Haiti: The Breached Citadel contains a wide-ranging discussion of Haiti, past and present. The book is handsomely produced and accessible to the general reader. The author is a Haitian who has lived and worked in the United States for many years. The book contains a few minor errors of fact. Patrick Bellegarde-Smith states that all Haitian constitutions up to the U.S. occupation of 1915-34 forbade the foreign ownership of land, thus ignoring the significant exceptions of Henry Christophe’s constitutions of 1807 and 1811. Again, the author states that the first major peasant revolt occurred forty years after independence (p. 70), overlooking the revolt of “Goman” in the region of the Grande Anse, which lasted from 1806 to 1821. He tends throughout the book somewhat to underestimate the significance of color distinctions. While color conflicts or tensions are never the sole factors at work in Haiti, they are rarely absent; at times they indeed appear to be the major grounds on which political alignments arc based.
To say that François Duvalier was “largely a U.S. creation” (p. 95) and that in 1957 the United States “helped to install the dynastic Duvalier dictatorship” (p. 70) is misleading. There were certainly some in the U.S. embassy (connected with the AID program particularly) who favored Duvalier, but most supported Louis Déjoie. It was only at a late moment in the campaign that the State Department came to view Duvalier as an acceptable candidate. There is of course a sense in which dynastic Duvalierism was aided by Washington; its strong backing of Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1971 was a major factor in the achievement of a smooth transition from father to son. In a longer perspective also the U.S. occupation’s policy of imposing a strongly centralized form of government, disarming the peasants, and encouraging the growth of a black middle class might be said to have set the stage for the appearance of Duvalier. But Haitians must begin to acknowledge Duvalier as largely a Haitian creation. The author seriously underrates Papa Doc’s skill in securing civilian control of the army by suggesting that it was “easily accomplished” (p. 137); tell that to Leslie Manigat!
The book has a good account of the 1987 revolt and massacre of peasants in the northwest, which shows an understanding of the events and the region, in striking contrast to the impression given in the author’s discussion of black pigs. These are “said to be” a cross between pigs introduced by the French and an “indigenous variety” introduced by the Spanish! “Arguably, they are said to have consumed excrement and thus helped overall sanitation needs” (p. 161). This is academic caution with a vengeance!
Haiti: State Against the Nation is a more sophisticated analysis of Haitian politics. It represents a rewriting (and not merely a translation) of the author’s Les racines historiques de l’état duvaliérien (Port-au-Prince, 1986). Here Trouillot examines the roots of Duvalierism. Recognizing that François Duvalier enjoyed considerable support, he argues that the election result of 1957 probably reflected opinion at the time. To understand the rise and fall of the Duvalier dynasty he stresses the need to consider the impact of the U.S. occupation and the class/color structure of Haiti back into the nineteenth century.
As an essay in political anthropology this book is of considerable value, but the author’s understanding of political theory and his use of political concepts are frequently defective and confusing. Early on he announces, “In theory, the state can do anything it wishes within its recognized boundaries, since there it has a monopoly on force” (p. 35). On what theory? the reader might ask. In no country does the state have such a monopoly, and a theory that suggests that it has is misconceived. In neither law, morality, nor practice can the state do what it wishes. It is circumscribed by international law and by treaty obligations. There are numerous moral limits to state action, and in practice it is restricted by the existence of actual or potential groups prepared to resist what the state might propose. Jean-Claude Duvalier became acutely aware of the limits on his power, particularly in the mideighties.
Trouillot portrays Duvalierism as a type of totalitarian politics. First he ignores the most important characteristic of totalitarianism: a dynamic politics designed to impose a total way of life on the nation and a consequent concern with every aspect of the people’s existence. Trouillot actually gives his case away. “Duvalierism,” he states, “had no program other than power for power’s sake” (pp. 158-159). Such a regime cannot properly be called totalitarian. Trouillot even refers to the “totalitarian inclinations” (p. 143) of the autocratic Paul Magloire; but it would be hard to think of any Latin American ruler who conformed less to the totalitarian model than did the playboy Magloire. The politics of these Haitian leaders were strikingly different from the dynamic and fanatical desire to remold the Italian nation, or to purify the German Volk of non-Arian blood, or to collectivize Russia’s peasants into a total communist state. It is surprising to find a Haitian writer so keen to apply to Caribbean reality categories developed in a European context!
While much of what Trouillot says about the Duvalier regime is correct—its ruthless extension of terror into the massacre of women and children, its successful undermining of every institution in the country likely to constitute a center of resistance to the ruler, and its recruiting of the masses through the civil militia—these are not distinguishing features of totalitarianism. They are to be found in non-totalitarian forms of despotism, particularly in its populist form. Under the Duvaliers there was little pressure on most of the population to become explicitly involved in politics; an outward conformity was sufficient. Businesspeople were generally left to get on with making money (though they were sometimes encouraged to share it, by threats from macoutes or by temporary imprisonment in the palace). There was no concern for ideological purity even among Duvalierists themselves. Opportunists were welcomed. The fearful indifference that Duvalierist terror inspired—the desire to know nothing and he seen to know nothing about politics—is a classic characteristic of traditional despotism. Karl Wittfogel refers to the incident in Arabian Nights in which a body is moved from outside one door to another, no one wishing to he found with it in the morning. Despite these reservations Trouillot’s hook is to be welcomed as a stimulating contribution to an understanding of the Haitian past.
Roger Gaillard has continued his series of volumes of social and political history from the end of the nineteenth century to the early years of the occupation. The series Les blancs débarquent began in 1973 with volume two, Les cent-jours de Resalvo Bobo. Six later volumes have appeared. In 1984 he published La République exterminatrice. I. Une modernisation manquée. This was to be the first part of volume one of Les blancs débarquent. The present volume is part two of La République exterminatrice, and a third part is announced. Gaillard tells me, however, that these are now to constitute a separate work and that a volume one of Les blancs débarquent will be published. These volumes are marked by detailed reference to and quotation from relevant diplomatic sources and contemporary journals and are an invaluable record of Haitian political life.
