Haitian State Research Articles

‘The Light of Knowledge Follows the Impulse of Revolutions’: Prince Saunders, Baron de Vastey and the Haitian Influence on Antebellum Black Ideas of Elevation and Education

This article details the influence that Haitian ideas about education had on early black intellectuals. Following the successful slave revolution, leaders of the new Haitian state set out to develop a new educational system. African-American observers paid close attention to these developments and often attempted to mimic them. Especially important was the black traveller and activist Prince Saunders, who was hired by the Haitian King Henry Christophe to build schools. Combining social and intellectual history, this article argues that black intellectuals in the North were inspired by the memory and symbol of Haiti to develop an education system and elevation ideology that served explicitly political purposes.

Ti Dife Boule sou Istwa Ayiti as Haitian civic education

Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s scholarship examines the world economy in relation to structural alliances between state leaders and commodity traders. His work suggests that the majority of formerly enslaved agricultural producers in the Caribbean became a politically marginalized “reconstituted peasantry.” In Ti Dife Boule sou Istwa Ayiti, Trouillot employs narrative tools characteristic of oral storytelling and magical realism to analyze such relationships during the Haitian Revolution. The text, written in Haitian Creole, interjects on debates about the relationship between colonial economies and metropolitan governments, the historicity of uneven development, and the foundational rupture between the Haitian state and nation. This article argues that Trouillot selects Grenn Pwomennen, a true product of syncretism, an erudite scholar clothed in the uniform of Haiti’s ubiquitous peasant working class, to artfully demonstrate that the solution to Haiti’s challenges remains with its peasant classes. Published in 1977, within the context of his immigration and personal sense of responsibility for the Haiti he left behind, Ti Dife Boule sou Istwa Ayiti reveals itself to be an ideal text for civic education and politicization among Haitians who only understand Creole.

Ti dife boule sou istoua Ayiti: Considering the stakes of Trouillot’s earliest work

This essay discusses Ti dife boule sou istoua Ayiti (Burning Issues in Haitian History) (1977), Trouillot’s first published book, which is currently being translated to English for the first time. Ti dife boule is a complex and innovative text that lays the groundwork for Trouillot’s later thought, but remains the least known of his publications because it was composed in Haitian Creole, was never circulated widely, and has long been out of print. This Marxist critique of colonial history through the prism of Haitian history shows how Haiti’s Revolution (1791–1803) holds the clues to interpreting and critiquing Haiti’s recent history. Instead of following the epic tradition glorifying revolutionary heroes, Trouillot critiques the European-inspired traditions of governance displayed by Haitian rebel generals and re-examines the contributions of the Haitian slave masses in the revolution. In a well-documented yet accessible manner, drawing from Haiti’s popular storytelling tradition, proverbs, and songs, Trouillot explores the rivalries, murders, and gamesmanship that mark the formation of the Haitian State and traces their harmful effect upon the evolution of the State in independent Haiti. Ti dife boule’s translators conclude this essay by reflecting upon possible reasons why Trouillot only recently authorized its translation to English.

The Futility of Force? Strategic Lessons for Dealing with Unconventional Armed Groups from the UN’s War on Haiti’s Gangs

Confronted by non-conventional non-state military forces enjoying high – but very localized – social legitimacy, the United Nations Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) struggled between 2004 and 2007 to embed the use of force in a larger strategy of state consolidation. The article explores the confrontations between MINUSTAH and unconventional armed groups in Haiti during this period. It traces MINUSTAH’s operations against criminal gangs, and the resulting process of strategic learning. It explores how tactical innovations allowed MINUSTAH to defeat the gangs, but also highlights that the larger political objective – breaking the connection between the gangs and Haiti’s political-business elite – remained unarticulated and elusive – and perhaps ultimately unfeasible, given the necessity of Haitian state consent for continued UN operations in the country. In a final post-script the article reflects on the return of the gangs after the earthquake of 12 January 2010, and what it signals about the limited impact of tactical force on the presence and power of political-criminal networks.

Exploring the role of migrants’ remittances in the UN's nation building and development management in Haiti

Remitting outweighs foreign aid by a rate of more than eight times, resulting in a skewed perception of the Haitian economy and consequent hindrance to development. Endowing Haitian state institutions and civil society by strengthening the potential role of migrants’ remittances in regional socio-economic reconstruction could prevent some of the mistakes uncovered in previous development policies from recurring in current nation-building initiatives. The funding gap of the United Nations’ short term funded projects could be bridged with a long term commitment of a new migrant class of investors to finance productive projects and endow regional participatory institutions.

