Introduction
Sovereignty and Ownership from the Inside and Out
The question “Who owns Haiti?” creates a stir when it is asked in public. It created such a stir when it was posed at a symposium entitled “Who ‘Owns’ Haiti? Sovereignty in a Fragile State, 2004–2014” held at George Washington University in the Elliott School of International Affairs. Soon after, the question was under discussion on radio airwaves in Port-au-Prince and among policy makers, analysts, scholars, Haitian Americans, and others who follow Haiti’s foreign and domestic affairs. Those who posited answers ranged from the deeply reflective to the simplistic and cynical. Among the latter were those who stated that “we own nothing.” Others insisted that of course Haitians own Haiti. Among the deeply reflective were those who pointed out the complexities inherent in the question that made clear and full answers difficult if not impossible. They pointed to uneven power relationships between Haiti and external forces and to the ability of Haitians throughout their history to resist and push back at the stronger powers that asserted themselves with a view toward “owning” Haiti and its people.
External assertions of Haiti’s sovereignty often come wrapped in a package that presents the Caribbean land as a country in turmoil. Images of protests, burning tires, or violence perpetrated by armed groups are powerful in part because they fit into an existing narrative propagated largely by non-Haitians about “the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.” This narrative draws on Haiti as a locale that is the “odd” abomination of everything else rather than an ordinary place (Trouillot 1990b). Through a lens of poverty and violence, “black impoverished masses” are tied to the causes of their own strife. Even the moniker of “the poorest country” belies a focus on Haiti in isolation. Causes are not attached to descriptions of the country’s underdevelopment and poverty, but rather this presentation of Haiti’s economic, social, and political strife is seen as exclusively caused by internal factors. The truth of the matter, however, is that the Caribbean nation’s travail has never been caused wholly by its own internal turmoil. In assessing “ownership” of Haiti, we are compelled to consider the overwhelming evidence that the root of the country’s contemporary sovereignty dilemma is ultimately related not just to its own internal rumbling but also to roles foreign actors played.
This is not a novel analysis: Scholarship and writing on Haiti and by Haitians has in fact continually focused on the machinations of international actors in Haiti (Farmer 1994; Dupuy 2006; Schuller 2012; Gaillard 1981; Casimir 2001). From imperialism and economic extraction to the catastrophes of international aid, the roles of international actors are undeniable. While this edited volume sees Haiti as a specific and particular site, it does so while examining a larger set of international issues.
The chapters in this volume share a critical perspective of international actors but add a crucial reflection. What might we understand about Haiti by considering actions taken by the international community if we view those actions in terms of ownership? Haiti, despite its overwhelmingly negative portrayal, has always been a key target of foreign powers. From occupations to investment and tourism, Haiti is valuable, in both a material and an ideological sense. The desire to own it—in whatever forms that may take—has implications for how Haitians, particularly the majority of “non-elite” Haitians, experience the idea of a sovereign nation. Protests in the streets of Port-au-Prince illustrate the connectedness of all these players: They not only force the Haitian government to pay attention but also send ripples through the hallways of the U.S. Department of State, the White House, and Congress. Smallholding farmers and the urban poor speak through barricades and protests, peaceful demonstrations, and grassroots organizations. They are not unaware of the far-off policy makers who hamper their ability to sell crops at a competitive price, favor imported food, and hamper the electoral process.
This volume attempts to examine this convoluted set of relationships in all of its complexity. From the political meddling that sways election results to the way groups in Haiti assert alternative forms of sovereignty in daily life, this volume considers both infractions of Haiti’s sovereignty and Haitians’ multiple objections. Imagining Haiti’s historic or contemporary lot as the exclusive result of internal turmoil not only accepts an exceedingly myopic analysis, it also denies the very reality of the Black Republic’s more than 200-year history. Given this history and in spite of an unyielding quest by Haitians to assert sovereign control over themselves and their land, ownership of that republic has continually been a matter of struggle and flux.
