Books will be issued only on presentation of library card. Please report lost cards and change of residence promptly. Card holders are responsible for all books, records, films, pictures or other library materials checked out on their cards. by Selden Rodman Verse AJviAznsrG YEAH.: A Diary in. Verse THIS THEl I^A-WIUENGE:; TMK I-AST TRIXTIS^PKI AJNT> OTHtKIt Art JPORXRAXX Oir TKE: ARTIST AS ANT HAITI : A. ]STegro Paintier Irx Amerloa. OISTOE: HTJisroREo jvioDEiiusr I>OEIVI:S TE HXJ>rOHJEr> AJVIERI ANT> TMK: ^OET ("witliL Rioliard CMF Travel : The Black Republic THE BLACK REPUBLIC The Complete Story and Guide by S ELD EN RODMAN THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY NEW YORK Copyright 1954 by Selden Rodman All rights reserved Permission to reproduce material from this book must be obtained in writing For information address the publishers, THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY, 23 East 26 Street, New York 10. Printed in the United States of America Canadian agents: Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd., Toronto Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-10816 First printing November 1954 Second printing March 1955 To II>iei and make a work-slave (zombi) of it. This widely-held superstition is based to some extent on an African practice of drug- ging people with the root of a certain tree, the effect of which is to turn the taster into an automaton. The extraordinarily heavy slabs 37 HAITI: of stone with which all Haitians cover graves is added insurance that the dead won't rise again. THE ELITE To the foreign visitor who, whatever he is, is not a peasant, peasants the world over seem more or less alike. Every ruling group, however, seems sharply distinguished by national peculiarities. This is particularly true in Haiti. I attended two dinner parties in Haiti some years ago. One was at the home of a very old family, its sons married to French or American women so that their children could not have been taken for Negroes anywhere; in fact, the daughters were now in finishing school in New England. The women and this is true of the Mulatto aristocracy generally would have been considered beautiful anywhere in the world: pale bronze or off- white, the eyes deep-set and incredibly clear but languorous under very long lashes, in carriage supple, feline Tike caged panthers dreaming.' The men were as typical of their caste and as striking: proud, fiery of mien, graceful in all their gestures but intensely mas- culine, relaxed and socially at ease. The dinner itself was an elaborate affair of many courses and many wines. The dress was formal. The conversation was about subtleties in the acting of the Com6die Fran?aise. And after dinner in the drawing-room there was polite piano playing to which every- one listened politely. Then the men withdrew to discuss world poli- tics and some pretty critical things were said about the current American effort to keep the Communists out of Asia, Our host, who insisted that the American State Department was "reactionary" and "imperialistic" was then well known for his opposition to the Hai- tian government's effort to impose a mild income-tax and permit the organization of labor unions. The other party, given by a leading intellectual and attended by government officials as well as literary figures, was informal There was as much a profusion of food, but the dishes were "peas- ant" plantains and dried fish, and the only drinks served were rhum- sodas and whiskey. The women, even more than at the other party, were relegated to the background, sat by themselves, and drank kola-champagne, a soft-drink. The conversation was much more animated and as the evening progressed became really brilliant. The men provided after-dinner entertainment by singing vaudou songs to the accompaniment of a guitar, and during one number a young officer of the Garde performed an impromptu bonda dance climaxed 38 The Story of the Black Republic by a feigned crise de possession which brought down the house. Very late in the evening some of the more adventurous youth de- parted to join the "Orthophonique," one of the largest Mardi Gras bandes with a special reputation for wildness; accompanying the revellers in old clothes and masks they would be sure to find plenty of excitement without being recognized. At the first party the decor had been a little stuffyacademic still-lif es, Chinese vases and screens, heavy uncomfortable furniture of dark mahogany. The ladies fanned themselves and did not smoke. At the second, a Coca-Cola calendar, a photograph of a favorite soccer-star and a card-size reproduction of a Matisse were tacked haphazardly to the bare walls. The guests in shirt-sleeves sat cross- legged on the floor or steps, and they helped themselves. At both parties the American guests were treated with impeccable consider- ationand just enough formality to make them