National Myths, Resistant Persons: Ethnographic Fictions of Haiti

In 1931, US writer Langston Hughes set sail for Haiti, the “land of blue sea and green hills,” in order – as he recalls in his 1956 memoir I Wonder as I Wander – “to get away from my troubles.” Seeking shelter from the US race problem in what he imagined would be the welcoming arms of the strong, proud, black republic, Hughes received instead a shocking, firsthand glimpse at Haiti’s constitutional contradiction: that the Haitian nation, “congealed around notions of liberty from slavery,” was launched in an opposite direction from the Haitian state, which had “inherited the social and economic institutions from colonial times,” and thus “required a regimented labor force.” The Haiti that welcomed Hughes in April 1931, fifteen years into the US Occupation, was indeed “a new world, a darker world,” but one in which “the white shadows” had encroached, transforming Haiti “into a sort of military dictatorship, backed by American guns.” It had become “a fruit tree for Wall street, a mango for the Occupation, coffee for foreign cups, and poverty for its own black workers and peasants.” All of the labor that kept Haiti alive and the foreign traders rich, lamented Hughes, was done by “the people without shoes.” This essay examines the rhetoric of national identification in twentieth-century Haiti – through the complex literary lens of US writers of the African diaspora, like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, whose own labors to present how “the people without shoes” had worked to prop up Haiti’s economy for centuries, often fluctuated between biting political commentary aimed at the political elite, gentle depictions celebrating local peasant customs, and (strategic) apologies for the US Occupation – all revelatory of a desire to build a space of transatlantic, postnational sense of kinship; a narrative homeland for the exiled and the nationless people on either side of its borders, forging parallels between all New World architects-turned-outsiders in their own homelands.

Beyond Good Intentions: The Structural Limitations of NGOs in Haiti

The catastrophic earthquake which devastated Haiti on 12 January 2010 revealed the deep socio-economic divides which plague the nation. The vivid scenes of trauma led to a massive influx of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on behalf of the goodwill of the global community. However, more than one year later the reconstruction process has been shown to be a very lucrative undertaking for many private organizations. Haiti remains in ruins, with NGOs benefiting from the extreme privatization of the Haitian state, resulting in a patchwork system of services which are unaccountable to the Haitian people. The Interim Haiti Reconstruction Committee, led by Bill Clinton, seeks to entrench the same neoliberal policies which laid the foundation for much of the pre-earthquake poverty and dependency. Such efforts raise serious questions about the legitimacy of the current reconstruction and whether these organizations are committed to help Haiti, or themselves – and what alternatives exist.

Beyond the Binary: New Roles and Implications of NGOs in Haiti

Recent academic debates regarding the proliferation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Haiti often fall into the trap of pitting NGOs as an entity against the Haitian state. This paper seeks to follow academic arguments that go beyond this binary framework by examining the coordination and collaboration practices of health NGOs at the local level in the North Department of Haiti. Specifically, this paper will discuss how individuals, both Haitian and foreign, attempt to resist national and international hegemonic structures while still operating within these confines to present an acceptable “face” to the outside. To illustrate this point, I will draw on three specific instances and conversations I had while in Haiti that manifest acts of individual resistance. First, I will discuss how the Haitian state’s extreme centralization affects government workers and NGO partners at the local and regional level in Cap-Haitian. Second, I will illustrate the philosophy of one particular health NGO that negotiates both foreign and local ideologies and practices in an attempt to create a more accountable partnership with the local Haitian authorities. Third, I will explore how my participant observation became wrapped up in dominant power structures and relations. Drawing on the theoretical work of Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault, I will explore how individuals contest the power structures and hegemonic discourses within which they are embedded, thereby constantly creating new spaces for possibility and change.

Truth and Freedom in Haiti: An Examination of the Haitian Truth Commission

This paper reflects on the truth commission experiences of Haiti as a struggle to come to justice in the wake of mass violence and authoritarian oppression in the case of Haiti’s Commission nationale de verite et de justice (CNVJ), a truth commission first proposed by a Haitian diasporan group in Montreal in 1994, and implemented in the spring of 1995. Modeled after the first deployment of a truth commission institution/genre/performance in Uganda in 1974, the Haitian CNVJ unfolded contemporaneously with the more extensive South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Haitian commission’s mandate was to “globally establish the overall truth of the most serious human rights violations committed between September 29, 1991, and October 14, 1994.” The essay assesses the specific goals and methodology of the commission, its relationship to the judicial system and to the Aristide government in Haiti, and its widely-perceived failure “within an institutional vacuum” as well as in its relation to the U.S. government censorship (redaction) of key sections of the archives on human rights abuses from the period in question. A final and decisive flaw was the “weak publicity and inaccessibility” of the Commission’s work and report. The CNVJ episode is just as pertinent for the explosive problem of impunity and institutional inadequacy in the current post-disaster Haitian environment, and presents a searing example of the obstacles to the institutional life of freedom in the Haitian state. The paper concludes that the strivings for justice in Haiti cannot be delinked from the larger project of freedom.