Since European adventurers first encountered what today is Haiti in the late 1400s, the idea of self-determination and a sovereign space has been fiercely contested. European arrival marked a set of claims about ownership that set the stage for the Haitian revolution. Hispaniola has never been truly isolated from global powers since the arrival of Christopher Columbus. After the demise of the indigenous Taino people at the hands of European conquerors and the diseases they introduced, French colonists eventually claimed ownership of the western third of the island area they called Saint-Domingue and forcibly repopulated it with enslaved Africans, whose ownership they also claimed. Eventually, in a profound act of resistance against the ownership of both land and people, those Africans and their descendants rose up to cast off their physical and colonial bondage.
Contemporary clashes over the ownership of Haiti and its political, economic, and social fabric take place against a backdrop of this most remarkable assertion of sovereignty when, over 200 years ago, Haitian independence was vociferously declared by those who made revolutionary change that was seen as “unimaginable” at the time (Trouillot 1990a). Haiti’s 1804 triumph over France forced the western world to truly consider the liberal ideals of liberté, egalité, and fraternité. Adding to this were Haitians’ assertions of two new sets of liberties: the humanity and freedom of previously enslaved Africans and the radical notion that self-rule by formerly enslaved people was both possible and just. The victors of that revolutionary struggle underscored these ideas when they expelled remaining Frenchmen, made foreign ownership of their land illegal, abolished the very notion of one human being owning another, and invoked a Taino name for their new nation: Ayiti. At the heart of the revolution were acts that expelled foreign influence. Similarly, Haiti’s leaders asserted themselves with the creation of their flag: a blue and red banner made by the removal of the symbolically laden white stripe of the French tricolor. Such fundamental symbols of nationhood—a name and a flag—powerfully reinforced the idea of a Haiti free from foreign control.
But almost immediately in the postcolonial period, concepts of sovereignty and ownership became contentious. There is no doubt that Haitians’ dominion, autonomy, authority, and self-determination over their space has been assaulted and eroded since the initial glow of revolutionary triumph. In the moments following independence, political factions in the new republic conspired to create multiple and contradictory systems of government. Despotic leaders, such as Henri Christophe, a father of Haiti’s independence, invoked such titles as “emperor” and “king.” Christophe reinstated forced labor and built the famous Citadelle Laferrière with the work of purportedly “free” Haitian laborers. He thus asserted his sovereignty through a monopoly of power and violence at the expense of the sovereignty and freedom of the individual.
International actors continued to impinge upon Haiti’s self-dominion as they envied Haitian labor and natural resources, seeing them both as accessible and exploitable. The French intruded upon self-dominion not only in the form of merchants, diplomats, adventurers, and missionaries but also, as Amy Wilentz pointed out in her foreword to this volume, in the shape of debilitating economic retribution. Haiti’s century-long payment of a post-independence indemnity to France was the path France required for recognition of the nation’s sovereignty, one that robbed the country of desperately needed capital and incapacitated its future.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, new external actors, most notably the United States, became dominant forces over the small republic’s political, social, and economic life. Complete external ownership of an independent nation and its people is a clear marker of such struggles. The U.S. military occupation from 1915 to 1934 is the most unconcealed example of a breach of Haiti’s sovereignty (Bellegarde-Smith 1990). Road building and land clearing during the U.S. occupation were done by the despised corvée chain gangs. For many Haitians, this labor form meant that the individual freedoms of the revolution had yet again receded into the past (Renda 2001). If we measure contentment by popular protests and uprisings since that occupation, it becomes evident that increasingly Haitians conclude that the postcolonial promise of freedom, autonomy, and a better life is still incomplete. Interventions in 1994 and 2004 by UN-mandated and U.S.-supported multilateral forces (which prominently included Canadian and, in 2004, French soldiers) are more recent examples of overt, militarized violations of Haiti’s space.
