Black Emigration to Mexico

Although Mexico did not occupy as conspicuous a role in African American emigrationism as that of Liberia or Haiti, Mexico as a site for African American conceptions of an alternative home was a consistent theme. In spite of receiving a small number of black immigrants over the course of the 19^th century, Mexico loomed large in African American ideas of the future destiny, place, and hopes of African Americans at various moments in the antebellum and Jim Crow periods in the United States. This paper seeks to examine African American perceptions of Mexico, as well as some of the prominent persons and migration streams of Blacks to Mexico in order to contextualize Mexican migration within the larger discourse of black emigrationism. Prominent black abolitionists and leaders who called for emigration to Mexico, particularly Martin Robinson Delany, as well as individuals who migrated to Mexico, like Joseph Tinchant, William Ellis, and the father of Langston Hughes, will be used as specific examples of the appeal of Mexico to African Americans from the antebellum period to the early 20^th century. Through a combination of secondary sources and select primary source documents, this paper will demonstrate the importance of Mexico within the Black imagination and emigrationist movements, concluding with the diverse and flexible ways black emigrationist efforts contributed to US African American internationalism.

            Emigrationism in the context of this paper refers to various movements of African Americans to leave the US in the pursuit of racial equality, a black nationalist project, or dissatisfaction with the status quo in the US. Liberia and Haiti are usually the only examples discussed in great detail, and both states received thousands of immigrants from the US over the course of the 19^th century. Haiti, in the 1820s, received more than 4000 African Americans, the majority of whom presumably returned to the US.[1] Motivated by nascent black nationalist ideology, free blacks from northern cities came to Haiti with passage covered by the Haitian state and offers of land for farmers, sharecroppers, laborers, and artisans.[2] Subsequent waves of African Americans came in the 1850s and the eve of the Civil War, with those of Louisiana extraction often finding more success.[3] Haiti, as the first independent black state in the hemisphere, and the first to abolish slavery, predictably occupied the minds and hearts of African Americans, slave and free, throughout the 19th century. And, to some black nationalists who supported emigrationism, such as James Theodore Holly, Haiti was to become central to building a black nationality through Protestantism and Anglo-Saxon civilization, thereby regenerating Haiti.[4]  Liberia, on the other hand, was initially organized by the American Colonization Society, a group of whites who saw no future for free blacks in the US. Black proponents of emigration to Liberia also saw little future for free blacks in the US because of racial discrimination and slavery, and tied the Liberian colonization project as a civilizing mission to redeem Africa by establishing a black republic and converting the autochthonous population to Christianity.[5] Haiti and Liberia, the first two independent “black” states, in this context of black emigration, became the central poles. However, due to religion, economics, and the eventual emancipation of slaves, emigrationist projects took on different forms in the postbellum period. Jim Crow segregation and post-Reconstruction forms of racial discrimination transformed black emigrationism, including the forms it took in Mexico through colonization projects such as the 1896 attempt of Ellis in northern Mexico.

African Americans in Mexico Before 1865

The standard narratives of African American migration to Mexico begin with the abolition of slavery in 1829. Consequently, Mexico became free soil, offering freedom to fugitives from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama and beyond who crossed the border. Free soil was not new to fugitive slaves, who often sought freedom by crossing the border to Canada or parts of the Caribbean where slavery was already abolished.[6] According to Sarah E. Cornell, fugitive slaves in Mexico did not have legal rights of citizenship, but were able to carve out a contingent freedom dependent on justifications that they could provide for their presence and the goodwill of local authorities.[7] Naturally, the US consulate in Mexico refused to extend recognition of national citizenship to runaway slaves, who were left in a legal limbo and precluded from citizenship.[8] Therefore, fugitives petitioned for cartas, ensuring legality, some even converting to Catholicism and using godparentage links to increase their chances.[9] Nonetheless, by effectively turning Mexico into free soil for slaves in Texas or other parts of the South, Mexico helped hasten the US Civil War and emancipation by refusing to agree to any extradition treaty for the thousands of runaways in their territory.[10] Mexican authorities benefitted from this arrangement by using freed blacks to populate the frontier, block US expansion, and protect the borderlands from nomadic indigenous peoples.[11] Indeed, Rosalie Schwartz highlighted the example of land grant issued to Seminoles to populate the borderland near Coahuila. These Seminoles also included Black Seminoles.[12] Moreover, runaway slaves provided another source of labor, frequently as sharecroppers or workers on ranches in the north of Mexico.[13] This estimated population of 4000 fugitive slaves in the north of Mexico by the middle of the 1850s undoubtedly contributed to the labor demands of local agriculture.[14]

Although there are not many first-hand accounts of the experiences of fugitive slaves in Mexico, it appears that many escapees in Mexican territory also found some degree of social inclusion or opportunity. US abolitionist Benjamin Lundy, who had traveled to Haiti as well as Texas and Mexico in promotion of abolitionist agendas, used the example of a former slave working as a blacksmith to promote the idea of Mexico as a land with little to no racial prejudice. According to Lundy’s informant, Mexicans treated all people the same, regardless of color, leading Lundy to characterize Mexican government policy as one based on bringing together people of all colors.[15] Jane Cazneau, cited by Rosalie Schwartz, also mentioned the multiple opportunities for “’young men of mixed blood, who have been well-trained, perhaps, in the household of their masters, settle themselves advantageously, marry in the best families and carry their honors with high dignity.’"[16]