Cooperation, Peace and (Re-)Construction? A Tale from the Shanties

The catastrophic earthquake of January 2010 deepened the socio-cultural fault lines and disparities that define Haitian society. Even before, the needs of the population and the prioritisation of intervention were managed by international actors. As a result of societal fragilities and the ineffectiveness of the Haitian state in shoring up community relations and basic services, a proliferation of NGOs has arisen in shanties to organise local groups around short-term programmes. Building on surveys and ethnographic research, this article analyses residents' perceptions of such initiatives to foster peace, reconstruction and development in one of Port-au-Prince's poorest and most violent neighbourhoods. Findings suggest that residents remain sceptical about the peace and development impacts of the proliferation of scattered, foreign-driven and unsustainable interventions in Cité Soleil.

Anatomy of a Haitian Tragedy: When the Fury of Nature Meets the Debility of the State

On January 12, 2010, Haiti experienced one of the most catastrophic natural disasters in recent history. In terms of fatalities, only the Bangladesh cyclone of 1970 and the Tangshan earthquake of 1976 in China surpassed the Haitian tragedy. This article argues that geography and geology sparked the Haitian earthquake, but the extent of the destruction was due to the massive failure of Haitian institutions, in particular the state, and international policy, which predated the earthquake. In sum, the Haitian tragedy combined the fury of Nature and the ineptitude of “Man.” The article demonstrates the logic, mechanisms, and consequences of institutional failure. Furthermore, it deems Haitian state building an existential imperative and suggests a road map to its achievement.

Audit Culture and Grassroots Participation in Rural Haitian Development

When implementing development projects and programs in the global south, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) seek to maximize project success and sustainability through the practical management of risk. In southern rural Haiti, efforts by NGOs and the Haitian state to minimize the corruption and political opportunism that pervade and jeopardize development activities have resulted in the implementation of an “audit culture,” in which community‐based organizations (CBOs) must engage before partnering with NGOs in bringing development to their communities. Conjoined with neoliberal governmentality and known locally as the process of legalizasyon (legalization), the processes of audit culture represent techniques by which the objects of development and governance–local communities and the organizations that represent them–are made knowable and accountable to local government and transnational development authorities. Assumed to reduce the risks posed to development projects by local social environments, legalization shapes the meaning of “participation” and “bottom‐up development” for actors engaged in development practice. Efforts to limit political opportunism and corruption in development result in the implicit depoliticizing of grassroots organizations, because NGOs avoid local groups whose “audits” reveal any “political” activity. This article concludes that the implementation of an audit culture in development represents a transition in government authoritative power from direct control and supervision to indirect power relations premised on new forms of bureaucracy.

Enhancing Public Governance in Fragile States

Since the 1990s, academics, international organizations, and development practitioners have had to come to grips with the concept of governance. Although absent from the development vocabulary of the 1960s, the term has evolved considerably.1 Initially, it was narrowly defined: the Bretton Woods institutions, for example, defined governance as management of the public service and public finances in order to obtain aggregate economic growth, and institutions such as the United Nations considered governance only from the standpoint of democracy.2The concept has also evolved considerably in Canada.3 Accountability and citizen participation were initially held to be the strategic dimensions of governance. Subsequently, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) stressed other elements, such as democratic institutions, the public sector, and human rights. Since 2000, Canada has broadened its definition of the term by establishing a link between democratic institutions and security. CIDA aimed in the short term to promote security and fair elections, and in the long term to reduce poverty. Since 2000, programs to enhance governance have had, in general, five components: democratization; human rights; the rule of law; public institutions and capacity-building; and conflict prevention, the maintenance of peace, and security sector reform.4With the passage of time, however, it has become apparent that the real problem with the concept is less its definition than its actual application. According to Ian Smillie, the enhancement of good governance in different developing countries has given rise to confusion or even controversy. For example, he writes that the link between democracy, human rights, the reduction of conflicts, and economic development has not been clearly proven, and efforts to support civil society have sometimes met with failure. Sue Unsworth attributes the principal causes of these failures to the confused nature of programs and international donors' lack of familiarity with the political and institutional context of the country in question. According to Unsworth, these programs aim to implant an implicit model of good governance based on Weberian norms and the democratic political systems of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development states. In the developing world, however, lack of political legitimacy and administrative capability is a significant constraint on economic and social development. Because good governance requires collective action on the part ofthe state and various civil society actors, developing countries face an enormous challenge. They must engage in state-building while simultaneously attempting to put in place the economic, social, and political institutions that will enable them to participate in an increasingly globalized world.Governance faces additional challenges in the context of frague states such as Haiti. Haiti has experienced repeated political crises and economic instability, and currently ranks 148th on the human development index. Life expectancy is only 53 years and an estimated two-thirds of the population live below the poverty level. After the events leading to the 2004 departure of President Jean- Bertrand Aristide, a transitional government ruled for two years and a multinational force was deployed under the terms of a UN security council resolution.According to Robert Muggah, the fragility of the Haitian state can be explained by both endogenous and exogenous factors. The four endogenous factors are: the concentration of political power in the hands of a small political and commercial elite; the practice of highly personalized politics by the Lavalas and the opposition parties; endemic corruption; and a macroeconomic environment characterized by weak exports and a long-term dependence on international aid.5 Among the exogenous factors, Muggah lists the lack of security; the history of interventionism; reforms undertaken either unilaterally or multilaterally, such as structural change programs; and the troubled relationship between donors and the Haitian authorities. …

