Since the signing of the Treaty of Ryswick between the kingdoms of
Spain and France in 1697, the island of Hispaniola (La Isla Española)
has played host to two separate and distinct societies that we now know
as the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. At first encounter,
and without the benefit of historical background and context, most
students or observers find it incongruous that two such disparate
nations--one speaking French and Creole, the other Spanish--should
coexist within such limited confines. When viewed in light of the bitter
struggle among European colonial powers for wealth and influence both on
the continent and in the New World, however, the phenomenon becomes less
puzzling. By the late seventeenth century, Spain was a declining power.
Although that country would maintain its vast holdings in mainland North
America and South America, Spain found itself hard pressed by British,
Dutch, and French forces in the Caribbean. The Treaty of Ryswick was but
one result of this competition, as the British eventually took Jamaica
and established a foothold in Central America. The French eventually
proved the value of Caribbean colonization, in an economic as well as a
maritime and strategic sense, by developing modern-day Haiti, then known
as Saint-Domingue, into the most productive colony in the Western
Hemisphere, if not the world.
Although the other European powers envied the French their island
jewel, Saint-Domingue eventually was lost not to a colonial rival, but
to an idea. That idea, inspired by the American Revolution and the
French Revolution, was freedom; its power was such as to convince a
bitterly oppressed population of African slaves that anything--reprisal,
repression, even death-- was preferable to its denial. This positive
impulse, liberally leavened with hatred for the white men, who had
seized them, shipped them like cargo across the ocean, tortured and
abused them, and forced women into concubinage and men into arduous
labor, impelled the black population of Saint-Domingue to an achievement
still unmatched in history: the overthrow of a slaveholding colonial
power and the establishment of a revolutionary black republic.
The saga of the Haitian Revolution is so dramatic that it is
surprising that it has never served as the scenario for a Hollywood
production. Its images are varied and intense: the voodoo ceremony and
pact sealed in the Bois Cayman (Alligator Woods) in anticipation of the
slave revolt of 1791; the blazing, bloody revolt itself; foreign
intervention by British and Spanish forces; the charismatic figure of
François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, his rise and fateful decision
to switch his allegiance from Spain to France, his surprisingly
effective command of troops in the field, the relative restraint with
which he treated white survivors and prisoners, the competence of his
brief stint as ruler; the French expedition of 1802, of which Toussaint
exclaimed, "All France has come to invade us"; Toussaint's
betrayal and seizure by the French; and the ensuing revolution led by
Jean-Jacque Dessalines, Henri (Henry) Christophe, and Alexandre Pétion.
Given the distinctive and auspicious origins of the Haitian republic,
there is some irony in that the Dominicans commemorate as their
independence day the date of their overthrow of Haitian rule. The
Dominican revolt, however, came as a response to annexation by a Haitian
state that had passed from the promise of orderly administration under
Toussaint to the hard-handed despotism of Dessalines and had then
experienced division, both racial and political, between the forces of
Christophe and Pétion. By the time of its conquest of Santo Domingo
(later to become the Dominican Republic), Haiti had come under the
comparatively stable, but uninspired, stewardship of Jean-Pierre Boyer.
Although viewed, both at the time and today, by most Dominicans as a
crude and oppressive state dominated by the military, the Haiti that
occupied both eastern and western Hispaniola from 1822 to 1844 can
itself be seen as a victim of international political and economic
isolation. Because they either resented the existence of a black
republic or feared a similar uprising in their own slave-owning regions,
the European colonial powers and the United States shunned relations
with Haiti; in the process, they contributed to the establishment of an
impoverished society, ruled by the military, guided by the gun rather
than the ballot, and controlled by a small, mostly mulatto, ruling group
that lived well, while their countrymen either struggled to eke out a
subsistence-level existence on small plots of land or flocked to the
banners of regional strongmen in the seemingly never-ending contest for
power. To be sure, the French colonial experience had left the Haitians
completely unprepared for orderly democratic self-government, but the
isolation of the post-independence period assured the exclusion of
liberalizing influences that might have guided Haiti along a somewhat
different path of political and economic development. By the same token,
however, it may be that Western governments of the time, and even those
of the early twentieth century, were incapable of dealing with a black
republic on an equal basis. The United States occupation of Haiti
(1915-34) certainly brought little of lasting value to the country's
political culture or institutions, in part because the Americans saw the
Haitians as uncivilized lackeys and treated them as such.
Both nations of Hispaniola share--along with much of the developing
world--the strong tendency toward political organization built upon the
personalistic followings of strongmen, or caudillos, rather than on more
legalistic bases, such as constitutionalism. This similarity in
political culture helps to explain the chronologically staggered
parallels between the brutal regimes of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina
(1930-61) in the Dominican Republic and that of the Duvaliers--François
Duvalier (1957-71) and his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier (1971-86)-- in
Haiti. Both regimes lasted for approximately thirty years; both were
headed by nonideological despots; both regimes sustained themselves in
power by employing terror and ruthlessly suppressing dissent; both drew
the ire of an international community that ultimately proved incapable
of directly forcing them from power; and both left their countries mired
in political chaos and internal conflict upon their demise. One may only
hope that the unstable situation in Haiti after the fall of the Duvalier
regime will resolve itself without further analogy to Dominican
history--that is, without a civil war. As of late 1990, however, the
outcome of the situation remained extremely unpredictable.
Lieutenant General Prosper Avril took power in Haiti in September
1988, ousting the highly unpopular military regime led by Lieutenant
General Henri Namphy. Avril, a product of the Haitian military tradition
and the Duvalierist system, initially gave assurances that he would
serve only as a transitional figure on the road to representative
democracy. Whatever his personal feelings or motivations, however, Avril
by his actions proved himself to be simply another corrupt Haitian
military strongman. Having scheduled elections for 1990, he arrested and
expelled leading political figures and declared a state of siege in
January of that year. These actions triggered demonstrations, protests,
and rioting among a population weary of exploitation and insincere
promises of reform. Despite his public rhetoric, Avril presided over a
military institution that perpetuated the Duvalierist traditions of
extortion, graft, and price-gouging through state-owned enterprises. At
the same time, the military made no substantive effort to address the
problem of political violence. By early 1990, Haitians had had enough of
promises; many decided to take action on their own, much as they had
during the uprising of 1985 that swept Jean-Claude Duvalier from power.
Violent demonstrations began in earnest in early March 1990,
ostensibly in response to the army's fatal shooting of an eleven-
year-old girl in Petit Goâve. Streets blazed across Haiti as
demonstrators ignited tires and automobiles, chanted anti-Avril slogans,
and fought with army troops. Avril soon recognized the untenable nature
of his position; the United States ambassador reportedly influenced the
general's decision to step down in a private meeting held on March 12.
Avril's flight from Haiti on a United States Air Force transport added
his name to a long list of failed Haitian strongmen, and it left the
country under the guidance of yet another military officer, Major
General (subsequently promoted to Lieutenant General) Hérard Abraham.
Consultations among civilian political figures produced a provisional
government headed by a judge of the Court of Cassation (supreme court),
Ertha Pascal-Trouillot, a woman little-known outside legal circles.
Judge Pascal Trouillot reportedly accepted the post of provisional
president after three other supreme court judges declined; she was sworn
in on March 13. Appointed along with her was a nineteen-member Council
of State, made up of prominent civic and political leaders. Although the
new government announced no clear definitions of the powers of the
council vis-à-vis the provisional president, some reports indicated
that the president could exercise independent authority in some areas.
The most compelling reality, however, was that all powers of the
provisional government had been granted by the Haitian Armed Forces
(Forces Armées d'Haïti--FAd'H), which would provide the government's
only mandate--and perhaps its major political constituency--until valid
popular elections could be held.
The Conseil Electoral Permanent (Permanent Electoral Council- -CEP)
scheduled local, legislative, and presidential elections for sometime
between November 4 and November 29, 1990. The prospects for their
successful implementation, however, appeared highly problematical at
best. Seemingly unchecked political violence, which conjured up for many
the horrible images of the bloody election day of November 1987,
presented the major obstacle to free and fair balloting. Negotiations
between the FAd'H and the CEP sought to establish security mechanisms
that would prevent a recurrence of the 1987 tragedy. Popular confidence
in these efforts, however, did not appear to be very great.
In a larger sense, the utter absence of any democratic tradition, or
framework, in Haiti stacked the odds heavily against a smooth
governmental transition. Economist Mats Lundahl has referred to Haiti as
a hysteretic state, "not simply one where the past has shaped the
present, but also one where history constitutes one of the strongest
obstacles to change." Several conditions prevailing in Haiti gave
substance to this definition. Among the wide array of personalistic
political parties, only three--Marc Bazin's Movement for the
Installation of Democracy in Haiti (Mouvement pour l'Instouration de la
Démocratie en Haïti-- MIDH), Serge Gilles's National Progressive
Revolutionary Haitian Party (Parti Progressiste Révolutionnaire Haïtien--Ponpra),
and Sylvio C. Claude's Christian Democrat Party of Haiti (Parti National
Chrétien d'Haiti--PDCH)--displayed any semblance of coherent programs
or disciplined party apparatus. The odyssey of the Haitian military,
from dominant power before the Duvaliers to subordinate status under the
dynastic dictatorship, left uncertain the intentions of the FAd'H under
Abraham's leadership. The return of such infamous Duvalierist cronies as
former interior minister Roger LaFontant and persistent rumors that
Jean-Claude himself was contemplating a return to the nation he had bled
dry for fifteen years provoked outrage among a population that wanted
nothing so much as to rid itself of the remaining vestiges of that
predatory regime. According to some observers, internal conditions had
approached, by the late summer of 1990, a sort of critical mass, which,
if not defused by way of fair and free elections, could explode into
generalized and ultimately futile violence.
