Table Of ContentHAITI
STATE AGAINST NATION
HAITI
STATE AGAINST NATION
The Origins and Legacy
of Duvalierism
Michel-Rolph Trouillot
Copyright © 1990 by Michel-Rolph Trouillot
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph.
Haiti, state against nation : the origins and legacy of
Duvalierism / Michel-Rolph Trouillot.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-85345-755-7 $28.00—ISBN 0-85345-756-5 (pbk.) ; $12.00
1. Haiti—Politics and government—1934—- 1971. 2. Haiti—Politics
and government— 1971-1986. I. Title
F1927.T76 1990
972.94 dc20 89-27395
: CIP
Monthly Review Press
122 West 27th Street
New York, N.Y. 10001
Manufactured in the United States of America
098765 4321
Truth is always revolutionary.
—Antonto Gramsci
To Czerny and Lyonel
To Pierrot and Evelyne
1005000
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Haitian Chiefs of State 13
Introduction: The Problematic of State and Nation 15
PART 1: THE HISTORICAL LEGACY
1. Nationalism and Dependency:
The Genesis of State and Nation 35
2. A Republic for the Merchants 59
3. The Recurring Crisis 83
4. Culture, Color, and Politics 109
PART 2: THE TOTALITARIAN SOLUTION
. The Transition to Duvalierism 139
. State Against Nation 163
. The Continuities of Duvalierism 186
. The Interrupted March to Democracy 217
DUCOM oN
Notes 231
Bibliography 245
Index 261
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Preface and Acknowledgments
When I first returned to Haiti, three days after Jean-Claude Duvalier’s
departure for exile, I joined in a moment of national euphoria unprece-
dented in Haitian history. I soon became convinced, however, in spite of
the elation that I shared, that few among the urban elites dared to envision
concretely the transformations necessary to ensure popular participation
in state affairs. While members of the lower classes practiced their brand of
summary justice on kin and neighbors associated with the fallen dictator-
ship, the interim government that replaced the Duvaliers protected the
true pillars of the fallen regime, providing them with safe houses or secret
means to flee the country. Meanwhile, many traditional politicians and
professional members of the petty bourgeoisie used the unusual degree of
freedom of expression to position themselves in the upcoming contest for
leadership of the state apparatus. Amid genuine demands for democracy,
many were those who wanted only to emphasize their alleged anti-
Duvalierist credentials or the Duvalierist connections of their potential
competitors. State fetishism, the congenital disease of the Haitian urban
classes, soon obliterated such fundamental issues as the social basis of
Duvalierism, the conditions of its emergence, and the social mechanisms
behind the longevity and resilience of the dictatorship. In short, few
intellectuals, and no political party, even among the progressive ones,
chose to address the multitude of questions that the passing of the Duvalier
dynasty posed to the Haitian people. It was to call attention to some of
these issues, and especially to the tortuous relationship between state and
nation, that I wrote Les Racines historiques de l'état duvaliérien in the
spring of 1986.
The present book was at first intended to bea translation of Racines. But
just as the first book imposed itself on me in the course of an entirely
9
10 Haitz: State Against Nation
different project, so too this work claimed a life of its own. First, as events
unfolded in Haiti they encouraged a stronger phrasing of parts of the
argument and called for the refining of others. Chapter 7 was revised in the
light of current events and I added an entirely new chapter to bring the
book up to date. More important, the book in French was aimed at a
Haitian audience, mainly the intellectual elite. As such, it drew from a
common pool of images, of historical, social, and political references easily
decoded by Haitian urbanites. To present the same argument to an
international audience unfamiliar with Haiti required more than a linguis-
tic transcription. It also meant filling in hundreds of historical and cultural
blanks. It further implied that I make accessible to the reader multiple
points of entry into the discussion on the basis of much reduced assump-
tions about existing understandings. In short, this book required a cultural
translation for which the shift from French to English was but a metaphor.
I need not detail here the lessons I learned, as a practicing anthropolo-
gist, in this peculiar exercise in cultural translation. But the recouching of
the argument in cross-cultural terms forced me to elaborate upon my
conceptualizations. The book benefited from my having to set the state/
nation dichotomy in English, a language within which the equality of these
two words is often assumed. The first chapter in particular was rewritten to
underline the relevance of the theoretical issues beyond the Haitian case.
Similarly, chapter 4, as rewritten, provides the unfamiliar reader with an
introduction to the landscape of color prejudice and social organization in
urban Haiti. More generally, the entire book has been recast with an eye for
tighter conceptualization and greater empirical background.
Les Racines historiques also bore the mark of the ethical and political
stance from which it stemmed. That book was as much a scholarly
argument as it was an appeal to certain sectors of the Haitian elites; as such
it said as much about its author as it did about his audience. I have not tried
to lessen that stance here, but I could not assume the community of interest
on which the original appeal was based. Thus the cultural translation
necessarily implied a muting of voices, notably the first person singular and
the first person plural that are an intrinsic part of the analysis. But if the “I”
and the “us” have disappeared from much of the text as rewritten, there
remains enough within and between the lines for the reader to catch the
dialogue I am engaging in, and indeed to participate if he or she so wishes.
The two books being so intertwined, I cannot but acknowledge here the