Cacophonies of Aid, Failed State Building and NGOs in Haiti: setting the stage for disaster, envisioning the future

The January 2010 earthquake in Haiti was a catastrophe not only for the loss of life it caused, but also because it destroyed the very thin layer of state administrative capacity that was in place in the country. This article argues that the fragility of the Haitian state institutions was exacerbated by international strategies that promoted NGOs as substitutes for the state. These strategies have generated a vicious circle that, while solving immediate logistical problems, ended up weakening Haiti's institutions. However, the article does not call for an overarching condemnation of NGOs. Instead, it explores two cases of community-based NGOs, Partners In Health and Fonkoze, that have contributed to creating durable social capital, generated employment and provided functioning services to the communities where they operated. The article shows that organisations that are financially independent and internationally connected, embrace a needs-based approach to their activities and share a long-term commitment to the communities within which they operate can contribute to bringing about substantial improvement for people living in situations of extreme poverty. It concludes that in the aftermath of a crisis of the dimension of the January earthquake it is crucial to channel support towards organisations that show this type of commitment.

Indigestible Recipe: Rice, Chicken Wings, and International Financial Institutions

Food riots in Haiti in early April 2008 brought to the attention of the international community the plight of the Haitians. These events are neither unique to Haiti nor the product of happenstance. Instead, policies imposed on Haiti by international financial institutions (i.e., the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) since the 1980s, such as currency devaluation and trade liberalization, had a “double whammy” negative impact: They negated Haitian agricultural performance and the capacity of the Haitian state to manage the economy, thus exacerbating the current food crisis.

Orígenes y manifestaciones de la francofilia haitiana: nacionalismo y política exterior en Haití (1880-1915)

<p>Este estudio se fundamenta en la historiografía haitiana de finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX. Uno de los atractivos de este trabajo es lograr evidenciar que la ruptura política con Francia después de la revolución haitiana no representaba la ruptura cultural e ideológica. En poco tiempo, la nueva elite del poder haitiana se volvió francofila. El trabajo estudia la francofilia haitiana en sus orígenes y sus manifestaciones más evidentes. El autor llega a la conclusión que la francofilia haitiana era una propuesta de vínculo estratégico entre Haití y Francia. En tal sentido, la francofilia fue uno de los fundamentos de la política exterior del Estado haitiano y una expresión de su nacionalismo.</p>

Security sector reform in Haiti

This study examines the experience of the United Nations interventions to reform Haiti's security sector as part of a larger effort to rebuild the Haitian state. Despite multilateral attempts in the 1990s to demobilize the army, create a police force and implement reforms, the lack of elite support, insufficient judicial sector capacity and persistence of corruption led to the current resurgence of violence. The study concludes that a legitimate national dialogue with local elites, and long-term donor involvement, specifically of the United Nations, are necessary to ensure that justice, security, development and the governance sector are developed simultaneously to prevent Haiti from becoming a failed state.

Prohibition, persecution, performance

A preponderance of the ethnographies published by researchers working in Haiti during the 1930s and 1940s focus on the Vodou religion. Yet the fact that many Haitian popular ritual practices were officially prohibited by penal law, first as «sortilèges» and later as «pratiques superstitieuses», and, on this basis, subject to US Marine, Protestant missionary, Catholic Church, and Haitian state offensives during these same years, is not always well-acknowledged or documented in this ethnographic literature. Focusing on the writings of Melvillle J. Herskovits, George Eaton Simpson, Jacques Roumain and Alfred Métraux, this article argues that the persecution of Haitian popu­lar religious practices played a key role in propelling ethnographic work on Haiti and Vodou during this period and also influenced the methodological forms that this research took. In particular, the article examines the ways in which officially prohibited rituals were restaged and reframed as ethnographic «performances» in the context of this repression.

