US Occupation of the Dominican Republic and Haiti

We have been rereading parts of Calder's The Impact of Intervention: The Dominican Republic during the U.S. Occupation of 1916-1924 and thinking about the role of US imperialism in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Calder's book should be read in conjunction with Hans Schmidt on the US Occupation of Haiti for a similar but distinct experience of US military imperialism and interests in the Caribbean region. And the two occupations were definitely linked, involving some of the same personnel and leadership (Russell, Knapp) and engaging in finalizing the Haiti-US border as well as requiring Haitian labor in Dominican sugar plantations and other projects, like roads. 

Despite overlapping for several years and probably achieving the same result (no major systemic reforms in "democracy" or government), there are still some noticeable differences in the US military occupations of the island. And these differences cannot be found solely in the fact that the US Marines ruled the Dominican Republic directly while using puppet presidents in Haiti. Of course, the longest lasting legacies of the US in the DR appear to have been in public works and the Guardia, probably the same for Haiti in terms of the reforms of the Haitian military. The various military dictators of Haiti post-1934 and the Trujillo regime cannot be understood without taking this into account, despite some of the very different aspects of the military under the Duvaliers and Trujillo. But clearly the political and economic centralization in the two capitals and the defeat of the cacos and gavilleros, the caudillos and regional strongmen, by the US Marines, facilitated authoritarian regimes. 

Calder's book explores several examples of areas in which the US Occupation intervened or changed the DR. Some of the same goals were pursued in Haiti, such as reforms in taxation, military, public works projects, elementary education (more schools) and favoring US exports to the Dominican market. Legislation beneficial to sugar companies in 1920 also furthered tensions in the east of the DR, where an uprooted peasantry manifested into the gavillero "bandits" or rebels fighting the Marines. The US Occupation also implemented additional reforms in both countries but ultimately failed as the only arena in which Haitians or Dominicans were allowed to express any opinion was in education. In the Haitian case, we have well-known examples of US discriminatory attitudes, racist beliefs which also manifested in US interactions with the Dominican population. But perhaps because they are generally speaking lighter-skinned than Haitians, Calder suspects the US was willing to end their occupation of the Dominican Republic before that of Haiti.

The gavilleros in some way resemble the cacos of Haiti, but the areas of staunch caco resistance in Haiti does not appear to have developed in areas of the country under the influence of HASCO or other sites with large-scale agro-industrial projects (which were on a far smaller scale than US investments in the DR). The Haitian peasant did experience uprootedness, dispossession and labor migration to Cuba and the DR during this period (1915-1934), but the cacos appear to have been less active in, say, the Leogane area or Cul-de-Sac plain, regions where HASCO had an impact on the rural population. However, the two do seem to resemble each other in the disconnect between them and their respective elite opposition movements. According to Calder, the Union Patriotique in did not become a mass movement until the late 1920s, while the Union Nacional in the DR received more international support than their Haitian counterpart.  And while both elite opposition groups included intellectual resistance to the Occupation, perhaps the huge numbers of Haitian laborers in the DR and US racism precluded any elite Dominican attempt to rethink the nation's relationship to "blackness." Perhaps another legacy of the US Occupation was to ensure the somewhat deeper integration of the DR into the US "co-prosperity" sphere at slightly better terms than what they were willing to offer Haiti?

Les Simulacres

Fernand Hibbert's final novel, Les Simulacres, is a short text satirizing the author's own social class in the context of the US Occupation (1915-1934). Published in 1923, when the author could not have foreseen exactly how the Occupation would conclude, it is often ambivalent about the American presence. This is not an anti-Occupation work like the novels of the 1930s, but more akin to Hibbert's earlier works satirizing the Haitian bourgeoisie for their vanity, corruption, venality, and mismanagement of Haitian political, social, and economic life. As a far shorter text than, say, Les Thazar, and a smaller cast at that, it does not quite succeed in satirizing every social type among the Haitian upper-class, though it does reintroduce past characters such as Brion and Gérard Delhi. Brion, as one would expect from events in Les Thazar, has not married, is perhaps bitter, and seems to be amused by the various foibles of his social class.

By reviving past characters, Hibbert's former mouthpieces from the ancien regime can return as the this tale mocks the foolish and arrogant Hellénus Caton. Caton, a former politician who became wealthy through graft and corruption before the Occupation, is now ardently opposed to the Americans (but only due to their refusal to consider him for the post of president). Being a Simulacre means one who uses "mensonges derrière lesquels les hommes masquent la vérité, ou leur intérêts et leurs appétits." He falls prey to a Cuban swindler who proceeds to conjure a story of occult knowledge and miracles so that he has an excuse to get close to Cephise, Caton's beautiful wife. Needless to say, Pablo Alcantara makes a fool of Caton, having him wait outside in the middle of the night, nude, looking at the moon, while he proceeds to make love to his wife for seven consecutive nights. In short, this is the basic plot of the text, a Cuban foreigner swindling a Haitian bourgeois male of wealth and women. Brion, as perhaps the only redeeming bourgeois, intervenes to ensure a (somewhat) happy ending in which Cephise stays with her husband, but Caton never recovers.

