Revisiting Contribution à l'étude de l'ethnobotanique précolombienne des Grandes Antilles

After reading numerous other studies on the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, revisiting Jacques Roumain's "Contribution à l'étude de l'ethnobotanique précolombienne des Grandes Antilles" in Oeuvres Complètes  is a more meaningful experience. As the only substantial article on the indigenous peoples of Haiti (and the Greater Antilles) by Roumain, this piece from the 1940s shows Roumain attempting to bring together the historical, archaeological and linguistic sources. An added benefit is the inclusion of Haitian Creole names for various flora of the region, not just the Taino and Spanish names (often derived from the Taino or indigenous names). This is particularly interesting as one can see how Haitian Creole words for local flora are often not of Taino origin, though hardly shocking. But as one of the few articles that tries to bring Haitian perspectives into conversation with sources drawn from Spanish, English or German sources, Roumain's work shows there is a place for Haitian perspectives. Indeed, the Puerto Rican scholar, Francisco Moscoso, made a point of citing Nau for his understanding of how Taino chiefdoms worked through tribute obligations. One only wishes Roumain had lived long enough to explore other dynamics of indigenous Caribbean archaeology and socio-political questions. Perhaps Haitian ethnology could have maintained a more serious interest in the indigenous theme.

Dimensions et limites de Jacques Roumain

Hénock Trouillot's critical study of Jacques Roumain is a fascinating analysis of the illustrious Haitian writer. Despite Trouillot's noirist sympathies, which can be detected through his persistent admiration and praise for the Griots (Duvalier, Denis, Jacob, etc.), Dimensions et limites de Jacques Roumain is a mostly fair overview of the various writings of Roumain from his youthful anti-Occupation journalism to the mature talent of his final novel. Undoubtedly, Trouillot recognized the talent and ability of Roumain and his universalist outlook. However, Roumain's abilities as a novelist, poet, and ethnologue developed over time, and remained, in some aspects, embryonic or detached from what was actually happening on the ground in Haiti during the 1930s and 1940s. With the exception of the influence of Fernand Hibbert and Frederic Marcelin on Roumain's nouvelles, and Price-Mars writing the preface to his first roman, he seems to owe far more to his European education than Haiti. 

Of course, some of Roumain's detachment was due to exile and perhaps his education in Europe, so one can see why Roumain was removed from the "Ethnological School" of Price-Mars, Denis, Duvalier, and others. Trouillot's sympathy for the Griots and explicitly indigenist Haitian authors makes him torn on the question of Roumain's adherence to indigenist and negritude literature. Roumain was too universal, and did not pursue with the requisite depth history, ethnology, and the specifically Haitian context of the racial question. And one can make the case Trouillot was correct in clearly delineating two distinct schools, one of Roumain and that of Price-Mars and the Griots in Haitian ethnology and indigénisme. 

In spite of Roumain's shortcomings, and his early death depriving us of his future endeavors in literature, ethnology or Marxism, his legacy seems the most commemorated or celebrated today. With the exception of Price-Mars, the Griots became associated with the Duvalier regime and have, at best, a checkered legacy. They have may laid the foundations for the Bureau d'Ethnologie with more careful studies and historically-grounded research than Roumain, but Roumain, the Marxist universalist who rejected Vodou, authored the timeless novel of Haiti that artfully combined his descriptive ethnographic work and "symbolic realism" with his political vision of sacrifice for the collective. Thus, even though we tend to agree with Trouillot on the weakness of Roumain as a poet, particularly in the early years, and the sometimes superficial nature of his political and ethnographic works, there is undeniably something timeless in his universalist outlook and gradual development as a novelist.

Met Larouzé

Fanfan's Met Larouzé, a Creole comics adaptation of Jacques Roumain's famous novel is a worthwhile read. In addition to translating Roumain's already linguistically intriguing novel into Creole, Fanfan also visualizes the story of Manuel and Fond Rouge in a compelling way. The depiction of the habitants of the region, suffering from a long drought and general misery, is detailed, showing to an almost painful degree the travails the Haitian population of the era thought. The comic is also very faithful to the original novel, perhaps embellishing or providing additional context here or there that might have been missing from the novel (such as the setting being near Crois des Bouquets). The Creole vocabulary used throughout also may change the meaning of some moments in the plot. For instance, Manuel being called chef of the syndicat (sindicat) instead of the konbit might be a hint towards the resurgence of labor in Haiti near the end of Jean-Claude Duvalier's regime. 

