Crises et mouvements populaires en Haïti

Crises et mouvements populaires en Haïti by Michel Hector is one of those works which took us several years to read. Despite reading the chapter on Joseph Jolibois Fils several years ago, the rest of the book was something that we only finished today. Perhaps this is due to the nature of the text, mixing essays and articles written at different times by Hector. Some of the early chapters focus heavily on the contemporary crisis in Haiti from 1986-1994, yet another reason we found this one difficult to read. Hector's historical analysis of the Piquets in the Sud and the essay on Jolibois Fils are far more effective and interesting than the theoretical essays on the continuity of crises from the 19th century and first half of the 20th century with the post-Duvalier era. That said, if Hector had included additional chapters analyzing in greater detail the conjunctures of the crises of 1867-1870, 1911-1915, 1929-1930, 1946 and 1956, perhaps the book would have had greater coherence. 

Despite our issues with the structure of this work, a compilation of various articles and essays, Hector did raise a number of pertinent questions on the ephemeral nature of inter-class alliances for democratisation in Haiti. He also pointed out, using the example of Daniel Fignolé, how charismatic leaders preaching political and social change did not often support the creation of proper political parties or the types of administrative reforms that would be necessary to develop functional democratic institutions in places like Haiti. The example of Fignolé was perhaps most relevant to the crisis of the post-Duvalier years as Aristide and the Lavalas party represented an analogous situation for the 1990s. The aforementioned short-lived broader alliances or coalitions also frequently collapsed before Haiti could truly develop meaningful reforms or democratic governance. The past examples of crises in Haitian political history also showed how the dominant classes and the military were often able to end the crises through token reforms and dividing the popular movement, done so well with regard to the Piquets and Acaau in the 1840s. 

But the real "meat and potatoes" of Hector's work here is in regard to the 19th century peasant uprisings represented by Goman and the Piquets of the 1840s. Drawing on Moise, Madiou, French and British consular reports, the Haitian press, and subsequent Haitian historians like Manigat and Magloire, Hector proposes a model for understanding the Piquet movement as the first great popular uprising for a more egalitarian and democratic Haiti. However, this movement did not emerge out of nothing. Instead, the uprising led by Goman in the Sud from 1807-1820 represented a revival of the traditions of marronage against the Haitian Republic. After its neutralization, urban subaltern discontent and political conspiracies to overthrow Boyer in 1827 and 1838 reveal another dimension of popular organizing. Although the 1838 assassination attempt on Inginac failed and no peasant uprising materialized in Leogane, the humble class origins of the leaders of this plot (many were artisans and some were farmers or cultivateurs) and the promise of a future uprising to avenge them by one of the executed leaders, illustrate how the lower-classes were eager to end Boyer's unpopular, colorist regime. The inclusion of peasant rebels in the countryside near Port-au-Prince demonstrates another dimension of this, as urban and rural subalterns both expressed their disapproval of Boyer as the cost of living soared in that disastrous economic period (1830s and 1840s). But the South, where plantations were least developed in colonial Saint-Domingue and where those emancipated in the 1790s faced severe forms of exclusion in southern towns and attempts to minimize peasant freeholder agriculture, unsurprisingly witnessed the strongest manifestations of peasant rebellion. 

By the time of the Piquets and Acaau, however, peasant resistance was more organized and expressed clear political and social goals. Not just demanding a reduction in the prices for imported goods used by the popular classes and an increase in the value of exports, Acaau's movement wanted real democratic reforms, access to education for the lower classes, and acknowledged the class nature of the hegemonic group (both the "mulattoes" and noir elites). This, according to Hector, showed differences from Goman's movement through its expressed interest in public education and full inclusion within the state. To what extent that was true is perhaps debateable, but it is interesting to note Hector found an example of at least one former adherent of Goman's uprising who fully supported Acaau and the Piquets in the 1840s: César Novelet. Naturally, one must also consider the larger context of the elite liberal movement against Boyer in 1843 as well as the salomoniste opposition to the government which proceeded that of Boyer. The extended crisis of 1843-1848 included the secession of what became the Dominican Republic, fears of northern secession, and rivalries for power between the old boyerist oligarchy and proponents of Rivière-Hérard. But Hector is likely correct to emphasize the role of peasant agency in launching the movement and ensuring its autonomy from other political currents for a time.

