Anacaona's Martyrdom

Frédéric Marcelin's nephew wrote a rather unremarkable novella on Anacaona, one of the most celebrated figures of Haiti's indigenous past. In Emile Marcelin's imagination, Anacaona was a beautiful cacique who ruled in accordance with the zemis, justice, poetry, and the cultivation of art. Columbus and, even more effectively, Ovando ruined this "young" Indo-Haitian civilization of Xaragua and Maguana. In short, the Spanish obsession with gold, material goods and the exploitation of Taino labor spelled the end of the indigenous population. Due to its emphasis on the violent suffering of Anacaona through the capture of Caonabo, the reduction of her daughter to folie, and the massacre orchestrated by Ovando, Anacaona's function is largely as a tragic figure of a pristine Haiti unsoiled by colonialism and slavery.

Since the novella was first published in Havana and only one year after the Marchaterre Massacre, one cannot help but perceive this as a response to the US Occupation of Haiti. Like Anacaona, Haitians, despite their poetry and attention for the arts, were unable to defend their sovereignty from colonial invasion. With tragic figures like Charlemagne Péralte who could perhaps be compared to Caonabo, perhaps Emile Marcelin sought to highlight the indigenous legacy of resistance and defeat to Haitian nationalist and indigenist literary purposes. After all, the indigenous past of the island had already possessed an appeal to Haitian literary and nationalist purposes since the foundation of the state. And perhaps writing in Cuba, where the Taino legacy was also relevant, and where the yoke of US imperialism was inescapable, maybe Marcelin was situating the tale of Haiti's conquest within a larger Caribbean history. 

Sadly, this short novel reads like a slightly exciting fragment of a larger history. Anacaona, reduced mainly to a tragic figure, is not as much of an inspiring character as other caciques in Caribbean literature. She was left only as a shadow cacica before her brutal capture and death, and the nuances of cacicazgo politics and its possible role in aiding the Spanish conquest is minimized. Edwidge Danticat's novel for children, far from perfect and full of occasional historical errors, is perhaps a more empowering Anacaona, centering resistance. However, from what we have read as of now, Betances still reigns supreme for the most radical novelistic depiction of Taino caciques in literature.

Pays sans chapeau

 Dany Laferrière's Pays sans chapeau is a hilarious novel about Vieux Os's return to Port-au-Prince after 20 years of exile. As an excuse to practice one's French, Pays is very rewarding while also entertaining. As a novel of and about Port-au-Prince through the dreamed country and the real country, the reader is taken on a spiritual and material journey through the various quarters of the city. The narrator has a number of amusing experiences on the way as he reconnects with old friends Manu (based on Manno Charlemagne?), Philippe, Lisa, Antoinette, and his mother and aunt. Da, unfortunately, has passed away. 

As one would expect, the author seamlessly fuses real people with fictionalized versions of themselves, drawing on ethnologist J.B. Romain and real places or sites in the city. In addition, the mix of the supernatural with the depressing reality of Port-au-Prince in the 1990s alludes to US imperialism, the end of the Duvalier regime, and the amazing feat of Bombardopolis residents who can survive without eating. Numerous references to vaudou, Haiti as a grand cemetery, local paintings, and the class divide in the city make it clear that while the author has not been to Haiti in 20 years, some things have remained the same.

For this blogger, Laferrière's talent lay in his penchant for the comic while weaving together stories based on real people. Here in Pays sans chapeau we see this skill brilliantly used to bring to life Vieux Os's mother, the city of Port-au-Prince, and the migrant's experience. Who could forget the Jehovah's Witness driver who takes his riders on detours to drop off money for the mothers of his children? The gossip in the taxi? Conversations between Vieux Os and Philippe about Petionville? Or his mother, Marie, and her worst nightmare of falling down the social pyramid to live in Martissant? Anyone who has visited Port-au-Prince or similar cities will know these characters, and the difficult conditions they face. Pays sans chapeau confronts that with an ironic twist of the migrant who is an insider-outsider to his land of birth, thereby putting him in a unique position of being able to confront the shadows of the past in the present.

Les Simulacres

Fernand Hibbert's final novel, Les Simulacres, is a short text satirizing the author's own social class in the context of the US Occupation (1915-1934). Published in 1923, when the author could not have foreseen exactly how the Occupation would conclude, it is often ambivalent about the American presence. This is not an anti-Occupation work like the novels of the 1930s, but more akin to Hibbert's earlier works satirizing the Haitian bourgeoisie for their vanity, corruption, venality, and mismanagement of Haitian political, social, and economic life. As a far shorter text than, say, Les Thazar, and a smaller cast at that, it does not quite succeed in satirizing every social type among the Haitian upper-class, though it does reintroduce past characters such as Brion and Gérard Delhi. Brion, as one would expect from events in Les Thazar, has not married, is perhaps bitter, and seems to be amused by the various foibles of his social class.