Unfortunately, since the comic does not use the standardized orthography for Haitian Creole I am most familiar with, there are a number of words I struggled to translate or find English or French equivalents for, but that's mostly my problem for not being a fluent speaker. Moreover, backgrounds for the panels are usually not depicted or very detailed, highlighting the centrality of the people themselves and their role in changing their fortune and environment. Of course, when Manuel shows Annaise the source of the water, the Eden-like setting comes to life vividly, without color. Otherwise, we get mostly pastoral and rural scenes, domestic scenes, or meetings at Larivoua's house. Again, the people of Fond Rouge are centered, especially Manuel's mother, Delira.

Delira, it would seem, experiences the most personal and psychological growth. Through her son's sacrifice and her own seizing of destiny, she rejects fatalistic notions of religion (Catholicism and Vodou), and becomes a heroic figure in her own right. Whereas the novel, if I remember correctly, featured a less determined, free-willed Delira, this comic book highlights her role. Once more, I cannot help but wonder if this possible change is due to the political climate of the early 1980s and Bon Nouvel's socially conscious, and culturally affirming journal. The Haitian community here, torn apart by a family feud and poverty, must come together and adapt their traditions to save themselves, which must have been relevant to audiences growing sick of Baby Doc.

It would be useful to compare this to the few other Haitian comics produced in the 1980s by Lorquet, whose comics were original stories with socially relevant commentary on Haitian migrant workers, boatpeople, AIDS, and other issues of the day. Of course, it would also be worthwhile to compare Fanfan's work with the short-lived Haitian comics journal of the 1940s, Zobopes, if it can be located. One wonders why Haitian Creole comics failed to take off? And what to make of the Haitian graphic novel as a literary form that can adopt and adapt masterpieces of the Haitian canon? And the impact of the comics of the late 19th century? The continued use of proverbs, as well as social satire or comedy can be found. Indeed, the use of some of the same proverbs and critique of rapacious elites, corrupt officials, and the 'color question' can be found in both Le Zinglin and Met Larouzé.

La montagne ensorcelée

Jacques Roumain's first peasant novel, La montagne ensorcelée, was published in 1931. Several years separate this from his most famous work, translated in English as Masters of the Dew. While this is certainly not as successful of a literary work or as entertaining (possibly due to the very stark and desperate conditions of life for this peasant community in the Nord or Plateau Central region of the country), it provides a fascinating example of the evolution of the peasant novel in the Haitian literary corpus. It also features an interesting example of the "Francocreolophone" nature of Haitian literary works as it combines French narration with character dialogues in French and Creole, sometimes leaving untranslated the Creole dialogue. For example, t'en prie, or tanpri in standardized Haitian Creole, means please, but Roumain leaves untranslated some Creole words, presumably due to this novel originally being published in serial forms in a Haitian newspaper. Consequently, most of his readers were Haitians who knew Creole.

However, despite crafting a hauntingly real peasant community during the US Occupation, the tragic love story of Aurel and Grace is less successful because the reader does not receive enough information about Placinette and her daughter. Perhaps if those characters were developed a little more, at least Grace, one could see the utter depravity of the chef de section's actions as more tragic. Grace, described as beautiful and clearly in love with Aurel, meets him for nightly trysts and they plan to marry, with Aurel even giving her a proposal letter his uncle and godfather wrote for him. It's endearing and Roumain has a poetic way with words to describe their love, but I couldn't help but wonder about the relationship between Placinette and her daughter. Surely, Grace was less isolated from the community than her mother, and would have heard the rumors of sorcery against her family.

And Baptiste, the grand don who represents greed, or Balletroy, the chef de section who abuses his authority, they provide the bases for a critique of social inequality in the novel, but mostly remain character sketches. There is undeniably a hint of Roumain's nascent Marxism, but here the social bonds are torn apart by superstition and misery without a hint of class struggle or solidarity. Dorneval, driven by a lust for vengeance, as is Dorilas, lose themselves in the mob while Desilus, an elder, ends up ginning bloodlust by feeding the magico-religious worldview of the community. Through these character sketches we see the breakdown of the family, social trust, and concerted efforts to escape their shared destruction. There is no konbit here to bring together the village, nor does Vodou seem capable of acting as a unifying force. 