African Americans, particularly those of mixed racial origins, could marry into high-ranking families, perform a number of occupations, and achieve positions in society unavailable in the US South. Lundy similarly reported on the favorable treatment accorded to “mulattoes” from Louisiana. Nicholas Drouet, a “dark mulatto” officer in the Mexican army, for instance, received a grant of land for the purpose of colonization by “colored” settlers from Louisiana in Tamaulipas.[17] According to Lundy, Drouet received support from a Mexican general and support from other blacks.[18] It would seem that many free blacks and those living under slavery envisioned Mexico as not only a bastion of liberty from enslavement, but a site perceived as relatively lacking in the entrenched racial prejudices of the United States. Mexican state discourse of the nation as one built on racial inclusion likewise shaped state attempts to curry favor with US African Americans. General Santa Anna during the Mexican-American War, a period when many slaves fled across the border, circulated a notice to US troops, telling them that there is no distinction of races in Mexico and there is liberty, not slavery.[19] One can surmise from such instances that Mexican official responses to the question of slavery and racism positively contrasted Mexico to that of the US, connecting official discourse of race to the interests and imagination of African Americans, both enslaved and free.

In fact, African American support or relative acceptance of the official discourse of racial equality and a perceived lack of racial discrimination may have correlated with the writings of US black abolitionists and black nationalists who did not travel to Mexico. Frederick Douglass, who opposed the Mexican-American War, clearly linked US aggression to slavery and racial prejudice, thereby tying Mexico to African American anti-imperialist politics and abolitionist goals.[20] To Douglass, who did not favor black emigration, the war was nothing but “…a war against the free states—as a war against freedom, against the Negro, and against the interests of workingmen of this country—and as a means of extending that great evil and damning curse, negro slavery.”[21]

In addition, abolitionist, Civil War veteran, novelist, and medical doctor Martin R. Delany included Mexico within his vision of the future for African Americans. To Delany, the fate of blacks was in the south, in Mexico, Central America, the West Indies, and South America.[22] Delany believed Central and South America to be the “ultimate destination and future home of the colored race on this continent.”[23] Predating Ivan Van Sertima by over a century, Delany also claimed Africans had been present in Central America before 1492, thus tying the aboriginal population of the Americas to Africans by “consanguinity.”[24] Furthermore, because the indigenous population of the Americas was allegedly related to Africans, Delany argued blacks have even greater claims to the continent than Europeans and should make common cause with the Indian.[25] Moreover, the majority of the population of Mexico, Central America, and South America were “colored” and therefore “brethren” of US African Americans.[26] This common racial bond and shared history of oppression by Europeans was to unite African Americans with Latin Americans, who by this time (1852), had mostly abolished slavery and people of color purportedly enjoyed equality in social, civil, political and religious privileges with whites.[27] Delany’s tailoring of the fate of African American uplift in his black nationalist project was irrevocably linked to Latin America, and though Mexico was only a part, his 1852 essay utilized an expansive definition of “colored” people and a refashioning of the history of Central America that included Mesoamerica as central to a black emigrationist project.

While Delany later championed African American emigration to Liberia and West Africa, Mexico’s geography, resources, location, alleged consanguinity with Africans, and perceived racial equality made it an attractive site for black emigration and colonization projects. To Delany and other African American black nationalists, a broad definition of “colored peoples” could encompass Latin Americans and indigenous groups who were not necessarily “black,” strengthening the case for including Mexico as a significant site for African American emigrationism and the black imagination, not solely Liberia or Haiti. Besides, Delany’s emigrationist project was directed against the US, unlike US government black colonization schemes during the Civil War, which sought to use black colonization as a tool of national policy in the Yucatan and Central America, exploiting black colonization as a method for checking French, British, and Spanish intervention in the region.[28] Thus, black nationalist discourse’s expansive definition of “colored race” and reworking of history helped provide an ideological foundation which probably shaped some African American migrants in Mexico during the 19^th century. Foreshadowing future generations of African American critics of US Empire, examples such as Delany exemplified a black internationalist politics in which Mexico and Latin America were central.

The example of a free people of color family, the Tinchants, in Mexico before and after the US Civil War, serves as another example of the ways in which African American emigrationist and nationalist ideas intersected in Mexico. Cases like the Tinchants, who exhibited a mixture of the motives and interests of black immigrants in Mexico before and after emancipation in the US, point to the ways in way Mexico appealed to African Americans as an alternative to the US or Haiti. Rebecca Scott’s Freedom Papers alluded to the Tinchant brothers who lived in Veracruz and grew tobacco further inland during and after the US Civil War and Emperor Maximilian’s reign in Mexico. Maximilian, who endeavored to attract laborers and Confederates, also had support among some Francophone men of color from Louisiana.[29] Jules Tinchant, whose first home in Mexico was in Jicaltepec, with French settlers, attempted to lure fellow Creoles from Louisiana, especially his brother Joseph, to Veracruz, where he established his own retail tobacco, cigar, and dry goods business.[30] When his brother Joseph did move to Mexico, he and his wife Stephanie joined an agricultural colony recently founded by Louisiana migrants, where Creoles pursued tobacco cultivation after acquiring land near Papantla and other rural areas.[31] Intriguingly, Joseph Tinchant sympathized with Mexican opposition to French forces, and may have known Benito Juarez.[32] However, Joseph Tinchant left Mexico in 1875 after years of economic trouble, despite gaining Mexican citizenship. Yet he retained connections to his wife’s family, Creoles who remained in Mexico, cultivating tobacco.[33] Mexico was able to provide land, economic and social conditions, and policies aligned with the interest of Louisiana Creoles of color during the US Civil War, continuing a longer tradition in which African Americans could enjoy certain privileges unavailable in the US. Additionally, the Tinchant case appears to, like the future case of William Ellis, exploit the stereotype of “Latin” or Latin American peoples for self-identity and branding, as a sort of cultural Mexican-ness assisted Joseph Tinchant’s tobacco business after he established himself in Europe.[34]

