-Caveat Lector-
Edited by Jim Zwick
Copyright © 1995-1999 Jim
Zwick
Self-Determining Haiti
IV. The Haitian People
By James Weldon Johnson
The Nation 111 (Sept. 25, 1920).
The first sight of Port-au-Prince is perhaps most startling to the
experienced
Latin-American traveler. Caribbean cities are of the Spanish-American type
--
buildings square and squat, built generally around a court, with residences
and business
houses scarcely interdistinguishable. Port-au-Prince is rather a city of
the French or
Italian Riviera. Across the bay of deepest blue the purple mountains of
Gonave loom
against the Western sky, rivaling the bay's azure depths. Back of the
business section,
spreading around the bay's great sweep and well into the plain beyond, rise
the green
hills with their white residences. The residential section spreads over the
slopes and
into the mountain tiers. High up are the homes of the well-to-do, beautiful
villas set in
green gardens relieved by the flaming crimson of the poinsettia. Despite
the imposing
mountains a man-made edifice dominates the scene. From the center of the
city the
great Gothic cathedral lifts its spires above the tranquil city. Well paved
and clean, the
city prolongs the thrill of its first unfolding. Cosmopolitan yet quaint,
with an old-world
atmosphere yet a charm of its own, one gets throughout the feeling of
continental
European life. In the hotels and cafes the affairs of the world are heard
discussed in
several languages. The cuisine and service are not only excellent but
inexpensive. At
the Café Dereix, cool and scrupulously clean, dinner from hors d’oeuvres to
glaces,
with wine, of course, recalling the famous antebellum hostelries of New
York and
Paris, may be had for six gourdes [$1.25].
A drive of two hours around Port-au-Prince, through the newer section
of brick
and concrete buildings, past the cathedral erected from 1903 to 1912, along
the
Champ de Mars where the new presidential palace stands, up into the Peu de
Choses
section where the hundreds of beautiful villas and grounds of the
well-to-do are
situated, permanently dispels any lingering question that the Haitians have
been
retrograding during the 116 years of their independence.
In the lower city, along the water's edge, around the market and in
the Rue
Républicaine, is the "local color." The long rows of wooden shanties, the
curious little
booths around the market, filled with jabbering venders and with scantily
clad children,
magnificent in body, running in and out, are no less picturesque and no
more primitive,
no humbler, yet cleaner, than similar quarters in Naples, in Lisbon, in
Marseilles, and
more justifiable than the great slums of civilization’s centers -- London
and New York,
which are totally without aesthetic redemption. But it is only the
modernists in history
who are willing to look at the masses as factors in the life and
development of the
country, and in its history. For Haitian history, like history the world
over, has for the
last century been that of cultured and educated groups. To know Haitian
life one must
have the privilege of being received as a guest in the houses of these
latter, and they
live in beautiful houses. The majority have been educated in France; they
are cultured,
brilliant conversationally, and thoroughly enjoy their social life. The
women dress well.
Many are beautiful and all vivacious and chic. Cultivated people from any
part of the
world would feel at home in the best Haitian society. If our guest were to
enter to the
Cercle Bellevue, the leading club of Port-au-Prince, he would find the
courteous,
friendly atmosphere of a men's club; he would hear varying shades of
opinion on public
questions, and could scarcely fail to be impressed by the thorough
knowledge of world
affairs possessed by the intelligent Haitian. Nor would his encounters be
only with
people who have culture and savoir vivre; he would meet the Haitian
intellectuals --
poets, essayists, novelists, historians, critics. Take for example such a
writer as
Fernand Hibbert. An English authority says of him, "His essays are worthy
of the pen
of Anatole France or Pierre Loti." And there is Georges Sylvaine, poet and
essayist,
conférencier at the Sorbonne, where his address was received with acclaim,
author of
books crowned by the French Academy, and an Officer of the Légion
d'Honneur.
Hibbert and Sylvaine are only two among a dozen or more contemporary
Haitian men
of letters whose work may be measured by world standards. Two names that
stand
out preeminently in Haitian literature are Oswald Durand, the national
poet, who died a
few years ago, and Damocles Vieux. These people, educated, cultured, and
intellectual, are not accidental and sporadic offshoots of the Haitian
people; they are
the Haitian people and they are a demonstration of its inherent
potentialities.