sensible of the priv- ilege they were being accorded. In 1939 Leyburn was able to describe the elite as that 3% of the Haitian population which does not work with its hands. The percentage may have risen a point or two; and the employment of a well-born Haitian woman as a stenographer, hostess or curio-shop saleswoman, is no longer uncommon; but the definition still holds. Other criteria listed by Leyburn included education and the ability to speak French, an almost religious devotion to "culture," resi- dence in the cities ("One must see and be seen by other members of one's caste"), formal marriage, and skin-color. The last qualification has relaxed greatly under the administra- tions of the Negro presidents, Estim6 and Magloire. The so-called "Two-Hundred Families," mostly very light in complexion and tracing their ancestry to Revolutionary times, are still the most im- portant component of the 6Hte socially speaking, but the bulk of the caste consists of the wealthy, the intellectually brilliant, and the more recently "arrived" among politicians and the military. It is from the latter that large accretions of dark-skinned Haitians have swelled the ranks of the 6tite under the last two administrations. And this, coupled with the rise of the small but aggressive urban middle-class, who now dispute even the sacrosanct Cabane Chou- coune with the aristocracy, has led some Haitians to insist that the term 6lite itself has become anachronistic. The ffite established its character during the 72 years that fol- lowed Boyer's downfall, a period in which Mulattoes ruled for only nine. Adapting themselves to life under Negro (mostly military) presidents, the Mulattoes controlled business, monopo- 39 HAITI: lized the Law, became state secretaries and diplomats, valedictorians and poets. To the extent to which one may generalize, the elite then assumed such social-psychological traits as elegant deportment, fiery patriotism, conversational brilliance, a love of indirection and intrigue, mild anti-Americanism, 1 extreme Francophilism, indiffer- ence toward religion, cynicism in politics, laissez faire in economics. At the same time the elite was developing that social sctvoir faire for which it is renowned, its attitudes toward others were solidifying: a contempt for the benighted peasantry, a stern benevolence toward domestics, a double standard as regards women and a belief that children should be (if nothing else) bien elev. Somewhere along the way, the elite acquired a marked taste for poetry and belles lettres, but little interest in any of the other arts including interior decoration. "There are among the elite" Leyburn wrote, "broad- minded, tolerant and cultured persons. The average member of the caste, however, like the average American, is full of prejudices of all kinds. Travel produces a superficial polish; their patriotism con- sists of antagonism toward the outside world and an eff ort to secure position for themselves; they are sure that Haiti's laws are sounder, her culture superior, her schools more advanced, her civilization in general higher than those of most other nations (France generally excepted)." There used to be a saying that when somebody sneezes in France, they have whooping-cough in Haiti. Times have changed since Leyburn wrote. France has lost prestige. Americans have abandoned much of their racial myopia, have come to Haiti to learn as well as to criticize. The common man everywhere has found champions. In the arts, primirivisrn and indi- vidualism have relegated academic standards to the dustbin. Haitian intellectuals have taken an interest in folklore, vttudou, Marxism, New Dealism. Poems and plays in the once-despised Creole have been publicly read and received with enthusiasm. The Slite has not rendered Leyburn's description of them obsolete but it has given cause for sharp revisions. That ambivalence which on the one hand i It is to the Mite's great credit and sense of proportion that they are not deeply anti-American, because it was under the Occupation that they were treated for the first time with social-racial contempt and in their very homes. **It made many of us," a Haitian journalist says, "ashamed in our hearts of our own race* ashamed of our birth and of our families and of the blood that flows in our own veins. For not all of us are strong enough to laugh and say 7* w?tn ficfa* as I do . . . The gen- eral's wife often invites us to tea and finds us charming, but the sergeant's wife, or the captain's, who maybe did her own washing at home, was our social superior and would feel herself disgraced to shake hands with any nigger. n Chauvet, quoted in Seabrook, op. cit. The Story of the Black Republic sought to emulate the Whites (even in coloration) and on the other regarded the "vulgar" foreign visitor as proof of the superiority of everything Haitian, has all but vanished. The 6lite Haitian of today may