African Americans in Mexico After 1865

After the US Civil, African American interesting in emigrationist schemes did not completely disappear, but no longer had the pressing impetus of racial slavery as a motive to leave. Official discourse in Mexico during the second half of the 19^th century also embraced notions of race that shaped immigration policy. Whites, particularly Italians and other “Latin” Europeans, were believed to be the best immigrants to improve the population pool, as exemplified by the failed Italian colony organized to cultivate terrenos baldíos.[35] Black immigrants, no matter where they came from, were perceived as contributing negatively to the racial makeup of the nation. Francisco Pimentel, for example, argued against black immigration because it would, he claimed, lead to an increase in vices, crime, and a zambo population that would be degenerate.[36] Elsewhere, blacks were described as a conductor of cancer in the US and Cuba, clearly establishing a bias against black immigration in Mexico.[37] In 1895, the Hotel Iturbide in Mexico City, possibly influenced by racial segregation in US cities, even prohibited the use of the kitchen to three African Americans, indicating the degree to which some institutions and enterprises adopted racially discriminatory attitudes and practices.[38] The solution, to those like Pimentel, who did not believe the indigenous population should be destroyed, favored European immigration to achieve progress, not black immigration.[39] During the Porfiriato, the state sought to entice European immigration through terrenos baldíos, which would promote export crops and increase revenues for the state. Unfortunately, European immigration never reached the rates of the immigration in the US or Argentina.[40] Thus, in the search for additional labor in agriculture, as well as foreign-owned enterprises and businesses, such as railway construction, thousands of blacks came to Mexico.[41]

Thousands of blacks from the US and the Caribbean came to Mexico, in spite of allegedly being corrupted, feminized, ugly and viceful.[42] Black laborers from Jamaica, for example, worked on the train line of San Luis de Potosi to Tampico in 1882.[43] According to historian Laura Muñoz Mata, black workers were often sought by English or American companies involved in railway construction, agriculture, and dockyards because they spoke English.[44] Mostly coming from Jamaica, these black immigrants came on contracts for a defined term and were expected to return to the Caribbean.[45] However, some black immigrants, including those from Jamaica or Belize, seem to have stayed in Mexico, as the case of Quintana Roo illustrates. By 1904, the majority of its 8000 inhabitants were from Belize and Jamaica.[46] These black workers were often paid more than their salaried Mexican counterparts, which may have fueled hostility from local populations against black migrants, who complained to British consuls of their poor treatment.[47] Black American laborers were similarly proposed for agricultural colonies for growing cotton, sugar, rice, and tobacco.[48] Economic considerations and labor interests led to an increase of black, Asian and other groups perceived as unfavorable in an age when Social Darwinism and racial ideology exerted a strong influence on the intellectuals of the Porfiriato. Thus, Mexican newspapers criticized black and Asian immigration.[49]

Unfortunately, little has been uncovered on the experiences of Jamaican and Afro-Caribbeans working in Mexico in the 1880s or 1890s, but a number of African American colonization projects or attempted plans shed light on black immigration in the period. One example, a colony in Tlahualilo, Durango, formed with African Americans, was founded in 1895 and led to an increase in the production of cotton and corn.[50] In 1888, the Mexican Land and Development Company, which claimed ownership of seven million acres of land in Tamaulipas, offered to sell shares to interested African Americans.[51] Arnold Shankman similarly describes interest among African Americans in colonization of Mexico in San Diego, California. James Fowler’s Colored Colonization Company of San Diego, established in 1893, claimed to have made arrangements to purchase land in Mexico for African American farmers, though by 1895, it appeared to have fallen apart.[52] Mexico was, at least for period in the 1890s, perceived as a land of opportunities for African-Americans in the black press, too.[53] On the other hand, African Americans and some of the black press also displayed critical or condescending attitudes, looking down on Catholicism or the “primitive” and backwards nature of Mexican agricultural methods and sanitation.[54] Consequently, in their view, African Americans could become agents of progress in Mexico, especially in agriculture and cotton production.[55] Therefore, African American emigration to Mexico would not only provide an escape from US racism, but also provide access to opportunities and aid in the progress of their new land, following older patterns of black emigrationist ideology as uplifting, redeeming, or civilizing in recipient nations.