Like Brion in Les Thazar, Caton cannot compete with the foreign male, although in this case Pablo Alcantara is not a successful German but another faker, from a country also under the tutelage of the US. Since Hibbert was the Haitian consul in Cuba, one can presume his use of a Cuban Simulacre is itself part of the text's anti-imperialist critique, as Pablo Alcantara knows very well how Cuba, like Haiti, is a pawn in the US Empire. Hibbert, stationed in Santiago de Cuba, would have known very well the degree to which US influence was paramount in the neighboring Caribbean nation, and may have possessed solidarity for Cubans based on past alliances against imperialism before Cuban independence. Perhaps Hibbert was trying to suggest, much like Naipaul several decades later, how the people of the Caribbean have become mimic men, lacking in proper comportment as befits independent people of independent nations. Pablo Alcantara, much like Caton, is another such case, exploiting the ignorance and credulity of others in much the same way Caton and his ilk have done similar actions in Haiti before the US Occupation. Thus, Pablo Alcantara is an interesting type of foreigner in the works of Hibbert, possibly a callback to the various Caribbean peoples represented on the ship en route to France in Séna. He likewise represents a change in the Haitian elite perception of Cubans as positive immigrants in Haiti, since he does not produce, teach, apprentice, or employ anyone.

As is the case with Les Thazar, most of the plot advances through the dialogue of these aforementioned characters (plus their domestics and a few additional acquaintances). So it is often through their exchanges that much of the novel's humor derives. These conversations entail Cato the Younger, ancient Rome's rise and fall, Creole and French in Haitian literature, the Cuban passion for love and duels, education and literacy campaigns, the motivations of the Occupation (to build a naval base?), the lack of unity among Haitians, and the lack of rain in Port-au-Prince. The novel's final chapter addresses the reader, specifically the Haitian mother, to raise their children to obey and never lie, to produce a better generation of citizens and ensure the survival of the nation. Using Rome, imperial Germany, tsarist Russia, and the "Orient" as examples of what happens when the lack of liberty takes hold and injustice prevails, leading to social decay or ruin, the novel adopts a direct moralizing tone. While this detracts from the bitterly satirical tone of the rest of the text, it makes it clear how the US Occupation, in the eyes of Hibbert, has not uprooted the Simulacres and fakers, and a return to ancien regime ways will lead down a path toward destruction.

Needless to say, Hibbert's account does not include the caco resistance or nascent unrest from the peasantry or lower classes. The Haitian workers in Cuba, with whom Hibbert was fully aware, do not enter into the picture despite Cuban emigration being a key aspect of the US Occupation's influence. A communist revolution or "Grand Soir" of Delhi are only mentioned humorously, suggestive of the venal and ignorant nature of Caton and the fear of popular revolt. So one presumes that Haiti's salvation will be found among the non-Simulacre of the elite. They alone will be able to direct the nation progressively during and after the occupation and ensure a return to full liberty of the press and other rights. They, and only they, can ensure expanded primary education and adult literacy, with the recent example of Lunarchsky in the Soviet Union cited positively. Unsurprisingly, Hibbert's Simulacres is thus a continuation of the same class and gender politics of his early novels, but accompanied by a heightened sense of alarm at the prospects of national survival if the Simulacres are not held at bay after the Americans leave. Unfortunately, the Simulacres never left after 1934...

The White King of La Gonave: The True Story of the Sergeant of Marines Who Was Crowned King on a Voodoo Island

Faustin Wirkus's The White King of La Gonave: The True Story of the Sergeant of Marines Who Was Crowned King on a Voodoo Island, begins with an introduction by William Seabrook, probably to add a touch of authenticity. Clearly written to appeal to US audiences with a taste for the primitive and sensationalized tales of 'Voodoo' or African atavism, Faustin Wirkus's narrative (ghost written by someone with more formal education than him) is a self-serving account of the US Occupation and his white savior complex. Although the author does not consider himself a racist, he consistently refers to Haitians as children, refers to Haitian villages as African and archaic, and describes La Gonave (which had about 12 thousand inhabitants during his 'reign') as Edenic, African-like, and mysterious. Playing on white imperialist fantasies of the era and racist notions of Africa and Afro-descended people, Wirkus's text surprisingly avoids some of the sensationalistic accounts of 'Voodoo' that other whites ensured an entrance into US popular culture (except for one occasion, where the author hints at possible cannibalism or human sacrifice). 

