Robert
Fatton Jr, The Jacobin
On July 28, 1915 the United States invaded Haiti, and imposed
its diktat on the nation for close to two decades. The immediate pretext for
the military intervention was the country’s chronic political instability that
had culminated in the overthrow, mob killing, and bloody dismemberment of
President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam.
The American takeover was in tune with the Monroe Doctrine,
first declared in 1823, that justified the United States presumption that it
had the unilateral right to interfere in the domestic affairs of Latin America.
But it was not until the late 1800s when America had become a major world
capitalist power that it actually acquired the capacity to fulfill its
extra-continental imperial ambitions. In 1898 it seized Cuba, Puerto Rico, and
Guam and soon afterwards took control of the Philippines, the Dominican
Republic, and Haiti.
The US’s goal was to transform the Caribbean into an
“American Mediterranean” inoculated from the influence of French, German, and
Spanish power.
The 1915 invasion was in fact the culmination of America’s
earlier interferences in Haiti — on eight separate occasions US marines had
temporarily landed to allegedly “protect American lives and property.” The
latter part of this claim was more accurate than the former, for these earlier
skirmishes served to solidify and enhance the presence of American financial
banking interests.
This priority became clear when, on December 17, 1914, US
marines, acting on the orders of US Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan,
forcibly removed Haiti’s entire gold reserve — valued at $500,000 — from the
vaults of Banque Nationale. The bullion was transported to New York on the
gunboat Machias and deposited in the National City Bank.
American imperialism had thus announced its designs; it was
bent on undercutting French and German economic dominance as well as signaling
to Haitian authorities that they would be forced to pay their debt to US
private banks. From Washington’s perspective, Haiti had to establish a
political order serving American economic and strategic objectives. Ultimately,
the means to that end was an occupation.
The first task of the occupiers was to select a new president
to replace Sam. Rosalvo Bobo, who headed a caco army that led the insurrection
ending with Sam’s brutal demise, was on the verge of moving into the Palais
National. The United States, however, had other ideas. Washington viewed Bobo
as too nationalistic to assume the reins of power.
While Capt. Edward Beach, the chief of staff of Adm. Caperton
who led the Marines’ takeover of Haiti, acknowledged Bobo’s immense popularity,
he deemed him “utterly unsuited to be Haiti’s President” because he was “an
idealist and dreamer.” In fact, Beach informed Bobo that the United States
considered him “a menace and a curse to [Haiti]” and thus forbade him to stand
as a candidate for the presidency.
A revolutionary nationalist like Bobo was inimical to
American interests. While he was being forced into exile and his cacos were
launching a futile uprising against the occupying forces, Adm. Caperton
installed a new president who would “realize that Haiti must agree to any terms
laid down by the United States.” This new president was Philippe Sudré
Dartiguenave.
The US not only imposed the unpopular Dartiguenave on Haiti,
it also compelled Haitian authorities to sign a treaty legalizing the
occupation. Caperton had orders “to remove all opposition” to the treaty’s
ratification. If that failed, the United States had every intention to “retain
control” and “proceed to complete the pacification of Haiti.”
Not surprisingly, on November 11, 1915 the Haitian Senate
ratified the treaty and placed the country under an American protectorate. The
United States was to take full control of the country’s military, law
enforcement, and financial system. The repressive and fraudulent means by which
the occupation was rendered officially “legal” symbolized what “democracy” and
“constitutional rule” meant under imperial rule.
Not satisfied with the mere ratification of the treaty, the
United States sought to compel the Haitian National Assembly to adopt a new
constitution made in Washington. Faced with the assembly’s opposition, Maj.
Smedley Butler, the head of the Gendarmerie d’Haiti — the military contingent
created by the United States to replace the Haitian army that it had disbanded
— arbitrarily dissolved the assembly.
Having no room to maneuver, Dartiguenave signed the decree of
dissolution. In waging their own coup d’état, the occupying forces continued a
long-held practice of Haitian politics, but they modernized it. As Butler
proclaimed, the gendarmerie had to dissolve the assembly “by genuinely Marine
Corps methods” because it had become “so impudent.”
The “impudence” of the assembly partly stemmed from its
refusal to grant foreigners the right to own property in Haiti. The US found
this refusal unacceptable and decided that a coup was warranted to impose the
laws of the capitalist market.
Armed with military power, imbued with an imperial mentality,
and convinced of their “manifest destiny” and racial superiority, the American
occupiers expected deference and obedience from Haitians. In fact, the key
American policymakers in both Washington and Port-au-Prince entertained racist
phobias and stereotypes and were bewildered by Haitian culture.
At best, the occupiers regarded Haitians as the product of a
bizarre mixture of African and Latin cultures who had to be treated like
children lacking the education, maturity, and discipline for self-government.
At worst, Haitians were like their African forbears, inferior human beings,
“savages,” “cannibals,” “gooks,” and “niggers.”