However, Port-au-Prince is not all of Haiti. Other cities are smaller
replicas, and
fully as interesting are the people of the country districts. Perhaps the
deepest
impression on the observant visitor is made by the country women.
Magnificent as they
file along the country roads by scores and by hundreds on their way to the
town
market, with white or colored turbaned heads, gold-looped-ringed ears, they
stride
along straight and lithe, almost haughtily, carrying themselves like so
many Queens of
Sheba. The Haitian country people are kind-hearted, hospitable, and polite,
seldom
stupid but rather, quick-witted and imaginative. Fond of music, with a
profound sense
of beauty and harmony, they live simply but wholesomely. Their cabins
rarely consist of
only one room, the humblest having two or three, with a little shed front
and back, a
front and rear entrance, and plenty of windows. An aesthetic touch is never
lacking --
a flowering hedge or an arbor with trained vines bearing gorgeous colored
blossoms.
There is no comparison between the neat plastered-wall, thatched-roof cabin
of the
Haitian peasant and the traditional log hut of the South or the shanty of
the more
wretched American suburbs. The most notable feature about the Haitian cabin
is its
invariable cleanliness. At daylight the country people are up and about,
the women
begin their sweeping till the earthen or pebble-paved floor of the cabin is
clean as can
be. Then the yards around the cabin are vigorously attacked. In fact,
nowhere in the
country districts of Haiti does one find the filth and squalor which may be
seen in any
backwoods town in our own South. Cleanliness is a habit and a dirty Haitian
is a rare
exception. The garments even of the men who work on the wharves, mended and
patched until little of the original cloth is visible, give evidence of
periodical washing.
The writer recalls a remark made by Mr. E. P. Pawley, an American, who
conducts
one of the largest business enterprises in Haiti. He said that the Haitians
were an
exceptionally clean people, that statistics showed that Haiti imported more
soap per
capita than any country in the world, and added, "They use it, too." Three
of the largest
soap manufactories in the United Statea maintain headquarters at
Port-au-Prince.
The masses of the Haitian people are splendid material for the
building of a
nation. They are not lazy; on the contrary, they are industrious and
thrifty. Some
observers mistakenly confound primitive methods with indolence. Anyone who
travels
Haitian roads is struck by the hundreds and even thousands of women, boys,
and girls
filing along mile after mile with their farm and garden produce on their
heads or loaded
on the backs of animals. With modern facilities, they could market their
produce much
more efficiently and with far less effort. But lacking them they are
willing to walk and
carry. For a woman to walk five to ten miles with a great load of produce
on her head
which may barely realize her a dollar is doubtless primitive, and a
wasteful expenditure
of energy, but it is not a sign of laziness. Haiti's great handicap has
been not that her
masses are degraded or lazy or immoral. It is that they are ignorant, due
not so much
to mental limitations as to enforced illiteracy. There is a specific reason
for this.
Somehow the French language, in the French-American colonial settlements
containing
a Negro population, divided itself into two branches, French and Creole.
This is true of
Louisiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and also of Haiti. Creole is an
Africanized French
and must not be thought of as a mere dialect. The French-speaking person
cannot
understand Creole, excepting a few words, unless he learns it. Creole is a
distinct
tongue, a graphic and very expressive language. Many of its constructions
follow
closely the African idioms. For example, in forming the superlative of
greatness, one
says in Creole, "He is great among great men," and a merchant woman,
following the
native idiom, will say, "You do not wish anything beautiful if you do not
buy this" The
upper Haitian class, approximately 600,000, speak and know French, while
the
masses, probably more than 2,000,000 speak only Creole. Haitian Creole is
grammatically constructed, but has not to any general extent been reduced
to writing.
Therefore, these masses have no means of receiving or communicating
thoughts
through the written word. They have no books to read. They cannot read the
newspapers. The children of the masses study French for a few years in
school, but it
never becomes their every-day language. In order to abolish Haitian
illiteracy, Creole
must be made a printed as well as a spoken language. The failure to
undertake this
problem is the worst indictment against the Haitian Government.
This matter of language proves a handicap to Haiti in another manner.
It isolates
her from her sister republics. All of the Latin-American republics except
Brazil speak
Spanish and enjoy an intercourse with the outside world denied Haiti.