In July one of the more responsible political leaders, Sylvio Claude,
exhorted Haitians to block the return of undesirables by seizing the
international airport outside Port-au-Prince. In a speech on Radio
Nationale, he declared, "Instead of letting [the army] go kill you
later, make them kill you now." Among the figures targeted by
Claude for such action was former president Leslie F. Manigat, not
previously considered a controversial figure by most observers. Perhaps
in response to such rabble- rousing, the provisional government
announced on August 1 that Manigat would be barred from returning to his
native Haiti.
In late July, the Council of State issued a communiqué, laying down
four conditions that it deemed necessary for holding successful
elections. First, effective legal action had to be initiated against
those who had participated in the November 1987 attacks and other
political murders; second, a general climate of public security needed
to be established in order to encourage voters to go to the polls;
third, the public administration should be purged of entrenched, corrupt
bureaucrats; and fourth, some checks had to be established over the
powers of the rural section chiefs (chefs de section), so that
the rural population could vote in an atmosphere free of coercion and
intimidation. It was not clear what action the Council would take if
these conditions had not been met by November.
In the Dominican Republic, events unfolded along a much more
predictable path. Although Dominican politics were boisterous, and
physical clashes--occasionally punctuated by gunfire--between the
members of contending political parties were not unusual, the democratic
system established after the 1965 civil war and the United States
intervention continued to function with comparative efficiency
(especially when compared with that of Haiti). The elections of May 16,
1990, however, demonstrated the manifold weaknesses of this system. The
most glaring example of the lack of institutionalization in Dominican
politics was that the major contenders for the presidency were the same
two men who had opposed each other in the elections of 1966, namely,
Juan Bosch Gaviño and incumbent Joaquín Balaguer Ricardo. Despite
almost a quarter of a century of relatively free political organization
and competition, the two modern-day caudillos, both octogenarians, still
sallied into the arena flying their own personalistic banners rather
than those of truly established parties. The one party that had
displayed some level of institutionalization, the Dominican
Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Dominicano--PRD), had split
into antagonistic factions--each with its own caudillo--and never
presented a serious challenge to the two elder statesmen.
The elections themselves, like most during the post-civil war era,
were lively, controversial, and bitterly contested. Despite debilitating
national problems, such as a chronic shortage of electricity, rising
inflation, and persistent poverty, President Balaguer retained enough
support in a presidential race contested by sixteen political parties
(some running in coalition) to eke out a narrow victory over Bosch. The
final tally showed Balaguer with 678,268 votes against Bosch's 653,423.
Like most Dominican politicians before him, Bosch did not accept defeat
with magnanimity; he lashed out at Balaguer and the Central Electoral
Board, accusing both of fraud during balloting that impartial observers
had judged to be fair and orderly. Bosch's early public statements
exhorted his followers to stage public protests against the alleged
electoral fraud. Early fears of widespread street violence initiated by
disgruntled Bosch supporters proved unfounded, however, and Balaguer's
reelection was confirmed by the Board on June 12, 1990.
Although it traditionally bends a little around election time, the
Dominican democratic system showed few signs of breaking completely.
Economic developments, however, will exercise a decisive impact on the
nation's future stability. In that regard, Balaguer's reelection could
prove to be a storm warning for the republic. At eighty-one years of
age, Balaguer reportedly retained his enthusiasm for hands-on
administration of government policy. The major economic aspects of that
policy, however, did not promise a significant degree of improvement in
the short term. Balaguer, since his days as a protégé of Trujillo, has
believed in the liberal application of funds to public works
projects--the construction of schools, housing, public buildings--in
order to boost employment and purchase political support. Such
gratuitous expenditures, however, largely served to exacerbate the
government's fiscal problems, while masking to only a limited degree the
consistently high levels of unemployment prevailing in the republic.
Another tenet of Balaguer's economic creed was a refusal to submit to an
economic adjustment program dictated by the International Monetary Fund
(IMF). By ruling out an IMF-mandated program, Balaguer avoided further
short-term austerity measures, such as devaluation and price increases
on subsidized items; this enabled him to stand on a platform of economic
nationalism and to proclaim his opposition to economic hardship imposed
from abroad (that is, from the United States, which is strongly
identified with the IMF throughout Latin America). In the long run,
however, his obstinacy diminished Dominican standing with foreign
creditors, and it limited any new infusions of capital needed to sustain
the impressive growth of nontraditional exports achieved during the
latter 1980s. This, in turn, would hinder the accumulation of foreign
exchange needed to finance the imports required to sustain industrial
development. Moreover, although an austerity program undoubtedly would
pinch still further an already hard-pressed population, it might also
help to balance the budget, to stabilize domestic prices, and to boost
exports, all highly desirable potential results.
If the Dominican situation demonstrated anything to Haitians, it was
that democracy is not a panacea for domestic turmoil. As Winston
Churchill observed, it is the worst political system "except for
all the others." Since Trujillo's death, Dominicans have struggled
to adjust to an imperfect system, under less than ideal conditions; the
final outcome of this process is still in doubt. For Haitians, the small
step represented by valid elections could be their first lurch along a
much longer road to peace and stability.
***
In the months following completion of research and writing of this
book, significant political developments occurred in Haiti. On December
16, 1990, over 60 percent of registered voters turned out to elect
political neophyte Jean-Bertrand Aristide president of Haiti. Aristide,
a Roman Catholic priest and an advocate of liberation theology,
registered an overwhelming first-round victory against a number of
opponents. His popular identification as an outspoken opponent of the
regime of Jean- Claude Duvalier apparently moved some 67 percent of
voters to select Aristide as their leader. More traditional politicians
such as Marc Bazin, Louis Dejoie, and Silvio Claude trailed badly,
reflecting their lack of appeal beyond the upper and middle classes.
Aristide's victory came as a result of what was arguably the first free
and fair election in Haitian history.
Right-wing backlash against the election of the radical leftist
Aristide expressed itself in a coup attempt led by Duvalierist Roger
Lafontant on January 6, 1991. Assisted by a small contingent of army
personnel, Lafontant seized the National Palace, took prisoner
Provisional President Pascal-Trouillot, and announced his control of the
government over the state-run television station. Lafontant's
pronouncement turned out to be decidedly premature, however, as loyalist
army forces stormed the palace twelve hours later on the orders of FAd'H
commander Abraham. Lafontant and those of his fellow conspirators who
survived the fighting were captured and incarcerated. The coup also
ignited violent street demonstrations in which mobs lynched at least
seven people they accused of Duvalierist ties or sympathies. Violence
continued in the interim between the elections and the presidential
inauguration on February 7, 1991. Particularly intense anti-Duvalierist
demonstrations took place on the night of January 26, leaving more than
a dozen dead. On the night of February 1, 1991, suspected Duvalierists
set fire to an orphanage in Port-au-Prince administered by Aristide.
Aristide's inauguration on February 7, 1991, was a gala event,
befitting its historic nature. As expected, the new president delivered
a spellbinding inaugural address. In it, he renounced his US$10,000 a
month salary as a "scandal in a country where people cannot
eat." Although the address was short on specifics of policy, its
tone was one of gratitude and support for the poverty-afflicted
constituency that had provided such a striking electoral mandate. The
address was also conciliatory with regard to the military. Aristide
described a "wedding between the army and the people," and
hinted that the army would henceforth function as a public security
force in order to lessen the threat emanating from right-wing forces
such as those directed by Lafontant.
Beyond his rhetorical outreach to the rank and file, Aristide moved
quickly to shore up his rule in the face of possible opposition from
within the officer corps of the FAd'H.In his inaugural address, he
called on General Abraham to retire six of the eight highest-ranking
generals as well as the colonel who commanded the Presidential Guard.
The appeal reflected Aristide's surprisingly powerful position, based on
his overwhelming electoral victory and his demonstrated popular support,
which extended even to the ranks of the military. The fact that Abraham
complied with the request confirmed the already rather obvious disarray
of the FAd'H and the general unwillingness of the institution to
reassume political power in Haiti.
On February 9, Aristide proposed René Préval as Haiti's prime
minister. Préval, a Belgian-trained agronomist and close associate of
the president, was subsequently approved by the National Assembly.
Although Aristide won a smashing personal victory in his presidential
race, no one party or movement achieved a majority in the assembly. This
fact promised a certain degree of stalemate and inertia in the
legislative process under the Aristide administration. Such a situation
did not seem conducive to the development of programs to deal
effectively with the country's many severe problems. At the same time,
however, an assembly based on coalition and compromise should serve to
check any temptation by the new government toward heavy-handed or even
authoritarian rule. In any case, the assembly was a new institution in a
new government in what many hoped would be a new and democratic Haiti.
Haiti - History
The island of Hispaniola (La Isla Española), which today is occupied
by the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, was one of several
landfalls Christopher Columbus made during his first voyage to the New
World in 1492. Columbus established a makeshift settlement on the north
coast, which he dubbed Navidad (Christmas), after his flagship, the Santa
María, struck a coral reef and foundered near the site of
present-day Cap Haïtien.
The Taino Indian (or Arawak) inhabitants referred to their homeland
by many names, but they most commonly used Ayti, or Hayti
(mountainous). Initially hospitable toward the Spaniards, these natives
responded violently to the newcomers' intolerance and abuse. When
Columbus returned to Hispaniola on his second voyage in 1493, he found
that Navidad had been razed and its inhabitants, slain. But the Old
World's interest in expansion and its drive to spread Roman Catholicism
were not easily deterred; Columbus established a second settlement,
Isabela, farther to the east.
Hispaniola, or Santo Domingo, as it became known under Spanish
dominion, became the first outpost of the Spanish Empire. The initial
expectations of plentiful and easily accessible gold reserves proved
unfounded, but the island still became important as a seat of colonial
administration, a starting point for conquests of other lands, and a
laboratory to develop policies for governing new possessions. It was in
Santo Domingo that the Spanish crown introduced the system of repartimiento,
whereby peninsulares (Spanish-born persons residing in the New
World) received large grants of land and the right to compel labor from
the Indians who inhabited that land.
Columbus, Santo Domingo's first administrator, and his brother
Bartolomé Columbus fell out of favor with the majority of the colony's
settlers, as a result of jealousy and avarice, and then also with the
crown because of their failure to maintain order. In 1500 a royal
investigator ordered both to be imprisoned briefly in a Spanish prison.
