I recently perused The Imagined Island by Pedro L. San Miguel, and I must say i am disappointed. Perhaps I had not done enough pre-reading research and reviews of the text. It is a little too short for my pleasure, less than 150 pages (not including the notes). The text consists largely of mostly Spanish sources and interpretations of the work of Dominican and colonial writers. For some reason, I was expecting a very extensive text analyzing how Haitians and Dominicans conceive of the island and the shared history and present, but the text is mostly focused on how writers from and speaking on the 'East' constructed Dominican history and national identity.
Fortunately, the chapter on Jean Price-Mars and his research on Haitian-Dominican relations was relevant to my interests. Moreover, understanding Price-Mars is essential to 20th century Haitian intellectual history and Caribbean thought. Indeed, his ethnology and approach to Vodou and peasant life and culture in Haiti was part of a broader ideological movement in Latin America and the Caribbean to look to the peasant and subaltern masses, to the indigenous and African, as representatives of national identity and shift from emulation of the West.
Indeed, San Miguel does connect the dots between Price-Mars and Fernando Ortiz of Cuba, too, and I am surprised I have yet to uncover comparative studies of Price-Mars and Ortiz on Afro-Cuban spirituality and Haitian Vodou. In fact, after reading Kate Ramsey's The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power, I found it hard not to think of some great work done on the history of Cuban laws and attempts by the Cuban state to suppress Santeria and other Afro-Cuban practices. It would not be much of a stretch to see broader comparative studies of the Haitian and Cuban elite suppression of African-derived religion juxtaposed with the attempts to study them from the works of Ortiz and Price-Mars.
On the question of Price-Mars and his thoughts on Haitian-Dominican relations, San Miguel's take is useful for an introduction. According to him, Price-Mars believes Haiti to be part of an epic struggle for black (and universal) freedom and Toussaint as a hero (San Miguel 74). Furthermore, Haiti and the Dominican Republic differ in degree, not kind, one way for Price-Mars to assert a common racial origin and history (77). Yet Price-Mars also refers to Haitians as "Negro" in a way that diminishes or undercuts his belief in some shared racial features in both states. He attributes to Price-Mars a perspective shared by many current scholars I have come across, that Haitian 'expansionism' in today's Dominican Republic was primarily a question of self-protection and anti-imperialism in the island (78). In addition, Haitian unification of the island under the Boyer regime is justly criticized by Price-Mars, but more so in terms of a lost opportunity to develop harmonious and positive relations (82).
Price-Mars also commented on Haitian support for Dominican nationalists during the anti-annexationist movement, the period when General Santana sold out Dominican independence to Spain (89). I am not too familiar with this period in Dominican history, but it certainly speaks volumes to the fragility of the Dominican national construct and the critical role of more positive and mutually beneficial relationships between the neighboring states. That alone is relevant to late 19th century notions of a Caribbean federation or closer alliances between Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. Overall, Price-Mars, interested in Haitian-Dominican relations since the 1930s, wrote a fair and relatively balanced text on the question of Hispaniola, though his views of Toussaint and the Haitian Revolution as of epic proportions and heroic deeds certainly differs from that of his Dominican counterparts, from the 19th and 20th centuries, who saw the Haitian Revolution as an abomination, Toussaint as a brigand or savage, and erased Afro-Dominican identities from the Dominican Republic.
Naturally, I will have to read Price-Mars myself (always better to get it from the horse's mouth, right?) and discover more myself. If only San Miguel's text was more representative of Haitian intellectual thought on intra-island relations, this could have been a much more meaningful work. He could have easily tackled the work of various Haitian historians, for instance, Thomas Madiou or Beaubrun Ardouin, for some Haitian views on relations between the two countries. He also should have used additional Haitian sources where necessary, something he only did occasionally from what I can recall. As an introductory text, however, San Miguel is worth reading, though the much larger ideological and far more specific historical contours would require a significantly longer book.
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