Yet, within the Haitian novel tradition, one can easily see the innovative prose and descriptive language of La montagne ensorcelée. Reading this after Antoine Innocent's Mimola demonstrates a sympathetic yet critical approach to the religion of Vodou, although Innocent's novel is far more detailed of the actual process of Vodou spirit possession and beliefs. In the case of Roumain, this early novel seems to suggest both Vodou and Catholicism are part of the superstitious worldview of the peasant masses, which cause them to leap to mystical conclusions about the decaying rural world around them and its natural calamities of droughts, storms, sickness, and death. However, if Albert in Mimola represents the thoughts of Innocent, one can see a trajectory in Haitian social thought on the religion as being part of Haitian culture and identity but not necessarily something that is permanent or necessary in the future. The nonfiction of Roumain seems to encapsulate that perspective by calling for an anti-misery campaign instead of anti-superstitious campaigns during the 1940s. Regardless of the influence of Mimola on this particular novel, Roumain subsequently developed a more complex approach to the question of superstition and religious fatalism versus human agency.

Qui était Christian Beaulieu?

Beaulieu from Antonin's Jacques Roumain, la passion d'un pays

Who was Christian Beaulieu? Although an important figure in the history of radicalism in Haiti, as well as education and Creole literacy, finding information about Beaulieu is far more difficult than it should be. A friend collaborator of Jacques Roumain, co-founder of the first Haitian Communist Party, and contributor to journals and newspapers such as Les Griots and Le Nouvelliste, as well as a pedagogical review, his paper trail appears far less copious than that of the more famous figures in the annals of the Haitian Left. Understanding who and what Beaulieu represented in the history of education in Haiti, in addition to the development of the Left, provides key insights into the role of language, discourse, and social structure which framed debates among various sects of the Haitian left and labor movement for the next several decades. 

As to the specific details of his life, Leslie Péan appears to be the main source relied on by others. From an article he authored in Le Petit Samedi Soir, Michel Hector and Matthew J. Smith draw their data. Beaulieu was, according to Hector, a "travailleur immigré" in the Dominican Republic before ending up at Columbia University, studying teaching. Unfortunately, without access to the source material used by Hector, one cannot but remain somewhat confused or mesmerized by the fact of a Haitian migrant worker in the Dominican Republic, presumably in the 1920s, eventually ending up in an elite US university. If Beaulieu was a migrant worker in the DR, presumably his roots were in the Haitian working-class or peasantry, yet his education suggests otherwise. Furthermore, without access to Beaulieu's writings on education, it is difficult to even begin to guess what his education at Columbia's Teacher College entailed, although presumably it shaped his desire to reform Haitian education with Creole instruction, thereby increasing the literacy rate and, in his view, pave the way for Haitians to learn to read French through an etymological orthography. 

By 1932, we learn that Bealieu traveled to New York with Jacques Roumain, seeking aid from the Communist Party to form the first Haitian party. The two must have crossed paths based on opposition to the US Occupation among Haitian youth and organized circles. By the early 1930s, Beaulieu, Roumain, and Louis Diaquoi (who, it must be said, flirted with Marxism) were discussing Marxism, radicalism, etc, and on the cusp of forming the Haitian Communist Party. After experiencing repression from Vincent and expulsion from the city of Port-au-Prince, Beaulieu appears again in the late 1930s, part of a United Front of opposition parties to stop Vincent from seeking another term in 1940. 

By the time of his death in 1943, due to a wartime shortage of penicillin (according to Max D. Sam), Beaulieu's work had appeared in La Nation, Le Nouvelliste and Les Griots, presumably still a Marxist but clearly someone of some degree of status or standing among intellectual circles. Unlike Roumain, who spent his final years with the Bureau d'Ethnologie and serving the Lescot government, Beaulieu appears to not have gone down the path of ethnology or the cultural politics of indigénisme, but was clearly familiar with the aforementioned Diaquoi and others affiliated with Griots. Beaulieu, like Roumain, demonstrate the degree of overlapping affiliations and intellectual journals that combined aspects of radical left-wing politics with noirist intellectuals and nationalists during and after the Occupation.

In terms of developing an orthography for Haitian Creole to promote education, Beaulieu was one of the first. According to Péan, Beaulieu and Faublas jeune were inspired by their socialist politics to develop a standardized orthography for the language. This is a fascinating idea, on the importance of literacy, education in the vernacular, and radical politics, which may explain why the Parti Socialiste Populaire's paper included a Creole section. It speaks to the socialist view of Haiti under US Occupation and after, a period of urbanization, proletarianization, and the need to bring to the masses new ideas and inclusion. Surely, Roumain and Beaulieu confronted the problem of literacy whilst attempting to form cells of their party in working-class quarters of Port-au-Prince, which necessitated an attempt to democratize language in Haiti. 