The colony's new governor, Nicolás de Ovando, laid the groundwork for
the island's development. During his tenure, the repartimiento
system gave way to the encomienda
system under which all land was considered the property
of the crown. The system also granted stewardship of tracts to encomenderos,
who were entitled to employ (or, in practice, to enslave) Indian labor.
The Taino Indian population of Santo Domingo fared poorly under
colonial rule. The exact size of the island's indigenous population in
1492 has never been determined, but observers at the time produced
estimates that ranged from several thousand to several million. An
estimate of 3 million, which is almost certainly an exaggeration, has
been attributed to Bishop Bartolomé de Las Casas. According to all
accounts, however, there were hundreds of thousands of indigenous people
on the island. By 1550 only 150 Indians lived on the island. Forced
labor, abuse, diseases against which the Indians had no immunity, and
the growth of the mestizo (mixed European and Indian) population all
contributed to the elimination of the Taino and their culture.
Several years before the Taino were gone, Santo Domingo had lost its
position as the preeminent Spanish colony in the New World. Its lack of
mineral riches condemned it to neglect by the mother country, especially
after the conquest of New Spain (Mexico). In 1535 the Viceroyalty of New
Spain, which included Mexico and the Central American isthmus,
incorporated Santo Domingo, the status of which dwindled still further
after the conquest of the rich kingdom of the Incas in Peru. Agriculture
became the mainstay of the island's economy, but the disorganized nature
of agricultural production did not approach the kind of intense
productivity that was to characterize the colony under French rule.
Haiti - FRENCH COLONIALISM
The Slave Rebellion of 1791
Violent conflicts between white colonists and black slaves were
common in Saint-Domingue. Bands of runaway slaves, known as maroons (marrons),
entrenched themselves in bastions in the colony's mountains and forests,
from which they harried white-owned plantations both to secure
provisions and weaponry and to avenge themselves against the
inhabitants. As their numbers grew, these bands, sometimes consisting of
thousands of people, began to carry out hit-and-run attacks throughout
the colony. This guerrilla warfare, however, lacked centralized
organization and leadership. The most famous maroon leader was François
Macandal, whose six-year rebellion (1751-57) left an estimated 6,000
dead. Reportedly a boko, or voodoo sorcerer, Macandal drew from
African traditions and religions to motivate his followers. The French
burned him at the stake in Cap Français in 1758. Popular accounts of
his execution that say the stake snapped during his execution have
enhanced his legendary stature.
Many Haitians point to the maroons' attacks as the first
manifestation of a revolt against French rule and the slaveholding
system. The attacks certainly presaged the 1791 slave rebellion, which
evolved into the Haitian Revolution. They also marked the beginning of a
martial tradition for blacks, just as service in the colonial militia
had done for the gens de couleur. The maroons, however, seemed
incapable of staging a broad-based insurrection on their own. Although
challenged and vexed by the maroons' actions, colonial authorities
effectively repelled the attacks, especially with help from the gens
de couleur, who were probably forced into cooperating.
The arrangement that enabled the whites and the landed gens de
couleur to preserve the stability of the slaveholding system was
unstable. In an economic sense, the system worked for both groups. The gens
de couleur, however, had aspirations beyond the accumulation of
goods. They desired equality with white colonists, and many of them
desired power. The events set in motion in 1789 by the French Revolution
shook up, and eventually shattered, the arrangement.
The National Assembly in Paris required the white Colonial Assembly
to grant suffrage to the landed and tax-paying gens de couleur.
(The white colonists had had a history of ignoring French efforts to
improve the lot of the black and the mulatto populations.) The Assembly
refused, leading to the first mulatto rebellion in Saint-Domingue. The
rebellion, led by Vincent Ogé in 1790, failed when the white militia
reinforced itself with a corps of black volunteers. (The white elite was
constantly prepared to use racial tension between blacks and mulattoes
to advantage.) Ogé's rebellion was a sign of broader unrest in
Saint-Domingue.
A slave rebellion of 1791 finally toppled the colony. Launched in
August of that year, the revolt represented the culmination of a
protracted conspiracy among black leaders. According to accounts of the
rebellion that have been told through the years, François-Dominique
Toussaint Louverture helped plot the uprising, although this claim has
never been substantiated. Among the rebellion's leaders were Boukman, a
maroon and voodoo houngan (priest); Georges Biassou, who later
made Toussaint his aide; Jean-François, who subsequently commanded
forces, along with Biassou and Toussaint, under the Spanish flag; and
Jeannot, the bloodthirstiest of them all. These leaders sealed their
compact with a voodoo ceremony conducted by Boukman in the Bois Cayman
(Alligator Woods) in early August 1791. On August 22, a little more than
a week after the ceremony, the uprising of their black followers began.
The carnage that the slaves wreaked in northern settlements, such as
Acul, Limbé, Flaville, and Le Normand, revealed the simmering fury of
an oppressed people. The bands of slaves slaughtered every white person
they encountered. As their standard, they carried a pike with the
carcass of an impaled white baby. Accounts of the rebellion describe
widespread torching of property, fields, factories, and anything else
that belonged to, or served, slaveholders. The inferno is said to have
burned almost continuously for months.
News of the slaves' uprising quickly reached Cap Français. Reprisals
against nonwhites were swift and every bit as brutal as the atrocities
committed by the slaves. Although outnumbered, the inhabitants of Le Cap
(the local diminutive for Cap Français) were well-armed and prepared to
defend themselves against the tens of thousands of blacks who descended
upon the port city. Despite their voodoo-inspired heroism, the ex-slaves
fell in large numbers to the colonists' firepower and were forced to
withdraw. The rebellion left an estimated 10,000 blacks and 2,000 whites
dead and more than 1,000 plantations sacked and razed.
Even though it failed, the slave rebellion at Cap Français set in
motion events that culminated in the Haitian Revolution. Mulatto forces
under the capable leadership of André Rigaud, Alexandre Pétion, and
others clashed with white militiamen in the west and the south (where,
once again, whites recruited black slaves to their cause). Sympathy with
the Republican cause in France inspired the mulattoes. Sentiment in the
National Assembly vacillated, but it finally favored the enfranchisement
of gens de couleur and the enforcement of equal rights. Whites,
who had had little respect for royal governance in the past, now rallied
behind the Bourbons and rejected the radical egalitarian notions of the
French revolutionaries. Commissioners from the French Republic,
dispatched in 1792 to Saint-Domingue, pledged their limited support to
the gens de couleur in the midst of an increasingly anarchic
situation. In various regions of the colony, black slaves rebelled
against white colonists, mulattoes battled white levies, and black
royalists opposed both whites and mulattoes. Foreign interventionists
found these unstable conditions irresistible; Spanish and British
involvement in the unrest in Saint-Domingue opened yet another chapter
in the revolution.
Haiti - Toussaint Louverture
Social historian James G. Leyburn has said of Toussaint Louverture
that "what he did is more easily told than what he was."
Although some of Toussaint's correspondence and papers remain, they
reveal little of his deepest motivations in the struggle for Haitian
autonomy. Born sometime between 1743 and 1746 in Saint-Domingue,
Toussaint belonged to the small, fortunate class of slaves employed by
humane masters as personal servants. While serving as a house servant
and coachman, Toussaint received the tutelage that helped him become one
of the few literate black revolutionary leaders.
Upon hearing of the slave uprising, Toussaint took pains to secure
safe expatriation of his master's family. It was only then that he
joined Biassou's forces, where his intelligence, skill in strategic and
tactical planning (based partly on his reading of works by Julius Caesar
and others), and innate leadership ability brought him quickly to
prominence.
Le Cap fell to French forces, who were reinforced by thousands of
blacks in April 1793. Black forces had joined the French against the
royalists on the promise of freedom. Indeed, in August Commissioner Léger-Félicité
Sonthonax abolished slavery in the colony.
Two black leaders who warily refused to commit their forces to
France, however, were Jean-François and Biassou. Believing allegiance
to a king would be more secure than allegiance to a republic, these
leaders accepted commissions from Spain. The Spanish deployed forces in
coordination with these indigenous blacks to take the north of
Saint-Domingue. Toussaint, who had taken up the Spanish banner in
February 1793, came to command his own forces independently of Biassou's
army. By the year's end, Toussaint had cut a swath through the north,
had swung south to Gonaïves, and effectively controlled north-central
Saint- Domingue.
Some historians believe that Spain and Britain had reached an
informal arrangement to divide the French colony between them-- Britain
to take the south and Spain, the north. British forces landed at Jérémie
and Môle Saint-Nicolas (the Môle). They besieged Port-au-Prince (or
Port Républicain, as it was known under the Republic) and took it in
June 1794. The Spanish had launched a two-pronged offensive from the
east. French forces checked Spanish progress toward Port-au-Prince in
the south, but the Spanish pushed rapidly through the north, most of
which they occupied by 1794. Spain and Britain were poised to seize
Saint- Domingue, but several factors foiled their grand design. One
factor was illness. The British in particular fell victim to tropical
disease, which thinned their ranks far more quickly than combat against
the French. Southern forces led by Rigaud and northern forces led by
another mulatto commander, Villatte, also forestalled a complete victory
by the foreign forces. These uncertain conditions positioned Toussaint's
centrally located forces as the key to victory or defeat. On May 6,
1794, Toussaint made a decision that sealed the fate of a nation.
After arranging for his family to flee from the city of Santo
Domingo, Toussaint pledged his support to France. Confirmation of the
National Assembly's decision on February 4, 1794, to abolish slavery
appears to have been the strongest influence over Toussaint's actions.
Although the Spanish had promised emancipation, they showed no signs of
keeping their word in the territories that they controlled, and the
British had reinstated slavery in the areas they occupied. If
emancipation wasToussaint's goal, he had no choice but to cast his lot
with the French.