not be the most humble or self-critical of men, but he is one of the most hospitable and charming, and his ancient fear that wide- spread education would topple his eminence is rapidly giving way to a knowledge that his future and Haiti's are involved in the com- mon weal. POLITICS: The Government and the Army THE GOVERNMENT. According to the Constitution of 1950 which was drawn up at Gonaives by a Constituent Assembly headed by Dantes BeUegarde, all Haitians are equal before the law without regard to sex, creed or color, save that women, though per- mitted to participate in municipal elections and to hold office, are temporarily not eligible to vote for national office. The government is divided into legislative and executive branches. The former consists of a National Assembly comprising a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies. The Deputies, directly elected by the people for four-year terms, number 37 and are distributed according to the population. The Senators, numbering 21, are elected for six years by the primary assemblies of each department (provincial state) . The chief executive, the President, is elected for six years and is not eligible for re-election. He is elected on the basis of a majority vote of communal electors, chosen by direct suffrage and secret ballot. He has the right to dissolve the Assembly, name all judges of courts and tribunals, and choose the members of his cabinet heading the various executive departments. The President, in whose person and that of the Army which he commands, resides the real power in Haiti, receives a salary of $z4,ooo a year. He lives and works in the National Palace on the Champ-de-Mars in Port-au-Prince, adjoining the Cassernes Dessa- lines, which houses the Palace Guard. His cabinet consists of seven departmental secretaries (State and Religious Cults, Interior and Jus- tice, Finance and National Economy, Foreign Affairs and National Education, Public Health and Work, Commerce and Agriculture, Public Works) each receiving a salary of $7200, and four Under- secretaries receiving $4800 each. Almost one-fourth of the annual budget for 1953-4 (totaling 4* HAITI: $25,839,379) was allocated to the most important of the ministries, that of the Interior, whose share was $6,040,620, but about $5,000,- ooo of this sum covered the expenses of the Army, and $147,996 went to the Secret Police. Education and Public Health came next with budgets of about $3,000,000 each. $1,500,000 was allocated to Public Works. Foreign Affairs, Finance, and Commerce- Agricul- ture each received about $1,000,000; and the office of Secretary of State to the Presidency (which includes also support of the Catholic Church) $500,000. The sum total of these expenses, which includes the funding of the public debt and carrying forward of Haiti's share in the Artibonite Project, is paid out of customs duties ($17,513,- ooo), internal revenues ($6,733,000) and other taxes ($1,591,000), In assessing the progress toward democracy in Haiti, two facts must always be remembered. Military dictatorships, of varying de- grees of severity and efficiency, were the rule during the Nine- teenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Even P6tion, though pre- serving the republican forms and never a tyrant, made the major decisions unassisted. The second fact is that no matter how demo- cratic a constitution may be and Bellegarde's contains many safe- guards of people's rights custom and usage are the ultimate arbi- ters; no more than 10% of the people participate in government even to the extent of voting, and it is inevitably in the interests of this minority that the lines are drawn and the laws enforced* The fact that the combined circulation of all newspapers is less than 50,- ooo and that there are only a few thousand radio receiving sets in Haiti must also be taken into account. THE GARDE D^HAixi. Haiti's small but well-disciplined Army, the Garde d'Haiti, consists of 400 officers and 4000-5000 enlisted men, and contains within itself the police force whose khaki uni- forms are undifferentiated from the other services. Since policing is the main function of the Army in the country districts, a very large proportion of the Garde is delegated to this activity. Branches of the Army are the Coast Guard, whose half-dozen small launches and torpedo boats patrol the coast and give aid to navigation; the Air Force, which efficiently moves all passenger and air freight within the country in addition to its military duties; and the Artil- lery, a part of the ground forces, which is equipped with French 75S and American 1055 and a few tanks. A battalion of the ground forces (40 officers and 500 men) constitutes the Palace Guard. The Army also maintains Haiti's prisons. Qualifications for an enlisted man in the Garde are literacy and loyalty. A private gets $2 1 a month plus $6 for board and clothing, 4* Catholic