Religion and Politics in Haiti

A collection of 2 essays by Harold Courlander and Remy Bastien, published as Religion and Politics in Haiti in 1966, presents an interesting moment in the study of Vodou and politics. Written at a time of economic malaise and authoritarian rule by Papa Doc, both Courlander and Bastien present Vodou in a provocative fashion. To Courlander, whose studies of Haiti always struck us as superficial, Vodou is not to be blamed for the woes of Haiti. Indeed, Vodou was actually something that represented a complete worldview and ethos for the Haitian masses. Due to the extreme poverty and precariousness of life for the Haitian peasant, Vodou offered something lacking in Catholicism and it continued to play such a pivotal role due to ongoing governmental neglect, incompetence, and exploitation. 

Bastien, a Haitian, offered a more extreme position. Indeed, Bastien went as far as accusing the Haitian ethnological movement of a trahison des clercs. Instead of dedicating themselves to the betterment of their illiterate brothers trapped in backwards, regressive living conditions and a magico-religious worldview disconnected from modernity, the Haitian intellectual sought to make Vodou (and folklore) the pillar of Haitian identity and authenticity. According to Bastien, these Haitian intellectuals, followers of the school of Price-Mars, lacked the brakes necessary to stop their extremism. So, unlike the situation in sub-Saharan Africa, the Haitian ethnologists took things too far and neglected their ultimate responsibility of ameliorating conditions for the Haitian peasantry. 

Of course, Bastien's brief essay is excessive itself, especially in light of the writings of Haitian ethnologists like Price-Mars which directly concerned social inequality and the failure of Haiti's elite. However, one can also see the justness of Bastien's critique at a time when Vodou had become another institution corrupted or controlled by Francois Duvalier. By 1966, at least in Bastien's eyes, Vodou had become part of the oppressive panoply of Duvalierism's toolbox of administration. Furthermore, Vodou was incompatible with the types of modern change, education, healthcare, and poverty eradication that Bastien believed was necessary. No houngan would sponsor or support these aforementioned reforms since their achievement would, in Bastien's perspective, defeat the purpose of the houngan's existence in the first place. This characterization of the houngan is unfair, or at least lacking the evidence for such a broad generalization. Nonetheless, the Haitian religion was, by then, a product of long-term marginalization and growing impoverishment of the Haitian. Consequently, Vodou reflected those regressive conditions of living and would be threatened by progressive changes in the Haitian countryside. Indeed, the Vodou of 1966 or even 1915 was far from the conditions of 1791. Instead of fetishizing folklore and Vodou, Haiti's intellectuals should have devoted themselves more passionately to the question of bringing the peasantry into the 20th century. 

Lamaute and the Bourgeoisie Nationale

One of the important theorists and activists in the annals of the Haitian Left, Alix Lamaute was one of the victims of the massacre of both PUCH members and innocent bystanders ordered by dictator François Duvalier.  Besides Lamaute, several prominent Haitian Communists were also killed, including Brisson, The  attack on the village of Cazale was particularly brutal, as young Communists and locals were mercilessly slaughtered by Duvalierist forces eager to end Communist armed uprisings. By 1969, Duvalier was already president for life with apparent total rule. Nonetheless, by the late 1960s, the two main Haitian Marxist parties unified into the Parti unifié des communistes haïtiens, which would embrace revolutionary violence to overthrow Duvalier. Rebels arriving from Cuban bases or across the Dominican border made clear the degree to which left-wing rebels poised a threat to the regime, even if their influence in numbers was rather small. 

Nevertheless, some of the ideas expressed by intellectuals within the PUCH are worth remembering for what it reveals of the nature of Haitian Marxism and political thought. Lamaute, whose La bourgeoisie nationale: une entité controversée encapsulates some of the main streams of Marxist thought in Haiti during the 1960s, deserves attention today for the still disturbing question of the Haitian prospects of a national bourgeoisie that could work with proletariat forces and a Marxist vanguard to transform Haiti. Lamaute, whose thought owes much to Alexis, Ambroise, Rameau, Pierre-Charles and other Haitian historians, economists, and intellectuals on the Left, presents an overview on primitive accumulation in Haiti, the idea of the 19th century Liberal party as progressive and the Nationals as feudal, and the weakness of the Haitian bourgeoisie. 

