The Formation of the Parti National Travailliste

Although there remains a lot more digging in archives and newspapers to be done, Antoine Pierre-Paul and the formation of the Parti National Travailliste is deserving of some attention. As the first official labor party in Haitian history, it's formation is intimately linked with the US Occupation of Haiti and the rising numbers of the working-class. It's formation symbolizes the convergence of an incipient working-class and the middle-class and elites also opposed to the US Marines. And while it may not have been a Communist party, to the chagrin of the US Daily Worker, the Parti National Travailliste did possess a larger political platform than simple opposition to US imperialism. The party very well might indicate a greater degree of inter-class solidarity during the US Occupation, in addition to providing background to the later growth of labor, Marxism, and noirisme in Haiti during the 1940s.

Combing through articles from Le Matin and Le Nouvelliste in the 1920s and early 1930s reveals the appearance of a number of labor organizations or associations. However, as correctly noted by Hector, many of these organizations were not unions, and it's questionable to what extent the typographers and chauffeurs really did have a syndicat in the 1920s, but the growing number of worker associations fueled the eventual rise of a political party geared towards labor. The Union Patriotique and Joseph Jolibois fils certainly sensed the importance of cross-class collaboration against imperialism, and we already know Jolibois fils had a following among workers in Port-au-Prince. Jolibois fils launched his own labor confederations, represented Haiti at a labor congress in Santo Domingo, and traveled across Latin America, thereby engaging with anti-imperialist, socialist, and nationalists across the hemisphere. Others, such as Perceval Thoby, sought to resist dispossession of peasants in their Union Nationaliste. Opposition to the US Occupation might not have been an effective inter-class collaborative effort, but there were attempts to bridge the gap, labor and peasant interests being one.

The youth, coming of age under the US Occupation, turned to new notions of Haitian identity, culture, and racism, especially through Haitian indigenist thought. Students, particularly those who launched a strike at Damien in 1929, later sparked a series of protests and solidarity strikes that eventually brought an end to the presidency of Louis Borno. These students, in addition to others who experienced the Occupation for the entirety of their youth, launched their own patriotic associations, journals, and, in some cases, embraced radical politics. Jacques Roumain and Georges Petit, for instance, rose to prominence for their journalism, activism, and experience of imprisonment at the behest of the US-controlled Haitian government. As one can see, the students were poised to play a major role as a spark in some type of social conflagration. 

Let's look at Antoine Pierre-Paul. Born in Les Cayes in 1880, he was a lawyer, businessman, and associate of former president Antoine Simon. He was also part of an attempted coup against Dartiguenave in 1916, which establishes his nationalist credentials against the US-appointed government. Moreover, Pierre-Paul participated in the Union Patriotique in the 1920s, after the armed insurrections of the cacos failed. Another organization he appears to have been a member of or affiliated with, the Association Fraternelle des Travailleurs, appears to be the link between his later involvement in labor politics and Haitian labor organizations prior to the 1929 demonstrations. According to Le Matin, this association was already calling for strikes against the US Occupation in 1921. This aforementioned article indicates the group consisted of some 100 or so members, including patrons and workers. Significantly, Ernest Gauchier, a member of the Association Fraternelle, later appeared as a member of the Parti National Travailliste. Thus, Pierre-Paul and the Parti National Travailliste inherited a history of cross-class collaboration, labor solidarity, and anti-Occupation tactics.

The party officially formed in November 1929, in the midst of the student strike at Damien and the later massacre of peasant protesters at Marchaterre. Its early membership likely consisted of artisans, such as Charles Mervilus, a carpenter, and other urban laborers. According to documents written by Pierre-Paul himself, published in Le Nouvelliste in October, the political party saw itself as representing the majority of the nation. The working-class, Pierre-Paul argued, experienced worsening conditions under US Occupation. Furthermore, the party sought to identify the cause of workers with peasants because of the close familial bonds between the two and, presumably, rural to urban migration. Clearly, Pierre-Paul was linking the cause of peasants and workers, not just urban workers and artisans. Whether or not the party was ever successful at organizing rural residents, it did develop a following in Port-au-Prince and near Les Cayes, where the Marchaterre massacre occurred.

The party's political platform, at least in November 1929, consisted of a series of administrative, economic, and legislative reforms. Protections for national industry, the creation of an industrial and agricultural credit and banking institutions, restrictions on foreign ownership of land, labor legislation on the length of the working day and minimum wages, savings funds for workers, and reorganization of night schools. While certainly not a socialist party calling for class war, it pursued a series of pro-labor reforms and economic agendas that would have improved conditions for the working-class, peasants feeling a crunch from US agro-industrial companies, and promote the national bourgeoisie instead of foreign capitalists. These reformist views bring to mind 19th century Haitian reformers and intellectuals like Edmond Paul and Louis-Joseph Janvier, not to mention subsequent Marxists who also sought to develop the local bourgeoisie and protect national industry. 

In terms of the party's impact on the anti-Occupation movement, it developed a following in Les Cayes (possibly due to Pierre-Paul's family ties and political connections there) and entered a pact of organizations also opposed to the occupiers. Gesner Guillou, the head of the regional committee of the Parti National Travailliste in Les Cayes, participated during the December 1929 demonstrations in the same city, when US Marines fired upon protesters. Pierre-Paul later claimed it was Marchaterre that finished Borno and brought the Forbes Commission to Haiti. To what extent the Parti National Travailliste can claim credit for organizing peasant and urban protests in 1929 is unclear at the moment, but the party did play a major role in consolidating a mass movement opposed to Borno's new taxes and the Occupation. 

As for the longevity of the party and its larger social significance after 1929, it appears throughout the 1930s and again, in 1946. Pierre-Paul was a presidential candidate on his party's ticket. He represented Haiti at the 1933 Montevideo Conference, challenging the Occupation. It's unclear to what degree the party actually existed independently of Pierre-Paul, who would later serve as a minister of labor under Francois Duvalier, but one article suggests the party possessed thousands of adherents by January 1930. Nonetheless, it seems like the party was probably limited to Port-au-Prince and Les Cayes, and it lacked the characteristic traits of a large political party like Fignole's Mouvement Paysan Ouvrier, which published its own journal, established locals, and appears to have developed from greater leadership of working-class members than the Parti National Travailliste. Nor did the Parti National Travailliste connect with Jolibois fils's labor ephemeral labor confederation, which did endeavor to build a labor movement connecting rural and urban Haiti.

It would take another democratic movement in 1946 to cement the conditions more favorable for legally recognized labor rights, middle-class political power, and the development of radicalism in Haitian politics. However, the Parti National Travailliste serves an as early precursor to these later developments, indicating the extent to which a labor party was both strengthened yet limited by the socio-economic and political conditions of Occupation. More work must be done to assess critically the political party's daily operations, its relationship with members inside and outside the capital, as well as its transformations in the 1930s and 1940s. But hopefully it serves to indicate the importance of a nascent working-class on the movement against the Occupation.

Works Consulted

Haiti; 1919-1920. Blue Book of Haiti. A Pictorial Review of the Republic of Hayti. New York: Klebold Press, 1920.

Hector, Michel. Crises et mouvements populaires en Haïti. Port-au-Prince, Haïti: Presses Nationales d'Haïti, 2006.

McPherson, Alan L. The Invaded: How Latin Americans and Their Allies Fought and Ended U.S. Occupations. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Millet, Kethly. Les paysans haïtiens et l'occupation américaine d'Haïti, 1915-1930. La Salle, Québec: Collectif Paroles, 1978.

Schmidt, Hans. The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995.