However, Beaulieu's "Pour Ecrire le Créole" advocates an etymological spelling for the language, which, though more difficult to learn, would facilitate later mastering of French. Phonetic spelling, which ultimately won out in the long run for a standardized Creole, would make it harder for monolingual speakers to learn to read French, which Beaulieu clearly saw as relevant part of Haiti. Access to French literacy would form a breach that opened a wider world to Haitians, which may suggest to some that Beaulieu was a Francophile. Although, in consideration of the fact that the vast majority of words in the tongue are of French origin, perhaps Beaulieu's middle position of mostly using etymological orthography with some concessions to phonetic spelling was an equitable system that would resist the phonetic spellings developed by Protestant missionaries and US linguists. Moreover, as explained by some Creole speakers themselves, the phonetic spelling privileges the Creole of Port-au-Prince and the dominant regions of Haiti, thus still an imperfect system for writing the vernacular language of the nation. 

Beaulieu's "Caste et Classe" in Le Nouvelliste

Ultimately, a phonetic spelling did succeed, but Beaulieu's socialist politics and attempt to call for education in the vernacular sheds light on the role of language among the Haitian Left. Jacques Roumain, for example, wrote Gouverneurs de la Rosée with a fluid language reflecting Creole and French, directly addressing the complex interplay of Haitian society through both languages. Totongi, who has criticized Francophilia in Haiti, has went as far as to suggest that the next literary move for Roumain would have been to embrace the vernacular in toto, which may be a stretch. Nonetheless, it exemplifies the extent to which the Left in Haiti was shaped by the popular vernacular, a need to find a uniquely Haitian voice, and create a proletarian literature. It is difficult to imagine any of this without the impact of Beaulieu on Roumain and other contemporaries. How could a Left make its literary and political aspirations relevant to the working-classes and peasantry without embracing Creole?

Beaulieu's other significant role in the history of the Haitian Left is surely his views on the Leyburn thesis and social relations in the "Black Republic," which can be traced back as far as the founding of the first Communist party. Although Analyse schématique, the first Marxist analysis of the country (excepting references to Marxism by Louis-Joseph Janvier), is usually credited to Roumain, the Haitian Communist Party's publication was a group effort to some extent. Articulating the party's views on the class struggle, the heterogeneous nature of the Haitian proletariat, the suffocating role of imperialism, and the confused manifesto of Réaction Démocratique, it likely represents the confluence of Roumain, Beaulieu, and Étienne Charlier's views. 

Beaulieu, who was a migrant worker in the Dominican Republic, surely knew first hand the proletarianization of the Haitian peasantry, providing much-needed lived experience and contact with the worsening conditions for the proletariat and petite bourgeoisie. Thus, Beaulieu's lived experience was directly tied to the party's formulations of class, color, and imperialism. In short, they argued that color is a mask used by bourgeois politicians to mask class struggle, but the process of proletarianization supposedly connected the class struggle with anti-imperialism. The Party's views on the color question are, therefore, what one would expect from a Communist party of the era, albeit cognizant of the ways in which color did indeed have psychological significance for social relations. Color was, in other words, nothing, but class was everything.

By 1942, Beaulieu further developed a unique perspective on Haitian society in a response to the Leyburn thesis, entitled Caste et Classe. Leyburn, author of what is one of the classic studies of the nation written by an American social scientist, argued Haiti was a caste society in which color was particularly salient. The elite caste were (mostly) mulatto, urban, Catholic, and French-speaking. The masses were rural, spoke Creole, practiced Vodou, etc. Unlike Price-Mars, who also responded to Leyburn's thesis to deny a caste interpretation of Haiti, Beaulieu forged a middle path that, with nuance, captured the degree to which caste and class are interrelated forms of social stratification. Furthermore, certainly the US had features of a caste and class society, particularly with regards to the question of race (the differing interpretations of Oliver C. Cox would be interesting to study in light of Haiti), so Beaulieu's argument for a caste society in transition to class provokes larger questions on the nature of stratification across the Americas. 

