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 Cafe
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 Republicaine, 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, conferencier at
the Sorbonne, where his address was received with acclaim, author of
books crowned by the French Academy, and an Officer of the Legion
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 markets, 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 States
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 500,000, 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
over-emphasized. 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!_
_From The Nation of September 25, 1920._