Sadly, the Piquets suffered from the divide and conquer tactics of the Haitian political elite. Political promotions to some Piquet leaders and the isolating of Acaau from these men paved the way for them to eventually desert him and the cause they initially fought for. Moreover, the evidence suggesting Acaau limited expropriations of land and goods in the occupied territories and towns may have weakened his popular support over time. Gradually, more of the Piquet leadership was coopted, neutralized, executed or defeated, paving the way for Guerrier, Pierrot, Riché and Soulouque to defeat the popular movement. In its 3 waves, Acaau was even, for a time at least, imprisoned and removed from the Sud. Upon his return, to Nippes, he was still seen as intractable and too independent, causing the central government to eradicate him for good. But Acaau's charisma and popularity were still strong, leading to peasant unrest in the South until it was finally crushed by 1848. Lamentably, some of the leaders of the repression of the Piquets were former Piquet chefs like  Dugué Zamor. Ultimately, the movement was crushed and the rise of Soulouque to the position of emperor represented an end to the crisis, with his regime's consolidation and inclusion of a number of former Piquets. 

Although the conditions of the 1843-1848 crisis were rather distinct, one can see clearly how class, color, questions of land, and political reforms to seriously include the majority in the system were obfuscated, divided, and neutralized by the elite. The inter-class alliance evaporated rather quickly despite some liberal reformers once hosting popular gatherings on their estates with farmers. The insidious color question also shaped matters as some accepted the replacement of Boyer and Rivière-Hérard by black presidents. The divide and conquer tactics of the elite paid off very successfully, too. With the loss of his supporters and other leaders, Acaau was forced to flee for his life and later committed suicide to evade capture. While it ultimately failed, the conditions in which it emerged and the threat it posed to the Haitian authoritarian habitus presented a specter that haunted future generations of elites. One only wishes Hector had explored the religious dimension to understand the appeal of Frère Joseph in articulating the appeal of the  movement. Indeed, Hector reported that serviteurs left offerings at the site where Acaau was believed to have died, as if he became a lwa. Furthermore, exploring how the peasant and urban masses shaped the crisis of the Salnave years may have presented another opportunity to consider the urban-rural divide as a factor in the failure of the popular movements in these moments of national crisis. To be fair, a hint of that is detected in the chapter on Jolibois Fils, particularly with regard to his greater interest in supporting labor in Haiti after 1930. But considering the urban-rural dichotomy in the 19th century crises is worthy of scrutiny, too. 

Michel Hector

A few years ago, my interest in the history and development of Haitian labor movements and radicalism led me to a renewed interest in the works of Michel Hector. From his various works written under the pseudonym Jean-Jacques Doubout to his later writings on the Haitian Revolution and the genesis of the state, Hector illustrates the utility of Marxist and materialist theory for understanding Haitian historical development. Furthermore, as a militant involved in the labor and socialist movements, Hector's objective analysis offers key insights into different moments and conflicts over strategy, ideology, tactics, and goals of the various left-wing political parties and labor federations. Furthermore, without Hector and his legacy rooted in the long history of Haitian Marxist critique, contemporary scholarship on the Haitian Left would be impoverished and sorely lacking the testimony and analysis of a participant of its struggles.

His work, in both Spanish and French essays and monographs, also provides key sources and an interpretative framework for understanding Haiti's position in the larger political economy of the last two centuries. The earlier work written under the name of Doubout explores the Marxist framework for analyzing the development of social classes and the "semi-feudal" nature of the economy for most of the 19th century. Doubout explains this in Feodalisme ou capitalisme by arguing that the Haitian Revoluton was neither anti-capitalist, nor anti-feudal. One can debate the utility of using terms like feudal, but if understood as "feudal-like," the dichotomy is warranted. Then, the rupture beginning in 1915 with the US Occupation and a rapid increase in the size and number of large-scale agro-industrial firms and proletarianization proceeds. Hector's work follows this development to the early labor movement of the 1920s and 1930s (through figures such as Joseph Jolibois, Jacques Roumain, and Christian Beaulieu), paving the way for the "explosion" of 1946 and independent labor's influence on politics.

