Review of Haiti: State Against Nation

As I continue to read Haiti: State Against Nation (1990) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot, a Haitian anthropologist and historian, I am very impressed with his insights and wisdom.  I think I am ready to call this book a masterpiece, on the level with The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.  Jean Thomas, have you read this book?

This is a book about how an Haitian elite---military, political, urban and merchant---have combined to oppress and exploit the rural peasant farmers.  Often in collusion with foreign, including U.S., merchants.  "The Duvalierist state emerged as the result of a long-term process that was marked by an increasing disjuncture between political and civil society."

Trouillot's sentiment seem to be on the side of the oppressed peasants as is indicated by this last sentence in his book; "The peasantry IS the nation."

Trouillot elaborates:

"Agricultural goods produced with the simplest means by a growing peasantry constituted the bulk of the country's exports, with coffee being by far the leading product.  Peasant crops and imported consumer goods were the mainstay of local economic exchange.  Taxes collected at the customhouses and ultimately borne by the peasantry provided the bulk of government revenues.  Profit made from the peasantry contributed a large share to the returns garnered by an import-export elite that was dominated by foreign nationals and unconcerned with local production. . . . the urban elites who gravitated around that state pushed the rural majority into the margins of political life.  Peasants were the economic backbone of the nation; yet peasants had no claim whatsoever on the state."

The Historical Legacy: Nationalism and Dependency

"Four fundamental traits characterized French colonial Haiti: slavery, dependence, commodity production for export, and the plantation regime.  The society embodied internal contradictions that were ultimately irreconcilable: between slavery and freedom, dependence and independence, export commodities and foodstuffs, plantations and garden plots."

All Haitians agreed they wanted an end to slavery and domination by France---political freedom.  But they did not agree on who should control the economic system and how it should be organized---economic justice.  To prevent economic collapse, the military leaders wanted to continue the plantation system and the export of sugar.  In other words, essentially continue the French system which came to be dubbed state controlled 'militarized agriculture.'  Most freed slaves
did not want to have anything to do with the old plantation system, if they had another option.

The slaves, now the freed peasant farmers, had been allowed private garden plots to grow their own food.  Now they wanted private, small scale farming to be expanded, including growing coffee for export.  State controlled plantations versus small scale peasant farming---two radically different forms of economic justice.

The plantation system slowly faded.  Then the Haitian state turned to controlling the customs taxes---fees on imports and exports.  This became the new source of state revenues and the new system of  oppression---discriminatory against the peasants.

Trouillot sums it up this way: "The leaders wanted export crops; the cultivators wanted land and food.  The leaders wanted a country with plantations; the cultivators dreamed of larger garden plots."

The freedom which was highly prized and symbolically important was largely illusionary because it was soon replaced by French debt slavery and a custom taxation system that exploited the peasants.

I would like to end with a comparison of U.S. and Haitian systems of oppression.  Neither were really ended, only redesigned.  In the U.S., slavery was replaced by segregation; then legal segregation by mass incarceration; underlying them all was economic inequality.  In Haiti, French slavery (100 years) was replaced by French debt slavery (for over 100 years); discriminatory customs fees were added to the mix; underlying them all was economic inequality.

In both Haiti and the U.S., we need a NT theology of social evil and social justice.  Key social evil concepts are:  oppression, exploitation, injustice, cosmos or evil social order, powers and authorities which rule the evil social order, and the rich who are greedy and oppressive.

NT words/concepts for social justice:  the kingdom of God versus the cosmos, justice versus oppression, generosity versus greed, and love versus exploitation.

Systems of oppression will never end unless the church has better theology and practice of the kingdom of God as Jubilee justice for the oppressed poor.