Lukacs and Christian Beaulieu also make an appearance on the caste question, as the so-called feudal or semi-feudal nature of the Haitian economy prevents the emergence of a full class-based society in which the embryonic national bourgoisie can truly emerge. Caste-like features actually, according to Lamaute, hinder the development of class consciousness among the bourgeoisie. Thus, the caste-like nature of Haitian social structure of that era is linked to the semi-feudal economy of rural Haiti and the dependence of the Haitian bourgeoisie on US and foreign capital and machinery. Borrowing from Gramsci, Lamaute also describes the the mimetism of the Haitian dominant classes and the forms of alienation one might suspect earlier generations of Haitian intellectuals to refer to as cultural bovarysme. But like Beaulieu, Lamaute probably saw the supposed caste system as being weakened by increasing industrialization and urbanization in Haiti over the course of the 20th century, particularly after 1915.

The remainder of the text focuses on the prospects of a joint anti-imperialist front connecting the proletariat and local bourgeoisie. Arguing against Fanon, who saw the bourgeoisie as a still-born class in the struggles of Third World liberation, Lamaute instead sees the development of a local bourgeoisie, primarily oriented towards the internal market and directing industries using local industry and labor and products as aligning itself with the proletariat and popular masses in the name of nationalism. For Lamaute, the national bourgeoisie only needs to see how nationalism could strengthen their class position. For, a truly national bourgeoisie (instead of the existing comprador Haitian one) would and could fight for a number of economic and social reforms that would benefit the proletariat and masses (free press, state policies, etc.) as well as accentuate the coming class conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This, to the Marxist teleological paradigm of Lamaute, would eventually usher in a socialist state with the proletariat and a vanguard of professional revolutionaries constantly pressuring the bourgeoisie to avoid too much collusion with imperialist powers.

In order to truly make sense of Lamaute's argument, however, one must see it as part of a trajectory of Haitian Marxist thought dating back to the 1940s and the Parti Socialiste Populaire. Like his 1940s forebears, Lamaute saw the peasantry, who comprised the majority of the Haitian population, as incapable of leading the path to socialism. Instead, Haiti must oppose imperialism and develop its bourgeoisie and proletariat, thereby strengthening class conflict and a shift in the mode of production to capitalism. Then, and only then, would a working-class revolution ultimately succeed. To Lamaute, who cited the example of the peasantry of Bolivia as a cautionary tale, the Haitian peasant will not come to a strict class consciousness and must be led by the proletariat in any alliance. Otherwise, the peasant will be used against the proletariat by the petit or moyenne bourgeoisie, as in Bolivia. In other words, the proletariat will make the revolution or there will be no revolution. But in order to reach that point, a truly national bourgeoisie must emerge that is not a comprador one, and which would heighten the class conflicts while further eroding the semi-feudal characteristics of the Haitian economy. 

One wonders if Lamaute, like Alexis, Roumain and other Haitian Marxists, may have adopted a somewhat anti-paysan perspective by viewing the religion of Vodou as encouraging fatalism. The complex question of the Haitian peasant in Haitian socialism, however, is beyond the immediate concerns of Lamaute's La bourgeoisie nationale. And after another half century, it is clear that the kind of national bourgeoisie called for by Lamaute did not emerge. If anything, an anti-national bourgeoisie strengthened itself under the rule of Baby Doc, and the question of the peasantry and democratic reforms would have to change. Nevertheless, Lamaute's treatise provides a window onto the thoughts and theoretical formulations that guided the young militants of the PEP, PPLN, and later PUCH in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. 