In several raids against his former allies, Toussaint took the
Artibonite region and retired briefly to Mirebalais. As Rigaud's forces
achieved more limited success in the south, the tide clearly swung in
favor of the French Republicans. Perhaps the key event at this point was
the July 22, 1794, peace agreement between France and Spain. The
agreement was not finalized until the signing of the Treaty of Basel the
following year. The accord directed Spain to cede its holdings on
Hispaniola to France. The move effectively denied supplies, funding, and
avenues of retreat to combatants under the Spanish aegis. The armies of
Jean-François and Biassou disbanded, and many flocked to the standard
of Toussaint, the remaining black commander of stature.
In March 1796, Toussaint rescued the French commander, General
Etienne-Maynard Laveaux, from a mulatto-led effort to depose him as the
primary colonial authority. To express his gratitude, Laveaux appointed
Toussaint lieutenant governor of Saint-Domingue. With this much power
over the affairs of his homeland, Toussaint was in a position to gain
more. Toussaint distrusted the intentions of all foreign parties--as
well as those of the mulattoes--regarding the future of slavery; he
believed that only black leadership could assure the continuation of an
autonomous Saint-Domingue. He set out to consolidate his political and
military positions, and he undercut the positions of the French and the
resentful gens de couleur.
A new group of French commissioners appointed Toussaint commander in
chief of all French forces on the island. From this position of
strength, he resolved to move quickly and decisively to establish an
autonomous state under black rule. He expelled Sonthonax, the leading
French commissioner, who had proclaimed the abolition of slavery, and
concluded an agreement to end hostilities with Britain. He sought to
secure Rigaud's allegiance and thus to incorporate the majority of
mulattoes into his national project, but his plan was thwarted by the
French, who saw in Rigaud their last opportunity to retain dominion over
the colony.
Once again, racial animosity drove events in Saint-Domingue, as
Toussaint's predominantly black forces clashed with Rigaud's mulatto
army. Foreign intrigue and manipulation prevailed on both sides of the
conflict. Toussaint, in correspondence with United States president John
Adams, pledged that in exchange for support he would deny the French the
use of Saint-Domingue as a base for operations in North America. Adams,
the leader of an independent, but still insecure, nation, found the
arrangement desirable and dispatched arms and ships that greatly aided
black forces in what is sometimes referred to as the War of the Castes.
Rigaud, with his forces and ambitions crushed, fled the colony in late
1800.
After securing the port of Santo Domingo in May 1800, Toussaint held
sway over the whole of Hispaniola. This position gave him an opportunity
to concentrate on restoring domestic order and productivity. Like
Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henri (Henry) Christophe, Toussaint saw that
the survival of his homeland depended on an export-oriented economy. He
therefore reimposed the plantation system and utilized nonslaves, but he
still essentially relied on forced labor to produce the sugar, coffee,
and other commodities needed to support economic progress. He directed
this process through his military dictatorship, the form of government
that he judged most efficacious under the circumstances. A constitution,
approved in 1801 by the then still-extant Colonial Assembly, granted
Toussaint, as Governor-general-for-life, all effective power as well as
the privilege of choosing his successor.
Toussaint's interval of freedom from foreign confrontation was
unfortunately brief. Toussaint never severed the formal bond with
France, but his de facto independence and autonomy rankled the leaders
of the mother country and concerned the governments of slave-holding
nations, such as Britain and the United States. French first consul
Napoléon Bonaparte resented the temerity of the former slaves who
planned to govern a nation on their own. Moreover, Bonaparte regarded
Saint-Domingue as essential to potential French exploitation of the
Louisiana Territory. Taking advantage of a temporary halt in the wars in
Europe, Bonaparte dispatched to Saint-Domingue forces led by his
brother-in-law, General Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc. These forces,
numbering between 16,000 and 20,000--about the same size as Toussaint's
army--landed at several points on the north coast in January 1802. With
the help of white colonists and mulatto forces commanded by Pétion and
others, the French outmatched, outmaneuvered, and wore down the black
army. Two of Toussaint's chief lieutenants, Dessalines and Christophe,
recognized their untenable situation, held separate parleys with the
invaders, and agreed to transfer their allegiance. Recognizing his weak
position, Toussaint surrendered to Leclerc on May 5, 1802. The French
assured Toussaint that he would be allowed to retire quietly, but a
month later, they seized him and transported him to France, where he
died of neglect in the frigid dungeon of Fort de Joux in the Jura
Mountains on April 7, 1803.
The betrayal of Toussaint and Bonaparte's restoration of slavery in
Martinique undermined the collaboration of leaders such as Dessalines,
Christophe, and Pétion. Convinced that the same fate lay in store for
Saint-Domingue, these commanders and others once again battled Leclerc
and his disease-riddled army. Leclerc himself died of yellow fever in
November 1802, about two months after he had requested reinforcements to
quash the renewed resistance. Leclerc's replacement, General Donatien
Rochambeau, waged a bloody campaign against the insurgents, but events
beyond the shores of Saint-Domingue doomed the campaign to failure.
By 1803 war had resumed between France and Britain, and Bonaparte
once again concentrated his energies on the struggle in Europe. In April
of that year, Bonaparte signed a treaty that allowed the purchase of
Louisiana by the United States and ended French ambitions in the Western
Hemisphere. Rochambeau's reinforcements and supplies never arrived in
sufficient numbers. The general fled to Jamaica in November 1803, where
he surrendered to British authorities rather than face the retribution
of the rebel leadership. The era of French colonial rule in Haiti had
ended.
Haiti - INDEPENDENT HAITI
On January 1, 1804, Haiti proclaimed its independence. Through this
action, it became the second independent state in the Western Hemisphere
and the first free black republic in the world. Haiti's uniqueness
attracted much attention and symbolized the aspirations of enslaved and
exploited peoples around the globe. Nonetheless, Haitians made no overt
effort to inspire, to support, or to aid slave rebellions similar to
their own because they feared that the great powers would take renewed
action against them. For the sake of national survival, nonintervention
became a Haitian credo.
Dessalines, who had commanded the black and the mulatto forces during
the final phase of the revolution, became the new country's leader; he
ruled under the dictatorial 1801 constitution. The land he governed had
been devastated by years of warfare. The agricultural base was all but
destroyed, and the population was uneducated and largely unskilled.
Commerce was virtually nonexistent. Contemplating this bleak situation,
Dessalines determined, as Toussaint had done, that a firm hand was
needed.
White residents felt the sting most sharply. While Toussaint, a
former privileged slave of a tolerant white master, had felt a certain
magnanimity toward whites, Dessalines, a former field slave, despised
them with a maniacal intensity. He reportedly agreed wholeheartedly with
his aide, Boisrond-Tonnerre, who stated, "For our declaration of
independence, we should have the skin of a white man for parchment, his
skull for an inkwell, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for a pen!"
Accordingly, whites were slaughtered wholesale under the rule of
Dessalines.
Although blacks were not massacred under Dessalines, they witnessed
little improvement in the quality of their lives. To restore some
measure of agricultural productivity, Dessalines reestablished the
plantation system. Harsh measures bound laborers to their assigned work
places, and penalties were imposed on runaways and on those who harbored
them. Because Dessalines drew his only organizational experience from
war, it was natural for him to use the military as a tool for governing
the new nation. The rule of Dessalines set a pattern for direct
involvement of the army in politics that continued unchallenged for more
than 150 years.
In 1805 Dessalines crowned himself Emperor of Haiti. By this point,
his autocratic rule had disenchanted important sectors of Haitian
society, particularly mulattoes such as Pétion. The mulattoes resented
Dessalines mostly for racial reasons, but the more educated and cultured
gens de couleur also derided the emperor (and most of his aides
and officers) for his ignorance and illiteracy. Efforts by Dessalines to
bring mulatto families into the ruling group through marriage met with
resistance. Pétion himself declined the offer of the hand of the
emperor's daughter. Many mulattoes were appalled by the rampant
corruption and licentiousness of the emperor's court. Dessalines's
absorption of a considerable amount of land into the hands of the state
through the exploitation of irregularities in titling procedures also
aroused the ire of landowners.
The disaffection that sealed the emperor's fate arose within the
ranks of the army, where Dessalines had lost support at all levels. The
voracious appetites of his ruling clique apparently left little or
nothing in the treasury for military salaries and provisions. Although
reportedly aware of discontent among the ranks, Dessalines made no
effort to redress these shortcomings. Instead, he relied on the same
iron-fisted control with which he kept rural laborers in line. That his
judgement in this matter had been in error became apparent on the road
to Port-au-Prince as he rode with a column of troops on its way to crush
a mulattoled rebellion. A group of people, probably hired by Pétion or
Etienne-Elie Gérin (another mulatto officer), shot the emperor and
hacked his body to pieces.
Under Dessalines the Haitian economy had made little progress despite
the restoration of forced labor. Conflict between blacks and mulattoes
ended the cooperation that the revolution had produced, and the
brutality toward whites shocked foreign governments and isolated Haiti
internationally. A lasting enmity against Haiti arose among Dominicans
as a result of the emperor's unsuccessful invasion of Santo Domingo in
1805. Dessalines's failure to consolidate Haiti and to unite Haitians
had ramifications in the years that followed, as the nation split into
two rival enclaves.
Haiti - Christophe's Kingdom and Pétion's Republic
Many candidates succeeded Dessalines, but only three approached his
stature. Most Haitians saw Henry Christophe as the most logical choice.
He had served as a commander under Toussaint and could therefore claim
the former leader's mantle and some of his mystique. Christophe was
black like Dessalines, but he lacked Dessalines's consuming racial
hatred, and he was much more pragmatic in this regard. His popularity,
especially in the north, however, was not strong enough to offset the
mulatto elite's growing desire to exert control over Haiti through a
leader drawn from its own ranks. The mulattoes had two other candidates
in mind: Gérin and Pétion, the presumed authors of Dessalines's
assassination.
In November 1806, army officers and established anciens libres
(pre-independence freedmen) landowners--an electorate dominated by the
mulatto elite--elected a constituent assembly that was given the task of
establishing a new government. Members of the assembly drafted a
constitution that established a weak presidency and a comparatively
strong legislature. They selected Christophe as president and Pétion as
head of the legislature, the earliest attempt in Haiti to establish what
would later be known as the politique de doublure (politics by
understudies). Under this system, a black leader served as figurehead
for mulatto elitist rule.
