The Haitian Tragedy. Part 2

Dumarsais Estimé, President of Haiti 1946-1950 (Wikicommons)

Elderly Haitians remember the postwar era with nostalgia. Their country benefited from the postwar doubling of sisal and coffee exports, as well as the boom in tourism. The resulting growth in government revenues made it possible to increase the national budget from 12 to 21 million dollars between 1946 and 1949. The civil service was expanded, and this expansion created a large black middle class (Labelle 1987, p. 56). Above all else, authoritarian mulatto rule had given way in 1946 to democratic black rule.

Yet discontent was high among the main beneficiaries of that era: middle-class blacks. Though much better off than the average Haitian, they preferred to compare themselves with middle-class mulattoes, who often enjoyed the trappings of inherited wealth: two-storey homes, French furnishings, and American cars. In addition to feeling jealous, they also resented having to conform to European norms: speaking, reading, and writing in French and not in Creole, practicing Catholicism and rejecting Vodou, straightening their hair (in the case of girls and women), wearing European-style dress, etc. This resentment strengthened the appeal of black nationalism for middle-class blacks.

In the 1970s, the anthropologist Micheline Labelle went to Haiti to survey middle-class mulattoes and middle-class blacks. The mulatto respondents saw differences between the two groups in terms of values:

[Mulattoes] have more stable fortunes because they know how "to make money work," although on an international scale, with few exceptions, huge fortunes are not to be found in Haiti. They have a sense of business, and they have administrative and economic competence.

In second place [in economic success], the same respondents pointed to the minority of blacks in power, who they said had gained very large fortunes through politics and not through personal effort and work. They [the blacks in power] did not know how "to make money work" or how to make the country progress. [They were] "demi-monde" people who had become millionaires, an elite completely created from scratch in 1946. (Labelle 1987, p. 191)

Labelle found the same discourse among many middle-class blacks:

On the one hand, I was told that "the mulattoes still hold the top," that they control the economy because they know how to earn money through their work and they make money "work" because they know how to produce and team up with each other. On the other hand, [the respondents] denounced the black man who gets rich through politics and who accumulates to show off, refuses to invest, spends outrageously, and does not know how to administer his assets. Few blacks are said to have a stable business, or a business well set up: "Wealth that is based only on politics may be swept away with the arrival of another [political] current," they said.  As for the blacks of the "middle classes" not involved in politics, their behavior was likewise stigmatized: when they have money they waste it like the people in power; otherwise they turn to the "culture" or take refuge "in the State":

"The Haitian finds it degrading to have to work. He envies the white man but doesn't think he should act the same way. He prefers to sit behind a bureau [...]. Those who are in politics hide their money in foreign banks. Never does the Haitian think he should make his capital bear fruit [...]." (middle-class black woman, 22 years old).¹ (Labelle 1987, pp. 194-196)

"If you manage to get a good mulatto friend, that friendship is solid. You can count more on that friendship. Among blacks, there is much more distrust, because of their parvenu mentality" (middle-class black man, 42 years old) (Labelle 1987, p. 208)

When questioned on the relative honesty of the two groups, most of the middle-class mulattoes refused to comment. Of those who did, Labelle summarized their comments as follows:

The mulattoes, it is said, have more cohesion, solidarity, respect for their word when given, self-control, sense of responsibility, and scruples. The black man is cunning, mistrustful, thieving, untruthful, treacherous, politically irresponsible, and corrupt.

"There is more solidarity, less harshness among mulattoes. The mulatto world is centrifugal, while the black world is centripetal. The black man absolutely wants to get out of his milieu; he's ready to crush another black man. They say they can trust a mulatto more than a black man" (middle-class mulatto man, 54 years old).

"In my milieu it's said you must not trust black people. It's said they try to get a mulatto's trust in order to betray him afterwards. Put them in power, they'll behave irresponsibly, they'll destroy what has been done, they'll try to profit" (middle-class mulatto woman, 23 years old). (Labelle 1987, pp. 198-201)

Middle-class black respondents tended to see things differently:

"[Mulattoes] are hollow-headed. They have nothing except their big money. For them everything is calculated, even their marriages... their conscience is elastic. In marriage, the black man will go overboard for the woman he loves. For him [the mulatto man], he calculates; usually it's a matter of families, of dowries... Blacks are very much driven by hate because they're categorical, while the mulatto is cunning" (middle-class black woman, 55 years old). 

"It's said the mulatto is depraved [vicieux], and thieving: "Sé bèt visyeu, lâch" [It's a depraved and cowardly animal]. They flatter, love money, their governments are woven out of corruption. Sycophants. People recognize that, and they recognize it among themselves..." (middle-class black man, 42 years old). 

