The Republic of Haiti holds a very special place in the consciousness of Caribbean people. This recognition of that country’s importance led to its induction as a member of Caricom in 2002, holding a significant place as one of the non-Anglophone nations in the community, with the accompanying geopolitical factors. But long before that formal status, Haiti had commanded the attention of its Caribbean neighbours for many reasons.
This country of 10.5 million people, who speak French and Kweyol (Patois or French Creole), occupies the western part of the island of Hispaniola in the Northern Caribbean. The current focus of attention is a most unwelcome one – the assassination of its President Jovenel Moise on July 7, which is not only the most recent calamity afflicting the nation, but leaves it teetering on the edge of violence and instability. It tests the fortitude of a people struggling to sustain a living economy, but continually challenged to do so in the face of a fragile democracy, unstable politics and ever lurking violence.
This assassination strikes another blow to a country known for extreme poverty, with a history of adversity and glory, known for political conflict and strife, but admired for its triumph over slavery and colonialism. It has been wracked by severe natural disasters, such as 2010’s catastrophic earthquake and annual hurricanes. It is a nation praised and admired by the Anglophone Caribbean for setting the example of nationhood 300 years ago, when it won independence from France. It is held in awe for its cultural power and traditional wealth.
Cultural factors have been extremely important in Caricom’s relationship with Haiti. They have fueled the response of the Caricom Single Market and Economy at a geopolitical level, and concerned ways of dealing with the troublesome issue of illegal migration. They have involved literature, art, theatre and linguistics.
The country once known as Saint-Domingue is honoured for the Haitian Revolution, the only totally successful rebellion of the enslaved in history. Enslaved Africans, in 1803, led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, rose up against their French masters, freeing themselves from slavery and setting up an independent state. They not only won victory over Napoleon Bonaparte, but outmanoeuvred other European powers, such as Spain, that took an interest in the situation in the face of the defeat of the French. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, ruler at the time of independence, named the new nation Haiti, which actually returned Saint-Domingue to its original Arawak name – Ayiti.
The rest of the Caribbean has always honoured Haiti as a model of resistance and a hero against colonialism. This is strengthened by the great respect the Patois-speaking nation enjoys for its postcolonial cultural power. Haiti is held in awe by its English-speaking neighbours for the depth and richness of its African cultural, traditional survivals. It celebrates a co-existence and a mixture of almost pure African, creolised and indigenous Haitian traditions and hybrid Roman Catholic influences. Some aspects of these cultural and spiritual traditions, of which Vodun, the voodoo spiritual belief and practice is the best known, are world famous, attracting tourists and anthropological interests.
The further off-shoots of this religion and the wider range of cultural traditions are to be found in art and theatrical performances. The visual arts are strongly informed by those African religious roots so that Haitian art, especially painting and sculpture, has indigenous characteristics and motifs that have magnetised tourist interest and has even moved over into craft and the work of local artisans.
But nothing on the Caribbean stage is more intriguing than Haitian dance powered by the indigenous spiritual traditions. Traditional performances are inflamed by the mythology, the ritual and the magical and the dance theatre of Haiti often offers choreography charged by those deep meanings and influences which mesmerise western audiences. For these, the country has won the respect of the Caricom region.
This has helped the less celebratory attributes of modern Haitian existence to be better or more sympathetically received by the countries in the CSME. This includes the long history of emigration by Haitians, whether legally or illegally, escaping poverty or political oppression. It includes the unwholesome heritage of the two Duvalier regimes – the dictatorship of Dr Francois Duvalier, trained as a medical doctor (nicknamed Papa Doc), 1957 – 1971, succeeded by his son Jean Claude Duvalier (nicknamed Baby Doc), 1971 – 1986. These reigns were the push factors of much emigration. But not even the ousting of Baby Doc in 1986 rescued Haiti from political instability, as even the rule of democratically-elected presidents, like Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was interrupted by unrest.