The only defect in the mulattoes' scheme was Christophe himself, who
refused to be content with his figurehead role. He mustered his forces
and marched on Port-au-Prince. His assault on the city failed, however,
mainly because Pétion had artillery and Christophe did not. Indignant,
but not defeated, Christophe retreated to north of the Artibonite River
and established his own dominion, which he ruled from Cap Haïtien
(which he would later rechristen Cap Henry). Periodic and ineffectual
clashes went on for years between this northern territory and Pétion's
republic, which encompassed most of the southern half of the country and
boasted Port-au-Prince as its capital.
The northern dominion became a kingdom in 1811, when Christophe
crowned himself King Henry I of Haiti. Unlike Dessalines, who as emperor
declared, "Only I am royal," Christophe installed a nobility
of mainly black supporters and associates who assumed the titles of
earls, counts, and barons.
Below this aristocratic level, life in the northern kingdom was
harsh, but not nearly so cruel as the conditions that had prevailed
under Dessalines. Laborers remained bound to their plantations, but
working hours were liberalized, and remuneration was increased to
one-fourth of the harvested crop.
Christophe was a great believer in discipline. He brought African
warriors from Dahomey (present-day Benin), whom he dubbed Royal
Dahomets. They served as the primary agents of his authority.
Incorruptible and intensely loyal to Christophe, the Dahomets brought
order to the countryside.
Many people were dissatisfied with the strictness of Christophe's
regime. As productivity and export levels rose, however, the quality of
their lives improved in comparison with revolutionary and immediately
post-revolutionary days.
In the more permissive southern republic, where Pétion ruled as
president-for-life, people's lives were not improving. The crucial
difference between the northern kingdom and the southern republic was
the way each treated landownership. Christophe gave ownership of the
bulk of the land to the state and leased large tracts to estate
managers. Pétion took the opposite approach and distributed state-owned
land to individuals in small parcels. Pétion began distributing land in
1809, when he granted land to his soldiers. Later on, Pétion extended
the land-grant plan to other beneficiaries and lowered the selling price
of state land to a level where almost anyone could afford to own land.
Pétion's decision proved detrimental in the shaping of modern Haiti. Smallholders had little
incentive to produce export crops instead of subsistence crops. Coffee,
because of its relative ease of cultivation, came to dominate
agriculture in the south. The level of coffee production, however, did
not permit any substantial exports. Sugar, which had been produced in
large quantities in Saint-Domingue, was no longer exported from Haiti
after 1822. When the cultivation of cane ceased, sugar mills closed, and
people lost their jobs. In the south, the average Haitian was an
isolated, poor, free, and relatively content yeoman. In the north, the
average Haitian was a resentful but comparatively prosperous laborer.
The desire for personal autonomy motivated most Haitians more than the
vaguer concept of contributing to a strong national economy, however,
and defections to the south were frequent, much to the consternation of
Christophe.
Pétion, who died in 1818, left a lasting imprint upon his homeland.
He ruled under two constitutions, which were promulgated in 1806 and
1816. The 1806 document resembled in many ways the Constitution of the
United States. The 1816 charter, however, replaced the elected
presidency with the office of president for life.
Pétion's largely laissez-faire rule did not directly discriminate
against blacks, but it did promote an entrenched mulatto elite that
benefited from such policies as the restoration of land confiscated by
Dessalines and cash reimbursement for crops lost during the last year of
the emperor's rule. Despite the egalitarianism of land distribution,
government and politics in the republic remained the province of the
elite, especially because the control of commerce came to replace the
production of commodities as the focus of economic power in Haiti. Pétion
was a beneficent ruler, and he was beloved by the people, who referred
to him as "Papa Bon Coeur" (Father Good Heart). But Pétion
was neither a true statesman nor a visionary. Some have said that his
impact on the nations of South America, through his support for rebels
such as Simón Bolívar Palacios and Francisco de Miranda, was stronger
and more positive than his impact on his own impoverished country.
Although Christophe sought a reconciliation after Pétion's death,
the southern elite rejected the notion of submission to a black leader.
Because the president-for-life had died without naming a successor, the
republican senate selected Pétion's mulatto secretary and commander of
the Presidential Guard (Garde Présidentielle), General Jean-Pierre
Boyer, to fill the post. In the north, King Henry committed suicide in
October 1820, after having suffered a severe stroke that caused him to
lose control of the army, his main source of power. The kingdom, which
had been ruled by an even narrower clique than the republic, was left
ripe for the taking. Boyer claimed it on October 26 at Cap Haïtien at
the head of 20,000 troops. Haiti was once again a single nation.
Haiti - Boyer: Expansion and Decline
Boyer shared Pétion's conciliatory approach to governance, but he
lacked his stature as a leader. The length of Boyer's rule (1818-43)
reflected his political acumen, but he accomplished little. Boyer took
advantage of internecine conflict in Santo Domingo by invading and
securing the Spanish part of Hispaniola in 1822. He succeeded where
Toussaint and Dessalines had failed. Occupation of the territory,
however, proved unproductive for the Haitians, and ultimately it sparked
a Dominican rebellion.
Boyer faced drastically diminished productivity as a result of Pétion's
economic policies. Most Haitians had fallen into comfortable isolation
on their small plots of land, content to eke out a quiet living after
years of turmoil and duress. Boyer enacted a Rural Code (Code Rural),
designed to force yeomen into large-scale production of export crops.
The nation, however, lacked the wherewithal, the enthusiasm, and the
discipline to enforce the code.
Boyer perceived that France's continued refusal to settle claims
remaining from the revolution and to recognize its former colony's
independence constituted the gravest threat to Haitian integrity. His
solution to the problem--payment in return for recognition--secured
Haiti from French aggression, but it emptied the treasury and mortgaged
the country's future to French banks, which eagerly provided the balance
of the hefty first installment. The indemnity was later reduced in 1838
from 150 million francs to 60 million francs. By that time, however, the
damage to Haiti had been done.
As the Haitian economy stagnated under Boyer, Haitian society
ossified. The lines separating mulattoes and blacks sharpened, despite
Boyer's efforts to appoint blacks to responsible positions in
government. The overwhelming rate of illiteracy among even well-to-do
blacks foiled Boyer's intentions. Still, his government effected no
substantial improvements in the limited educational system that Pétion
had established. The exclusivity of the social structure thus
perpetuated itself. Many blacks found no avenues in the bureaucracy for
social mobility, and they turned to careers in the military, where
literacy was not a requirement.
As Pétion's successor, Boyer held the title of president-for- life.
The length and relative placidity of his rule represented a period of
respite for most Haitians after the violence and disorder that had
characterized the emergence of their nation. Pressures gradually built
up, however, as various groups, especially young mulattoes, began to
chafe at the seemingly deliberate maintenance of the political and
social status quo.
In the late 1830s, legislative opposition to Boyer clustered around Hérard
Dumesle, a mulatto poet and liberal political thinker. Dumesle and his
followers decried the anemic state of the nation's economy and its
concomitant dependence on imported goods. They also disdained the
continued elite adherence to French culture and urged Haitians to forge
their own national identity. Their grievances against Boyer's government
included corruption, nepotism, suppression of free expression, and rule
by executive fiat. Banding together in a fraternity, they christened
their organization the Society for the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
The group of young mulattoes called for an end to Boyer's rule and for
the establishment of a provisional government.
The government expelled Dumesle and his followers from the
legislature and made no effort to address their grievances. The
perceived intransigence of the Boyer government triggered violent
clashes in the south near Les Cayes. Forces under the command of Charles
Rivière-Hérard, a cousin of Dumesle, swept through the southern
peninsula toward the capital. Boyer received word on February 11, 1843,
that most of his army units had joined the rebels. A victim of what was
later known as the Revolution of 1843, Boyer sailed to Jamaica. Rivière-Hérard
replaced him in the established tradition of military rule.
Haiti - DECADES OF INSTABILITY, 1843-1915
Leyburn summarizes this chaotic era in Haitian history. "Of the
twenty-two heads of state between 1843 and 1915, only one served out his
prescribed term of office, three died while serving, one was blown up
with his palace, one presumably poisoned, one hacked to pieces by a mob,
one resigned. The other fourteen were deposed by revolution after
incumbencies ranging in length from three months to twelve years."
During this wide gulf between the 1843 revolution and occupation by the
United States in 1915, Haiti's leadership became the most valuable prize
in an unprincipled competition among strongmen. The overthrow of a
government usually degenerated into a business venture, with foreign
merchants--frequently Germans--initially funding a rebellion in the
expectation of a substantial return after its success. The weakness of
Haitian governments of the period and the potential profits to be gained
from supporting a corrupt leader made such investments attractive.
Rivière-Hérard enjoyed only a brief tenure as president. It was
restive and rebellious Dominicans, rather than Haitians, who struck one
of the more telling blows against this leader. Nationalist forces led by
Juan Pablo Duarte seized control of Santo Domingo on February 27, 1844.
Unprofessional and undisciplined Haitian forces in the east, unprepared
for a significant uprising, capitulated to the rebels. In March Rivière-Hérard
attempted to reimpose his authority, but the Dominicans put up stiff
opposition. Soon after Rivière-Hérard crossed the border, domestic
turmoil exploded again.
Discontent among black rural cultivators, which had flared up
periodically under Boyer, re-emerged in 1844 and led to greater change.
Bands of ragged piquets (a term derived from the word for the
pikes they brandished), under the leadership of a black, former army
officer named Louis Jean-Jacques Acaau, rampaged through the south. The piquets
who were capable of articulating a political position demanded an end to
mulatto rule and the election of a black president. Their demands were
eventually met but not by the defeated Rivière-Hérard, who returned
home to a country where he enjoyed little support and wielded no
effective power. In May 1844, his ouster by several rebel groups brought
to power Philippe Guerrier, an aged black officer who had been a member
of the peerage under Christophe's kingdom.