Perhaps William Ellis best illustrates Mexico in the black imagination in the late 19^th century. Born a slave in Texas, Ellis learned Spanish and because of his ambiguous looks, was often able to pass as a Mexican, Cuban, or Latin American in the US, taking the name Guillermo Enrique Eliseo.[56] Ellis later met Porfirio Diaz in 1888, requesting a permit for 20,000 African Americans to come to Mexico.[57] By 1895, Ellis organized a colony of 816 persons, mostly from Alabama, in Tlahualilo, which, though short-lived because of an epidemic and poor housing, continued the earlier 19^th century tradition of viewing the country as an ideal setting for African Americans, lacking the race prejudice which characterized the US.[58] The African American colonists received higher pay than local farmers for growing cotton, but were not vaccinated and Ellis did not provide the promised comfortable lodgings.[59] Furthermore, Ellis’s exploitation of his vague racial features and knowledge of Spanish to craft an identity based on perceived “Latinness” facilitated his passing in the US, where he was accepted as a Mexican in New York. Like the Tinchants, who utilized their time in Mexico and connections to Latin America to further their own interests, Ellis took advantage of perceived “Latinness” to climb social ladders, although he retained ties with his relatives and other African Americans, showing a keen interest in promoting black emigration to Mexico. Lastly, in spite of the failure of the 1890s colonization experiment spearheaded by Ellis, Mexico persisted as a location among African American emigrationist imagination, even as the cientificos of the Porfiriato, newspapers, and local communities often responded to black immigration with hostility, thereby weakening Ellis’s essential argument that Mexico lacked race prejudice. Considering the amount of time Ellis spent in Mexico City, it would not be unreasonable to suspect he knew better, but as an alternative to legalized racial segregation of the US, and the earlier precedent of the southern neighbor as a refuge for slaves and free people of color, Ellis, at least in his writings to African Americans, promoted the idea of Mexico as a land of racial equality.

Moving into the 20^th century, Mexico sustained interest among African Americans. For example, the Little Liberia colonization project to exploit the land and mineral wealth of Baja California brought African Americans from California in 1919.[60] Mexican President Obregon also told these colonists his nation will not create a color line, later turning against black immigration through a law that required them to apply for special passports to get into Mexico.[61] Again, Mexican state responses contradicted the promise and reputation of racial equality, yet African American emigration and colonization carried over the 19^th century perspective of regarding Mexico as a land of racial equality. That the Baja California colonization took place in 1919 may also correlate with post-World War I black militancy and resistance to racism after serving in war, connecting African American emigration to other black responses to racism at a critical juncture. This, in turn, also shaped black internationalist politics in the post-World War I years and the Harlem Renaissance, which also looked to Mexico through travelers and writers like Langston Hughes. Notions of community uplift, cultivating race pride, and supporting black businesses in an environment believed to be less hostile likely kept Mexico relevant for the pursuit of these goals.

Langston Hughes’s father, James Nathaniel Hughes, permanently relocated to Mexico for reasons following a similar trajectory as past black migration, and died in Mexico City. In Hughes’s I Wonder As I Wander, Hughes describes visiting Mexico after the death of his father to settle his estate. His father owned a large ranch, as well as tenements in Mexico City, showing some degree of social and economic success for African Americans in Mexico.[62] Besides his father’s economic success, his relationship with the Patiño sisters, three women of standing, shows a degree of social integration.[63] Indeed, Hughes had left the US in order to escape the color line and to practice law, which he could not do in Oklahoma.[64]  Based on his travels in Mexico, Langston Hughes would conclude that in Mexico, blacks were so well merged they were hard to find, but noted the presence of Cuban blacks and a friend of his father, Butch Lewis, who owned the largest and most popular American-style restaurant in the capital.[65] Clearly, Mexico appealed to African Americans of Hughes’s father’s generation, but also his own interests in folk culture, African strains in Mexican culture, and literature. I Wonder As I Wander also covers Hughes’s time in Cuba and Haiti, two locales more often associated with the Harlem Renaissance and African Americans, but Mexico, with its folk dances, indigenous heritage, African past, and symbolic meaning to African Americans, such as the father of Hughes, signified an additional important space in the African American imagination. Hughes’s friendships with Diego Rivera and Miguel Covarrubias, in particular, the latter also a participant in the Harlem Renaissance, attests to the gravity of the Mexico connection to African Americans into the 20^th century.[66]

Conclusion

In summation, Mexico’s historic presence in the black imagination, in particular, black emigrationist movements since the 19^th century, necessitates contextualizing it within the broader history of African American emigration. Before emancipation, African Americans looked to Mexico, which, through its free soil policies and refusal to sign any extradition treaty for runaway slaves, became an important refuge. Both slaves and free people of color found a common interest in the republic to the south. In addition, influential black abolitionists and proponents of black emigration, such as Martin Delany, identified the future nationality of African Americans in Central America and Mexico, complicating the usual narrative on black emigration that focus solely on Liberia or Haiti. These tendencies persisted throughout the postbellum years, as African American emigrationist movements, which, like Afro-Caribbean migration, benefitted sectors of the Mexican economy despite their unwanted presence. They were organized by various African Americans. Mexican elites or government responses, unsurprisingly, used this connection to promote their own interests and to downplay the existence of racial prejudice on its soil, despite simultaneously promoting racially discriminatory immigration laws. Well-known examples of black colonization projects possessed positives that met the interests of African Americans and Mexico’s economic and labor needs, and indicate the ongoing appeal of Mexico for black emigrationist projects. Someone like Langston Hughes, for instance, who lived in Mexico for a year and whose father chose it over the US, proves its enduring symbolic significance to African American internationalist politics, history, and migration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] Sara Fanning, Caribbean Crossing: African Americans and the Haitian Emigration Movement, 100.