In the ten years since its 2004 bicentennial of independence—the time frame on which this volume focuses—Haiti has witnessed a series of events that have raised further questions about its ownership. The “international community”—a term for bilateral and multilateral entities that now totes a profoundly negative connotation in Haiti—has been at the center of a series of political and economic scandals that have unfolded much like dominoes toppling upon each other. Haiti’s third century of independence, for example, began with its elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, forcibly flown out of the country on a U.S.-chartered aircraft after internal strife yielded a coup d’état that international powers facilitated, most prominently the United States (Dupuy 2006).
France and Canada also played crucial roles in Aristide’s controversial ouster. As the 2004 coup was still unfolding, French and Canadian troops were dispatched to Haiti to join U.S. troops in what quickly became a UN multilateral force. France’s support of Aristide’s removal was widely attributed to French hatred of the Haitian leader, who had insisted that the indemnity Haiti had paid to the former colonizer be returned with interest, a sum of some $21 billion. The presence of Canadian troops in the 2004 multinational force was not surprising in view of the lead role Canada had taken in organizing the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti” in early 2003. The initiative united U.S., French, and Canadian diplomats who took the lead in discussing Haiti’s future, incredibly in the absence of any representatives of Haiti’s government. While French involvement in the multilateral force epitomized an echo of colonialism, the presence of Canadian troops was a more recent engagement, swayed by a well-established and influential Haitian Diaspora population that lived principally in the province of Quebec.
Concurrent with the 2004 departure of Aristide, Haiti witnessed the transformation of the multilateral force into the UN Stabilization Mission for Haiti (MINUSTAH) that, while arguably maintaining a modicum of political stability, has also brought great harm to Haitians. In 2010 its soldiers introduced a deadly strain of cholera that by April 2014 had not only killed 8,562 Haitians and sickened more than 600,000 others but had also left a mark on the country into the foreseeable future as a killer lurking in its rivers and streams (Archibold and Sengupta 2014; Morrison and Charles 2015). In late 2015, the UN Security Council approved a resolution extending MINUSTAH to at least October 2016, assuring the continuity of international military presence for a total of more than a decade (United Nations Security Council 2015).
In response to the continual onslaught of international control, in the runup to the presidential elections of 2010–2011, several candidates voiced the idea that if elected, they would seek to expand Haiti’s sovereign space. Yet that election would come to be symbolic of the very foreign involvement these erstwhile national leaders argued against. By interfering with internal electoral processes, including the vote count, the U.S. government and the Organization of American States (OAS) lent their power—whether deliberately or not—to one particular candidate, Michel Martelly, setting the stage for his election in what many Haitians believe was a less-than-democratic outcome (Joseph 2014). Five years later, these same international intruders found themselves attempting to convince the ill-reputed Martelly regime to hold long-delayed local, municipal and parliamentary elections. These external impositions in Haitian affairs may be made in the spirit of upholding Haitian constitutionality, but they are widely viewed in Haiti as yet another manifestation of heavy-handed outside interference.
The primacy of international actors in Haiti over the past ten years does not stop with the presence of foreign soldiers or intrusion into elections. As the chapters of this volume demonstrate, that influence extends to the country’s political process, economic policies, and development strategies. It also extends to forms of social organization and religious practice, as individuals and institutions of different stripes have steadfastly sought access to or control over the land and its people in order to own Haiti, or at least certain aspects of it. While the motives of those seeking access to Haiti’s space and people are not all necessarily sinister, they continually promote a set of practices based on material or discursive ownership. These include orphanages and charities that market Haiti’s poverty for their own well-being and aggrandizement (Schwartz 2008) and businessmen who use its peoples’ desperation to amass profits. External religious messengers regularly descend on Haiti to compete quite literally for Haitian souls. Who flying to Haiti from the United States has not witnessed well-meaning church groups sporting matching T-shirts bearing “Hope for Haiti” slogans?
What about the motives of scholars and researchers whose subtle imposition of seemingly unending studies on Haiti can treat the country and its people as little more than an experimental space? This question is particularly pertinent to the authors of this volume and many who will read it. Researchers’ desires to write papers that will advance careers, matched by attempts to own ideas about Haiti in English-language publications, are far too often divorced from consideration of what is owed the Haitian collaborators who facilitated the studies and data collection in the first place.