Roumain's tribute to Beaulieu, from Oeuvres Complètes

If the color question in Haiti did indeed resemble, to a certain extent, a closed caste-like system, it was in a state of transition as a result of democratization, the development of capitalism (accelerated by the US Occupation), and Haitian social mobility. An incipient class society was in formation, with social mobility disproving any kind of strict caste interpretation based on skin color. According to Beaulieu, this tension between caste and class were the motors of Haitian history, partly shaped by ruling elites at the time who may emphasize one or the other. Thus, the dialectic of class and caste were the engine of change in Haitian society, varying based on the political, economic, and social aims of the dominant party at the time. 

For example, Beaulieu saw the fall of the Liberals in the late 19th century until 1915 as a period emphasizing class, suggesting that the Liberals were, to at least a certain extent, tied to a caste rule, presumably a reference to the stereotype of the political party as one of upper-class mulattoes. US Occupation, from 1915 through 1934, brought back, in spite of the new economic and social forces, a return of caste's predominance through the installation of mostly mulatto presidents, such as Dartiguenave and Borno. Of course, there are a number of problematic assumptions or issues with Beaulieu's approach to the social history of Haiti based on class and caste, but it offers some advantages for thinking about the notorious "color question" in a different manner.

Beaulieu's interpretation also brings to mind the argument of Haitian leftists of later decades, obsessed with proving the Haitian economy to be feudal or semi-feudal. However, a caste society would be one that overlaps with a feudal or semi-feudal economic order, with the class society's full development limited by weak democratization and feudal-like economic conditions. The Parti Socialiste Populaire and subsequent Left organizations would take up similar arguments, which, while possibly clarifying, may introduce other problems inherent in any deterministic Marxism. Beaulieu, however, appears more nuanced in his response to Leyburn than the co-written Analyse schématique of the 1930s.

Beaulieu's view of a caste system en route to class suggests a more contextualized view that captures the perseverance of the old into new forms of social relations, with this tension being more believable than Herskovits's socialized ambivalence or Price-Mars bovarysme. The culturalist framework, which while certainly convincing to a certain degree, could be oriented towards any political agenda, thereby continuing an unequal class system while supposedly uniting all social classes in Haiti through nationalism. Furthermore, he removes any potential trouble of fixating on economic systems, since the caste-like aspects of the US social hierararchy persist in the center of international capitalism. This does suggest, to a certain extent, the independence of the race (color) question within class societies, which cannot be reduced entirely to class. Nevertheless, the color (race) question is still in some shape determined by the class question, since the Beaulieu of the 1940s likely still believed the PCH's argument that color prejudice in Haiti won't cease until the disappearance of the exploitation of the masses by the (mostly mulatto) oppressive bourgeoisie. 

Christian Beaulieu's College of Petion-Ville also involved Etienne Charlier and Max D. Sam, familiar names with the Haitian Left. 

In retrospect, Beaulieu's lived experience, practical Marxism, and educational reforms suggest his importance for the development of the Left may be underappreciated. Additional research must be done to understand precisely the scope of his Creole literacy project, but his influence on Roumain and the subsequent generations cannot be refuted. His views on education and the nature of Haitian social stratification were shaped by his Marxism, but not limited by it. By 1941, he saw to some extent the issue of the "color question" (or, race) as independent of class, but the combination of the two (with their internal contradictions) as the motor in the nation's history. One cannot but think of the famous stipulation on the nature of racial and class oppression in The Black Jacobins when considering Beaulieu's nuanced perspective. Undoubtedly, Beaulieu's lived experience in New York and the Dominican Republic suggest the larger regional implications of his ideas. There is something particularly ironic about US or European observers describing Haiti as a caste society in consideration of extreme racial inequality in the US at the time.

Edit (7-17-2019)

Leslie Péan's 1979 article on Christian Beaulieu fills in several gaps in the easily attainable knowledge on his life and work. From Péan, the Jacmel origins of Beaulieu are clarified, as well as his experience as a migrant worker in the Dominican Republic. Going there to work on railway construction, presumably Beaulieu continued to work for railroads or was employed by sugar plantations. Then, ending up at Columbia University to study teaching, Beaulieu returned to Haiti. According to Péan, he played a role in the 1929 strike at Damien and was involved in various schools and educational reform movements in the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, Beaulieu was a pivotal figure in the early promotion of Haitian Creole for education of the masses, and was involved in launching different schools in Port-au-Prince and teaching in Jacmel.