[2] Ibid, 82.

[3] Leon Pamphile, Haitians and African Americans: A Heritage of Tragedy and Hope, 50.

[4] Floyd J. Miller, The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization, 1787-1863, 247.

[5] Ibid, 56.

[6] Ada Ferrer, “Haiti, Free Soil, and Antislavery in the Revolutionary Atlantic” discusses the free soil concept in a Haitian context, while relating it to the broader Atlantic World.

[7] Sarah E. Cornell, “Citizens of Nowhere: Fugitive Slaves and Free African Americans in Mexico, 1833-1857,” 354.

[8] Ibid, 362.

[9] Ibid, 368.

[10] Ronnie C. Tyler, “Fugitive Slaves in Mexico,” 12.

[11] Ibid, 2.

[12] Rosalie Schwartz, Across the Rio to Freedom: US Negroes in Mexico, 39.

[13] James David Nichols, “The Line of Liberty: Runaway Slaves and Fugitive Peons in the Texas-Mexico Borderlands,” 428.

[14] Todd W. Wahlstrom, The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration across the Borderlands after the American Civil War, 41.

[15] Benjamin Lundy, The Life, Travels, and Opinions of Benjamin Lundy, 48.

[16] Rosalie Schwartz, Across the Rio to Freedom: US Negroes in Mexico, 43.

[17] Benjamin Lundy, The Life, Travels, and Opinions of Benjamin Lundy, 113.

[18] Ibid, 143, 144.

[19] Rosalie Schwartz, Across the Rio to Freedom: US Negroes in Mexico, 31.

[20] Frederick Douglass, Liberator, June 8, 1849 http://www.blackpast.org/1849-frederick-douglass-mexico

[21] Ibid.

[22] Floyd J. Miller, The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization, 1787-1863, 127.

[23] Martin R. Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States and Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party, 193.

[24] Ibid, 187, 188.

[25] Ibid, 188.

[26] Ibid, 195.

[27] Ibid, 214.

[28] Schoonover, Thomas. "Misconstrued Mission: Expansionism and Black Colonization in Mexico and Central America during the Civil War." Pacific Historical Review 49, no. 4, 610.

[29] Rebecca Scott, Freedom Papers, 117.

[30] Ibid, 140, 141.

[31] Ibid, 142, 144.

[32] Ibid, 146, 147.

[33] Ibid, 151.

[34] Ibid, 166.

[35] Moises Gonzalez Navarro, La Colonizacion en Mexico 1877-1910, 9.

[36] Gonzalez Navarro, Los Extranjeros en Mexico y los mexicanos en el extranjero, 188

[37] Ibid.

[38] Ibid, 189.

[39] Gonzalez Navarro, Los Extranjeros en Mexico y los mexicanos en el extranjero, 500.

[40] Moises Gonzalez Navarro, La Colonizacion en Mexico 1877-1910, 9.

[41] Karl Jacoby, The Strange Career of William Ellis, 54.

[42] Ibid, 186.

[43] Moises Gonzalez Navarro, La Colonizacion en Mexico 1877-1910, 80.

[44] Laura Munoz, “Migracion afroantillana a Mexico en el siglo XIX”, 76.

[45] Ibid, 77.

[46] Laura Munoz, “Presencia afrocaribena en Veracruz: la inmigracion jamaicana en las postrimerias del siglo XIX”, 78.

[47] Laura Munoz, “Migracion afroantillana a Mexico en el siglo XIX”, 81-82.

[48] Laura Munoz, “Presencia afrocaribena en Veracruz: la inmigracion jamaicana en las postrimerias del siglo XIX”, 77.

[49] Moises Gonzalez Navarro, Sociedad y cultura en el porfiriato, 162.

[50] Moises Gonzalez Navarro, La Colonizacion en Mexico 1877-1910, 60-61.

[51] Arnold Shankman, Ambivalent Friends: Afro-Americans View the Immigrant, 61.

[52] Ibid, 61-62.

[53] Ibid, 65.

[54] Ibid, 68, 69.

[55] Karl Jacoby, The Strange Career of William Ellis, 76.

[56] Ibid, 13.

[57] Karl Jacoby, “Between North and South: The Alternative Borderlands of William H. Ellis and the African American Colony of 1895”, 213.

[58] J. Fred Rippy, “A Negro Colonization Project in Mexico,” 1895, 69.

[59] Message of the President of the United States, Relating to the Failure of the Scheme for the Colonization of Negroes in Mexico and the Necessity of Returning Them to Their Homes in Alabama, 59.

[60] Seeking Eldorado, 158.

[61] Ibid, 168, 169.

[62] Langston Hughes, I Wonder As I Wander, 289.

[63] Ibid.

[64] Ibid, 294.

[65] Ibid.