Hector, however, also outlines the importance of changes in political economy during the second half of the 19th century with a limited opening of Haiti to foreign capital and enterprise, particularly after 1860. Hector is one of the few historians I have come across whose work encompasses that period in class formation and the extent to which the US Occupation merely accelerated a process that had begun in the later decades of the 19th century. His works include useful chronologies and timelines on the development of capitalist industries in the country, pivotal dates for strikes, and the formations of unions and political parties. Hector's also one of the few sources who wrote about artisans and wage-workers in that period, 1860-1915, including the incipient proto-proletariat into what may be early formations of class consciousness. 

While some may take issue with his Marxist-inspired critiques of the MOP's Fignolé or the UIH's lack of a clear political program or almost anarchist-inspired politics (essentially, playing with fire just as the Duvalier dictatorship was increasingly tyrannical), Hector's oeuvre is foundational for any kind of clear comprehension of the history of modern Haiti. His later work, which, unfortunately, I have not completely read, encompasses social movements and political crisis, such as the piquets of the 1840s and the 1946 revolution. A return to studying early Haiti also manifests, requiring close reading for analysis of the colonial period. In short, Hector's long list of published writings assist in elucidating the entirety of our past, as well as the applicability of Marxist framework for the Caribbean. Rest in peace, Michel Hector Auguste.

Searching for An Embryonic Proletariat

Source 

A little project I've been obsessed with over the last few days is the question of the 'pre-proletariat' in Haiti, before the US Occupation. Although I am still waiting for access to a few sources (Pean, Gaillard, Corvington), I believe I can lay out a sketch of what I am trying to do here. Haitian Marxist historian Michel Hector has written about this "embryonic proletariat" and is my main source, but, unfortunately, he doesn't cite sources for some of his dates of early strikes in Haiti (in the 1890s and 1900s, among barbers, cordonniers, etc.). I am also struggling to find information about the Coeurs Unis des Artisans (founded in Cap-Haitien, in 1870, this organization of artisans and government functionaries persisted into the 1890s) and the Association Ouvrière (founded in July 1894, in Port-au-Prince), the only labor organizations I have come across for the 19th century. Regardless, here is a schematic overview of what I have been attempting to uncover.

Beginning in 1848 (or 1860, if one cites another essay by Hector published in a Mexican academic journal), assuming one agrees with Michel Hector's chronology, one sees the encroachment of foreign capital in Haiti (particularly in agriculture) and early attempts at improving industry, importing new technology, and a growing population of wage laborers. The period of 1804-1843, although including some plantations for sugar production (especially 1804-1820) and centers of local industry (such as hat production, in 1840s Port-au-Prince), Haiti did not attract significant foreign capital for new industries or agriculture.. Under Geffrard and successive presidents, attempts were made to improve productivity and attract foreign capital through concessions, educational reforms, public works projects, and imported technology (steam engines, cotton gins, coffee processing plants, soap factories, etc.) and new agricultural exports (cotton, for instance, was profitable in the Geffrard years). Unfortunately, state economic policies inhibited the growth of industry because of the growing dependence on foreign firms for imports, dependence on coffee exports, and trade policies which made it more difficult for Haitian industries to compete with Europe or the United States for various goods and products. In fact, Michel Hector cites a petition of Haitian artisans and workers to the government of Port-au-Prince, demanding a change in prices of consumer products and state support for Haitian-produced products, to which Edmond Paul, also responded. Paul, a proponent of industrialization and Haitian economic independence, certainly saw the need to support Haitian self-sufficiency and development in order to protect national independence. Under Salomon and successive governments, various expositions in Port-au-Prince and abroad (such as Chicago's 1893 fair) promoted Haitian industry, agriculture, and attempts at economic modernization. Both the Liberal and National parties were devoted to progress, agricultural improvements, and industry, at least rhetorically.

