When the truth about the conquest of Haiti--the slaughter of three
thousand and practically unarmed Haitians, with the incidentally
needless death of a score of American boys--begins to filter through the
rigid Administration censorship to the American people, the apologists
will become active. Their justification of what has been done will be
grouped under two heads: one, the necessity, and two, the results. Under
the first, much stress will be laid upon the "anarchy" which existed in
Haiti, upon the backwardness of the Haitians and their absolute
unfitness to govern themselves. The pretext which caused the
intervention was taken up in the first article of this series. The
characteristics, alleged and real, of the Haitian people will be taken
up in a subsequent article. Now as to results: The apologists will
attempt to show that material improvements in Haiti justify American
intervention. Let us see what they are.
Diligent inquiry reveals just three: The building of the road from
Port-au-Prince to Cape Haitien; the enforcement of certain sanitary
regulations in the larger cities; and the improvement of the public
hospital at Port-au-Prince. The enforcement of certain sanitary
regulations is not so important as it may sound, for even under
exclusive native rule, Haiti has been a remarkably healthy country and
had never suffered from such epidemics as used to sweep Cuba and the
Panama Canal region. The regulations, moreover, were of a purely minor
character--the sort that might be issued by a board of health in any
American city or town--and were in no wise fundamental, because there
was no need. The same applies to the improvement of the hospital, long
before the American Occupation, an effectively conducted institution but
which, it is only fair to say, benefited considerably by the regulations
and more up-to-date methods of American army surgeons--the best in the
world. Neither of these accomplishments, however, creditable as they
are, can well be put forward as a justification for military domination.
The building of the great highway from Port-au-Prince to Cape Haitien is
a monumental piece of work, but it is doubtful whether the object in
building it was to supply the Haitians with a great highway or to
construct a military road which would facilitate the transportation of
troops and supplies from one end of the island to the other. And this
represents the sum total of the constructive accomplishment after five
years of American Occupation.
Now, the highway, while doubtless the most important achievement of the
three, involved the most brutal of all the blunders of the Occupation.
The work was in charge of an officer of Marines who stands out even in
that organization for his "treat 'em rough" methods. He discovered the
obsolete Haitian _corvee_ and decided to enforce it with the most modern
Marine efficiency. The _corvee_, or road law, in Haiti provided that
each citizen should work a certain number of days on the public roads to
keep them in condition, or pay a certain sum of money. In the days when
this law was in force the Haitian government never required the men to
work the roads except in their respective communities, and the number of
days was usually limited to three a year. But the Occupation seized men
wherever it could find them, and no able-bodied Haitian was safe from
such raids, which most closely resembled the African slave raids of past
centuries. And slavery it was--though temporary. By day or by night,
from the bosom of their families, from their little farms or while
trudging peacefully on the country roads, Haitians were seized and
forcibly taken to toil for months in far sections of the country. Those
who protested or resisted were beaten into submission. At night, after
long hours of unremitting labor under armed taskmasters, who swiftly
discouraged any slackening of effort with boot or rifle butt, the
victims were herded in compounds. Those attempting to escape were shot.
Their terror-stricken families meanwhile were often in total ignorance
of the fate of their husbands, fathers, brothers.
It is chiefly out of these methods that arose the need for
"pacification." Many men of the rural districts became panic-stricken
and fled to the hills and mountains. Others rebelled and did likewise,
preferring death to slavery. These refugees largely make up the "caco"
forces, to hunt down which has become the duty and the sport of American
Marines, who were privileged to shoot a "caco" on sight. If anyone
doubts that "caco" hunting is the sport of American Marines in Haiti,
let him learn the facts about the death of Charlemagne. Charlemagne
Peralte was a Haitian of education and culture and of great influence in
his district. He was tried by an American courtmartial on the charge of
aiding "cacos." He was sentenced, not to prison, however, but to five
years of hard labor on the roads, and was forced to work in convict garb
on the streets of Cape Haitien. He made his escape and put himself at
the head of several hundred followers in a valiant though hopeless
attempt to free Haiti. The America of the Revolution, indeed the America
of the Civil War, would have regarded Charlemagne not as a criminal but
a patriot. He met his death not in open fight, not in an attempt at his
capture, but through a dastard deed. While standing over his camp fire,
he was shot in cold blood by an American Marine officer who stood
concealed by the darkness, and who had reached the camp through bribery
and trickery. This deed, which was nothing short of assassination, has
been heralded as an example of American heroism. Of this deed, Harry
Franck, writing in the June Century of "The Death of Charlemagne," says:
"Indeed it is fit to rank with any of the stirring warrior tales with
which history is seasoned from the days of the Greeks down to the recent
world war." America should read "The Death of Charlemagne" which
attempts to glorify a black smirch on American arms and tradition.