The cycle of adversity continued to win a wealth of goodwill for Haiti from Caricom because of its special place in Caribbean consciousness. There was a particularly wide range of assistance and regional cooperation in education and immigration following the horrendous and tragic 2010 earthquake.
Haiti won even more respect in 2015 when it hosted Carifesta XII in spite of the fact that it was still trodding the long road of recovery from the earthquake. This was more significant since few countries, and none of the English-speaking ones, were willing to host it at the time. For five years after Guyana in 2008, the festival could not find a host until Suriname took it on in 2013, followed by Haiti in 2015. That was quite a laudable achievement, and what was remarkable was the great interest shown by the local population who filled the audiences in a number of accessible, neighbourhood performance venues, despite the language barrier.
Further, in the field of culture, the story of Haiti is captured in literature by Haitian novelists such as Edwidge Danticat and Myriam Chancy, as well as leading West Indian writers. Danticat, resident in the USA, is a leading Haitian novelist whose work explores both the folk culture and the nightmares of the Haitian experience. Among her foremost works are Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), The Farming of Bones (1998), The Dew Breaker (2004) and Claire of the Sea Light (2013). Quite a bit of the worst of the dark years of the Duvalier regime is reflected in her writing. This involves the notorious Tonton Macoute, a police force and feared death squad that was one of the diabolic creations of Papa Doc. Danticat takes readers through terrors, as well as some of the beliefs and traditions and the dynamic contact between Haiti and the outside society.
These relations are also explored by Chancy, also resident in North America, whose novel The Loneliness of Angels (2010) was the first winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature Caribbean Award. It explores contemporary Haitian society through a lens that also captures an historical perspective, with a certain amount of social realism, the supernatural and crime.
The English Caribbean’s response to Haiti is captured in drama. Among the latest experiments in modern theatre was a play Here’s My Ass; Now Try To Whip It by Rawle Gibbons done by the UWI, St Augustine in 2011 as part of a project called “JOUVAY AYITI” which proposed a new relationship with Haiti as central to Caribbean nationhood. It described Haiti as the “Mudder of Civilisation” and bolstered its pro-Haiti theme by adopting an extremely successful and effective audience integration. Its title was taken from a slogan used by President Aristide’s supporters at a time when he was struggling to regain his presidency.
Other highly celebrated works are those by C L R James and Derek Walcott. James’ The Black Jacobins (1936) is a major study of the history of the Haitian Revolution, which includes a somewhat Marxist viewpoint. It plays on a number of issues, including the heroic, the humorous, the ironic, the tragic and the working class. This approach summarises the attitude to Haiti which typifies the Anglophone Caribbean, and loudly celebrates Haiti’s and Toussaint’s heroic achievements. But it also takes an ironic view of the foot soldiers, the field slaves in the revolution playing at being Jacobins in the French Revolution. Worse than that, the irony moves to a study of the Eurocentric, superficial, tyrannical Dessalines as he declares Haiti a republic, severing the country from slavery and colonialism, but at the same time crowning himself Emperor. It speaks well to the ironies of Haiti today, which mixes historical triumph with contradictions.
Walcott walks a similar path with the play Haytian Earth, which was revised at UWI St Augustine in 2003 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Haitian Revolution. Walcott picked up the history where James laid it down, exposing in stark, satirical terms, the dictatorship of Emperor Dessalines, succeeded by that of Emperor Henri Christophe. At Christophe’s coronation, the people of Haiti uttered a cry: “No more kings! No more kings!”. Walcott dramatises the rape of Haiti by its presumed liberators Dessalines and Christophe. These dramas bring together the triumphant and the tragic in the history of Haiti.
President Moise has been murdered, marking a cycle of traumatic events (an interesting coincidence: Moise was the name of the most progressive of Toussaint’s three lieutenants during the revolution and he was controversially killed during the rebellion. The other two were Dessalines and Christophe). It is a history that is somewhat echoed in the present. But overriding most of that is the contemporary attitude to Haiti as demonstrated in the CSME. In the context of the Caribbean which suffered colonialism and slavery, is Haiti a counry that is central to Caribbean nationhood?