By the 1870s, Cubans, who were migrating through the circum-Caribbean region as a result of the Cuban Wars of independence, came to Port-au-Prince and other cities. Many were tailors, shoemakers, barbers, and small businessmen, who revitalized Haitian trade professions in urban areas, employed local workers, and were an important segment of the foreign population in Haiti in the late decades of the 19th century. Like the Cubans, Jamaicans and other migrants and artisans from the Caribbean and Europe also came to Haiti. Much of the skilled labor and specialized labor was performed by these foreign workers in Haiti, which may have inhibited or influenced early Haitian labor organization (assuming that many of these foreigners only passed through Haiti for a few years, and were mostly in urban areas). Thus, the Haitian 'working-class' of the second half of the 19th century was mostly based in skilled trades, and associated more with pre-industrial productivity and organization. In the rural areas, a growing number of people were working for commercial houses that exported coffee and other products, while others were employed in plantations, distilleries, refineries, and the coffee processing centers (which appear to have improved productivity and the quality of Haitian coffee beans for export, thereby spreading to other regions of the country). From going through various sources for the late 19th century and early 20th century, many of these ventures employed 50-100 laborers, and in some cases, more (including some urban workshops and factories as well as larger commercial firms preparing and processing export products). For example, Riviere's steamship company suppposedly employed 120 workers, according to an 1876 article in Les Bigailles. However, Hector's articles and essays which touch on this reveal that wages were low, and primary sources contradict each other on the availability of labor while many of these ventures did not survive for more than a few years. 

Regrettably, one must delve deeper into the newspapers, financial records, the National Bank of Haiti, and state records of the period to uncover specific informaton about the rural wage laborers of this time. For instance, how many were seasonal? Were the women trieuses of the Haitian coffee industry, such as those of Maison Vital, paid less than males who worked for these commercial houses and plantations? How many were paid in wages and in the demwatye system? How did the agrarian "pre-proletariat" relate to the "feudal" and peasant economies of the rural area? Did the landless poor and sharecropper of rural Haiti of the time begin to migrate to the cities, and if so, were any eventually employed in the new industries (such as cola factories, ice factories) or the cordonneries, cabinetmakers, tanneries, and other forms of employment? What about the educational reforms, such as the 1892 Ecole Libre Professionelle? Were skilled workers trained there, and if so, how many? What were labor relations like at Les Plantations d'Haiti, established in 1901, in Bayeux? According to various sources, this venture, founded with Belgian capital, employed perhaps 300 or more workers to grow sugar, rubber, bananas, and other products for export. Were labor relations "cordial" as some sources indicate? What about references to socialism and anarchism, which appear in 1890s and 1900s Haitian journals and texts? Or references to Anglo-Saxon/Latin dichotomies of labor and labor organization in Le Matin? Did provincial industries based on pre-industrial methods, such as the production of hats and pipes in Bainet, disappear with the rise of US capital in the 20th century? How many commercial firms were directly involved in growing coffee, cotton and other crops versus buying from speculateurs? Were the workers in the new hotels, cigarette and cigar factories, bakeries, foundries, and other ventures from the countryside or the peri-urban peripheral neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince? How did Haitian bourgeois capitalists compete with foreign firms and commercial houses also engaged in coffee, cotton, and similar ventures?