For those looking for a historical account of the US Occupation of Haiti (1915-1934), however, the book is full of detail pertaining to the 1915 landing of US troops, caco resistance in the countryside, Batraville's failed attempt to seize Port-au-Prince, and the conditions of the Haitian peasantry. While critical of the Haitian government and US Marines for endeavoring to prohibit 'Voodoo' (which is contradictory, considering how Faustin Wirkus actually breaks up a large Vodou ceremony on the mainland) and for not learning as much as they can about the peasantry to aid them, Wirkus describes the caco bands as terrorizing the countryside instead of seeing them solely as a response to US Occupation. Wirkus desribes in great detail campaigns near St. Marc, Perodin, Petite-Riviere and other inland areas near the Artibonite valley where caco bands were hunted and killed by US Marines and their local gendarmes, trained by the US white officers.  He also visits and spends time in Port-au-Prince, Arcahaie, and Carzal (presumably Cazale, the village where many descendants of Polish reside). He also makes it quite clear he didn't care for the Haitian elite or 'aristocracy' in Port-au-Prince, preferring to spend time with the 'native' peasants and rural population. 

When the text finally covers his time in La Gonave (nearly halfway through), he is placed in charge of the island by the US Commissioner and sees to some important changes. This is where the text is most interesting, since La Gonave's population is described by US Marines (who never ventured into the interior of the island) as being savage, isolated, and unknown. Instead, La Gonave is clearly connected to mainland Haiti. According to Wirkus's understanding, the land is owned by the government in Port-au-Prince, sublet to wealthy Haitians in the mainland, and then worked by tenant farmers, who were often cheated by the tax collectors and other officials of the state. In order to resist this, the peasants of La Gonave, for at least 3 or 4 generations, formed cooperative labor societies, Congo societies, to combine their resources and labor for more agricultural productivity. While only about half of La Gonave's population participated in these labor societies and cooperative groups (according to Wirkus's 'census'), those who were not part of the Congo societies were often barely eking out an existence or took advantage of other peasants through collaboration with corrupt government officials. 

Thus, La Gonave's population were clearly incorporated into the exploitative Haitian political system, but local notions of poer and rule were conducted through cooperative Congo associations in which women were the ultimate authority, appointed as queens. Wirkus describes in great detail the top queen, Ti Menmenne, a squat black woman with dignity and authority. Wirkus, while overstepping his power as a military leader, uses his relationship with top officials in the US Occupation to remove from power corrupt officials, appoint local leaders, and improve infrastructure on the island with a new wharf, a new home for himself in Anse-a-Galets (the main village where officials lived), landing stirps for Marine airplaines, and new seed for the Haitian peasants. For all these reasons, he became popular and beloved by the black 'children,' coronated as their 'king,' which solely referred to his prestige and services for the Congo societies on the island. While they sometimes incorporated Vodou into their rituals, the Congo societies appear to me as being permanent combite societies, something Wirkus surprisingly supported as a step to improving agricultural productivity and natives' happiness. 

Of course, Wirkus claims his successes and coronation as 'king' by the Congo societies on La Gonave led to him being replaced after President Borno visited La Gonave, upset to see him as 'king' of a Haitian territory. Besides praising his rule on La Gonave as benefitting the population, he also describes the 'children' of Haiti as viewing him as wonder worker (because he built a chimney for his home when stationed in Perodin). On the subject of Marine relations with local women, he is quick to avoid mentioning rape or sexual liasons, but was attracted to two women, one a black woman near Perodin and Marie, the 'white-skinned' descendant of Poles from 'Carzal,' who he loses to a Syrian (after the blue shoes he buys for her are taken by the Syrian). On describing local conceptions of skin color, he claims 'pure' blacks of the countryside looked down on mulattoes for being mongrels while describing the light-skinned peasants of 'Carzal' as only marrying other light-skinned people. 

In addition, he does not criticize polygamy in the countryside, nor does he disrespect Vodou ceremonies and local ritual (although, he certainly admits to laughing at how absurd some peasant customs were to him, or suspicions that some Vodou priests and bocor were frauds). Indeed, he even participates in some rituals and seems to respect 'Voodooism' and its syncretic nature as part of the culture and needs of the peasantry (such as the ceremony for Agwe and Erzulie). In that regard, Faustin Wirkus, Faustin II (reincarnated Soulouque, according to islanders in La Gonave) seems to have some respect for Vodou that transcends the usual American garbage and racist notions, yet he also accused Borno or officials in his cabinet of practicing Voodoo. Ultimately, this is an enlightening read on an important era of Haitian history, although sugar-coated and imperialistic. Travel narratives such as these nonetheless provide an important perspective on the US Occupation's impact on the countryside, which certainly was not as positive as this account describes it. Indeed, the writer white-washes his exploitation and abuse of Haitian laborers, and one is probably right to be skeptical of his arrogance and self-praise.