There is a reason why the methods employed in road building affected the
Haitian country folk in a way in which it might not have affected the
people of any other Latin-American country. Not since the independence
of the country has there been any such thing as a peon in Haiti. The
revolution by which Haiti gained her independence was not merely a
political revolution, it was also a social revolution. Among the many
radical changes wrought was that of cutting up the large slave estates
into small parcels and allotting them among former slaves. And so it was
that every Haitian in the rural districts lived on his own plot of land,
a plot on which his family has lived for perhaps more than a hundred
years. No matter how small or how large that plot is, and whether he
raises much or little on it, it is his and he is an independent farmer.
The completed highway, moreover, continued to be a barb in the Haitian
wound. Automobiles on this road, running without any speed limit, are a
constant inconvenience or danger to the natives carrying their market
produce to town on their heads or loaded on the backs of animals. I have
seen these people scramble in terror often up the side or down the
declivity of the mountain for places of safety for themselves and their
animals as the machines snorted by. I have seen a market woman's horse
take flight and scatter the produce loaded on his back all over the road
for several hundred yards. I have heard an American commercial traveler
laughingly tell how on the trip from Cape Haitien to Port-au-Prince the
automobile he was in killed a donkey and two pigs. It had not occurred
to him that the donkey might be the chief capital of the small Haitian
farmer and that the loss of it might entirely bankrupt him. It is all
very humorous, of course, unless you happen to be the Haitian
pedestrian.
The majority of visitors on arriving at Port-au-Prince and noticing the
well-paved, well-kept streets, will at once jump to the conclusion that
this work was done by the American Occupation. The Occupation goes to no
trouble to refute this conclusion, and in fact it will by implication
corroborate it. If one should exclaim, "Why, I am surprised to see what
a well-paved city Port-au-Prince is!" he would be almost certain to
receive the answer, "Yes, but you should have seen it before the
Occupation." The implication here is that Port-au-Prince was a mudhole
and that the Occupation is responsible for its clean and well-paved
streets. It is true that at the time of the intervention, five years
ago, there were only one or two paved streets in the Haitian capital,
but the contracts for paving the entire city had been let by the Haitian
Government, and the work had already been begun. This work was completed
during the Occupation, _but the Occupation did not pave, and had nothing
to do with the paving of a single street in Port-au-Prince_.
One accomplishment I did expect to find--that the American Occupation,
in its five years of absolute rule, had developed and improved the
Haitian system of public education. The United States has made some
efforts in this direction in other countries where it has taken control.
In Porto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, the attempt, at least, was
made to establish modern school systems. Selected youths from these
countries were taken and sent to the United States for training in order
that they might return and be better teachers, and American teachers
were sent to those islands in exchange. The American Occupation in Haiti
has not advanced public education a single step. No new buildings have
been erected. Not a single Haitian youth has been sent to the United
States for training as a teacher, nor has a single American teacher,
white or colored, been sent to Haiti. According to the general budget of
Haiti, 1919-1920, there are teachers in the rural schools receiving as
little as six dollars a month. Some of these teachers may not be worth
more than six dollars a month. But after five years of American rule,
there ought not to be a single teacher in the country who is not worth
more than that paltry sum.
Another source of discontent is the Gendarmerie. When the Occupation
took possession of the island, it disarmed all Haitians, including the
various local police forces. To remedy this situation the Convention
(Article X), provided that there should be created,--
without delay, an efficient constabulary, urban and rural,
composed of native Haitians. This constabulary shall be
organized and officered by Americans, appointed by the
President of Haiti upon nomination by the President of the
United States.... These officers shall be replaced by Haitians
as they, by examination conducted under direction of a board to
be selected by the Senior American Officer of this constabulary
in the presence of a representative of the Haitian Government,
are found to be qualified to assume such duties.