Unfortunately, Péan does not go into the specifics of Beaulieu's published writing on Haitian Creole education or reforms in L'école réelle. However, one can infer it was likely informed by his left-wing politics, training at Columbia University, and his experiences with teaching  in Port-au-Prince. Beaulieu's importance in terms of the legacy of the PSP and its newspaper, La Nation, cannot be denied, either. Thus, Beaulieu's significance in terms of the Haitian Left's interest in the uplift or education of the masses shaped the PSP militants and their successors for the next several decades.

 Bibliography

Beaulieu, Christian. "Caste et Classe." Le Nouvelliste (Port-au-Prince), July 28-29, 1942.

Hector, Michel. 1989. Syndicalisme et socialisme en Haïti: 1932-1970. Port-au-Prince, Haïti: Impr. H. Deschamps.

 Leslie Péan, « Du côté de la liberté – Christian Beaulieu », Le Petit Samedi Soir, no. 320, 12-18 janvier 1980.

Roumain, Jacques. Analyse schématique (1932-1934) et autres textes scientifiques. 2016. <http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/roumain_jacques/analyse_schematique/analyse_schematique.html>.

Smith, Matthew J. Red & Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934-1957. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

Cumbite

"La sangre es la muerte. El agua la vida."

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's film adaptation of Jacques Roumain's famous novel, Gouverneurs de la rosée, is quite faithful to the text. Taking place in a Haitian rural setting in 1940, the film closely aligns with the plot of Roumain's pivotal novel. Manuel returns from Cuba, meets the romantic interest, reacquaints himself with a birthplace that is in decline and torn apart by a family feud, promises to find a new spring or source of water to help restore agriculture in the reason, and his sacrifice pays off in the end. The deceptively simple plot of Roumain's novel is of course more detailed and nuanced (particularly regarding the role of religion in human liberation and specifically, the conditions in which the peasantry toil), and this relatively short film manages to capture most of that complexity. 

The actors, who I believe are Cubans of Haitian descent in this 1964 film, speak Haitian Creole in key moments (the lengthy scene of the Vodou ceremony, the coumbite at the film's conclusion, and the wake for Manuel), which adds a sense of authenticity. The landscape is mountainous, barren, and eerily reminiscent of Haiti (and right away, when Manuel gets off the bus and walks to his village, the infertile land and its eroded hills symbolize the decay of the community), which adds another layer of accuracy to the Cuban film. Roumain's socialist and optimistic tale also matches thematically the early years of the Cuban Revolution and the socialist government of Castro, thereby making this film a socialist art film rendering of a socialist novel. 

On the question of religion, the film also captures some of the ambiguity of Roumain. The Vodou ceremony scene, one of the longest in the film, is beautifully done yet understated, and Manuel appears uncomfortable but participates in the dancing anyway, much like Manuel in the novel, who does not necessarily believe in the lwa but comes to accept their importance for the community, particularly his mother. Moreover, Vodou symbols introduce the film, thereby establishing a pattern in which Vodou aesthetics and belief are integral to the worldview of the characters. While the Catholic and Vodou prayers and rituals of the community may not be personal belief of Manuel, as previously mentioned, but are not divorced from the social or class interests of the peasantry or proletariat. By not relying on stereotypes and using Cubans of Haitian descent, the nuances of Vodou as a religious philosophy (and Afro-Haitian culture in general) are portrayed respectfully.

As a nice touch to the themes of the Cuban Revolution, the patriarchal assumptions or sexism of the novel are not overstated in the film, although women characters are, besides Manuel's mother (and Annaise or the manbo) largely ignored. Yet, the exclusion of women at all is challenged by the powerful scene introducing the viewer to Manuel's parents. In it his mother rests against the central pillar, literally symbolizing the potomitan saying about Haitian women. Manuel's mother goes on to play an important role in the film, too, ushering in a general coumbite to finish the canal and irrigate everyone's fields. Annaise is plagued by the original text material as a weaker character, but Manuel's mother more than makes up for it while his father, Bienaime, is far less central to the film than in the novel. 

Overall, Cumbite is a worthwhile film. Drawing from one of most widely respected works of Haitian literature, Alea manages to capture most of the text's magical appeal and politicized intent, thereby connecting this Haitian community to the much larger world of the Caribbean, capitalism, as well as exploitation. The migrant Haitians returning from Cuba were hardly apolitical as the case of Manuel indicates, and the fact that this film was made in the 1960s, only a few years after the successful Cuban Revolution, suggests that the film's political resonance with socialist Cuba possessed positive goals for social advances. Unfortunately, the film could have done a better job incorporating the Haitian state into the story a little more, but for a film of around 90 minutes, this is probably as good as it gets.

