called attention to the caste or caste-like nature of Haitian society and the need for educational reforms, industrialization, and state intervention in the economy to protect local industries and sectors. It is due to this caste system and the wide cultural and educational gap that incapable "black" rulers and "mulatto" elites could not come together to govern effectively. This caste-like approach and its understanding of the role of class and color in Haitian society had its problems, but one can see how later writers like Christian Beaulieu and Jacques Roumain struggled with the question of a transition from caste to class and the eventuality of a fairer, more egalitarian society (at least that was what socialists and Marxists ultimately wanted). 

Paul also defended the prohibition of foreigners to owning land in Haiti, a measure which demonstrates his wisdom in understanding the threats of foreign economic penetration of the Haitian economy. As he predicted in the 19th century, the Haitian cultivator, converted to a serf of foreign capital during and after the US Occupation, endured an even worse fate as a "rural proletariat," migrant laborer in Cuba or the Dominican Republic, or a life in the burgeoning slums of Port-au-Prince. Paul even foresaw the continued racial component to economic imperialism. Some of the measures favored by Paul were also clearly of some appeal to artisans, laborers, local industrialists of a nationalist bent, and proponents of economic and educational reform. Artisans, beginning as early as the 1870s in Port-au-Prince, petitioned the government for protectionist measures to protect and expand local industries and workshops, a measure which would be repeated in later decades by various organizations, journalists, government officials and, in the 20th century, labor unions. 

Thus, one wonders if Paul served as one of the conduits of Saint-Simonianism in Haiti. It may explain the Saint-Simonian and socialist aspects of La patrie et les conspirations, published in 1890, which appears to be written by someone of less formal education than Paul but influenced by Saint-Simonian emphasis on industry, production, and improving the economy to prevent toilers and artisans from engaging in political violence. Paul's influence can be seen even more obviously with Blanchet, Hudicourt, Charlier, the PSP, and Lamaute in the 20th century, with various representatives openly embracing more socialist or Marxist variants of Paul's dream of an industrial Haiti. 

The US Occupation of Haiti

We here at the blog have recently completed a re-read of Hans Schmidt's classic study of the US Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934. While later studies have added a cultural dimension to American imperialism in the Caribbean republic, and others have centered Haiti and Haitian resistance to the military occupation, Schmidt's monograph remains a go-to study for understanding the conditions that precipitated, endured, and continued for the Black Republic.

 This study elucidates why the US was interested in securing financial and economic control of Haiti, inter-imperial rivalry in the Caribbean region, the context of racism and racial ideology, and the lack of development and long-term positive results of the American Occupation. Despite all the rhetoric of Wilson and subsequent US presidents, the military occupation never invested in practical and meaningful democratic or educational reforms. Of course, one reads Schmidt and gets the impression there was a degree of paternal protection of Haiti on the part of the Marine high commissioner, Russell, and attempts to minimize an invasion of US lataifundia agricultural enterprises, which never materialized anyway. 

It is interesting to see how Schmidt did not discuss land dispossessions and the impact of US companies like HASCO or sisal in the north as having the types of devastating consequences Haitians of the time and afterwards would describe. Although one could not omit the negative impact of corvee-styled forced labor used by the Marines against the Haitian peasantry, nor can one forget the rise of Haitian emigration to the plantations of the Dominican Republic and Cuba during the Occupation. However, we get the impression from Schmidt that the American rulers of Haiti really did want to limit the possible negative impact of US companies in the countryside. We here at the blog will have to return to the question of the Occupation's economic and social impact on the Haitian countryside.