In the summer of 2015, I had the opportunity to attend the Haitian Creole Summer Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. For three weeks in July, I attended daily classes at the university where, under the guidance of eminent Haitian scholars like Marc Prou and Patrick Sylvain, I greatly improved my speaking, reading and writing abilities in the Haitian language. There were around thirty students total, divided into two groups: Beginner and Intermediate/Advanced. Nine of us were placed in the Intermediate/Advanced group. We were all there to learn Creole, but apart from that we didn’t have much else in common. The group consisted of four Bostonians and five academics who had travelled to Boston for the Institute. Among the Bostonians were a high school French teacher who had numerous Haitian students in his classes, a social worker and housing activist, a young university undergraduate student of Haitian descent, and a retired poet. The five academics were a Canadian gender studies professor at Concordia in Montreal, an American PhD student in ethnomusicology at the University of Pennsylvania, a Polish PhD student of literature at Leeds in the United Kingdom, a Puerto Rican PhD student in anthropology at Cornell, and myself, at the time a master’s student in History at the University of Guelph.
Despite our diverse backgrounds, we built a fine little community in that class. We had a lovely time learning about Haiti’s language and culture and getting to know one another. In the final week we had a little party—a banbòch—and during the preparations we made an interesting discovery about our little group: out of the nine students, eight were vegetarians (in my case, admittedly, a lapsed vegetarian). This struck me as too odd to be coincidental. Here were eight strangers from different countries and different walks of life, united only by a desire to learn Haitian Creole, and all happened not to eat meat. What was the connection between a strong interest in Haiti and the decision to be a vegetarian?
People refrain from eating meat for all kinds of reasons: health, religious custom, concerns about the climate, or a respect for all sentient life. In many cases vegetarianism is based on an ethical conviction. Factory farming—the mass production and slaughter of creatures who feel pain—is seen as unjust and inexcusable. A decision to refrain from eating meat can be based on a consequentialist (hoping to elicit change in the system) or non-consequentialist (personally abstaining from activities considered morally wrong) standpoint, but in either case the individual has a keen interest in pursuing some form of moral justice.
An interest in Haiti, likewise, can stem from an active commitment to moral justice. Much of the country’s history is characterized by injustice and marginalization. In the colonial era, nine-tenths of the population was enslaved and endured every manner of inhumane treatment. In 1791, this enslaved population challenged the injustice of slavery by rising up in insurrection, ultimately ending slavery and colonialism on the island. This was an event of tremendous historical importance in the progression toward universal human rights and national self-determination. And what was their reward for this significant contribution to human progress? Centuries of abuse and neglect.
The great powers employed alternating policies of exploitation and isolation against this young nation that had dared to challenge notions of white dominance. France forced an exuberant indemnity on their former subjects, trapping them in a cycle of debt and dependency and permanently crippling their ability to develop industries and infrastructure. In the twentieth century, the United States meddled endlessly in Haiti’s internal affairs. The U.S. occupied the country from 1915 to 1934. Despite the stated intention of bringing order, prosperity and democracy to Haiti, the Occupation exacerbated divisions and reinforced non-democratic politics, all the while enriching American corporations. The United States sustained some of the country’s worst dictators (most notably the Duvaliers), and generally subordinated the Haitian peoples’ interests to their own economic and geo-political concerns. All this has contributed to the situation of extreme instability and poverty in Haiti. Meanwhile, the United States has continually treated refugees from the very situation they helped create as pariahs at home. Haitian immigrants to the United States (and elsewhere) have been turned away at the borders and marginalized in the cities. As I’m writing this, the Biden administration is sending thousands of Haitian migrants back to a country where gang violence and kidnappings have become a fact of daily life.
The nine of us in that Intermediate/Advanced Haitian Creole class were aware of this historical injustice—it was part of what had drawn us to Haiti. Most of us were learning the language specifically to work with Haitians in our communities who were clearly the victims of centuries-old injustices. Some were also engaged with these injustices on a more abstract level. If Haiti has been the victim of history, it has also been a victim of historiography. Despite the paramount importance of the Haitian revolutionaries’ attack on the foundations of slavery and colonialism, Haiti has been tragically underacknowledged in history books and history classes. (For a thorough analysis of the “silencing” of the Haitian Revolution, see Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History). Accounts of the mass slave uprising (and the self-governing Black Republic it ultimately created) threatened dominant views of European superiority and the economic basis of the lucrative transatlantic trade. So white historians hushed up the Haitian Revolution.
Today, with 200 years of hindsight, history has justified the Haitian Revolution. On this side of the (apparent) global abolition of slavery, the colonization and decolonization of Africa, the Civil Rights movement and Black Lives Matter, it seems that Toussaint Louverture was onto something. We owe so much to the revolutionaries for taking a stand against racism. And yet Haiti continues to suffer the consequences of being right at the wrong time.
So how can we possibly atone for two centuries of abuse and neglect? With an estimated 10,000 NGOs operating in the country, clearly people are trying. But with so many trying to “save Haiti” it seems like everything has been tried and nothing will work. The place is too far gone. But, in view of the historical and historiographical injustices outlined about, we have no right to stop trying. Fortunately, we have gone about it the wrong way so many times that at least we know what not to do. Don’t, like the occupiers of 1915-1934, step in and start bossing people around. Don’t assume that you, the all-knowing foreigner, are best placed to know what needs to change. Don’t, like USAID and leagues of other international donors in the Duvalier period, simply keep your distance, throw money at the situation and expect unelected officials to use it judiciously. In both situations we forgot about one thing: the Haitian people. Change needs to begin with them. They were right in 1791 when they challenged slavery. They were right in 1804 when they challenged imperialism. There’s a good chance they know what needs to be done today.
Ask them.
In order to ask them, you need to speak their language. Which brings us back to that classroom in 2015. I haven’t stayed in touch with all nine of my classmates. I’m not sure if, like me, they’ve let their vegetarianism lapse. But I am sure they’re still speaking Creole and still trying to learn about Haiti from Haitians so that, in some small way, they can contribute to undoing centuries-old injustices.
