Conclusion
Reflections on Sovereignty
The goal of this volume, a fairly lofty one, is to consider how ownership and sovereignty have become essential concepts for the examination of contemporary Haiti. Since Haiti’s independence in 1804, both its territory and individuals have been free, perhaps making the question of ownership anachronistic. It is just that sentiment, however, that this volume challenges. Despite the overt semblance of independence, freedom, and self-determination, the chapters of this book point to how sovereignty manifests in Haiti against a far more complex backdrop. The reality is that there are constant challenges to Haitian independence that should give us pause.
Haiti’s status as the first black republic is invoked almost as much as its status as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. A romantic image of independence and complete freedom is deployed almost as an antidote to the depiction of Haiti as both poor and violent. Within this dueling paradigm, what we often miss is that both of these narratives are far more complex. When we refer to the independence of Haiti, we must also note responses to that independence—the racialized isolation led by France and the United States that was intended to suffocate the fledgling republic. We must recall the U.S. occupation as another racially charged action. And we must remember the myriad other moments when international actors have challenged the autonomy of Haiti. Over the ten years preceding this volume, legions of foreign political officials, soldiers, scholars, journalists, so-called experts, and aid workers reported on, worked on, and spoke for Haiti and Haitians. In posing the question of who “owns” Haiti, we follow the tradition of other scholars (see, for example, Farmer 1994) in drawing attention to the fact that Haiti has never been free of international meddling. In doing so, we must draw attention not only to these actions but also to the continual responses by Haitians designed to reclaim and assert their ideas of ownership.
During the symposium that led to this volume, participants from Haiti, the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean—including scholars, civic activists, officials and businesspeople—spent three days discussing the question of who “owns” Haiti. The symposium considered that question in the contexts of politics, history, culture, and the economy, focusing principally on a ten-year period that began with the country’s 2004 bicentennial of independence: 2004–2014.
The idea for the larger discussion arose from a reflection on statements aspiring Haitian presidential candidates made during the 2010–2011 election campaign. These individuals declared that if elected, they would expand their country’s sovereign space. In the aftermath of that election—and even during it—violations of sovereignty continued. Thus, it seems fitting, and arguably necessary, that a symposium focusing on Haitian “ownership” ought to take place in Washington, DC, close to the institutions and individuals that are widely viewed as the primary drivers of those violations.
At the 2014 symposium, speaker after speaker—and in this volume, author after author—documented both infractions of and aspirations to “ownership” and Haitian strategies and actions for deflecting them. Given the contentious and multidimensional nature of Haiti’s sovereignty, it is important to consider how sovereignty has been forged, maintained, modified, or extended by different groups at different times and in different ways. As authors underscore throughout this volume, scholars and practitioners must broaden their consideration of both infractions on sovereignty and efforts to safeguard it and think beyond simple analyses that reify the boundaries of the nation-state. Indeed, neither infractions on Haitian sovereignty nor Haitian responses to them have been monolithic. On one hand, for example, the authors of this volume have demonstrated the varied ways that economic and development policies have been imposed in ways that exclude Haitian participation. On the other, they have shown how rural and urban forms of solidarity are practiced and how spiritual traditions continue despite unending efforts to convert Haitians to other religions. It seems that for every assertion of external ownership there are responses by Haitians that resist or cunningly accommodate external efforts to control.
This concluding chapter, which draws principally from a conversation among the symposium’s speakers and panelists, does not seek a definitive answer to the complicated question of who owns Haiti. Rather, it offers a synthesis of participants’ reflections on contemporary ownership and sovereignty, which frequently juxtaposed questions, concerns, and ideas. These reflections include not just ideas evident in the chapters of the volume but also insights into a larger set of concerns and possibilities that will no doubt course through Haiti’s third century of independence.
Onè—Respè: Honor—Respect
Among many Haitians, especially in the countryside, the practice of calling out “Honor” (Onè) upon entering a front yard, a veranda, or a home earns a response of “Respect” (Respè) from its occupant. This common practice is imbued with a sense of mutual recognition, unity, and acknowledgement of the autonomy of the other. Borrowing from this tradition, each symposium session began with the call and response of onè—respè.
We do not refer to this basic greeting in order to paint an idyllic or inherently politicized vision of a countryside where all are united and social differentiation does not occur. Rather, we present it as a Haitian sense of how mutual recognition can be a primary point of reference. As seen, for example, in Chelsey Kivland’s chapter in this volume, among members of urban baz organizations, respè is invoked in complex ways that touch upon military violence and power, mutual recognition and fear, competition and force. The idea of respect is thus not always embedded in peaceful simplicity. But these complex personal affirmations of respect that occur in Haiti, in both rural and urban areas, seem to be a foundational part of acknowledging the dignity in one another.
