The Failure of the American Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934

   

Might Did Not Make It Right

Part 1

by Marie-Josée Mont-Reynaud,  March 2002  

The author, age 15, in rural Haiti, learning from  and with the youth of Mon Bouton

    American Marines entered Haiti in 1915 in order to maintain peace and help stabilize the Haitian government.  They occupied Haiti until 1934, controlling the Republic through a puppet Haitian government. This Occupation failed to achieve its goal of building a democratic government that would last after its forces departed. This paper ascribes this failure to the predominantly military character of the occupation, which undermined the sovereignty of the Haitian Republic and the development of democracy.

 

    Many American officials involved in the Occupation believed their efforts were to aid in the peaceful governance of the country because Haitians were deemed incapable of such. American attitudes toward Haitians were typically paternalistic, claiming, for example “these people had never heard of democracy and couldn’t have comprehended it had they heard.”^[1]

 

    This paper maintains that Haitians did not want foreign intervention; Americans were in Haiti because they wanted to be there, not because they had been invited, and they remained there only by military force. The will of the Haitian people was not expressed because Haitian political sovereignty was constrained by the American military. This survey of the literature shows that military force was used to impose a democracy by undemocratic means. Elections under the Occupation were rigged; a treaty was passed by force; martial law was declared; military tribunals were held; the press was censored; the Haitian Senate was dissolved; the constitution was changed by an unconstitutional plebiscite, and opposition was violently repressed. 

    These procedures reveal the ideology of the Occupation forces that "Might could Make Right" in Haiti.

(Part 2, in forthcoming Blog post)

FOOD DOESN'T GROW ON TREES

 Food doesn’t grow on trees…

Food doesn’t grow on trees here. It must be coaxed, nurtured, wheedled, and cajoled out of the dry earth. 

Mostly, if you try to grow carrots, the piglets will dig them up; mostly carrots, like mostly everything else, has to be purchased up at the weekly market at the site of old Fort Kampon.  

This market, “upstairs," as I quipped, is an hours' hike, depending on if you are Haitian or blan and the time of day.  My neighbors are out the door with laden baskets on their heads by 4 a.m.  If I make it out before 7, the hike will go faster before the sun gets strong.  

Yes, it can take me 2 hours.

The Fort Kampon market is where Madame Andre taught me how to sell rice by the tin can, yon gwo marmite, yon ti mamite. 

It was one of those cans from Maxwell House coffee  — yes they used small tomato sauce cans, and Maxwell House, coffee tins, precious containers. 

And  no, you would never, ever throw away a plastic bag!

Yes, I measure, I learn.  It was a great beginning. Understanding the world.

Madame Andre, my teacher, master of Haitian economics

"Markets are conversations,"  - who wrote that?

Madame Deklis is thrilled to have customers for peanut candies. 

I'm also thrilled because they go great with hot dark Haitian coffee.

On the road...watch every step. Every exhilarating step.  Did I really do this, live it, love it?

The Anthropologist's Hero, Carlo Levi

Clearly, God was in this place.

    Let me tell you: 

    My current  hero, the physician-anthropologist-partisan, Italian Carlo Levi, crafted an ethnography of his exile in mountains of Basilicata, Southern Italy, under Fascism. His memoir was Cristo si è fermato a Eboli,  — Christ Stopped at Eboli.

Nothing much about Christ stopping here, in these mountains, somewhere, in southern Haiti.  At 4,500 feet, give or take. Dr. Levi’s title is better translated as “Christ Never Made it Up Here.”

Mountain? This Haitian hillock. It’s too alive, verdant, earthy, sweaty, breathing…bare footsteps murmuring up and down the paths, Kreyol calling. Perhaps…perhaps, here, on this small mountain, despite the deprivations, the hard-scrabble lives I share…perhaps, here, well — Christ —that notion of redemption through suffering…doesn’t sell well here.  

At least, myself, I’m not buying.

Here, there is all-over green, pandanus, kokoye, trees, young and old pea plants…a vast, jungle-y drooping smelling life, a wildness that feels, in contrast to Carlo Levi’s bare village, starving peasants somewhere in 20th century Basilicata, in Italy’s boot, a dried, forsaken, abandoned plaster… 

Here, well, on the mountain, well, God is in this place. “And I didn’t know it.”  Mon Bouton, Haiti. 

       

         Now, I must show you. 

        

        Here.

In Living Color

Lives I witnessed, pitied

Lives I shared

The living earth, verdant, lush vines gripping

You could see, if not imagine, forever...Miami!

Yes, I am an anthropologist, a seeker, wanderer...and so?