Dramatic and
musical companies from Spain, from Mexico and from the Argentine annually
tour all
of the Spanish-speaking republics. Haiti is deprived of all such
instruction and
entertainment from the outside world because it is not profitable for
French companies
to visit the three or four French-speaking islands in the Western
Hemisphere.
Much stress has been laid on the bloody history of Haiti and its
numerous
revolutions. Haitian history has been all too bloody, but so has that of
every other
country, and the bloodiness of the Haitian revolutions has of late been
unduly
magnified. A writer might visit our own country and clip from our daily
press accounts
of murders, robberies on the principal streets of our larger cities, strike
violence, race
riots, lynchings, and burnings at the stake of human beings, and write a
book to prove
that life is absolutely unsafe in the United States. The seriousness of the
frequent
Latin-American revolutions has been greatly overemphasized. The writer has
been in
the midst of three of these revolutions and must confess that the treatment
given them
on our comic opera stage is very little farther removed from the truth than
the treatment
which is given in the daily newspapers. Not nearly so bloody as reported,
their
interference with people not in politics is almost negligible. Nor should
it be forgotten
that in almost every instance the revolution is due to the plotting of
foreigners backed
up by their Governments. No less an authority than Mr. John H. Allen,
vice-president
of the National City Bank of New York, writing on Haiti in the May number
of The
Americas, the National City Bank organ, who says, "It is no secret that the
revolutions
were financed by foreigners and were profitable speculations."
In this matter of change of government by revolution, Haiti must not
be
compared with the United States or with England; it must be compared with
other
Latin American republics. When it is compared with our next door neighbor,
Mexico,
it will be found that the Government of Haiti has been more stable and that
the country
has experienced less bloodshed and anarchy. And it must never be forgotten
that
throughout not an American or other foreigner has been killed, injured or,
as far as can
be ascertained, even molested. In Haiti's 116 years of independence, there
have been
twenty-five presidents and twenty-five different administrations. In
Mexico, during its
99 years of independence, there have been forty-seven rulers and
eighty-seven
administrations. "Graft" has been plentiful, shocking at times, but who in
America,
where the Tammany machines and the municipal rings are notorious, will dare
to point
the finger of scorn at Haiti in this connection.
And this is the people whose "inferiority," whose "retrogression,"
whose
"savagery," is advanced as a justification for intervention -- for the
ruthless slaughter of
three thousand of its practically defenseless sons, with the death of a
score of our own
boys, for the utterly selfish exploitation of the country by American big
finance, for the
destruction of America's most precious heritage -- her traditional fair
play, her sense of
justice, her aid to the oppressed. "Inferiority" always was the excuse of
ruthless
imperialism until the Germans invaded Belgium, when it became "military
necessity." In
the case of Haiti there is not the slightest vestige of any of the
traditional justifications,
unwarranted as these generally are, and no amount of misrepresentation in
an era when
propaganda and censorship have had their heyday, no amount of slander, even
in a
country deeply prejudiced where color is involved, will longer serve to
obscure to the
conscience of America the eternal shame of its last five years in Haiti.
Fiat justitia,
ruat coelum!
James Weldon Johnson (1871-1933) is probably best known today as the author
of
The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man. He was secretary of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and visited Haiti
to
investigate conditions there on its behalf. He later became a vice-chairman
of the
Haiti-Santo Domingo Independence Society, a member of the publications
committee
of the American Fund for Public Service Committee on American Imperialism,
and
served on the national committees of the American Civil Liberties Union and
the
Committee on Militarism in Education.
Citation: Johnson, James Weldon. "Self-Determining Haiti: IV. The Haitian
People." The Nation
111 (Sept. 25, 1920).
http://www.boondocksnet.com/ailtexts/johnson200925.html In Jim Zwick, ed.,
Anti-Imperialism in the United States, 1898-1935.
http://www.boondocksnet.com/ail98-35.html
(April 23, 1999).
Jane Addams
John Dewey
E. San Juan
Amazon.com · Egghead.com · enews.com · Expedia Travel · Reel.com · Value
America
Anti-Imperialism in the United States, 1898-1935, edited by Jim
Zwick.
Copyright © 1995-1999 Jim Zwick. All rights reserved.
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