[66] Ibid

The Haitian Peasantry and the US Occupation: Les paysans haitiens et l'occupation américaine d'Haiti (1915-1930)

We have recently taken another look at Kethly Millet's study of the US Occupation of Haiti and the peasantry. Millet's brief book examines the impact of the Occupation on the Haitian peasant. The peasantry, however, were not an undifferentiated mass of smallholder farmers. Some were landless, others were squatters on state-owned land, more were sharecroppers, a few were grand proprietors and medium-scale owners, and then there were the speculators who benefited from their relationship with, for example, exporters of coffee to move peasant-produced crops. Naturally, the impact of the US Occupation on the peasantry varied by region and by the social status of the peasant involved. In some regions, such as Plaisance, 15% of the peasantry were landless (according to Simpson and Dartigue). Furthermore, some areas of rural Haiti had already been impacted by foreign agro-industrial enterprise like Freres Simmonds and Plantation d'Haiti. 

The major impact of the US Occupation appears to have been an intensification of this process, despite the meager investments (compared to Cuba). HASCO, Compagnie Nationale de Chemin de Fer, road construction using corvee labor, a sisal plantation, a cotton plantation in Artibonite, bananas, and new taxes furthered the development of a rural proletariat while creating conditions that enlarged the scale of Haitian emigration to Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Wages for this burgeoning rural laboring class were 25 to 30 cents (US dollars) for 12 hour day and 10 cents for women and children, which were lower than wages one could have earned abroad. According to Millet, the imposition of taxes in September 1928 on local distillers also weakened the position of local guildive production. HASCO, which enjoyed a sugar monopoly, as well as other US companies rerouted water sources which negatively impacted small farmers.

So, hurt by taxes on small-scale distillers, rising unemployment, increased prices for basic subsistence and food in the late 1920s, and loss of land or resources,  Millet's explanation for the conditions leading to 1929 and the massacre at Marchaterre seems adequate. Of course, we know what happened after 1929, as the bad press of the incident spread internationally and steps were made to finally end the Occupation by 1934. But what, if anything, was the legacy of this period? The caco resistance was brutally crushed, and the poorly armed peasants could not unseat the Marines. Despite some gains in infrastructure, funded by the Haitians and with their own labor, the peasantry appear to have experienced mainly immiseration, emigration and top-down reforms that did little to fundamentally alter the economy or aid peasant agriculture.

The US Occupations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic

We have been rereading parts of Calder's The Impact of Intervention: The Dominican Republic during the U.S. Occupation of 1916-1924 and thinking about the role of US imperialism in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Calder's book should be read in conjunction with Hans Schmidt on the US Occupation of Haiti for a similar but distinct experience of US military imperialism and interests in the Caribbean region. And the two occupations were definitely linked, involving some of the same personnel and leadership (Russell, Knapp) and engaging in finalizing the Haiti-US border as well as requiring Haitian labor in Dominican sugar plantations and other projects, like roads. 

Despite overlapping for several years and probably achieving the same result (no major systemic reforms in "democracy" or government), there are still some noticeable differences in the US military occupations of the island. And these differences cannot be found solely in the fact that the US Marines ruled the Dominican Republic directly while using puppet presidents in Haiti. Of course, the longest lasting legacies of the US in the DR appear to have been in public works and the Guardia, probably the same for Haiti in terms of the reforms of the Haitian military. The various military dictators of Haiti post-1934 and the Trujillo regime cannot be understood without taking this into account, despite some of the very different aspects of the military under the Duvaliers and Trujillo. But clearly the political and economic centralization in the two capitals and the defeat of the cacos and gavilleros, the caudillos and regional strongmen, by the US Marines, facilitated authoritarian regimes. 

Calder's book explores several examples of areas in which the US Occupation intervened or changed the DR. Some of the same goals were pursued in Haiti, such as reforms in taxation, military, public works projects, elementary education (more schools) and favoring US exports to the Dominican market. Legislation beneficial to sugar companies in 1920 also furthered tensions in the east of the DR, where an uprooted peasantry manifested into the gavillero "bandits" or rebels fighting the Marines. The US Occupation also implemented additional reforms in both countries but ultimately failed as the only arena in which Haitians or Dominicans were allowed to express any opinion was in education. In the Haitian case, we have well-known examples of US discriminatory attitudes, racist beliefs which also manifested in US interactions with the Dominican population. But perhaps because they are generally speaking lighter-skinned than Haitians, Calder suspects the US was willing to end their occupation of the Dominican Republic before that of Haiti.

The gavilleros in some way resemble the cacos of Haiti, but the areas of staunch caco resistance in Haiti does not appear to have developed in areas of the country under the influence of HASCO or other sites with large-scale agro-industrial projects (which were on a far smaller scale than US investments in the DR). The Haitian peasant did experience uprootedness, dispossession and labor migration to Cuba and the DR during this period (1915-1934), but the cacos appear to have been less active in, say, the Leogane area or Cul-de-Sac plain, regions where HASCO had an impact on the rural population. However, the two do seem to resemble each other in the disconnect between them and their respective elite opposition movements. According to Calder, the Union Patriotique in did not become a mass movement until the late 1920s, while the Union Nacional in the DR received more international support than their Haitian counterpart.  And while both elite opposition groups included intellectual resistance to the Occupation, perhaps the huge numbers of Haitian laborers in the DR and US racism precluded any elite Dominican attempt to rethink the nation's relationship to "blackness." Perhaps another legacy of the US Occupation was to ensure the somewhat deeper integration of the DR into the US "co-prosperity" sphere at slightly better terms than what they were willing to offer Haiti?