Robert Lansing, the secretary of state in the Woodrow Wilson
administration, exemplified the racist American view:
The experience of Liberia and Haiti show that the African race
are devoid of any capacity for political organization and lack genius for
government. Unquestionably there is in them an inherent tendency to revert to
savagery and to cast aside the shackles of civilization which are irksome to
their physical nature . . . It is that which makes the Negro problem
practically unsolvable.
For the occupiers, Haitians thus had no capacity to run their
own affairs or even appreciate the alleged benefits of America’s invasion. As
High Commissioner Russell put it, “Haitian mentality only recognizes force, and
appeal to reason and logic is unthinkable.”
And indeed, the American-led gendarmerie used brutal force to
impose its grip on Haitian society and squash all opposition. Adm. Caperton
declared martial law on September 3, 1915. It would last fourteen years,
facilitating the establishment of a new regime of corvée (forced, unpaid
labor), as well as the brutal suppression of the caco guerrilla resistance
against American forces.
Overseen by the repressive control of the gendarmerie, the
unpopular corvée system compelled peasants to work as virtual “slave gangs.”
The massive mobilization of coerced labor helped build roads that reached
remote areas of the territory; the creation of a viable network of
transportation was not merely a means of spurring economic and commercial
development, but a result of American strategic considerations.
Putting down the cacos who had supported Bobo and joined the
popular guerrillas of Charlemagne Péralte required the penetration of the
countryside to prevent any further recruitment of peasants into the forces of
resistance.
The corvée system of forced labor extraction,and the military
repression of the guerrillas were thus symbiotically connected. Riddled with
abuse, the corvée failed to stifle opposition, however. Instead, coercing the
peasantry to labor on infrastructural projects just fueled greater resistance
to the occupation.
Popular support for the cacos grew, and soon there was an
embryonic movement of national liberation with an increasingly sophisticated
guerrilla force under the leadership of Péralte. Péralte, who called himself
Chef Suprême de la Révolution en Haïti, explained that he was fighting the
occupiers to gain Haiti’s liberation from American imperialism.
In the eyes of American authorities, however, the cacos,
Péralte, and his supporters were nothing but “bandits,” “criminals,” and
“killers” who had to be thoroughly “pacified.” And so they were. Péralte was
shot on November 1, 1919 and his successor, Benoît Batraville, suffered a
similar fate on May 19 of the following year. By 1921 the American pacification
of the country was virtually complete. Some 2,000 thousand insurgents had been
killed, and more than 11,000 of their sympathizers had been incarcerated.
Still, pacification did not imply popular acquiescence. It is
true that the traditional Haitian elites initially collaborated with and even
welcomed American imperialism. But as they experienced the unmitigated racism
of the occupying forces, the elites turned against them and espoused varied
forms of nationalist resistance.
While not inclined to back the caco insurgents, these elites
developed a sense of nationhood that curbed the significance of color but had
little impact on the salience of class identities. In the eyes of most
Haitians, those who had participated actively in the occupation machinery, like
President Dartiguenave or his successor, Louis Borno, were opportunistic
collaborators or simply traitors.
In fact, many of these collaborators had authoritarian reflexes
and shared some of the paternalistic and racist ideology of their American
overlords. Convinced that Haitians were not prepared for any democratic form of
self-government, these elites believed in the despotisme éclairé of the plus
capables (the enlightened despotism of the most capable).
In addition, from their privileged class position they
regarded the rest of their compatriots — especially the peasantry — with
contempt. In an official letter to the nation’s prefects, President Borno
openly expressed this disdain:
Our rural population, which represents nine-tenths of the
Haitian population, is almost totally illiterate, ignorant and poor . . . it is
still incapable of exercising the right to vote, and would be the easy prey of
those bold speculators whose conscience hesitates at no lie.
[The] present electoral body . . . is characterized by a
flagrant inability to assume . . . the heavy responsibilities of a political
action.
Borno was a dictator, but a dictator under American control.
His rule embodied what Haitians called la dictature bicéphale, the “dual
despotism” of American imperialism and its domestic clients. This regime of
repression had unintended consequences. It intensified the level of nationalist
resistance to the occupation and contributed to a convergence of interests
between intellectuals, students, public workers, and peasants.
This growing mobilization against the occupation precipitated
the 1929 Marchaterre massacre, when some fifteen hundred peasants protesting
high taxation confronted armed marines who then opened fire on the crowd.
Twenty-four Haitians died and fifty-one were wounded. The massacre set in
motion a series of events that would eventually lead the United States to
reassess its policies and presence in Haiti.
President Herbert Hoover created a commission whose primary
objective was to investigate “when and how we are to withdraw from Haiti.” The
commission — which took the name of its chair, Cameron Forbes, who served in
the Philippines as chief constabulary and then as governor — acknowledged that
the US had not accomplished its mission and that it had failed “to understand
the social problems of Haiti.”
While the commission astonishingly claimed that the
occupation’s failure was due to the “brusque attempt to plant democracy there
by drill and harrow” and to “its determination to set up a middle class,” it
ultimately recommended the withdrawal of the United States from Haiti.
