Abstract
This chapter unravels the complicated history of the Haitian army by following an anti-military militant son and his pro-military father as they come into and out of conflicts. This family history disrupts the-state-versus-the-people dichotomy that often characterizes discussions about Caribbean militaries. I show how the Haitian military, and militarized force more generally, can be simultaneously embraced by disenfranchised populations as a source of national, racial pride and a mechanism state terror. For this family and many others, militarized force represents both a political enemy of the black, poor majority and an institutional advocate offering them avenues for social and political mobility.
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Notes
- 1.
Trouillot, Haiti, State against Nation, 87.
- 2.
Laguerre, Military and Society in Haiti.
- 3.
Laguerre, Military and Society in Haiti, 63–83; Trouillot, Haiti, State against Nation, 106.
- 4.
Critiques of the tendency to establish stark dichotomies between national militaries and the population and between foreign militaries and nationalists are well-established. For the former, see Laguerre, Military and Society in Haiti, and for the latter see Kaplan and Pease, Cultures of United States Imperialism; and Neptune, Caliban and the Yankees.
- 5.
I gathered the story featured in this chapter over the course of my extended ethnography of the popular politics and performance traditions in the Bel Air neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The quoted material stems from conversations that unfolded while I followed the everyday lives of neighborhood residents from July 1, 2008, to December 30, 2013. Except for the song lyrics, which were recorded, the remarks cited here were reproduced from field notes. In order to protect confidentiality, the names of informants have been changed. All conversations were in Haitian Creole; they have been translated into English for ease of readability.
- 6.
Trouillot, Haiti, State against Nation, 168–169. It has been estimated that over 60,000 people were murdered over the course of the Duvalier regime. Farmer, Uses of Haiti, 109; James, Democratic Insecurities, 60.
- 7.
Cf. Pierre-Charles, Radiographie d’une dictature.
- 8.
The Haitian term milat is a racial and class category, usually referring to someone who is both light-skinned and of an elevated social class. In other words, it does not refer to someone who is merely of Black and white ancestry, but rather someone who exhibits the phenotypic, social, and cultural characteristics of the elite social class. As the popular proverb teaches, “Nèg rich se milat, milat pòv se nèg” (A rich Black is a milat, a poor milat is a Black).
- 9.
For more on the popular movement and the rise of Aristide, see Aristide, In the Parish of the Poor; Dupuy, Prophet and the Power; Fatton, Haiti’s Predatory Republic; and Wilentz, Rainy Season.
- 10.
Amy Wilentz, “U.S. Regards Aristide as Haiti’s Real Problem,” Los Angeles Times, August 7, 1994.
- 11.
Farmer, Uses of Haiti, 85.
- 12.
It is likely that the Haitian term kadejak derives from the 1906 novel Zoune chez sa ninnaine by Justin Lhérisson.
- 13.
For more, see Averill and Gillis, “Rara in Haiti”; Kivland, “We Make the State”; and McAlister, Rara!
- 14.
The lyrics to this song were recorded on multiple occasions between 2008 and 2013, though it was originally performed in 1994.
- 15.
The role of education in the conflict between the milat and Black classes crystallized in their distinct political slogans. Whereas the milat class based their claim to power in the slogan “Le pouvoir aux plus capables” (power to the most competent), the Black class argued “Le plus grand bien au plus grand nombre” (the greatest good to the greatest number).
- 16.
An important development in the political conflict was Aristide’s demand that France pay US$21 billion to Haiti as reparation for the 1825 indemnity France leveled against Haiti in exchange for diplomatic recognition. (The payment was controlled for inflation from the original 90 million gold francs.) Several analysts cite this request as the decisive factor in why peacekeepers were not deployed until after the 2004 coup.
- 17.
For more, see Sprague, Paramilitarism; and Haiti Support Group, “Interim Government Paves Way for the Return of the Military” (press release), Haiti Support Group, August 20, 2004, http://haitisupportgroup.org/interim-government-paves-way-for-return-of-the-military/.
- 18.
For more on these raids, see Kolbe and Hutson, “Human Rights Abuse.”
- 19.
For the most recent epidemiological statistics on cholera in Haiti, see Pan-American Health Organization and World Health Organization, “Epidemiological Update: Cholera, August 12, 2015,” Pan American Health Organization, www.paho.org/cholera.
- 20.
A 2008 US State Department cable, recently made available through Wikileaks, stated that a “premature departure of MINUSTAH would leave the Preval [sic] government or his successor vulnerable to […] resurgent populist and anti-market economy political forces.” United States Embassy of Haiti, “Why We Need Continuing MINUSTAH Presence in Haiti,” Wikileaks, 2008, http://wikileaks.org/cable/2008/10/08PORTAUPRINCE1381.html. For a fuller discussion, see Bell, Fault Lines, 76.
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Kivland, C. (2017). The Haitian Military as a Family Affair. In: Puri, S., Putnam, L. (eds) Caribbean Military Encounters. New Caribbean Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58014-6_2
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