Michel-Rolph Trouillot's Haiti, State Against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism

 “It must be said in all sincerity that in Haiti, the most productive, the most useful class is surely the peasantry. After all, is it not this class alone that pays taxes? Is it not they who bear all the nation’s costs?” 

Finally got around to completing Trouillot's well-written text. The man was a gifted writer unafraid to use the first person or throw in sarcastic and bitter words toward certain figures of Haitian history, such as Beaubrun Ardouin. Ever since I first read his excellent essay on the rise of free people of color planters due to the coffee boom in Saint Domingue a few years ago, and his Silencing the Past was also a thought-provoking read. After his untimely death, I felt reading his Haiti, State Against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism was a must. Furthermore, I heard a humorous story involving him and a former professor of mine traveling in Cuba. Not to speak ill of the dead, but Trouillot apparently recoiled in fear when the two were approached by a beggar in Cuba!

Returning to the text, Trouillot traces the development of Duvalierism before Duvalier to the colonial period and early independent black and mulatto-led governments of the 19th century. Indeed, as he pointed out through a careful examination of the writings of Beaubrun Ardouin, an important figure in Haitian liberalism, Ardouin was the first to articulate a form of despotism in which the Executive held complete control and civil servants were to comply at all times. Furthermore, Trouillot is adamant about the key roles of Petion and Boyer in establishing the pattern in which Haiti became the "Merchant's Republic" where foreign merchants dictated the course of the political system.

Of course, some of the blame for the militarized structure of governance could be attributed to Toussaint Louverture or Dessalines, but, according to Trouillot, Dessalines tried in vain to curb the power of foreign merchants (while urging for capitalist accumulation within the state sector, according to Trouillot) while Petion and Boyer actively courted them and ensured the republic would cater to their needs. This, unsurprisingly, helped fuel merchants cheating the Haitian government, threatening the nation with protective consulships (something Raybaud himself did during the Soulouque years), and worked against the peasantry, the only productive group in Haitian society through indirect taxation on their coffee and other export items at the customshouses (which was unfair for placing favorable duties on luxury goods for elites, hurt peasant producers who received less and less for their coffee and other products but had to pay more for agricultural and other imports from the United States and Europe and the peasantry had few options to resist it, given their exclusion from the towns and cities dominated by the import and export firms acting in collusion with the Haitian state. Indeed, foreign consignment merchants also became powerful in Haiti's coastal towns, including prominent families such as the Brouards, Sutherlands, Prices, and Milroys, who, like the rest of the international trading community in Haiti, "fed on the political, financial, and military instability of the state, and had an objective interest in the rate of political succession, since every regime offered them a new and greedier clique of customers” (72).

In a very similar manner as Dupuy, Plummer, and Dubois, Trouillot illustrates how the Haitian taxation system and death of the plantation economy (despite attempts to revive it, such as during the reigns of Louverture, Dessalines, and Christophe, which Trouillot claims only succeeded due to their black skins and honorable positions as military heroes, surely a position a frequent critic of this blog would disagree with) led to many mulatto elites switching to retail and government to profit of the peasantry and their marginalization in the various dictatorships and military coups that claimed power in Port-au-Prince. Foreign merchants benefited the most from this arrangement, providing loans to the Haitian government to keep it standing while using the threat of US or European invasions to ensure compliance with their demands, hence the violation of Haitian waters dozens of times in the second half of the 19th century.

In this context of European and US contempt for Haitians and the threats and intimidation that went hand in hand with the Haitian elite of all shades preying on the vast majority of the people, it's no surprise that productivity stagnated, the population increased, more and more people moved to the cities and Port-au-Prince especially, and the Haitian economy was trapped in a state of dependence and underdevelopment. Without any capital from taxes used by the state or elite to fund technological innovation (well, except for Geffrard, Salomon, and a few industrialists in Haiti and their foreign partners), combined with the corruption of Haitian politicians using government funds to purchase luxuries they believed were deserved, Haitian levels of coffee exports fell despite rising population and their close trade relationships with the US, Germany, France, and other European powers.

One example particularly pertinent is the estimated 150 million francs in gold Boyer and his cronies squandered from the leftovers of Henri Christophe's treasury. What happened to the money? Presumably, it went into the pockets of Boyer, Inginac, and their other closed circle of mulatto elites and the foreign merchants who supplied them with unnecessary luxurious imports. Or, to quote an example from the Soulouque regime, his appointed nobility numbered in the hundreds and drained the treasury far more than Henri Christophe's underpaid and significantly fewer nobility in the North. Soulouque also spent over 30,000 francs one year for a fine French coat one year, the same as his budget for education! Papa Doc's government had numerous examples from the 19th century for corruption, repression, and poor fiscal policy.

In order to demonstrate the weakness of the landowners in post-emancipation Haiti, Trouillot cites Beaubrun Ardouin himself, writing about his inability to control the movement of workers from his plantation or what they chose to produce and take for themselves! In addition, the black landowners of the North also took to politics and the military to enrich themselves, while the import-export bourgeoisie remained more mulatto-controlled, perhaps due to their closer phenotype to whites. Trouillot does not offer a definitive answer to that, but certainly diplomats discriminated against darker-hued Haitians, why not many white businessmen?