While respect is part of a common personal greeting throughout Haiti, symposium participants acknowledged a conspicuous absence of respect in the dealings of international actors in Haiti. This volume raises questions about how institutional actions embody the idea of respect. How does a respect for Haitian institutions or individuals permeate (or not) the actions and ideologies of external and internal institutions? What sort of respect occurs or is absent in the daily actions of l’international who dominate the direction of aid and, very often, Haiti’s domestic affairs? Is there a fundamental acknowledgement of the humanity and self-determination of Haitians, or are relationships founded on paternalistic notions of who knows best? Implicit in these questions is the concept that the legacy of colonialism is not yet over. It does not go unnoticed in Haiti that international entities present there—including the U.S. Agency for International Development, the United Nations, and the U.S. Department of State—have acted with questionable levels of respect.
This analysis, of course, cannot shy away from an examination of Haitian political institutions and actors. As discussed in this volume, many of the machinations of the international community have brought Haitian leaders into power—with or without popular support from Haitian voters. As exemplified by, but not limited to, the regime of Michel Martelly, elite politicians have continually sought self-benefit through power. The political polarization between the executive and legislative branches since the 2010–2011 election emerged in large part as the result of lack of mutual respect and competing interests that seek personal benefit. Domestic political actors face the same critiques we might wage against foreign individuals and institutions: The interests of the elite are prioritized at the expense of those of the poor majority. Yes, symposium participants acknowledged, Haiti is fraught with weak government, inequality, injustice, social and economic dichotomization, a crisis of trust, and other obstacles to its development. But if the Haitian state is a failed one, they insisted, it is because it works well only for certain segments of society.
Yet not all is doom and gloom. During this same ten-year time frame, we have examples of political rivals sitting together in constructive conversation at moments of crisis. Illustrating an acknowledgement of respect for fundamental rights of speech and assembly, we see examples of what can happen when respect is an a priori part of a relationship.1
This basic idea of honor and respect must become a robust guiding feature of the social, economic, and political relationships between Haitians and those who enter Haitian geographic and political space. Perhaps for our purposes the greeting onè-respè should be considered as a model for engagement. In that model, a solitary individual cannot complete the salutation; it is based on a call followed by a response. If we look to honor and respect as a model for institutional and individual relationships, we look to a model where two parties acknowledge dignity and autonomy in each other.
To be clear: This reflection is not intended to reify some simplistic notion that respect can cure the ills of foreign involvement in Haitian affairs through introducing a discursive act. It is, however, an effort to denounce the lack of respect that most often permeates these relationships.
Participation in Decision Making
While behavior that reinforces respect is important, the reality is that certain sectors of the population are routinely excluded from participation in dialogues and decisions pertaining to Haiti. Conferences, donor meetings, and planning events may invoke honor and respect, but the list of attendees may indicate otherwise. How many meetings about Haiti take place without diverse or representative groups of Haitians in the room? When do rural residents and women participate? Many planning meetings that occurred in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake took place in English, facilitating international actors and excluding Haitian ones (Farmer 2011). Since the vast majority of Haitians speak only Creole, conversations in French, English, or Spanish isolate and exclude.
Similarly, the location of these conversations is of utmost importance. Many key conversations occur outside Haiti—in hearing rooms, conference rooms, and offices of institutions located in New York and Washington, DC. The complications and costs of international travel create barriers for participation by certain individuals but facilitate the engagement of others. The voices of Haitian women and the pep (ordinary people) become conspicuously absent when such meetings are held at the convenience of foreign consultants or functionaries. A paradigm shift away from the exclusivity of elites and from the continuation of a business-as-usual approach to who participates and decides is of utmost necessity.
A well-known Haitian proverb proclaims that “when you cannot bring the cow to the pasture, you can take the pasture to the cow.” International actors and their Haitian counterparts need to do a better job at bringing their hearings, meetings, consultations, and conferences to localities that will facilitate more inclusive participation in decision making. Expanding the range of participation of Haitians in decision-making processes relevant to their lives and the future of their country will help assure a better Haiti. But while fewer obstacles exist when meetings take place in Haiti, geographic proximity does not guarantee equal access or voice to all. Participation has long been desired and invoked in development work, but all too often it takes the form of “box checking,” not legitimate integration into decision making (see Cooke and Kothari 2001; Anderson, Brown, and Jean 2012). Thus, incorporating broader sections of Haiti into decision making is not a simple task, and unfortunately, can all too easily become a way that voices are further co-opted by others. In thinking through participation, we need to question how participation is invoked and practiced, making it, too, a target of our analysis of ownership.