Guerrier's installation by a mulatto-dominated establishment
represented the formal beginning of politique de doublure; a
succession of short-lived black leaders was chosen after Guerrier in an
effort to appease the piquets and to avoid renewed unrest in
the countryside. During this period, two exceptions to the pattern of
abbreviated rule were Faustin Soulouque (1847-59) and Fabre Nicolas
Geffrard (1859-67). Soulouque, a black general of no particular
distinction, was considered just another understudy when he was tapped
by the legislature as a compromise between competing factions. Once in
office, however, he displayed a Machiavellian taste for power. He purged
the military high command, established a secret police force--known as
the zinglins--to keep dissenters in line, and eliminated
mulatto opponents. In August 1849, he grandiosely proclaimed himself as
Haiti's second emperor, Faustin I.
Soulouque, like Boyer, enjoyed a comparatively long period of power
that yielded little of value to his country. Whereas Boyer's rule had
been marked by torpor and neglect, Soulouque's was distinguished by
violence, repression, and rampant corruption. Soulouque's expansive
ambitions led him to mount several invasions of the Dominican Republic.
The Dominicans turned back his first foray in 1849 before he reached
Santo Domingo. Another invasion in 1850 proved even less successful.
Failed campaigns in 1855 and in 1856 fueled mounting discontent among
the military; a revolt led by Geffrard, who had led a contingent in the
Dominican campaign, forced the emperor out of power in 1859.
Geffrard, a dark-skinned mulatto, restored the old order of elite
rule. After the turmoil of Soulouque's regime, Geffrard's rule seemed
comparatively tranquil and even somewhat progressive. Geffrard produced
a new constitution based largely on Pétion's 1816 document, improved
transportation, and expanded education (although the system still
favored the upper classes). Geffrard also signed a concordat with the
Vatican in 1860 that expanded the presence of the Roman Catholic Church
and its preponderantly foreign-born clergy in Haiti, particularly
through the establishment of parochial schools. The move ended a period of ill will between Haiti and
the church that had begun during the revolutionary period.
Intrigue and discontent among the elite and the piquets
beset Geffrard throughout his rule. In 1867 General Sylvain Salnave--a
light-skinned mulatto who received considerable support from blacks in
the north and in the capital- -forced Geffrard from office. The
overthrow profoundly unsettled the country, and Salnave's end came
quickly. Rural rebellion among anti-Salnavist peasants who called
themselves cacos (a term of unknown derivation) triggered
renewed unrest among the piquets in the south. After several
military successes, Salnave's forces weakened, and the leader fled
Port-au-Prince. Caco forces captured him, however, near the
Dominican border, where they tried and executed him on January 15, 1870.
Successive leaders claimed control of most of the country and then
regularly confirmed their rule ex post facto through a vote by the
legislature, but none succeeded in establishing effective authority over
the entire country.
Rebellion, intrigue, and conspiracy continued to be commonplace even
under the rule of Louis Lysius Félicité Salomon (1879-88), of the
National Party (Parti National--PN), the most notable and effective
president of the late nineteenth century. During one seven-year term and
the beginning of a second, Salomon revived agriculture to a limited
degree, attracted some foreign capital, established a national bank,
linked Haiti to the outside world through the telegraph, and made minor
improvements in the education system. Salomon, the scion of a prominent
black family, had spent many years in France after being expelled by
Riviére- Hérard. Salomon's support among the rural masses, along with
his energetic efforts to contain elite-instigated plots, kept him in
power longer than the strongmen who preceded and followed him. Still,
Salomon yielded--after years of conflict with forces led by the Liberal
Party (Parti Liberal--LP), and other disgruntled, power-hungry elite
elements.
Political forces during the late nineteenth century polarized around
the Liberal and the National parties. Mulattoes dominated the Liberal
ranks, while blacks dominated the National Party; both parties were
nonideological in nature. The parties competed on the battlefield, in
the legislature, within the ranks of the military, and in the more
refined but limited circles of the literati. The more populist
Nationalists marched under the banner of their party slogan, "the
greatest good for the greatest number," while the blatantly elitist
Liberals proclaimed their preference for "government by the most
competent."
Haitian politics remained unstable. From the fall of Salomon until
occupation by the United States in 1915, eleven men held the title of
president. Their tenures in office ranged from six and one-half years in
the case of Florvil Hyppolite (1889-96) to only months--especially
between 1912 and 1915, the turbulent period that preceded the United
States occupation--in the case of seven others.
Although domestic unrest helped pave the way for intervention by the
United States, geostrategic concerns also influenced events. The United
States had periodically entertained the notion of annexing Hispaniola,
but the divisive issue of slavery deterred the nation from acting. Until
1862 the United States refused to recognize Haiti's independence because
the free, black, island nation symbolized opposition to slavery.
President Ulysses S. Grant proposed annexation of the Dominican Republic
in 1870, but the United States Senate rejected the idea. By the late
nineteenth century, the growth of United States power and the prospect
of a transoceanic canal in either Nicaragua or Panama had increased
attention given to the Caribbean. Annexation faded as a policy option,
but Washington persistently pursued efforts to secure naval stations
throughout the region. The United States favored the Môle Saint-Nicolas
as an outpost, but Haiti refused to cede territory to a foreign power.
The French and the British still claimed interests in Haiti, but it
was the Germans' activity on the island that concerned the United States
most. The small German community in Haiti (approximately 200 in 1910)
wielded a disproportionate amount of economic power. Germans controlled
about 80 percent of the country's international commerce; they also
owned and operated utilities in Cap Haïtien and Port-au-Prince, the
main wharf and a tramway in the capital, and a railroad in the north.
The Germans, as did the French, aiming to collect the nation's customs
receipts to cover Haiti's outstanding debts to European creditors, also
sought control of the nearly insolvent National Bank of Haiti. This kind
of arrangement was known technically as a customs receivership.
Officials in Washington were especially concerned about Germany's
aggressive employment of military might. In December 1897, a German
commodore in charge of two warships demanded and received an indemnity
from the Haitian government for a German national who had been deported
from the island after a legal dispute. Another German warship intervened
in a Haitian uprising in September 1902. It forced the captain of a
rebel gunboat (that had waylaid a German merchant ship) to resort to
blowing up his ship--and himself--to avoid being seized.
Reports reached Washington that Berlin was considering setting up a
coaling station at the Môle Saint-Nicolas to serve the German naval
fleet. This potential strategic encroachment resonated through the White
House, at a time when the Monroe Doctrine (a policy that opposed
European intervention in the Western Hemisphere) and the Roosevelt
Corollary (whereby the United States assumed the responsibility for
direct intervention in Latin American nations in order to check the
influence of European powers) strongly shaped United States foreign
policy, and when war on a previously unknown scale had broken out in
Europe. The administration of President Woodrow Wilson accordingly began
contingency planning for an occupation of Haiti.
Escalating instability in Haiti all but invited foreign intervention.
The country's most productive president of the early twentieth century,
Cincinnatus Leconte, had died in a freak explosion in the National
Palace (Palais National) in August 1912. Five more contenders claimed
the country's leadership over the next three years. General Vilbrun
Guillaume Sam, who had helped to bring Leconte to power, took the oath
of office in March 1915. Like every other Haitian president of the
period, he faced active rebellion to his rule. His leading opponent,
Rosalvo Bobo, reputedly hostile toward the United States, represented to
Washington a barrier to expanded commercial and strategic ties. A
pretext for intervention came on July 27, 1915, when Guillaume Sam
executed 167 political prisoners. Popular outrage provoked mob violence
in the streets of Port-au-Prince. A throng of incensed citizens sought
out Guillaume Sam at his sanctuary in the French embassy and literally
tore him to pieces. The spectacle of an exultant rabble parading through
the streets of the capital bearing the dismembered corpse of their
former president shocked decision makers in the United States and
spurred them to swift action. The first sailors and marines landed in
Port-au-Prince on July 28. Within six weeks, representatives from the
United States controlled Haitian customs houses and administrative
institutions. For the next nineteen years, Haiti's powerful neighbor to
the north guided and governed the country.
Haiti - THE UNITED STATES OCCUPATION, 1915-34
Representatives from the United States wielded veto power over all
governmental decisions in Haiti, and Marine Corps commanders served as
administrators in the provinces. Local institutions, however, continued
to be run by Haitians, as was required under policies put in place
during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. In line with these policies,
Admiral William Caperton, the initial commander of United States forces,
instructed Bobo to refrain from offering himself to the legislature as a
presidential candidate. Philippe Sudre Dartiguenave, the mulatto
president of the Senate, agreed to accept the presidency of Haiti after
several other candidates had refused on principle.
With a figurehead installed in the National Palace and other
institutions maintained in form if not in function, Caperton declared
martial law, a condition that persisted until 1929. A treaty passed by
the Haitian legislature in November 1915 granted further authority to
the United States. The treaty allowed Washington to assume complete
control of Haiti's finances, and it gave the United States sole
authority over the appointment of advisers and receivers. The treaty
also gave the United States responsibility for establishing and running
public-health and public-works programs and for supervising routine
governmental affairs. The treaty also established the Gendarmerie d'Haïti
(Haitian Constabulary), a step later replicated in the Dominican
Republic and Nicaragua. The Gendarmerie was Haiti's first professional
military force, and it was eventually to play an important political
role in the country. In 1917 President Dartiguenave dissolved the
legislature after its members refused to approve a constitution
purportedly authored by United States assistant secretary of the navy
Franklin D. Roosevelt. A referendum subsequently approved the new
constitution (by a vote of 98,225 to 768), however, in 1918. Generally a
liberal document, the constitution allowed foreigners to purchase land.
Dessalines had forbidden land ownership by foreigners, and since 1804
most Haitians had viewed foreign ownership as anathema.
The occupation by the United States had several effects on Haiti. An
early period of unrest culminated in a 1918 rebellion by up to 40,000
former cacos and other disgruntled people. The scale of the
uprising overwhelmed the Gendarmerie, but marine reinforcements helped
put down the revolt at the estimated cost of 2,000 Haitian lives.