When the Tom-Tom Beats

Enjoy Jacques Roumain's "When the Tom-Tom Beats", translated by African-American literary giant Langston Hughes, courtesy of Poetry Nook. For another translation from May 1943, check out Poetry Foundation's page for a version from L.C. Kaplan. It is worth nothing that the water blends with the audience of the poem in the Hughes translation, but Kaplan's omits that. Hughes, who wrote similar poetry, seems to capture the deeper meaning of Roumain's poetry and its message for readers of African descent, particularly mixed-race readers who reject their African ancestry but cannot escape it. 

Your heart trembles in the shadows, like a face reflected in troubled water

The old mirage rises from the pit of the night

You sense the sweet sorcery of the past:

A river carries you far away from the banks,

Carries you toward the ancestral landscape.

Listen to those voices singing the sadness of love

And in the mountain, hear that tom-tom panting like the breast of a young black girl

Your soul is this image in the whispering water where your fathers bent their dark faces

Its hidden movements blend you with the waves

And the white that made you a mulatto is this bit of foam cast up, like spit, upon the shore

A Poem For Jacques Roumain

Enjoy a short tribute to Jacques Roumain, written by his African-American friend and literary giant, Langston Hughes. I believe this poem and numerous other fascinating aspects of Jacques Roumain's life and work can be found in Fowler's A Knot in the Thread: The Life and Work of Jacques Roumain.

Always 

You will be 

Man

Finding out about

The ever bigger world

Always you will be

Hand that links

Erzulie to the Pope,

Damballa to Lenin

Haiti to the universe

Thoughts on Jacques Roumain's Masters of the Dew

“Nevertheless, the fete went on. The peasants forgot their troubles. Dancing and drinking anesthetized them-- swept away their shipwrecked souls to drown in those regions of unreality and danger where the fierce forces of the African gods lay in wait.”

            Jacques Roumain’s Masters of the Dew, translated into English by Langston Hughes and Mercer Cook, remains one of the most important works in Haitian and Caribbean literature. Roumain, member of Haiti’s elite (his grandfather, Tancrede Auguste, was president of Haiti), also founded the Communist party, which explains the strong Marxist tones of the novel. Roumain studied abroad in Europe and traveled, thus the international context of Masters centers on a character that was part of the Haitian immigrant braceros communities, who labored on often American-owned plantations in Cuba.  An understanding of Cuban and Haitian history is required to fully comprehend the background of Manuel, the protagonist. In the first few decades of the 20^th century, American investors and landholders, alongside their white Cuban allies, imported thousands of black workers from Haiti and the British West Indies for cheap labor, and because of the poor economic conditions of these other Caribbean islands, hundreds of thousands came. Manuel spends several years cutting cane in Cuba, where he and his other braceros gain a worker, or proletariat consciousness and use it or for a huelga, or strike. Unlike the peasants of Haiti, who continued to face extreme exploitation, political exclusion and few opportunities for wage labor, the Haitian and other black workers in Cuba used their labor power collectively to demand higher wages and rights. The novel focuses on Manuel endeavoring to bring this revolutionary, Marxist-influenced notion of worker/peasant consciousness to the people of his village of Fonds Rouge in Haiti. Along the way, he encounters resistance from the religious traditions and a feud between two main families, and he must end the drought that has driven the village to starvation and deeper poverty. Roumain, though obviously not from Haiti’s peasant society, nonetheless uses peasant cultural and religious practices in the novel, such as the coumbite tradition of collective labor among villagers to work on agricultural projects for the entire village. For Manuel, the only way to save agriculture in the village and end poverty is to overcome the feud and form a permanent coumbite that will gradually incorporate more peasants to take back political power.