Foreign scholars and researchers are also part of the problems related to participation. The processes of gathering knowledge and conducting research have long been processes of extraction, whereby knowledge and information is taken from marginalized groups for the benefit of those who are better off (Smith 1999). This issue is particularly pressing as increasing numbers of partnerships form between foreign universities and Haitian counterparts. The lives and livelihoods of foreign researchers and practitioners revolve around the publication (and veritable “ownership”) of information on Haiti. Studies done in Haiti may benefit Haitians in the broadest sense of scientific pursuit, but all too often the format and availability of the publications such studies generate do not reach the populations who participated in the original study (Sheller 2013).
This absence of participation fuels distrust in a society that has long been polarized in terms of race, geography, and socioeconomic status. As participants noted, these stark divisions have resulted in nearly two countries that exist within the same space. The absence of inclusivity can result in the imposition or adoption of reforms and activities from elsewhere that do not respond broadly to the priorities or needs of the majority. Reform initiatives in the areas of rule of law, administration of justice, public administration, and education are among those ideas that have been largely imported into Haiti without the benefit of inclusive engagement.
Lack of access to information and exclusion from discussions and decision making were key themes for the symposium, as for this volume. For each assertion of ownership by one group, the possibility of loss exists for another. This is particularly clear when thinking about participation. As language, location, and more overt strategies limit the contribution of particular sectors of the population, we seem to be talking less and less about participation and more and more about its obverse: exclusion.
Identifying Needs
How needs are defined is related to the question of exclusion. As anthropologist James Ferguson (1990) famously observed, a great deal of the work of development and political institutions is devoted to defining development problems. How a problem is defined has a profound bearing on what solutions are proposed. Particularly when it comes to international aid, defining a problem from the outside can easily be aligned with foreign interests, fostering solutions that are divorced from supposed beneficiaries and are “owned” instead by planners and so-called experts.
Participants in the symposium questioned the concept of “need” in the context of project planning and design, challenging the intentions of large aid institutions. Do forms of assistance to rural Haitians such as vouchers for food purchase help Haitian farmers or do they ultimately benefit the United States through practices of “boomerang aid,” whereby food imports sourced from the United States are woven into aid programs? More broadly, do these programs do more to benefit external actors than Haitians? Participants raised concerns about how foreign aid targets agriculture, particularly its focus on export crops. This policy emphasis, which includes crops such as mangoes and bananas, would not improve the country’s ability to directly feed itself, a key Haitian priority. Accordingly, such policy interests propelled participants to question the design of such programs: Do Haitian farmers want a focus on export crops? What are the historical successes of such models? Given the questionable benefits to ordinary Haitians of large monocropping initiatives in Haiti’s past, from eighteenth-century sugarcane plantations to twentieth-century sisal, rubber, and banana farms, such recommendations put at risk both food security and food sovereignty. More broadly, do projects designed without input and participation from farmers result in strategies that address the core needs of Haiti and its people? Arguably, the answer is no. A more productive approach to identifying development problems and plans would be for outsiders to ask “What do you do and how can we help you do it better?” than to take it upon themselves to identify needs and plan accordingly.
As the presence and work of U.S.-based NGOs and for-profit contractors (FPCs) in Haiti is fundamentally couched in a conversation of “need,” the topic of “the Republic of NGOs” captured the attention of participants. Widely perceived by Haitians as a tool to facilitate U.S. objectives for Haiti, NGOs and FPCs often have led to frustration among Haitians. Half-completed or unsustained projects that define needs without Haitian participation seem to be a common experience in Haiti. While a diversity of NGO and for-profit actors exists, it is their fundamental structure that is of concern: They are accountable to the needs of external funders and planners rather than those of Haitians.
This accountability to foreign donors is of particular concern in light of the fact that tax-exempt arrangements with NGOs cause the government of Haiti to lose a great deal of potential revenue. While arguments might be launched about the nonprofit intentions of NGOs, the questionable benefits they usually provide create a great deal of skepticism about who really benefits from such ventures. Removing these tax exemptions would increase the revenue of the Haitian government by about 4 percent of GDP. However, it would likely be politically impractical, if not impossible, for the government of Haiti to take on such an economic reform. U.S.-based NGOs would likely rally lobbyists to the U.S. Congress at the first sign of such measures. This of course raises again the question of who gets to make decisions regarding Haiti. The interests of non-Haitian groups often take a primary role in what otherwise would be a government decision.