Thereafter, order prevailed to a degree that most Haitians had never
witnessed. The order, however, was imposed largely by white foreigners
with deep-seated racial prejudices and a disdain for the notion of
self-determination by inhabitants of less-developed nations. These
attitudes particularly dismayed the mulatto elite, who had heretofore
believed in their innate superiority over the black masses. The whites
from North America, however, did not distinguish among Haitians,
regardless of their skin tone, level of education, or sophistication.
This intolerance caused indignation, resentment, and eventually a racial
pride that was reflected in the work of a new generation of Haitian
historians, ethnologists, writers, artists, and others, many of whom
later became active in politics and government. Still, as Haitians
united in their reaction to the racism of the occupying forces, the
mulatto elite managed to dominate the country's bureaucracy and to
strengthen its role in national affairs.
The occupation had several positive aspects. It greatly improved
Haiti's infrastructure. Roads were improved and expanded. Almost all
roads, however, led to Port-au-Prince, resulting in a gradual
concentration of economic activity in the capital. Bridges went up
throughout the country; a telephone system began to function; several
towns gained access to clean water; and a construction boom (in some
cases employing forced labor) helped restore wharves, lighthouses,
schools, and hospitals. Public health improved, partially because of
United States-directed campaigns against malaria and yaws (a crippling
disease caused by a spirochete). Sound fiscal management kept Haiti
current on its foreign-debt payments at a time when default among Latin
American nations was common. By that time, United States banks were
Haiti's main creditors, an important incentive for Haiti to make timely
payments.
In 1922 Louis Borno replaced Dartiguenave, who was forced out of
office for temporizing over the approval of a debtconsolidation loan.
Borno ruled without the benefit of a legislature (dissolved in 1917
under Dartiguenave) until elections were again permitted in 1930. The
legislature, after several ballots, elected mulatto Sténio Vincent to
the presidency.
The occupation of Haiti continued after World War I, despite the
embarrassment that it caused Woodrow Wilson at the Paris peace
conference in 1919 and the scrutiny of a congressional inquiry in 1922.
By 1930 President Herbert Hoover had become concerned about the effects
of the occupation, particularly after a December 1929 incident in Les
Cayes in which marines killed at least ten Haitian peasants during a
march to protest local economic conditions. Hoover appointed two
commissions to study the situation. A former governor general of the
Philippines, W. Cameron Forbes, headed the more prominent of the two.
The Forbes Commission praised the material improvements that the United
States administration had wrought, but it criticized the exclusion of
Haitians from positions of real authority in the government and the
constabulary, which had come to be known as the Garde d'Haïti. In more
general terms, the commission further asserted that "the social
forces that created [instability] still remain--poverty, ignorance, and
the lack of a tradition or desire for orderly free government."
The Hoover administration did not implement fully the recommendations
of the Forbes Commission, but United States withdrawal was well under
way by 1932, when Hoover lost the presidency to Roosevelt, the presumed
author of the most recent Haitian constitution. On a visit to Cap Haïtien
in July 1934, Roosevelt reaffirmed an August 1933 disengagement
agreement. The last contingent of marines departed in mid-August, after
a formal transfer of authority to the Garde. As in other countries
occupied by the United States in the early twentieth century, the local
military was often the only cohesive and effective institution left in
the wake of withdrawal.
Haiti - POLITICS AND THE MILITARY, 1934-57
The Garde was a new kind of military institution in Haiti. It was a force manned
overwhelmingly by blacks, with a United States- trained black commander,
Colonel Démosthènes Pétrus Calixte. Most of the Garde's officers,
however, were mulattoes. The Garde was a national organization; it
departed from the regionalism that had characterized most of Haiti's
previous armies. In theory, its charge was apolitical--to maintain
internal order, while supporting a popularly elected government. The
Garde initially adhered to this role.
President Vincent took advantage of the comparative national
stability, which was being maintained by a professionalized military, to
gain absolute power. A plebiscite permitted the transfer of all
authority in economic matters from the legislature to the executive, but
Vincent was not content with this expansion of his power. In 1935 he
forced through the legislature a new constitution, which was also
approved by plebiscite. The constitution praised Vincent, and it granted
the executive sweeping powers to dissolve the legislature at will, to
reorganize the judiciary, to appoint ten of twenty-one senators (and to
recommend the remaining eleven to the lower house), and to rule by
decree when the legislature was not in session. Although Vincent
implemented some improvements in infrastructure and services, he
brutally repressed his opposition, censored the press, and governed
largely to benefit himself and a clique of merchants and corrupt
military officers.
Under Calixte the majority of Garde personnel had adhered to the
doctrine of political nonintervention that their Marine Corps trainers
had stressed. Over time, however, Vincent and Dominican dictator Rafael
Leónidas Trujillo Molina sought to buy adherents among the ranks.
Trujillo, determined to expand his influence over all of Hispaniola, in
October 1937 ordered the indiscriminate butchery by the Dominican army
of an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Haitians on the Dominican side of the
Massacre River. Some observers claim that Trujillo
supported an abortive coup attempt by young Garde officers in December
1937. Vincent dismissed Calixte as commander and sent him abroad, where
he eventually accepted a commission in the Dominican military as a
reward for his efforts while on Trujillo's payroll. The attempted coup
led Vincent to purge the officer corps of all members suspected of
disloyalty, marking the end of the apolitical military.
In 1941 Vincent showed every intention of standing for a third term
as president, but after almost a decade of disengagement, the United
States made it known that it would oppose such an extension. Vincent
accommodated the Roosevelt administration and handed power over to Elie
Lescot.
Lescot was a mulatto who had served in numerous government posts. He
was competent and forceful, and many considered him a sterling candidate
for the presidency, despite his elitist background. Like the majority of
previous Haitian presidents, however, he failed to live up to his
potential. His tenure paralleled that of Vincent in many ways. Lescot
declared himself commander in chief of the military, and power resided
in a clique that ruled with the tacit support of the Garde. He repressed
his opponents, censored the press, and compelled the legislature to
grant him extensive powers. He handled all budget matters without
legislative sanction and filled legislative vacancies without calling
elections. Lescot commonly said that Haiti's declared state-of-war
against the Axis powers during World War II justified his repressive
actions. Haiti, however, played no role in the war except for supplying
the United States with raw materials and serving as a base for a United
States Coast Guard detachment.
Aside from his authoritarian tendencies, Lescot had another flaw: his
relationship with Trujillo. While serving as Haitian ambassador to the
Dominican Republic, Lescot fell under the sway of Trujillo's influence
and wealth. In fact, it was Trujillo's money that reportedly bought most
of the legislative votes that brought Lescot to power. Their clandestine
association persisted until 1943, when the two leaders parted ways for
unknown reasons. Trujillo later made public all his correspondence with
the Haitian leader. The move undermined Lescot's already dubious popular
support.
In January 1946, events came to a head when Lescot jailed the Marxist
editors of a journal called La Ruche (The Beehive). This action
precipitated student strikes and protests by government workers,
teachers, and shopkeepers in the capital and provincial cities. In
addition, Lescot's mulatto-dominated rule had alienated the
predominantly black Garde. His position became untenable, and he
resigned on January 11. Radio announcements declared that the Garde had
assumed power, which it would administer through a three-member junta.
The Revolution of 1946 was a novel development in Haiti's history,
insofar as the Garde assumed power as an institution, not as the
instrument of a particular commander. The members of the junta, known as
the Military Executive Committee (Comité Exécutif Militaire), were
Garde commander Colonel Franck Lavaud, Major Antoine Levelt, and Major
Paul E. Magloire, commander of the Presidential Guard. All three
understood Haiti's traditional way of exercising power, but they lacked
a thorough understanding of what would be required to make the
transition to an elected civilian government. Upon taking power, the
junta pledged to hold free elections. The junta also explored other
options, but public clamor, which included public demonstrations in
support of potential candidates, eventually forced the officers to make
good on their promise.
Haiti elected its National Assembly in May 1946. The Assembly set
August 16, 1946, as the date on which it would select a president. The
leading candidates for the office--all of whom were black--were
Dumarsais Estimé, a former school teacher, assembly member, and cabinet
minister under Vincent; Félix d'Orléans Juste Constant, leader of the
Haitian Communist Party (Parti Communiste d'Haïti--PCH); and former
Garde commander Calixte, who stood as the candidate of a progressive
coalition that included the Worker Peasant Movement (Mouvement Ouvrier
Paysan--MOP). MOP chose to endorse Calixte, instead of a candidate from
its own ranks, because the party's leader, Daniel Fignolé, was only
twenty-six years old--too young to stand for the nation's highest
office. Estimé, politically the most moderate of the three, drew
support from the black population in the north, as well as from the
emerging black middle class. The leaders of the military, who would not
countenance the election of Juste Constant and who reacted warily to the
populist Fignolé, also considered Estimé the safest candidate. After
two rounds of polling, legislators gave Estimé the presidency.
Estimé's election represented a break with Haiti's political
tradition. Although he was reputed to have received support from
commanders of the Garde, Estimé was a civilian. Of humble origins, he
was passionately anti-elitist and therefore generally antimulatto. He
demonstrated, at least initially, a genuine concern for the welfare of
the people. Operating under a new constitution that went into effect in
November 1946, Estimé proposed, but never secured passage of, Haiti's
first social- security legislation. He did, however, expand the school
system, encourage the establishment of rural cooperatives, raise the
salaries of civil servants, and increase the representation of
middle-class and lower-class blacks in the public sector. He also
attempted to gain the favor of the Garde--renamed the Haitian Army (Armée
d'Haïti) in March 1947--by promoting Lavaud to brigadier general and by
seeking United States military assistance.