And what about labor strikes, organizations, mutual aid societies, guilds, radicalism and resistance? Hector cites Joseph Justin and Joseph Jeremie to demonstrate the non-existence of strikes, workers associations and unions in 19th century Haiti, but mentions strikes in the 1890s (barbers in Port-au-Prince, for example, in 1891) and early 1900s. The 1890s witnessed the formation of an Association Ouvriere, of a mutualist character (despite fears of socialism and anarchism among some in the Haitian political class). One of its leaders, Stanislas Madour, was involved with some of the Haitian artisanal products displayed at the 1893 Chicago Exposition, presumably since he was a cabinet-maker. Through Hector, one can locate a source for a 1905 strike of shoemakers, which was organized by a union (Syndicat des Ouvriers Cordonniers) founded in 1903 with 47 workers. This union, though small and ephemeral, even sent aid to Jamaican laborers after a natural catastrophe there, indicating an internationalist conception of labor solidarity. Of course, the non-peasant working population in Haiti remained small (one estimate I found indicated only 25,000 agricultural workers by 1915), but I am curious as to the social formation of the period as Haiti made the transition to global capitalism dominated by the United States. For example, were any of these aforementioned workers and artisans exposed to or influenced by Cuban worker and artisan radicalism or educational efforts, as indicated in the works of authors like Casanova, James, or Poyo? What else besides support political revolutions in Port-au-Prince did the urban/semi-urban popular classes accomplish? How did popular beliefs, Vodou, and different conceptions of labor and value shape worker-boss relations and resistance? What about the impact of class stratification in the Haitian countryside during this period (1860-1915)? How did the expansion of Port-au-Prince affect the semi-urban workers and unemployed in Bizoton and other districts? What about cooperatives, communal work projects, and gender relations? How did urban workers and artisans engaged in associations and the early unions of the 1900s differ from their rural counterparts?

As for sources, this work in progress has not pressured me to forming a proper bibliography. The works of Michel Hector have been the main source, as well as various 19th century and early 20th century commercial registries, consular reports, Haitian state documents, some newspapers, and contemporary Haitian texts and essays on education, labor, political econony, and industry. The Blue Book of Hayti, published during the US Occupation, is a priceless source for information on various firms that operated in Haiti in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In addition, it includes photographs of various offices, warehouses, and factories, as well as estimates on the number of employees and the commodities produced, processed, and exported. Pierre-Charles, Joachim, Dupuy, Trouillot, Jean Luc, Richman, Dubois, Plummer, Gaillard, and others have been useful secondary sources, although future references from Latortue, Corvington, Brisson, Redsons, Pean and additional newspapers shall be beneficial. Richman's oral history and archival research on Lacombe's land theft and HASCO in the Leogane plain is fascinating, but one wonders how representative it is of the ways in which Haitian landowners and foreign firms seized land from Haitian peasants in the second half of the 19th century and used the sharecropping system for production of coffee and sugar. One wonders to what extent the Simmond Brothers and other firms would have done what Lacombe did, who, since he lacked the capital and access to credit, persisted in using the sharecropping system to grow coffee and sugar. Perhaps, even before HASCO, wage laborers for agro-industrial companies were already experiencing dislocation and preferred to work outside of their communities, while their more fortunate counterparts persisted in the 'traditional' peasant economy. If the peasant moral economy was under threat already by Lacombe, and further weakened by the enroachment of HASCO, it would be interesting to see if this development was similar to that of other regions of Haiti, and in what manner agricultural workers may have responded similarly to other large-scale plantation developments and displacement. 

Notes sur le développement du mouvement syndical en Haïti

One of my current long-term interests is the historical and ideological foundations of radicalism, labor movements and socialism in Haiti. Although I still have a long way to go in terms of access to specific reading materials and primary sources, Notes sur le développement du mouvement syndical en Haïti, coauthored by Marxist historian Michel Hector (Jean-Jacques Doubout) and labor organizer Ulrick Joly, provides a succinct overview of the Haitian labor movement from its origins to the fall of l'Union Intersyndical d'Haiti (UIH) in 1963. While the authors have their biases as Marxist-Leninists and Joly's past in the UIH adds a personal dimension, this is an important overview of the Haitian labor movement and Duvalierism from a Haitian left perspective. 

Unfortunately, the study skips over most of the period prior to the US Occupation, and focuses for the most part on 1946-1963, covering the role of the 1946 revolution against Lescot, the brief period of democratic reforms and progressive labor laws, and then the repression of labor under Estime, Magloire, and Duvalier. While partial to the PSP, PEP, and PPLN parties, this study is more sympathetic to fignolisme and the MOP than Hector's major study of labor and socialism. Fignolisme combined charisma, social reformism, noirism, and demagogy with labor but was too limited to Port-au-Prince and its environs. The Federation of Haitian Workers (FTH in French) was more influenced by the PCH (Parti Communiste Haitien of the 1940s) and the PSP (Parti Socialiste Populaire). The other labor union federations were either phantom unions tied to the state or led by opportunists. The PSP sounds like the most coherent socialist political party with the most determined support for labor militancy and union democracy during this period (1946-1950). 