Ironically, tax relief for international NGOs helps perpetuate a highly regressive taxation system in Haiti that places the heaviest burden on the poorest people in Haiti’s cities, towns, and countryside. Such a system extracts wealth from small farmers. Because these small-holding agricultural producers are actually net consumers, their economic status is increasingly and continually marginalized by a taxation system that favors foreign interests and domestic elites by creating so-called favorable business climates. Exasperated symposium participants concluded this discussion by reasserting that Haiti’s sovereignty can be expanded only when the identification of needs and the imposition of ideas from the outside morphs into respect for what Haitians know and do and when outsiders respond in ways that reinforce that knowledge and experience.
The Idea of Haiti
The amorphous “idea of Haiti” meanders in and out of our conversations and chapters. It was seen by those engaged with the country’s history, society, culture, and arts as particularly critical in a discussion of who owns Haiti. The idea of Haiti arises from the country’s unique historical experience and manifests itself in institutions and expressions that grew out of that experience. It is nestled in multiple facets of Haiti’s social organization and cultural expression and in the pride of being Haitian. It fortifies a deep desire for dignity, respect, and dominion. It is a concept, albeit nebulous, that is fluid in its meaning and diverse in its expression. It is something that should belong to all Haitians.
But all too often, the idea of Haiti seems to be deployed far outside Haiti. It is invoked as mission groups and service trips use Haiti as an exotic destination for bringing salvation and development. It is deployed as aid workers who live and work in Haiti wear a badge of pride, expressed through the ever-common expat greeting of “How long have you been here?” The idea of Haiti is invoked in marketing campaigns: It becomes a name on Instagram hashtags for posts about service trips and a quintessential “do-good” fashion statement. The roots of these ideas may originate in an exotic, simplified, and erroneous idea of Vodou or a media-fueled image of Haiti as dangerous and poor. Yet these ideas, which are continually deployed both within and outside Haiti, are ironically the very things that have marginalized it as a pariah black republic. These concepts both produce and benefit from a romanticized idea of Haiti and contribute to its marginalization.
In the final analysis, it is the continually unfolding story of Haiti that can allow Haitians to confront and dismiss misplaced perceptions. Self-determination compels a rejection of the labels of Haiti as a “failed state” and “the poorest country in the hemisphere.” Self-confidence fuels resistance to the entreaties of l’international. The everyday moments when Haitian sovereignty is exerted, in community organization, spiritual practice, and rural labor, can—and should—be the conceptual framework on which Haiti’s future is constructed. These ideas and the achievements they represent provide an already existing Haitian road map for the future. They support conceptions of democracy that are built upon participation and dignity.
How can Haiti be “failed” when the country and its people have constantly found ways of asserting themselves and protecting their space despite serial intrusions by powerful external forces and entities that would impose ineffective, inappropriate, or self-serving policies and practices? How can Haiti be “the poorest” when throughout its history its people have produced rich and ongoing efforts to protect their space against strong odds and powerful intrusions and then have found ways of moving forward?
Arguments that blame Haitians for the present condition of Haiti should look to this volume as part of the large body of work pointing to the problematic role of the international community in Haiti’s affairs. Those who wish to help Haiti develop further ownership must be prepared to welcome and listen to diverse sectors of the population in deliberations and decision making and be prepared to work as partners, not as those who would impose their will or seek to own Haiti or a part of it. Yet while we implore all actors to reflect on and listen to a diversity of Haitian perspectives, we recognize that these exchanges are steeped in unequal power relationships and that there has been an overwhelming tendency of those in more powerful positions to ignore potentially liberating conversations. Our hope is that this volume will create a space for more constructive, considerate, and mutually liberating conversations to take hold.
Thinking through both assertions and infractions of sovereignty should force all those engaged with Haiti to reflect seriously on their roles. How do their actions as Diaspora, blan (white or foreigner), or even Haitian counterparts or partners of those who seek a piece of Haiti facilitate or reject various ideas of sovereignty? Do they seek to prescribe solutions for Haitians, or do they seek to support Haitians’ quest for a better future? In closing, we ask that these questions be considered in ongoing movements of support and solidarity, ones that are based fundamentally on onè and respè.
1. Such a moment took place toward the end of 2014, when diverse political actors worked together to create a nonpartisan presidential commission that helped defuse a crisis related to the Supreme Court and the election council (see Charles 2015).
References
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Charles, Jacqueline. 2015. “Haiti Supreme Court Chief Resigns: New Electoral Council to Come.” Miami Herald, January 7.
Cooke, Bill, and Uma Kothari. 2001. Participation: The New Tyranny? Zed Books. New York, NY.
Farmer, Paul. 1994. The Uses of Haiti. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press.
———. 2011. Haiti after the Earthquake. New York, NY: PublicAffairs.
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Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books.