The incessant onslaught of foreign individuals and organizations and their strategies, mandates, ideas, and actions are not always enacted in isolation from Haitian counterparts. Sometimes there are willing Haitian collaborators; other times there are not. On occasion, those who are unwilling to yield enact practices of subterfuge or cooptation, commonly known in Haiti as mawonaj, in order to maintain a semblance of ownership and protect their sovereign rights. Externally imposed development projects that introduce unwelcome practices gain support among well-paid Haitian technicians, enlist participation through wage payments, and are abandoned as soon as the money runs out.
Always, the ebb and flow of who gets access to and control over resources and people takes place in a highly complex context. An important theme coursing through the symposium was the idea that for every case of attempted ownership of Haiti and its people, there are powerful reminders of the way Haiti cannot be owned. In the midst of diverse infractions of sovereignty, there are continual countermoves from Haitians. Foreigners who are interested in buying and owning Haitian land, for example, are countered by unique, defensive land tenure practices (see Dubois, this volume). Similarly, when international designers attempt to own or profit from the material culture of Haiti, Haitian artisans engage in continually diffuse acts of expression to ensure their ownership of uniquely Haitian art and its production. Whereas religious messengers from Europe and the United States have long attempted to expunge the perceived evils of Haitian Vodou for what they argue are the superior rewards of Christianity, the continually changing and decentralized nature of Vodou enables its devotees to maintain opportunities to serve the spirits (see Richman, this volume). Rural and urban social movements, both small and large, have long found ways of challenging, dissuading, and even co-opting foreign powers and domestic elites that aim to assert their social and cultural mores. These movements, be they peasant or labor groups, urban neighborhood organizations, or grassroots political movements, are particularly adept at creating multiple manifestations of their own sovereignty, including the aforementioned mawonaj, to ensure its protection and maintenance.
The general concept of sovereignty itself is in constant flux. Among scholars who ponder this on a universal scale, the concept no longer applies exclusively to the idea of fixed borders on the basis of which a state or ruler exercises sovereignty based upon a monopoly of violence, as per Max Weber’s analysis (2009). As Litzinger argues, “The uncertainty and instability of the concept owes much to processes usually associated with globalization, especially those which are undermining the foundations of national sovereignty” (2006, 69). No longer are the borders of the nation-state the most important aspects of a critical examination of sovereignty. Historic representations of sovereignty have often fallen prey to simplistic representations of “western” state governments facing off against the “traditional” groups embodying notions of agency and resistance.
Conversations about sovereignty have been illuminated, and long challenged, by the critical thought in a variety of venerable and detailed ethnographic and historic accounts of life and power relationships in the Caribbean (Wolf 1982; Mintz 1985; Hansen and Stepputat 2006; Lewis 2012a). From the devastation of indigenous people through the rise of transatlantic slavery and authoritarian colonial rule, the history of the Caribbean has been one of loss and a quest to reclaim sovereignty (Lewis 2012b). Defying ideas of a sovereign and controlling nation state, planters—not states—powerfully exercised control over both space and people in the colonial Caribbean (Mintz 1985). The literal possession of people in slave-based regimes challenges assertions of supposedly sovereign state power. Philosophical examinations of the colonial Caribbean illuminate a broader conception of sovereignty that is tied to the life of the individual. Frantz Fanon ([1952] 2008; [1961] 2007), for example, considers the psychological impacts of the profound personal loss of those subjugated by a process of colonization that annihilates not only self-government but also selfhood. He argues that those who were colonized became mere objects in the eyes of those ruling over them and therefore advocates a decolonization of both self and society. Similarly focusing on the intersection of government and subject, Fanon’s mentor, Aimè Césaire, examined similar impacts of colonialism (Césaire [1950] 2001), vehemently critiquing its political economy. Yet Césaire envisioned an alternative type of sovereignty in reaction to the disenfranchisement of colonial subjects when he advocated a change in the relationship of individual to the state that would transform previously colonial subjects into full citizens of the French Republic.