During the first months of the Occupation officers of the Haitian
Gendarmerie were commissioned officers of the marines, but the war took
all these officers to Europe. Five years have passed and the
constabulary is still officered entirely by marines, but almost without
exception they are ex-privates or non-commissioned officers of the
United States Marine Corps commissioned in the gendarmerie. Many of
these men are rough, uncouth, and uneducated, and a great number from
the South, are violently steeped in color prejudice. They direct all
policing of city and town. It falls to them, ignorant of Haitian ways
and language, to enforce every minor police regulation. Needless to say,
this is a grave source of continued irritation. Where the genial
American "cop" could, with a wave of his hand or club, convey the full
majesty of the law to the small boy transgressor or to some equally
innocuous offender, the strong-arm tactics for which the marines are
famous, are apt to be promptly evoked. The pledge in the Convention that
"these officers be replaced by Haitians" who could qualify, has, like
other pledges, become a mere scrap of paper. Graduates of the famous
French military academy of St. Cyr, men who have actually qualified for
commissions in the French army, are denied the opportunity to fill even
a lesser commission in the Haitian Gendarmerie, although such men, in
addition to their pre-eminent qualifications of training, would, because
of their understanding of local conditions and their complete
familiarity with the ways of their own country, make ideal guardians of
the peace.
The American Occupation of Haiti is not only guilty of sins of omission,
it is guilty of sins of commission in addition to those committed in the
building of the great road across the island. Brutalities and atrocities
on the part of American marines have occurred with sufficient frequency
to be the cause of deep resentment and terror. Marines talk freely of
what they "did" to some Haitians in the outlying districts. Familiar
methods of torture to make captives reveal what they often do not know
are nonchalantly discussed. Just before I left Port-au-Prince an
American Marine had caught a Haitian boy stealing sugar off the wharf
and instead of arresting him he battered his brains out with the butt of
his rifle. I learned from the lips of American Marines themselves of a
number of cases of rape of Haitian women by marines. I often sat at
tables in the hotels and cafes in company with marine officers and they
talked before me without restraint. I remember the description of a
"caco" hunt by one of them; he told how they finally came upon a crowd
of natives engaged in the popular pastime of cock-fighting and how they
"let them have it" with machine guns and rifle fire. I heard another, a
captain of marines, relate how he at a fire in Port-au-Prince ordered a
"rather dressed up Haitian," standing on the sidewalk, to "get in there"
and take a hand at the pumps. It appeared that the Haitian merely
shrugged his shoulders. The captain of marines then laughingly said: "I
had on a pretty heavy pair of boots and I let him have a kick that
landed him in the middle of the street. Someone ran up and told me that
the man was an ex-member of the Haitian Assembly." The fact that the man
had been a member of the Haitian Assembly made the whole incident more
laughable to the captain of marines.
Perhaps the most serious aspect of American brutality in Haiti is not to
be found in individual cases of cruelty, numerous and inexcusable though
they are, but rather in the American attitude, well illustrated by the
diagnosis of an American officer discussing the situation and its
difficulty: "The trouble with this whole business is that some of these
people with a little money and education think they are as good as we
are," and this is the keynote of the attitude of every American to every
Haitian. Americans have carried American hatred to Haiti. They have
planted the feeling of caste and color prejudice where it never before
existed.
And such are the "accomplishments" of the United States in Haiti. The
Occupation has not only failed to achieve anything worth while, but has
made it impossible to do so because of the distrust and bitterness that
it has engendered in the Haitian people. Through the present
instrumentalities no matter how earnestly the United States may desire
to be fair to Haiti and make intervention a success, it will not
succeed. An entirely new deal is necessary. This Government forced the
Haitian leaders to accept the promise of American aid and American
supervision. With that American aid the Haitian Government defaulted its
external and internal debt, an obligation, which under self-government
the Haitians had scrupulously observed. And American supervision turned
out to be a military tyranny supporting a program of economic
exploitation. The United States had an opportunity to gain the
confidence of the Haitian people. That opportunity has been destroyed.
When American troops first landed, although the Haitian people were
outraged, there was a feeling nevertheless which might well have
developed into cooperation. There were those who had hopes that the
United States, guided by its traditional policy of nearly a century and
a half, pursuing its fine stand in Cuba, under McKinley, Roosevelt, and
Taft, would extend aid that would be mutually beneficial to both
countries. Those Haitians who indulged this hope are disappointed and
bitter. Those members of the Haitian Assembly who, while acting under
coercion were nevertheless hopeful of American promises, incurred
unpopularity by voting for the Convention, are today bitterly
disappointed and utterly disillusioned.
If the United States should leave Haiti today, it would leave more than
a thousand widows and orphans of its own making, more banditry than has
existed for a century, resentment, hatred and despair in the heart of a
whole people, to say nothing of the irreparable injury to its own
tradition as the defender of the rights of man.
_From The Nation of September 4, 1920._