By reviving past characters, Hibbert's former mouthpieces from the ancien regime can return as the this tale mocks the foolish and arrogant Hellénus Caton. Caton, a former politician who became wealthy through graft and corruption before the Occupation, is now ardently opposed to the Americans (but only due to their refusal to consider him for the post of president). Being a Simulacre means one who uses "mensonges derrière lesquels les hommes masquent la vérité, ou leur intérêts et leurs appétits." He falls prey to a Cuban swindler who proceeds to conjure a story of occult knowledge and miracles so that he has an excuse to get close to Cephise, Caton's beautiful wife. Needless to say, Pablo Alcantara makes a fool of Caton, having him wait outside in the middle of the night, nude, looking at the moon, while he proceeds to make love to his wife for seven consecutive nights. In short, this is the basic plot of the text, a Cuban foreigner swindling a Haitian bourgeois male of wealth and women. Brion, as perhaps the only redeeming bourgeois, intervenes to ensure a (somewhat) happy ending in which Cephise stays with her husband, but Caton never recovers.

Like Brion in Les Thazar, Caton cannot compete with the foreign male, although in this case Pablo Alcantara is not a successful German but another faker, from a country also under the tutelage of the US. Since Hibbert was the Haitian consul in Cuba, one can presume his use of a Cuban Simulacre is itself part of the text's anti-imperialist critique, as Pablo Alcantara knows very well how Cuba, like Haiti, is a pawn in the US Empire. Hibbert, stationed in Santiago de Cuba, would have known very well the degree to which US influence was paramount in the neighboring Caribbean nation, and may have possessed solidarity for Cubans based on past alliances against imperialism before Cuban independence. Perhaps Hibbert was trying to suggest, much like Naipaul several decades later, how the people of the Caribbean have become mimic men, lacking in proper comportment as befits independent people of independent nations. Pablo Alcantara, much like Caton, is another such case, exploiting the ignorance and credulity of others in much the same way Caton and his ilk have done similar actions in Haiti before the US Occupation. Thus, Pablo Alcantara is an interesting type of foreigner in the works of Hibbert, possibly a callback to the various Caribbean peoples represented on the ship en route to France in Séna. He likewise represents a change in the Haitian elite perception of Cubans as positive immigrants in Haiti, since he does not produce, teach, apprentice, or employ anyone.

As is the case with Les Thazar, most of the plot advances through the dialogue of these aforementioned characters (plus their domestics and a few additional acquaintances). So it is often through their exchanges that much of the novel's humor derives. These conversations entail Cato the Younger, ancient Rome's rise and fall, Creole and French in Haitian literature, the Cuban passion for love and duels, education and literacy campaigns, the motivations of the Occupation (to build a naval base?), the lack of unity among Haitians, and the lack of rain in Port-au-Prince. The novel's final chapter addresses the reader, specifically the Haitian mother, to raise their children to obey and never lie, to produce a better generation of citizens and ensure the survival of the nation. Using Rome, imperial Germany, tsarist Russia, and the "Orient" as examples of what happens when the lack of liberty takes hold and injustice prevails, leading to social decay or ruin, the novel adopts a direct moralizing tone. While this detracts from the bitterly satirical tone of the rest of the text, it makes it clear how the US Occupation, in the eyes of Hibbert, has not uprooted the Simulacres and fakers, and a return to ancien regime ways will lead down a path toward destruction.

Needless to say, Hibbert's account does not include the caco resistance or nascent unrest from the peasantry or lower classes. The Haitian workers in Cuba, with whom Hibbert was fully aware, do not enter into the picture despite Cuban emigration being a key aspect of the US Occupation's influence. A communist revolution or "Grand Soir" of Delhi are only mentioned humorously, suggestive of the venal and ignorant nature of Caton and the fear of popular revolt. So one presumes that Haiti's salvation will be found among the non-Simulacre of the elite. They alone will be able to direct the nation progressively during and after the occupation and ensure a return to full liberty of the press and other rights. They, and only they, can ensure expanded primary education and adult literacy, with the recent example of Lunarchsky in the Soviet Union cited positively. Unsurprisingly, Hibbert's Simulacres is thus a continuation of the same class and gender politics of his early novels, but accompanied by a heightened sense of alarm at the prospects of national survival if the Simulacres are not held at bay after the Americans leave. Unfortunately, the Simulacres never left after 1934...