Within the Caribbean, Haiti in particular has illuminated much about global political economy and the nature of sovereignty. Simply considering the Caribbean nation’s history shakes otherwise stable definitions of the way sovereignty is conceived. Anthropologist Michel Rolf Trouillot (1990b) famously argued that scholars should stop representing Haiti in exceptional terms. By representing the Caribbean nation as a place unlike any other, scholars relegate it to margins of analysis. Such interpretations veil the colonial and neocolonial practices that have led to Haiti’s contemporary political and economic trials. In short, Trouillot argues that we should come to see Haiti not as the exception but as an “ordinary” outcome of the globalized political and economic system.
Anthropologist Yarimar Bonilla (2013) extends Trouillot’s analysis to sovereignty in the broader Caribbean. Neither in the past nor in the present, she asserts, have traditional concepts of sovereignty and autonomous nation-states been characteristic of the Caribbean. Full of seeming exceptions to sovereignty—Guantánamo in Cuba, privately owned islands, the political status of Puerto Rico, the overseas French departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe—the Caribbean cases might easily be dismissed in favor of a more simplistic idea of sovereign nation-states. Yet the Caribbean, Bonilla argues, must be considered as an “ordinary” element of a global economic and political system. The region is not an exception to traditional renditions of sovereignty but rather presents realities that unmask the very instability of the concept itself. As Bonilla insists, “[Sovereignty] has not, and has never been, what it claims to be” (2013, 156, emphasis in original).
More recent debates on the manifestation of sovereignty have incorporated an analysis of the contemporary global economic order. As related to Haiti, this debate centers on such issues as its placement in the larger world system of economic extraction and structural violence (Farmer 1994, 1996). As Fatton notes in this volume, neoliberal actors such as nongovernmental organizations, international financial institutions, and transnational capitalists impose economic orders and challenge theories of power that rely on the neatly bounded nation-state as the primary source of control. Such analysts of the Haiti context as Farmer and Fatton surely would find themselves in accord with the assessment of aboriginal activist Bobby Sykes, who asks: “What? Post-colonialism? Have they left?” (Smith 1999).
Questions of ownership are fundamental to any examination of sovereignty. Uncertainties about who controls what and when blur the ostensibly neat lines created by diplomatic relations based on the idealized sovereign “nationstate.” In their review of sovereignty, Hansen and Stepputat (2006) ask us to move away from simple ideas of legal sovereignty and toward a discussion of the daily notions of justice—a move toward a tentative and negotiated form of authority that occurs on multiple levels. Such queries and recommendations highlight the complexity of the concept that is the foundation of this volume. These provocative thoughts and definitions are at the heart, for example, of Kivland’s consideration in this volume of manifestations of sovereign expression in the forms of protection and democracy in a poor Port-au-Prince neighborhood and Richman’s analysis of the constant battle for religious converts that occurs throughout Haiti. They are also apparent in Freeman’s chapter on the realities of international aid that beseeches us to ponder how activities previously relegated to state governments have been absorbed into the work of aid organizations.
These weighty considerations suggest that the definition of sovereignty is far from clear. Indeed, its meaning is subject to constant change that takes place over diverse landscapes. The chapters that follow consider history, political science, economics, development studies and anthropology in order to understand how the very idea of ownership of Haiti is asserted and resisted. Ranging from analyses of religion, rural labor, and urban gangs to history, political expression, and international policies, this volume provides fresh material that can advance discussions of the evolving nature of sovereignty worldwide in the twenty-first century. The authors provide a broad and profound understanding of historical and contemporary Haiti in the context of its ownership. If, as many of them contend, a multitude of externally driven infractions have impinged deeply on Haiti’s sovereign space, then it is incumbent upon us to identify and analyze the diverse forces that threaten Haitian sovereign expression.