However, the main utility of this important work for me is detailed breakdown of affiliated unions with the UIH in the 1958-1963 period, when Duvalier finally cracked down on democratic labor unions. I once asked a Haitian academic about labor unions among the trieuses of the coffee sector in Haiti after reading that Jean-Jacques Dessalines Ambroise had helped organize workers in the industry, and this book gives the names of two specific unions of trieuses for Maison Madsen and Maison Vital plus their delegates to the UIH. Furthermore, the transformations in the Haitian economy during the 1950s and 1960s under US imperial capitalism helped explain why socialists and syndicalists were able to made impressive gains for labor as the number of companies employing vast numbers of workers increased, including rural areas with agro-industrial US companies and mining. Indeed, some of the strikes launched by regional peasant unions and rural proletarian unions, such as in the Nord-Est, involved thousands of people and were able to win concessions from the labor department of Duvalier into the early 1960s. 

Perhaps most useful, however, is the reflection of Joly and Hector on the weaknesses of the labor movement and internal flaws of UIH. Like economist Mats Lundahl, they point to the lack of a united front of the labor movement as the reason for its inability to defeat Duvalier, but they offer a more nuanced interpretation of the various historical actors and their role in the social totality. Like Lundahl, they acknowledge how the labor movement between 1946 and 1963 was too centered on Port-au-Prince and its environs, did not encompass the poor peasants, and was divided ideologically by fignolisme and socialist currents, but the UIH itself fell victim to economism and winning direct victories for affiliated unions instead of democratic political reforms. The pro-democratic forces were already divided, but by not actively encouraging support for it, UIH may have lost sight of the larger vision for democratic reforms to ensure protections for the growing number of unions affiliating with them. Moreover, the rise of regional federations or confederations of peasants and agricultural workers, partly tied to the political conflicts of 1956 and 1957, proved they were useful for labor organizing in the rural areas but UIH was probably not as proactive in connecting the urban working-class and countryside, despite the involvement of figures like Rodolphe Moise. 

In their defense, state repression placed limits on how much could be done, and despite their shortcomings, UIH supported literacy campaigns, a cultural center, a clinic, fought for the rights of Haitian migrant workers in the DR and Bahamas, and produced a party organ for political education. In short, the UIH, which was supported by PEP and PPLN, was perhaps lacking in a a concerted effort to promote democratic reforms to safeguard the gains of the labor movement while having to deal with an increasingly fascist regime which continued to pretend it was the natural supporter of workers. Moreover, while praising the unification of the PEP and PPLN for the formation of the PUCH by the end of the 1960s, perhaps Hector and Joly's defense of vanguardism may be a blindspot. Indeed, if fignolisme was characterized by the MOP's refusal to trust the Haitian masses with the decision making processes itself, and the UIH did indeed attempt to ensure affiliated unions and their rank and file were involved with democratic decisions of the organization, perhaps the vanguardism of the PSP and PUCH were closer to fignolisme and what Nicholls referred to as the technocratic character of Haitian socialists?

And what does one make of the paternalist mentality and belief in charismatic figures which supposedly characterizes pre-capitalist societies and helps explain, perhaps, the fatalism of the Haitian poor and working-class? Presumably, this fatalistic belief of the Haitian lower classes that a state or individual will save them is part of the same trope among other Haitian leftists that the Haitian people need to develop class consciousness as a class for itself, in itself, and take ownership of its own destiny (masters of the dew, perhaps?). Claude Souffrant once made a similar argument about the religious fatalism of the Haitian peasant. However, is it a just a strawman? Did the Haitian Left have its own CLR James or Joseph Edwards, Caribbean leftists who championed the self-activity of the workers and opposed state bureaucracy and vanguards? UIH came somewhat close to this by trying to stay accountable and include rank and file workers in the decision-making apparatus, but Joly and Hector never denounce vanguards.