ABSTRACT: Migration and Resistance: Haitian Workers under U.S. Occupation, 1915-1934

Aviva Chomsky
Bates College

Work in Progress--please do not cite

The ostensible goal of the U.S. occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 was to impose order and to remove the "threat" of European loans and investment. An integral part of the program, in fact perhaps the key, was to create a secure environment for U.S. in vestment in railroads and plantation agriculture. This meant ensuring access to land, labor, and favorable financial policies. However, despite U.S. formal and military control of the country from 1915 to 1934, these goals were never achieved. Haitians re sponded to U.S. control with the twin phenomena of migration and resistance, and frustrated U.S. efforts to establish a favorable field for investment. This paper focuses on the issue of labor. Control of labor was fundamental to the U.S. agenda; and cont rol of their own labor was also fundamental to Haitians' efforts to resist U.S. control of their country. Haitian resistance was facilitated by the fact that U.S. policymakers had to juggle the various interests at stake in Haiti: officials on the ground often disagreed with those in Washington over the degree and type of control necessary; and U.S. investors in Cuba disagreed with those in Haiti over where and how Haitian workers could best be employed.
The issues of race and slavery tied in with those of peasant and worker rights and national sovereignty in occupied Haiti. Haitian independence in 1804 had combined political sovereignty with emancipation from slavery, and both were racial victories of bl acks against white domination as well. U.S. political control, with all of its economic aspects, continued the connection in Haitian political reality of foreign imperialism, racial domination of whites over blacks, and foreign/white control of Haitian/bl ack labor.
Scholarly accounts of Haiti under U.S. control have tended to echo the view of U.S. officials a time, characterizing peasant rebels as essentially mercenaries, and dismissing them as lacking in class consciousness. However, a social consciousness based on race, nationalism, a national identity intimately tied to liberation from slavery, and anti-imperialism, as well as class issues, led to a coherent and strong reaction to U.S. occupation which systematically undercut U.S. plans for the island. In fact, w hen U.S. forces invaded the country in 1915, peasant fighters stayed in the field long after their supposed leaders had surrendered, turning what U.S. policymakers called Haiti s ignorant and half-educated peasants into the spearhead of antiimperialism in the country.
Crushing this resistance was the first stage in facilitating U.S. investment in Haiti, and during 1915 there was a continuous flow of correspondence from U.S. businesses to the State Department regarding the necessity of a full occupation of the country, and from the State Department to business interests assuring them that the conditions for investment were being implemented. In particular, U.S. officials celebrated Haiti s low wages.
Labor was of no use to U.S. investors if they could not get access to land, and one of the occupation s first tasks was to regularize land tenure, and force the Haitian government to revise the Constitution in order to allow foreign land ownership, by dis solving Haiti s elected National Assembly, giving the occupying forces an absolute power over the President. Once this was accomplished, the occupying authorities instituted a system of corve or forced labor which was used both for public works which prov ided the infrastructure necessary for plantation agriculture (like roads and irrigation systems), and sometimes provided workers directly for the plantations. The corve confirmed Haitian peasants fears that the occupation would bring a revival of slavery, and led to the 1918-21 uprising against the occupation.
The defeat of the rebellion opened northern Haiti as a field for investment, and several important contracts with U.S. companies were signed shortly thereafter. U.S. investors made it clear that they considered the marines presence crucial to their abilit y to run their businesses. I believe it would be a great mistake to withdraw the marines from the North, stated a U.S. logwood exporter in 1927. It would have an immediately bad effect on my business.
During the 1920s U.S. officials attempted to create an internal tax system, and to facilitate access to land by U.S. companies by forcing peasants to prove legal title to the land they occupied. Peasant resistance made both of these difficult. Nonetheless , through the 1920s there is evidence of numerous expulsions of peasant farmers.
Racial consciousness was an important element in Haitian resistance to U.S. occupation. U.S. officials recognized that the Liberal party, composed of Mulattoes and the better class favored the occupation, while the Nationals, representing the poorer class es and the blacks, led the opposition. Many U.S. officials feared a racially-based agitation against Americans. They also recognized that Haitian mulattoes stand in great fear of the blacks obtaining control. They believe that if the marines were withdraw n from Haiti and a revolution started whereby the blacks would be placed in power, that they, the mulattoes, would all be murdered or driven from the country. And they realized that issues of independence, land and race could not be separated. Northern pe asants, U.S. officials explained, opposed the U.S.-imposed president because he is not pure black and he is selling Haiti to the whites.
During the occupation, the Cuban government, the U.S. government, the Haitian government, U.S. companies, and professional labor contractors cooperated in organizing the migration of approximately 25,000-35,000 Haitian workers to Cuba each year, a busines s which was commonly spoken of in Haiti as the Slave traffic. While many Haitians were eager to take advantage of Cuba's higher wages, all concerned agreed that the recruitment system served to siphon off huge amounts of money that lined the pockets of pr ivate recruiters, government officials personally, and the national treasury--to the extent that emigration fees were by far the most important source of internal revenue, accounting for 31 per cent of the total in 1924. As one Haitian opposition leader e xplained: American forces... are chasing Haitians from their lands to give it as gifts to American citizens so that they can profit, so that they can continue in power] . . . it is they who have incited the exodus of Haitians to foreign shores for the des poilment of their civil and material rights. In some respects this migration represented a form of resistance to the occupiers, and undermined their goals, but it also served other, larger goals of U.S. foreign policy.
The paper examines the nature of Haitian peasant resistance and consciousness, the conflicting goals and policies of the occupation, and Haitian migration to Cuba. It argues that Haitian peasants actively maneuvered to maintain their independence under oc cupation.

e-mail: achomsky@abacus.bates.edu
History Department
Bates College
Lewiston, ME 04240
Fax: (207) 786-6123