Organization of the Volume
Following this introductory chapter, Laurent Dubois, in chapter 2, takes a historical perspective, considering the question of sovereignty as rooted in the Haitian Revolution. He argues that because the French colony of Saint-Domingue was organized around the social and economic structures of slavery and the plantation, it profoundly lacked both personal and national sovereignty. During the revolution, new institutions were forged to ensure the continuity of newly gained freedoms. Most significant for Dubois are the ideas of a “counter-plantation” society: the values, procedures, and processes that were forged during the Haitian Revolution itself. As residents of postcolonial Haiti crafted institutions and practices designed to curb the return of a plantation in any form, they made it a place of remarkable and diverse sovereignties. Yet from these profound beginnings come troubling challenges and international interventions.
In chapter 3, Robert Fatton implores us to critically examine the label of “failed state” and the assumptions that go along with it. He argues that Haiti’s economic structure and performance cannot be understood or explained by merely domestic factors but must be understood in relation to the impositions of neoliberal economic policy. Most important for Fatton is the fact that the disintegration of social welfare in Haiti and its economic decline are direct results of economic and political decisions imposed by l’international—the ill-reputed international community. This examination of the supposed logic of neoliberalism clarifies the uses of particular economic policies and how they benefit some groups over others. The near-imperial imposition of such policies has consistently benefited foreign institutions and actors while contributing to Haiti’s marginalized position in the “outer periphery.”
Chapter 4 details the complexities of U.S. pressures on Haitian domestic politics as François Pierre-Louis examines the realities of hegemonic hemispheric tactics. The relationship between domestic politics and international actors, he argues, is not simply a matter of the United States’ imposition of its will on Haiti. Rather, collaborations are necessary between U.S. officials and Haitian elites who broadly share political ideologies and goals. By examining the 2010 elections and the rise of Martelly as a viable candidate for president, Pierre-Louis presents us with a case that demonstrates how political maneuvers are no longer conducted in smoky diplomatic backrooms, prodding us to think about how agreements between local elites and foreign powers attempt to dislodge members of the voting public from their ownership of decision-making power.
In chapter 5, Ricardo Seitenfus extends the analysis of international actors to focus on the role Brazil and its neighbors played in the 2004 fall of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the creation of the military force that would become MINUSTAH. As he examines how Latin America more broadly moved from a position of nonintervention to one aggressively supporting UN military action, Seitenfus argues that it is crucial to understand the broader political movements that precipitated both Brazil’s decisions and its eventual leadership role in MINUSTAH and its preceding change of position on Aristide. As divisions in the Haitian political left created a growing distance between Latin America and Aristide, the internal politics of the São Paulo Forum became significant in determining the degree of engagement of Brazil and its Latin American neighbors. Seitenfus offers an opportunity to break out of mere discursive critiques through an understanding of the intersections of specific political movements as they pertain to Haiti.
Any examination of ideas of ownership and sovereignty would be incomplete without a rigorous critique of aid in Haiti. In chapter 6, Robert Maguire examines both the discourse and reality of U.S. foreign assistance to Haiti, which has lately become a paradigmatic case of ineffective aid and proposed reform. Many critiques of U.S.-based aid initiatives, including from within the Obama administration, focus on the top-down nature of aid initiatives and the prevalence of “beltway bandit” contractors as the real beneficiaries of aid contracts. While the U.S. government’s response to the earthquake includes a framework designed to increase ownership in the receiving country, Maguire demonstrates how the Haitian government was continually kept on the margins while lucrative post-earthquake contracts were routed to U.S.-based NGOs and for-profit contractors. Even small social programs run by the Martelly administration seem to be rerouting aid benefits back to the United States through food imports. This analysis exposes the differences between a discursive shift to “Haitian ownership” and the realities of a U.S.-centric aid institution.