Estimé eventually fell victim to two of the time-honored pitfalls of
Haitian rule: elite intrigue and personal ambition. The elite had a
number of grievances against Estimé. Not only had he largely excluded
them from the often lucrative levers of government, but he also enacted
the country's first income tax, fostered the growth of labor unions, and
suggested that voodoo be considered as a religion equivalent to Roman
Catholicism--a notion that the Europeanized elite abhorred. Lacking
direct influence in Haitian affairs, the elite resorted to clandestine
lobbying among the officer corps. Their efforts, in combination with
deteriorating domestic conditions, led to a coup in May 1950.
To be sure, Estimé had hastened his own demise in several ways. His
nationalization of the Standard Fruit banana concession sharply reduced
the firm's revenues. He alienated workers by requiring them to invest
between 10 percent and 15 percent of their salaries in national-defense
bonds. The president sealed his fate by attempting to manipulate the
constitution in order to extend his term in office. Seizing on this
action and the popular unrest it engendered, the army forced the
president to resign on May 10, 1950. The same junta that had assumed
power after the fall of Lescot reinstalled itself. An army escort
conducted Estimé from the National Palace and into exile in Jamaica.
The events of May 1946 made an impression upon the deposed minister of
labor, François Duvalier. The lesson that Duvalier drew from Estimé's
ouster was that the military could not be trusted. It was a lesson that
he would act upon when he gained power.
The power balance within the junta shifted between 1946 and 1950.
Lavaud was the preeminent member at the time of the first coup, but
Magloire, now a colonel, dominated after Estimé's overthrow. When Haiti
announced that its first direct elections (all men twenty-one or over
were allowed to vote) would be held on October 8, 1950, Magloire
resigned from the junta and declared himself a candidate for president.
In contrast to the chaotic political climate of 1946, the campaign of
1950 proceeded under the implicit understanding that only a strong
candidate backed by both the army and the elite would be able to take
power. Facing only token opposition, Magloire won the election and
assumed office on December 6.
Magloire restored the elite to prominence. The business community and
the government benefited from favorable economic conditions until
Hurricane Hazel hit the island in 1954. Haiti made some improvements on
its infrastructure, but most of these were financed largely by foreign
loans. By Haitian standards, Magloire's rule was firm, but not harsh: he
jailed political opponents, including Fignolé, and shut down their
presses when their protests grew too strident, but he allowed labor
unions to function, although they were not permitted to strike. It was
in the arena of corruption, however, that Magloire overstepped
traditional bounds. The president controlled the sisal, cement, and soap
monopolies. He and other officials built imposing mansions. The
injection of international hurricane relief funds into an already
corrupt system boosted graft to levels that disillusioned all Haitians.
To make matters worse, Magloire followed in the footsteps of many
previous presidents by disputing the termination date of his stay in
office. Politicians, labor leaders, and their followers flocked to the
streets in May 1956 to protest Magloire's failure to step down. Although
Magloire declared martial law, a general strike essentially shut down
Port-au-Prince. Again like many before him, Magloire fled to Jamaica,
leaving the army with the task of restoring order.
The period between the fall of Magloire and the election of Duvalier
in September 1957 was a chaotic one, even by Haitian standards. Three
provisional presidents held office during this interval; one resigned
and the army deposed the other two, Franck Sylvain and Fignolé.
Duvalier is said to have engaged actively in the behind-the-scenes
intrigue that helped him to emerge as the presidential candidate that
the military favored. The military went on to guide the campaign and the
elections in a way that gave Duvalier every possible advantage. Most
political actors perceived Duvalier--a medical doctor who had served as
a rural administrator of a United States-funded anti-yaws campaign
before entering the cabinet under Estimé--as an honest and fairly
unassuming leader without a strong ideological motivation or program.
When elections were finally organized, this time under terms of
universal suffrage (both men and women now had the vote), Duvalier, a
black, painted himself as the legitimate heir to Estimé. This approach
was enhanced by the fact that Duvalier's only viable opponent, Louis Déjoie,
was a mulatto and the scion of a prominent family. Duvalier scored a
decisive victory at the polls. His followers took two-thirds of the
legislature's lower house and all of the seats in the Senate.
Haiti - FRANÇOIS DUVALIER, 1957-71
Like many Haitian leaders, Duvalier produced a constitution to
solidify his power. In 1961 he proceeded to violate the provisions of
that constitution, which had gone into effect in 1957. He replaced the
bicameral legislature with a unicameral body and decreed presidential
and legislative elections. Despite a 1957 prohibition against
presidential reelection, Duvalier ran for office and won with an
official tally of 1,320,748 votes to zero. Not content with this sham
display of democracy, he went on in 1964 to declare himself president
for life. For Duvalier, the move was a matter of political tradition;
seven heads of state before him had claimed the same title.
An ill-conceived coup attempt in July 1958 spurred Duvalier to act on
his conviction that Haiti's independent military threatened the security
of his presidency. In December the president sacked the armed forces
chief of staff and replaced him with a more reliable officer. This
action helped him to expand a Presidential Palace army unit into the
Presidential Guard. The Guard became the elite corps of the Haitian
army, and its sole purpose was to maintain Duvalier's power. After
having established his own power base within the military, Duvalier
dismissed the entire general staff and replaced aging Marinetrained
officers with younger men who owed their positions, and presumably their
loyalty, to Duvalier.
Duvalier also blunted the power of the army through a rural militia
formally named the Volunteers for National Security (Volontaires de la Sécurité
Nationale--VSN), but more commonly referred to as the tonton makouts
(derived from the Creole term for a mythological bogeyman). In 1961,
only two years afterDuvalier had established the group, the tonton
makouts had more than twice the power of the army. Over time, the
group gained even more power. While the Presidential Guard secured
Duvalier against his enemies in the capital, the tonton makouts
expanded his authority into rural areas. The tonton makouts
never became a true militia, but they were more than a mere secret
police force. The group's pervasive influence throughout the countryside
bolstered recruitment, mobilization, and patronage for the regime.
After Duvalier had displaced the established military with his own
security force, he employed corruption and intimidation to create his
own elite. Corruption--in the form of government rake-offs of
industries, bribery, extortion of domestic businesses, and stolen
government funds--enriched the dictator's closest supporters. Most of
these supporters held sufficient power to enable them to intimidate the
members of the old elite who were gradually co-opted or eliminated (the
luckier ones were allowed to emigrate).
Duvalier was an astute observer of Haitian life and a student of his
country's history. Although he had been reared in Port-au- Prince, his
medical experiences in the provinces had acquainted him with the
everyday concerns of the people, their predisposition toward
paternalistic authority (his patients referred to him as "Papa
Doc," a sobriquet that he relished and often applied to himself),
the ease with which their allegiance could be bought, and the central
role of voodoo in their lives. Duvalier exploited all of these points,
especially voodoo. He studied voodoo practices and beliefs and was
rumored to be a houngan. He related effectively to houngan
and bokò (voodoo sorcerers) throughout the country and
incorporated many of them into his intelligence network and the ranks of
the tonton makouts. His public recognition of voodoo and its
practitioners and his private adherence to voodoo ritual, combined with
his reputed practice of magic and sorcery, enhanced his popular persona
among the common people (who hesitated to trifle with a leader who had
such dark forces at his command) and served as a peculiar form of
legitimization of his rapacious and ignoble rule.
Duvalier weathered a series of foreign-policy crises early in his
tenure that ultimately enhanced his power and contributed to his
megalomaniacal conviction that he was, in his words, the
"personification of the Haitian fatherland." Duvalier's
repressive and authoritarian rule seriously disturbed United States
president John F. Kennedy. The Kennedy administration registered
particular concern over allegations that Duvalier had blatantly
misappropriated aid money and that he intended to employ a Marine Corps
mission to Haiti not to train the regular army but to strengthen the tonton
makouts. Washington acted on these charges and suspended aid in
mid-1962. Duvalier refused to accept United States demands for strict
accounting procedures as a precondition of aid renewal. Duvalier,
claiming to be motivated by nationalism, renounced all aid from
Washington. At that time, aid from the United States constituted a
substantial portion of the Haitian national budget. The move had little
direct impact on the Haitian people because most of the aid had been
siphoned off by Duvalierist cronies anyway. Renouncing the aid, however,
allowed the incipient dictator to portray himself as a principled and
lonely opponent of domination by a great power. Duvalier continued to
receive multilateral contributions. After Kennedy's death in November
1963, pressure on Duvalier eased, and the United States adopted a policy
of grudging acceptance of the Haitian regime because of the country's
strategic location near communist Cuba.
A more tense and confrontational situation developed in April 1963
between Duvalier and Dominican Republic president Juan Bosch Gaviño.
Duvalier and Bosch were confirmed adversaries; the Dominican president
provided asylum and direct support to Haitian exiles who plotted against
the Duvalier regime. Duvalier ordered the Presidential Guard to occupy
the Dominican chancery in Pétionville in an effort to apprehend an army
officer believed to have been involved in an unsuccessful attempt to
kidnap the dictator's son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, and daughter, Simone
Duvalier. The Dominican Republic reacted with outrage and indignation.
Bosch publicly threatened to invade Haiti, and he ordered army units to
the frontier. Although observers throughout the world anticipated
military action that would lead to Duvalier's downfall, they saw events
turn in the Haitian tyrant's favor. Dominican military commanders, who
found Bosch's political leanings too far to the left, expressed little
support for an invasion of Haiti. Bosch, because he could not count on
his military, decided to let go of his dream to overthrow the
neighboring dictatorship. Instead, he allowed the matter to be settled
by emissaries of the Organization of American States (OAS).
Resistant to both domestic and foreign challenges, Duvalier
entrenched his rule through terror (an estimated 30,000 Haitians were
killed for political reasons during his tenure), emigration (which
removed the more activist elements of the population along with
thousands of purely economic migrants), and limited patronage. At the
time of his death in 1971, François Duvalier designated his son,
Jean-Claude Duvalier, as Haiti's new leader. To the Haitian elite, who
still dominated the economy, the continuation of Duvalierism without
"Papa Doc" offered financial gain and a possibility for
recapturing some of the political influence lost under the dictatorship.
Haiti - JEAN-CLAUDE DUVALIER, 1971-86