Mimola

Antoine Innocent's innovative novel, Mimola, offers a sympathetic portrait of Haitian Vodou and popular religion in a Haiti that appears to take place during the second half of the 19th century. Julie Georges, daughter of Rosalie, an African woman from Dahomey or the Gold Coast, loses her husband and six of her seven children. Her last child, Mimola, nicknamed Lala, also becomes sick and nearly dies, but speaking with another old African woman cognizant of things Creoles (those born in Saint-Domingue or Haiti, not Africa) do not know, tells her that she and Mimola must pay their respects to the ancestral spirits of Rosalie in order to cure Mimola. 

Assigned several tasks that require her and her daughter to embrace Vodou rituals and services, Madame Georges and Mimola eventually make the pilgrimage to Saut d'Eau, near Mirebalais, and while doing so, meet the "mulatto" cousin of Madame Georges, Francine Dajobert. Dajobert's mother, the enslaved African-born twin sister of Rosalie, was raped by a French colon. Her daughter's son, Leon, was the product of Francine and a wealthy man, which made it possible for him to be educated in France. Most of the novel is an overview of the promesse made by Madame Georges to appease the ancestral spirits in order to save the life of her daughter, who eventually becomes a manbo, or Vodou priestess herself.

However, as a realist novel that foreshadows Haitian indigénisme through its intimately detailed Vodou ceremonies, customs in the countryside, and social world of its characters, it, like the work of Lhérisson, creatively uses Haitian Creole and playful names, puns, as well as Port-au-Prince and the rural landscape to bring to life a not so distant past. As someone who has also made the trek to Saut d'Eau, (in an automobile, of course), one cannot help but be moved by Innocent's prose and the calm beauty of the waterfalls at the holy site. Innocent goes to great length to describe the trek to Saut d'Eau, the candles, vigils, prayers, music, dancing, and other customs of pilgrims seeking the miraculous from the Virgin Mary and/or the spirits. 

What's fascinating here is how Innocent manages to find the beauty and respectful elements of Vodou while using it as a metaphor for a united Haiti. Wealthy "mulattoes" and their "pure" black relations find each other through this religion, and through it a respect for their African forebears and its social value for the lower classes. Thus, through Vodou ceremonies, a respect for charity and others is maintained, as well as veneration of filial ties, which cost Madame Georges and Madame Dajobert their social standing among the elite who look down on Vodou or anything reminding them of Africa. Unfortunately, Leon, the son of Madame Dajobert, continues to reject Vodou and suffers the consequences, all the while dreaming of his cherished France. 

Meanwhile, his friend Albert, who was also educated in France and a firm believer in progress, saw the value of Vodou and related its origins to the lares of the Roman world and classical antiquity, to the religions of "primitive races" and ancestral cults. While Albert is almost certainly wrong about the influence of ancient Mediterranean religions on Vodou, it brings to mind a point raised by an academic who told me that many Haitian authors who broached the subject of Vodou were influenced by Fustel de Coulanges's study of classical antiquity, perhaps explaining in part why Innocent falsely presents the origin of the word lwa (or, loua) as lares. Perhaps positivism's three stages and Firmin's legacy also influenced Innocent, who refers to Vodou as a religious stage found all over the world, from the Celts, the ancient East, Africa, and beyond. 

Nonetheless, despite his defense of the religion from the extreme disdain of Leon, he also hopes that education, schools, theaters, and gradual change will lead to the religion's decline, although such a development will take a very long time. Moreover, as Albert wisely tells Leon, attempting by force to eradicate Vodou will cause the masses to cling to it more tightly. This brings to mind Roumain's critique of the anti-superstition campaign of the 1940s, which cruelly attempted to uproot the faith while ignoring the conditions in which it is cultivated. And despite his Marxism, Roumain, like Innocent, urged respect and honor for Vodou, even as the latter designates it as primitive and from a previous stage of religious thought.

Thus, Innocent, like the successive generation of indigénistes, saw the value of Vodou in terms of its link to the African past, respect for the origins of Haiti, and as a social glue, even if they personally disagreed with its tenets from a theological point of view. In consideration of the unstable conditions of Haiti at the time of its original publication, and the context of the Generation de la Ronde's nationalism, Mimola offers the reader a penetrating literary exercise in the importance of the religion of the masses for rehabilitating the nation's identity. If the argument of Fustel de Coulanges is relevant at all here, this disdain and rejection of the popular class's religion constitutes a key factor in the implacable social divide and lack of solidarity plaguing the country during the later half of the 19th century.