The Kingdom of Allada

Robin Law's short history of the kingdom of Allada was a little disappointing. We were hoping for a study of the scope of his other monographs with rich analysis of the kingdom of Allada. Unfortunately, our existing sources are thinner than we realized, often mainly relevant to Allada's active involvement in slave trading and only hints at other aspects of the state's administrative, economic, political, social, or cultural dimensions. Furthermore, as Law convincingly demonstrates, the surviving oral traditions are often problematic and present a number of problems since they have lost the institutional framework of the old kingdom's court and the traditions of Allada and Dahomey have changed over time to express new or different genealogies, historical events, or composite characters. 

It is clear that Allada was probably the dominant kingdom of the Slave Coast (or at least a good chunk of it) but its own origins remain unclear (although it was in existence by the 16th century if not long before) and the exact nature of Allada's authority over its "fidalgos" and vassal provinces or territories is unknown. However, as Law suggests, there does seem to have been more than a little continuity in the court and structure of the state from Allada to Dahomey. That continuity plus the pieces of the puzzle Law endeavors to place in correct order with the aid of European contemporary sources and later traditions, provides the reader with some idea of the chronology of kings, the institutions of the kingdom, and the impact of slave trading on the kingdom's relations economy and foreign relations. Due to our unfamiliarity with the historiography of the Slave Coast, we were surprised how often Law disagreed or felt a need to add nuance to arguments by Akinjogbin, whose study of Dahomey seems to be quite seminal. We feel Law was probably correct about the qualifications he attached to Akinjogbin's interpretations of the impact of the slave trade as a factor in Allada's decline.

Unfortunately, this brief history is a bit too schematic and we wonder if more recent scholarship has uncovered new sources or attempted to integrate more fully studies on the 'Arada" or "Arara" in the Americas. There is a recently published study coauthored by Law on early Allada-Portugal relations, suggestive of important links between Christianity (or interest in it) as a way to strengthen Allada's economic ties to European traders. Perhaps the possible or alleged Christian presence in Allada could also be of interest, with at least one king being educated by the Portuguese in Sao Tome and Allada's ambassador to the court of Louis XIV being fluent in Portuguese and, at least nominally Christian. Who knows, maybe Latin Americanists and Caribbeanists examining so-called "Arada" or "Arara" captives in the Americas could potentially shed light on social, ethnic, religious, or political dynamics impacting Allada and its neighbors in the 1600s and 1700s. Law uses some of this material, particularly the work of Alonso de Sandoval but we are convinced more material might be available. 

Haiti in the New World Order

Alex Dupuy's Haiti in the New World Order: The Limits of the Democratic Revolution is one of those studies we should have read several years ago. Probably should have been done around the same time we read Dupuy's book on Aristide, but this one has the benefit of being written in the 1990s and focusing entirely on the first term of Aristide and how his eventual return to Haiti to complete that term was related to US foreign policy and neoliberal structural adjustments in a post-Cold War world. As Dupuy convincingly outlines in the early chapters, the new world order of neoliberal reforms promoted by the US, IMF, World Bank, and USAID would not have favored development for countries like Haiti and would not have alleviated the misery of the population. 

However, even a liberal capitalist state would have represented progress over the prebendary Haitian state and could have won over a share of the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, one can see how the very conditions in which Aristide was allowed to return to Haiti after the first coup diminished the left-leaning social democratic agenda of Lavalas while recognizing how it deviated from Cold War-era US interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean (which usually involved intervention against leftist or left-leaning governments and support for military dictatorships). Aristide's first term must be contextualized in the new era in US foreign policy as well as the years of pro-democracy activism and struggles in Haiti since the fall of Duvalier in 1986. 

Reading Dupuy's book and thinking about his later analysis of Aristide as a politician who never relinquished the robe of the prophet for the clothes of the prince, one cannot help but feel Haiti may have been better off with Aristide remaining outside of formal politics. His real charisma and footwork for political, economic, and social changes in the 1980s was perhaps squandered or misdirected by his decision to run for president. Perhaps he really think believe it was a messianic or mystical relationship he enjoyed with the Haitian people and God was calling him to run to create a newer, better Haiti with dignified poverty instead of abject poverty most Haitians survive under. 

But his political and tactical errors of resisting a broad left coalition in government, employing threatening rhetoric against the bourgeoisie (which already hated or opposed him), his failure to thoroughly condemn violence or political mobs, and the "deal with the Devil" he agreed with to be returned to office almost ensured an unpleasant end to his political career. Just imagine if he had remained outside of formal politics but supported a broader left-leaning coalition that, while still facing pressure from the military, the haute bourgeoisie, and the US, was able to build a moderately progressive growth with equity economic policy for Haiti? Just imagine if the institutions and practice of democracy had been given the chance to actually develop and Aristide, as an outsider of the formal political process, could have used his charisma and influence to support this trend?

Perhaps it is naïve on our part to think the Duvalierist old guard and neo-Duvalierists would have ever agreed to this, but the last 36 years in Haiti have been a constant struggle for building democratic institutions and stability. The US role in this failed transition seems quite clear, and the old Duvalierists did not disappear since they played a role in 2004 and Martelly's presidency. We just wish Haiti could get a "do-over" for the last few decades, although it would be difficult to see huge progress made in Haiti becoming a "developed" or industrialized country. Perhaps things didn't have to become this bad, with the breakdown of the state, immiseration of the population, proliferation of gangs (and the Aristide years contributed to this), continued drug trafficking, fraudulent elections, and common human rights violations. When will Haiti's next chance for a democratic transition or something else to escape the current cycle present itself?