Chapter 7 asks the important question “Who owns Haiti’s religion?” Karen Richman demonstrates how the complex interplay of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Vodou is not at all separate from international meddling. While Catholics “owned” the spiritual terrain in Haiti until the mid-twentieth century, Protestant evangelism has become an increasingly important part of Haiti’s spiritual, social, and political landscape. Richman demonstrates how the opening of Haiti to American Protestantism led to new possibilities for spiritual and moral influence and created prospects for the erosion of the Haitian state when such typical state responsibilities as education were ceded to missionaries. Richman demonstrates that even in the realm of religion, Haiti’s sovereignty is constantly in question as it becomes the domain of international involvement. Despite Catholic and Protestant efforts to marginalize and eliminate Vodou, the indigenous spiritual beliefs and practices have not been stymied. Adaptive ways for Haitians to serve the spirits demonstrate that even state-sanctioned efforts to stamp out such practices are likely to fall short of their goal.
In chapter 8, Scott Freeman discusses aspects of sovereignty and solidarity as practiced by rural labor groups. He notes how the histories of environmental aid have often been based on the insertion of foreign funds at the discretion of foreign “experts.” Since the arrival of development institutions in Haiti in the mid-twentieth century, soil conservation has been part of many environmental conservation projects. Often ignoring larger systemic causes of degradation, experts have continually recommended a set of practices that attempt to pay wages to Haitian rural labor groups when they implement soil conservation measures. Despite these incentives, farmers rarely if ever do the specific interventions of their own accord. Freeman argues that in this context, smallholding farmers do not choose not to adopt externally imposed practices because they do not understand them but rather because of a conceptual distinction between the individualized work that aid interventions sponsor and the collective agriculture groups practice in the countryside. Rural localities thus become a setting for indigenous labor groups’ engagement with (and often rejection of) imposed external aid designs.
Chapter 9 introduces the idea of sovereignty as contemplated in neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince. Chelsey Kivland argues that the concept of respect is paramount in Haitian conceptions of sovereignty, using informal street organizations known as baz to illustrate how sovereign space is maintained in urban settings. Often marginalized or dismissed as merely “gangs,” baz are brokers of development between NGOs and the neighborhoods that they control. As such, they are fundamentally a part of the larger issues of sovereignty contemplated in this volume. Kivland demonstrates how these neighborhood groups became key players in the distribution of aid as development projects entered their neighborhoods in the post-earthquake context. Unlikely intermediaries, these groups simultaneously play the roles of the state, grassroots organizations, and pseudomilitary power brokers. As such, they provide insights into Haiti’s “fragile” circumstance, suggesting that we must look to more localized notions of sovereign organization if we are to understand not only contemporary urban challenges but also possible ways of strengthening sovereignty at the national scale.
Chapter 10, the volume’s conclusion, emanates from a post-symposium discussion among panelists and moderators as they sought to synthesize and expand the gathering’s emergent themes with a view toward achieving three goals: better analyzing issues pertaining to Haitian sovereignty, identifying obstacles to and opportunities for reforming relationships with international actors in order to achieve an expansion of the country’s sovereign space, and identifying recommendations for action.
Throughout Haiti’s history, foreign forces, institutions, and individuals have attempted time and again to exert some form of possession over Haiti and its people. They have also sought to undercut a fundamental idea of Haiti’s historic sovereignty: the universal embrace of freedom and human dignity and the accordance of honor and respect to its land and all those who occupy it. An array of foreign actors, including missionaries, aid workers, diplomats, and contractors harbor the arrogant conceit that they know what Haitians need and what is best for their country. This attitude seems to fit neatly into the antiquated ideologies of colonialism cast off in that land more than 200 years ago. Yet infractions on Haiti’s sovereignty—both large and small—continue unabated.
Intrusions by armed soldiers and pushy diplomats are easy, clear targets for a critique of sovereignty and ownership. More difficult is an analysis of sovereignty and infringements upon it as measured by the less clear notion of how the “idea” of Haiti is used. Within these pages are considerations of the ownership of Haiti as seen through an array of issues, domains, and magnitudes of both infractions and assertions. Those considerations reflect the limits of sovereignty and ownership and as how Haitians experience and respond to infractions of them. All of this is part of the complex response to “Who owns Haiti?” a question that inevitably appears unanswerable.
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