Duvalier and Noirisme

Sometimes Haiti Inter features very interesting discussions of Haitian literature. While Duvalier's own writings are certainly tainted by his embrace of biological notions of race and, later on, his brutal dictatorship, he nonetheless represents an importance stage in Haitian noirisme. One cannot understand Haiti of the 20th century and the lingering legacy of Duvalierism without understanding noirisme.

Le problème des classes à travers l'histoire d'Haïti

Le problème des classes à travers l'histoire d'Haïti is a worthwhile read for all eager to understand the roots of Duvalierism and its legacy in Haiti. What is particularly striking about it is the ways in whcih Lorimer Denis and  François Duvalier contort Haitian history and apply noirist lens to develop an argument for the rule of noir elites. Their argument rests on their ideological sleight of hand that allows them to collapse the distinctions between race and class for their analysis of Haitian social relations.  Moreover, their account of the Haitian Revolution offered in the text is surely out of date or lacking the nuanced interpretation of Jean Price-Mars's La vocation de l'élite. 

Indeed, while the former acknowledges contradictions between the enslaved masses and the black and "mulatto" leaders in the Haitian Revolution, Denis and Duvalier make Toussaint L'ouverture into the incarnation of the aspirations of the slave classe. Even more than the incarnation of their collective hopes and aspirations, Denis and Duvalier defend his labor regime despite its similarities with that of Rigaud in the South. Throughout the text, the authors make clear their admiration for strong man leadership, of Ataturk, of authoritarian collectivism in a nation-state. Their willingness to apply psycho-sociology and racial theory further buttress their argument for la brave classe moyenne and its intellectuals as the rightful leaders for the nation. 

However, there is also a call for a politics of equilibrium that, one would hope, brings together the two classes (affranchis and the bourgeois of today, slaves and the Haitian majority) into unity for the fulfillment of the nation's destiny. So there is a call to national unity across the "color" line while the authentic representatives of the black masses (the intellectual elites of black middle class) should lead. What definitely distinguishes Denis and Duvalier from Price-Mars (besides the emphasis on color in Duvalier and his contemporaries) is their admiration for authoritarian individual rule, which, if representative of the masses, can still be democratic in their eyes. There are more than enough hints in Le problème des classes à travers l'histoire d'Haïti of what types of political systems appealed to Duvalier the decade after its initial publication.

In some respects, Duvalier and Denis offer an overview of Haitian social relations that echoes Jacques Roumain's Analyse schématique. Both see parallels between the Haiti of today and the colonial-era social structure. Both groups show some degree of nuance in understanding the complex interplay of color and class. But the proposed solutions differ profoundly, whether the "national socialist" quasi-fascist mysticism of Duvalier or the Haitian Left's appropriation of Marxism in an underdeveloped, semi-colonial context. But again, one cannot help but see parallels in the proposed routes to national freedom in Price-Mars, Duvalier, and, to a certain extent, the Haitian Left's belief in a vanguard or national bourgeoisie (PSP and its descendants). This is a topic of further interest for the blog. 

Merengue, Kompa, and Dictatorships in Hispaniola

Trujillo and Francois Duvalier (Papa Doc) in a meeting. Two dictators, two countries, same island. Papa Doc came to power while the aging Trujillo was beginning to lose it, but the relations between the two governments would be an interesting history project. And while both were similar autocrats, Papa Doc seems to have been more of a kleptocrat and created a more terrifying force to intimidate the masses while Trujillo supported industrialization. Moreover, both promoted related genres of dance music, Trujillo nationalizing merengue while Papa Doc and his son promoted kompa, which was influenced by 1950s merengue. Looking at music alone during both of their horrid reigns would be an interesting project for how both used music to express a nationalistic identity that, naturally, could be manipulated and used to promote their power. Check out the links below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFYCfk2NMc0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVgR6mtebvA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcCinJHPCL4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSGjLTlDxtM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weFmRXJ3kOs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8phy586SGaw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwNoVSVflec
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC2nHA35Qys&index=19