The commission advised, however, that the withdrawal not be
immediate, but rather that it should take place only after the successful
“Haitianization” of the public services as well as the gendarmerie. Forbes also
understood that President Borno had no legitimacy and could be sacrificed.
Borno was forced to retire and arrange the election of an interim successor who
would in turn organize general elections. Sténio Vincent, a moderate
nationalist who favored a gradual, negotiated ending to the occupation, thus
became president in November 1930.
Vincent’s gradualism was in tune with the Forbes Commission’s
recommendation for the accelerated Haitianization of the commanding ranks of
the government and the eventual withdrawal of all American troops. While Forbes
and Vincent operated on the assumption that the United States’ withdrawal would
not occur until 1936, the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 altered
events.
Roosevelt’s new “Good Neighbor” strategy toward Latin America
was rooted in the premise that direct occupation through military intervention
was expensive, counterproductive, and in most instances unnecessary. It was not
that the forceful occupation of another country was precluded; it simply became
a last resort.
Roosevelt understood that in Latin America, the United States
could impose its hegemony through local allies and surrogates, especially
through military corps and officers that it had trained, organized, and
equipped. It is this perspective that explains the American decision to
withdraw from Haiti. In fact, what Haitians came to call “second independence”
arrived two months earlier than expected. On a visit to Cape Haitien, in the
north of the country, Roosevelt announced that the American occupation would
end on August 15, 1934.
After close to twenty years of dual dictatorship, Haitians
were left with a changed nation. American rule had contributed to the
centralization of power in Port-au-Prince and the modernization of the
monarchical presidentialism that had always characterized Haitian politics. With
the American occupation, praetorian power came to reside in the barracks of the
capital, which had supplanted the regional armed bands that had hitherto been
decisive in the making, and unmaking, of political regimes.
Moreover, the subordination of the Haitian president to
American marine forces had nurtured a politics of military vetoes and
interference that would eventually undermine civilian authority and help incite
the numerous coups of post-occupation Haiti. To remain in office, the executive
would have to depend on the support of the military, which had been centralized
in Port-au-Prince.
The supremacy of Port-au-Prince also implied the privileging
of urban classes to the detriment of the rural population. Peasants continued
to be excluded from the moral community of les plus capables, and they came
under a strict policing regime of law and order.
The occupation never intended to cut the roots of
authoritarianism; instead, it planted them in a more rational and modern
terrain. By establishing a communication network that became a means of
policing and punishing the population, and by creating a more effective and
disciplined coercive force, American rule left a legacy of authoritarian and
centralized power. It suppressed whatever democratic and popular forms of
accountability and protests it confronted, and nurtured the old patterns of
fraudulent electoral practices, giving the armed forces ultimate veto on who
would rule Haiti.
Elections during the occupation, and for more than seventy
years afterward, were never truly free and fair. In most cases, the outcome of
elections had less to do with the actual popular vote than with compromises
reached between Haiti’s ruling classes and imperial forces. Thus, elections
lacked the degree of honesty and openness required to define a democratic
order. The occupation imposed its rule through fraud, violence, and deceit, and
little changed after it ended.
It is true that the imperial presence from 1915 to 1934
contributed to the building of a modest infrastructure of roads and clinics,
but it did so with the most paternalistic and racist energy. American
authorities convinced themselves that their mission was to bring development
and civilization to Haiti. They presumed that Haitians were utterly incapable
of doing so on their own. Not surprisingly, they used methods of command and
control to achieve their project, a practice that reinforced the existing authoritarian
patterns of unaccountable, undemocratic governance.
Interestingly, when one examines the strategy and rhetoric
from the 1915–1934 occupation, one can see that it foreshadowed the
contemporary “modernization” and “failed states” theories that have justified
western interventionism during and after the Cold War era. Except for its
unmitigated racism, the old interventionism differs little from the
twenty-first century doctrines of “humanitarian militarism” and “responsibility
to protect.”
In fact, since the fall of the US-backed Duvalier
dictatorship in 1986 and the catastrophic earthquake of 2010, the country has
been involved in an unending democratic transition marred by persistent
imperial interventions that have transformed it into a quasi-protectorate of
the international community.
Foreign powers, particularly the United States and to a
lesser extent France and Canada, have regarded Haiti as a “failed state” that
could not function without the massive political, military, and economic presence
of outsiders.
One hundred years after the first American occupation and
three decades after Jean-Claude Duvalier’s popular ouster, Haiti has been
reoccupied twice by American marines, who have paved the way for the current,
interminable, and humiliating presence of a United Nations “peace-keeping”
force. The imperial language has barely changed. American rhetoric justifies
occupation in the name of “stability,” “domestic security,” and the dangers of
“populist and anti-market political forces.” The US continues to promise the
development of a modern capitalist economy, a middle class society, and a
democratic order.
That all of these occupations failed miserably to achieve
these goals indicate the obdurate limits and contradictions of any project of
development sponsored and imposed by imperial forces. These occupations warn us
also about the justifications, dangers, and vicissitudes of interventions in
the current era of neoliberal globalization.