Peacekeeping's Poor Cousin

FOR MUCH OF THE PAST DECADE, Canada has been deeply engaged in the effort to remake Haiti's police forces in the image of a modern, democratic police service. As part of successive United Nations police support missions, upwards of 700 Canadian police officers served in Haiti during this period, mentoring and training their local counterparts and carrying out some law enforcement responsibilities. Haiti's recent descent back into chaos and lawlessness following the flight of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, however, has left this process, as well as the broader international effort to stabilize the hemisphere's most volatile and strife-ridden state, in ruins. Once again, the outside world-while hardly innocent in Haiti's most recent bout of instability-finds itself struggling to restore order, security, and some measure of democracy to Haiti. And once again, Canada is part of a longer-term international effort to transform Haiti's police, which had become increasingly corrupt, politicized, and thuggish, into a force for peace, order, and stability. While seemingly a Sisyphean task, the stakes surrounding police reform in Haiti are particularly high. With the disbanding of the Haitian military in 1994, the Haitian National Police now stands as the country's key security sector institution, and the most visible means through which the Haitian state has attempted to exercise its legitimate authority. For the international community, failing to get it right this time may simply set the stage for Haiti's next round of turmoil.Haiti's recurring nightmare dramatically illustrates the importance of addressing questions of security sector reform in weak, unstable, or post-conflict states, and underlines the direct links between an ineffective security sector and human insecurity. A relatively recent addition to the international relations lexicon, the notion of security sector reform refers to efforts to strengthen the full range of tools at the disposal of states-from armies and police to courts, penal institutions, and intelligence services-with which to exercise their monopoly on the legitimate use of force. At its core, security sector reform is based on the principle that a state's security institutions should be democratically controlled, anchored in the rule of law, and most importantly, sources of security rather than insecurity for citizens.This article examines Canadian experiences, policies, and practices with regard to police reform-a key element of the security sector reform agenda-in post-conflict or failed states. While an entire mythology has developed around Canada's role as originator and longstanding champion of peacekeeping in its military guise, less attention has been paid to policing as the second core pillar of security in transitions from conflict to peace. This is gradually changing, as the limitations of military peacekeepers as agents of peace-building become more evident, and as it is increasingly recognized that building sustainable peace in the absence of minimal levels of public security is next to impossible.In many ways, post-conflict police assistance-including the provision of international civilian police for monitoring or law enforcement roles as well as longer-term training and institutional development assistance-is an issue tailor-made for Canadian foreign policy, combining national commitments to human security, to peace-building, and to the export of core Canadian values such as peace, order, and good government. However, while Canada's contributions in this area to date are far from negligible, neither has it been an international leader. The article will assess Canada's contributions, and the possibilities for greater Canadian involvement, in this area. It will consider both domestic and international obstacles to a greater Canadian role-such as chronic personnel shortages, interdepartmental politics, and the hodgepodge of inadequately coordinated institutional actors already active in the field-and examine ways in which some of these challenges might be overcome. …

Without One Ritual Note: Folklore Performance and the Haitian State,1935–1946

During a roundtable discussion focused on the early history of Haitian staged folklore performance that took place in Port-au-Prince in April 1997, one panelist noted that the so-called mouvement folklorique had “really begun” under the post–U.S. occupation presidency of Elie Lescot (1941–46). Another then observed that “paradoxically, you also had under Lescot the kanpay rejete,” the Roman Catholic Church’s violent crusade against “superstition,” which the state backed in 1941–42 with military force.1 This article focuses on the logic of that historical conjunction, examining official cultural nationalist policy in Haiti during the late 1930s and early 1940s in relation to the postoccupation legal regime against les pratiques superstitieuses (superstitious practices). The latter was a new penal category, instituted by Lescot’s predecessor, Stenio Vincent, a year after the end of the nineteen-year U.S. military occupation of Haiti in the summer of 1934. Repealing the longstanding legal prohibition against les sortileges (spells), Vincent’s government tightened the official interdiction of particular forms of popular ritual, but also, for the first time, affirmed the right of peasants to organize “popular dances.” The article will consider the implications of this legal formulation in light of the Haitian state’s support for the church’s “antisuperstition” campaign and its simultaneous construction and promotion of ritual dance as an