            Now, I enjoyed reading this novel, but the obvious Communist features limited the character development by reducing some to allegories, such as the rural policeman Hilarion. Hilarion, Florentine the storeowner, the police lieutenant, and the magistrate represent the predatory Haitian state that sells goods to Haitian peasants at high prices, loans money and supplies at usurious rates, and attempts to limit peasant political activity to ultimately expropriate their lands. This portrayal of the Haitian state is largely true, but Hilarion and the other ‘villains’ have very little characterization. I believe this is partly due to the tendency in Marxist literature to reduce human beings to allegories, thereby ignoring the real complexities one finds among all humans. Furthermore, Roumain’s portrayal of Catholicism and Haitian Vodou is problematic for many reasons. One must agree that, as Manuel tells the peasants of Fonds Rouge, the people cannot resign their fates and sacrifice animals to the loas or Christ and put their faith in prayer, but must work collectively in the material world to better their condition. Manuel, though still a believer in Vodou and its cultural and religious relevance to the peasant community, represents a thoroughly secular political movement among villagers, which is problematic for multiple reasons. First, it ignores the potential power of Vodou to actually improve lives, especially through medicine and its importance for building ties between families and villages across Haiti. Second, Roumain sees Vodou (and Catholicism for that matter) as distractions that, though relevant for cultural reasons, essentially divide people from focusing on the present world around them and leads to putting one’s faith in God(s) instead of taking agency. If one has a better understanding of Vodou, one would realize that the belief system is based on the present existence and lived history of the people, and fundamentally fosters communal relations by encouraging collective responses to the vicissitudes of modern life. Vodou, a religion of collective goodwill, is essential for building worker consciousness among peasants because it’s a hybrid fusion of various religious and cultural traditions that brings people together. In Roumain’s defense, however, his critique of religion is not as strong as I describe it, it merely subordinates Vodou to class and economics, instead of focusing on how all the aforementioned conditions are challenged by Vodou. Vodou, however, can and has been abused in Haiti, as the case of the houngan Dormeus who overcharges the peasants for his services. The ultimate strength of Vodou lies in its cultural hybridity, which avoids the hegemony of instrumental reason by emphasizing human collective goodwill rather than categorizing and ranking individuals that occurs consequentially in the super rationalist Western epistemological and Marxist traditions that perpetuate binary thinking. Any social theory that ignores the unique and organic conditions of resistance of the people is bound to fail, and only reproduces Western domination. In the novel, however, Manuel ultimately succeeds by not working against the local religious and cultural beliefs of his community. Though he brings in outside ideas, how the coumbite forms to irrigate the farmlands of the entire village is essentially Vodou, or even the best form of Christianity. Personal sacrifice, as the cost of human life, forces the village to recognize the futility of the feud, work together. Thus, religions play a vital role in the process of resisting the oppressive state by encouraging a compromise between personal avarice and the society’s well being. I must restate that Roumain does not overtly attempt to negate this point, but does tend to overlook it.

            The novel interestingly follows the peasant novel tradition of Haitian literature, which is dominated by mulatto writers since most Haitian peasants were illiterate in the 1930s and 1940s. Due to the overwhelming numbers of non-peasant, non-black writers attempting to portray Haitian rural life, one must wonder how accurate or realistic these novels are. Roumain, an ethnologist, Communist, and nationalist influenced by Jean Price-Mars, provides an accurate depiction of peasant life because of the addition of Creole expressions and the communal practices of the people, such as the coumbite. Unfortunately, Roumain overemphasizes his Communist ideology as the tool for Haitian liberation and economic growth, and some of his characters lacked depth, such as the police officer Hilarion and the peasant resistant to Manuel’s plans of change, Gervilen. Moreover, I find aspects of the novel’s conclusion very clichéd and predictable, especially Manuel’s grieving lover being pregnant as the peasants succeeded in irrigating their fields. In spite of these previously mentioned flaws, Masters does provide a powerful counter to the status quo of Haitian society and espouses a different Marxism, focusing on agricultural labor rather than Marx’s industrial economy. Roumain, as part of the international black literary and political world, had contacts with important figures like Langston Hughes and others of African descent. Indeed, Frantz Fanon’s Les Damnes de la Terre derives its title from a work by Roumain, thereby illustrating his importance in Pan-Africanist, anti-colonial and socialist movements. Manuel also demonstrates the transnational radical consciousness of the Black Atlantic during this period, since his experiences in Cuba with Haitian braceros and other Caribbean laborers including forming multi-ethnic and multi-national collectives to battle white capitalist control of the sugar plantation industry for higher wages. Historically, the fall of the sugar industry led to massive deportations of Caribbean laborers, and racialized notions of civilization led to many Cubans demanding the deportation in order to save jobs for Cubans, even though few Cubans, white or black, desired to work on exploitative plantations. Regardless, nationalities of the Black Atlantic are always crossing porous borders and forming a counterculture of modernity, to use Paul Gilroy’s terminology. This novel provides additional evidence of that, and transcends its literary limits as a Marxist novel.