Against Decolonisation

Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously by Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò is one of those catchy, polemical books that points out the several flaws in a certain type of decolonisation. Critiquing Wiredu, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and other like-minded proponents influenced by them, Táíwo illustrates how their understanding of African agency, history, and languages suffers from a variety of flaws. One of their major flaws is equating modernity with colonialism or Westernization, a perspective that ignores the plethora of ways in which European colonialism in Africa actually preempted or prevented modernity through the imposition of a government without the consent of the governed and an extractive regime based on the utter exploitation and abuse of indigenous or local populations. 

Táíwò is basically saying those who ignore the ways in which liberal representative democracy has been engaged with, accepted, and appropriated by Africans to create modern societies are actually guilty of a misunderstanding of decolonisation (in the original sense of a formal end to European colonialism) and do not seriously engage with African intellectuals and politicians like Nkrumah, Senghor, Nyerere, or Cabral who saw value and utility in liberal democracy and other ideas, political philosophies, and customs of European origin. The obsession with African languages, defining and delimiting "African" in atavistic or retrograde fashions, and rejecting something of European origin because it may have entered a place like Nigeria through missionaries or even the colonial state does a disservice to the nuances of African intellectual history and the challenges people across the continent are engaged in to ensure a freer, more democratic government. 

Something of European or other external origins can be debated, analyzed, and perhaps adapted instead of blindly emulated or copied, but calling it "decolonizing" does not facilitate our understanding and may further obfuscate a deeper engagement with the full array of African intellectual production. Even the chronologies we use, like "precolonial" or terms like "traditional African religion" have to be rethought or reconsidered for what it suggests about the history of the continent and the impact of European colonialism. And trying to use decolonizing as a method of resurrecting "traditional" or ancient African monarchies, communalism, or spiritual practices is dangerous and does not help in the struggle to end customs like child marriages, ritual killings, or genital mutilation. I am sure most reasonable writers and activists who speak of decolonisation do not really want a return to the political or social order of "precolonial" Africa. Moreover, no one who has read Fanon or Cabral or, dare I say it, Haitian intellectuals of the 19th and 20th centuries, would see a return to premodern civilization as the basis for building a postcolonial state. 

Although ostensibly about Africa, much of what Táíwò discusses is also relevant to Haiti and the Caribbean. In "Haitian Studies" one can also find similar rhetoric of "decolonizing" or "decoloniality" (although perhaps closer in spirit to Latin American forms) that often cloud deeper understanding or analysis of Haiti's political, linguistic, and intellectual debates. In the Haitian case, I see it more often around the question of religion and language. According to some, language in Haiti needs to be decolonised by favoring education and literature in Haitian Creole, the only language spoken fluently by all Haitians. Instead of privileging French, Haitian Creole should be promoted to complete the mental decolonisation of Haitians. The linguistic realities of Haiti are of course more complicated than this kind of Manichaean worldview allows. I also wonder how anyone can only see the French language as colonial force in Haiti when the vast majority of Haitian literature has been composed in that language and French has been owned, claimed, and mastered by Haitians for two centuries. As for Creole in Haiti's schools, we have yet to truly see the basic reforms necessary to improve and update Haitian education or properly prepare curriculum and materials for Creole instruction. The situation is more difficult than proponents of Creole recognize or admit, and the relationship between French and Creole is not so black and white. 

As for religion and spiritual practices, I also wonder if Haitians could learn from Táíwò. Instead of assuming that the Vodou religion offers practical or useful ways of rethinking or reconsidering liberal democracy or that it could even offer a template of an alternative democracy because of the faith's alleged democratic or imaginary spirit, perhaps Haitian intellectuals would do better to dwell on Haitian engagement with liberalism, the legacy of 1804 (and 1789), and repeated attempts to build a representative democracy that respects and protects the individual with independent judiciaries and rights for women and sexual minorities. I see some parallels between Africa and Haiti in the dangers of "atavistic impulses" and exclusionary conceptualizations of Haitian identity that have been tried or toyed with in the past, with the usual disastrous results one can see in 20th century Haitian politics. And this is in a context where Haitian intellectuals have been working with allegedly "Western" values for over 200 years. I don't see how or why some Haitians think the "real" culture of Haiti is to be found in some resistant culture of Vodou and Creole that is the "real" Haiti (a breached citadel) and will be the foundation for another political system that better matches the Haitian's true nature or culture.

In short, everyone with time should read Against Decolonisation. It beats a dead horse occasionally, but at least forces us to remember that Africans (and people of African descent) have agency and we should take their histories and thinkers seriously instead of relegating them to the status of children or objects of a "colonial" history. We should also reject simple-minded or kneejerk reactions that hide or ignore history, deny or minimize cultural and intellectual exchange, or evince a lack of engagement with the languages we seek to promote as "authentic" or "decolonized" in Africa (or the Caribbean). There is no "authentic" or "pure" African (or Haitian) tradition or civilization that has not been shaped by the interaction with others, before and after formal colonialism, and we should not reduce local agency in the choices and practices made by African governments in the postcolonial era. Haitians should pay attention to this and try to take their history seriously.