"Sé li ki vòlè [He's the one who steals], they're exploiters. They'll trick you every time. They don't consider this country to be their own because they're of foreign origin. They aren't like Haitians, so they have to get the most profit out of this position. Sé yo mêm k'ap manjé kòb pèi a [Only they eat the money of the country]" (middle-class black man, 26 years old). (Labelle 1987, pp. 210)

Nonetheless, some of the black respondents corroborated what the mulatto respondents had said. This was especially true for the older ones who had grown up under mulatto domination:

[For the older black respondents] the mulatto man is more honest than the black man. He acted with more tact and moderation in the past, more intelligence also. He is more respectful of the rules. He is more loyal, acts nastily less often [donne moins de mauvais coups], and hesitates more before doing so. (Labelle 1987, p. 204)

Rise of the black middle class and noirisme

The postwar empowerment of the black middle class radically changed Haiti's social and political landscape. Previously, power had been overwhelmingly in the hands of the mulatto community, with political conflict being between a mulatto-dominated Right and a mulatto-dominated Left. In this conflict, most black Haitians were indifferent bystanders. There was, however, a small but growing black middle class whose political leanings were noiriste (black nationalist) and whom the Right saw as natural allies in its struggle with the Left:

[...] noiriste intellectuals generally came from the emerging black middle class of the occupation period [...]. Paradoxically, despite the U.S. segregation policies and blatant racism, the possibilities for social mobility for blacks improved considerably during the occupation, since for the first time in Haiti's history large numbers of blacks received postsecondary education and entered into the civil service. (Kaussen 2005, p. 69)

It was especially this group that President Sténio Vincent (1930-1941) had in mind when he insisted on making his state addresses in Creole. Under Vincent, noiristes never suffered the persecution that Marxists did, probably because he never imagined that noirisme would become politically consequential.

Yet it did, partly because the black middle class continued to grow, and partly because the U.S. intervened to weaken the competing ideologies of Catholic authoritarianism and Marxism. In 1941, Roosevelt pressured President Vincent to step down:

Indeed, Roosevelt was not ready to support Stenio Vincent for a third term, because the State Department had discovered Stenio Vincent was encouraging and supporting a large political movement of Anti-Americanism. (Laudun 2008, p. 191)

In the context of that time "Anti-Americanism" probably meant Axis sympathies. Vincent was replaced by a weaker and more liberal leader, who in turn had to resign in 1946.

In the ensuing presidential election, all of the candidates were black, and the winner was a moderate noiriste, Dumarsais Estimé (1946-1950). The mulatto minority continued to wield much influence for another decade, but only behind the scenes. Even before the election of François Duvalier, they found themselves increasingly excluded from the political arena and viewed as tolerated guests in their own country. 

The mulatto community had few other options during this time of increasing exclusion and marginalization. Many had invested their energies in the Catholic authoritarianism of Sténio Vincent, but that ideology had come to an end with the end of the Second World War. Others had turned to Socialism and Marxism, but that option too was becoming problematic. In 1944, their main intellectual leader, Jacques Roumain, had died under mysterious circumstances. In the late 1940s, the United States pressured Estimé to distance himself from his radical leftist allies.

Initially, his administration included a coalition of dissidents who led opposition to previous regimes. But Estimé learned the United States viewed his government unfavorably as radically left-wing. As the coalition broke up, fiery labor leader Daniel Fignolé and socialist George Rigaud were eased out of the cabinet. Estimé would later attempt to solidify ties to the United States by exaggerating the communist threat to his government. (Wikipedia 2018).

With the Left sidelined and the Right eradicated, the way was now clear for an increasingly radical black nationalism. "Estimé's noiriste government represented a significant departure from previous administrations. Government jobs, including cabinet positions, were overwhelmingly held by black professionals instead of members of the light-skinned elite" (Wikipedia 2018). Mulatto families who had previously gone into politics or the civil service now had to turn to the private sector (Labelle 1987, p. 66). 

Middle-class blacks thus became direct beneficiaries of noirisme, and its most ardent supporters.

To be cont'd

Note

1. When identifying her respondents, Labelle uses the term "bourgeoisie" for the mulatto middle class and "petty bourgeoisie" for the black middle class. (Labelle 1987, p. 40)

References

Abbott, E. (1988). Haiti. A Shattered Nation, London: Duckworth Overlook

https://books.google.ca/books?hl=fr&lr=&id=U-AoDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT7&dq=haiti+mulatto+duvalier&ots=IoNrmWst5Q&sig=Qfz0xjj_oQBuGnI-nuACaHlCA5Y#v=snippet&q=guillaume%20sam&f=false  

Kaussen, V. (2005). Race, Nation, and the Symbolics of Servitude in Haitian Noirisme, in A. Isfahani-Hammond (ed.). The Masters and the Slaves. Plantation Relations and Mestizaje in American Imaginaries (pp. 67-88), New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.

https://books.google.ca/books?hl=fr&lr=&id=tX7HAAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA67&ots=9n5kLms9lz&sig=2qI-YwbmPd9SjlH942Pqo71HbE8#v=onepage&q&f=false

Labelle, M. (1987). Idéologie de couleur et classes sociales en Haïti, Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal.

http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/labelle_micheline/ideologie_de_couleur_en_haiti/labelle_ideologie_couleur.pdf

Laudun, M. (2008). To Set the Record Straight. From Slavery - Independence - Revolution to the United States of America Intervention and Occupation 1915-1934, Victoria (BC): Trafford

https://books.google.ca/books?id=FHU9HhRRD1MC&pg=PA195&lpg=PA195&dq=%22st%C3%A9nio+Vincent%22+roosevelt+1941&source=bl&ots=XlnP57Cz6d&sig=elEAFIst8gR5HTRxWJkK9DHNIvQ&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi508HXuJzZAhUOSq0KHfYuAJY4ChDoAQgmMAA#v=onepage&q=%22st%C3%A9nio%20Vincent%22%20roosevelt%201941&f=false

Wikipedia (2018). Dumarsais Estimé

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumarsais_Estimé