On the color question, Trouillot provides some insights lacking in other accounts of Haitian history and social relations. For instance, from what I can recall, Dubois and Dupuy do not delve deeper in the the demographic signifiance of the clair groups in Haiti today. How could such a small minority of the population from Saint Domingue, who lost signifiant numbers during the Haitian Revolution, still appear so numerous in 20th century Haiti? Of course, the fluctuating boundaries between 'black' and the 'mulâtre' have shifted multiple times, allowing certain people to become 'mulatto' when a century ago, they would have never passed. Indeed, regardless of color classifications or the fact that not just any noir could marry a clair, the question of color among black and mulatto elites in Haitian political history was never about democracy or sharing power with the black masses, something visible in the Duvalier years when the bourgeoisie and handy mulattoes benefited from supporting or accepting Papa Doc and Baby Doc. 

The 'color question' and conflicts associated with it in Haitian politics was also compounded by Trouillot's 'urban parasites,' a problematic term but, if I understand correctly, refers to the urban proletariat and servants of the state and other members of the Haitian population not engaged in productive labor but merely waiting and betting on political crises to enrich themselves of serve another dysfunctional state. This system consisting of the political marginalization of the peasantry and accumulation of the urban sector into the political realm was contradictory and made political strife inevitable, which thereby helped 'justify' US occupation for some. This crisis in the system was already almost at its nadir in the 1860s, when Geffrard could not control the countryside, revolts were spreading each year, coffee prices and cotton were down, and Geffrard had to rely on the British to stay in power.

Unfortunately, the pattern did not end, but only grew worse after US occupation centralized the system in Port-au-Prince and removed what Trouillot calls the 'feeble restraints' of the system. Soon, everything was leaving through Port-au-Prince, impoverished peasants and the growing black middle-class were moving to Port-au-Prince and other towns, and the military apparatus was more centralized, too. Papa Doc, from 1957-1964, merely had to neutralize opposition in the government institutions, already conveniently centralized through Port-au-Prince, and then declare himself President-for-Life. Duvalier was following in the more recent footsteps of the repression of Magloire, too, for both persecuted the political opposition and changed the face of Haitian political violence. Women were, for the first time, valid targets and anyone nearby or related to a target was fair game. This is much worse than the assassination of Dessalines, when at least Petion had the honor to promise her the protection of the Haitian state!

Anyway, the Duvalier dictatorships witnessed the rise of totalitarianism, a specific cult of personality centered on Papa Doc, the worsening share of peasant-producers in Haiti's exports, a kleptocracy with little restraints, pervasive and new forms of violence, and the reduction of the state to Papa Doc himself. His son, no better for Haiti, ruled in a period of increasing prices for food, excessive flaunting of his wealth and ties to wealthy elites, and popular discontent and the eventual uprisings. However, as Trouillot indicates in his book, dictatorships, the Haitian state acting against the nation, or the majority of its inhabitants, were and are not new phenomena.

Yet, Trouillot leaves many questions unanswered. How, for instance, can he say peasants were not aware of who to blame or direct for their worsening poverty in the late 19th and 20th centuries? Even in the 1840s, the Piquet peasant uprisings in the South directed their anger at the exploitative taxation system instituted by Petion and Boyer's governments. Would peasants in the second half of the same century not know who to blame, despite being included in caco uprisings in the North and various military leaders who took it upon themselves to lead a coup against Port-au-Prince? I am sure peasants would have realized they were still being cheated by the same indirect taxation of the Boyer years and the influx of peasants into the coastal towns and interior market towns would have exposed them to the intricacies of urban Haiti and economic/political power. Indeed, as Trouillot argues himself, Haiti was never a society of two separate castes, but rather complementary and unequal worlds where peasants and elites were inseparable sides of the same coin representing society.

Overall, a fascinating overview of Haitian society and a convincing case for the origins of Duvalierism in the 19th century economic and political structure. A frequent topic on this blog, the numerous ways in which Boyer and his cronies firmly institutionalized the patterns of systemic underdevelopment and undemocratic practices, partly inherited from the colonial era and a world hostile to black independence, are fully detailed by Trouillot. However, the question of peasant resistance and pushes for social change requires a secondary look to avoid problematic silence on the question of subaltern agency. Basically, what I would like to see is a thorough account of ex-slaves and their descendants in rural Haiti from the 19th century to the present which may shed some light on the inner thinking of peasant communities and moments in which their actions and reactions shaped the national government (and beyond some of the more obvious ways, such as peasant resistance to the Code Rural).

Well, let me know what you think? Thoughts on Duvalierism and the long first century of Haitian independence? Could capitalist accumulation in the state sector under Dessalines have succeeded in curbing the power of foreign merchants and allow for innovation and improvements in the Haitian economy?