Ti Dife Boule sou Istwa Ayiti as Haitian civic education

Introduction

Two 19-year-old boys embarked upon life altering journeys. Michel-Rolph “Roro” Trouillot immigrated to the United States in 1969. In 1971, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier inherited the post of lifetime dictator. To transition in one fell swoop from child to immigrant or child to dictator is, most likely, not in our life’s path. The young immigrant’s imagination may have been kindled by the death of Martin Luther King Jr in Memphis the year before his arrival. He heard chants of “Black Power” uttered by people in his US peer group, which ultimately ushered in the next phase of the Civil Rights Movement. Meanwhile, the young dictator’s lavish exploits were financed by the state’s tobacco monopoly and the Dominican government’s annual 3 million dollar payment for Haitian cane cutters withering away across the border (Khan, 2010). His inheritance also included his father’s decentralized security forces, which were scattered throughout the countryside to simultaneously terrorize the rural majority and foil coup attempts. Both boys, at the impressionable age of 19 years, faced obligations most people never have to consider.

Historical and political context

In successive waves after the installation of Duvalier’s Junior, thousands of Haitians embarked on similarly precarious journeys that led to them to urban cities of the United States. Some of these immigrants, particularly the youth, “asked themselves what tomorrow’s promise could bring about in [their] country, Haiti … was under a dictatorship. The dictator was young [and] in good health” (Trouillot, 2012b: 4). Considering the strength of the Duvalier regime and its probable longevity, members of the Haitian diaspora considered if and how they could alter their country’s future. Michel-Rolph knew a brutal dictator, who was his peer, stood to rule, annihilate, and exile countless other Haitians for his entire lifetime. Were they to wipe their hands clean of Haiti? Many did. Would they plan guerilla warfare against the Duvalier regime like their predecessors, Marcel Numa and Louis Drouin? These two men immigrated to New York City when François “Papa Doc” Duvalier assumed power in 1957 (Danticat, 2010). The brutal wave of government repression quickly exiled or eliminated segments of Haitian society that, theoretically, wielded enough financial and political capital to organize against the state’s authority. The targeted were not simply the traditional (male) elites who dominated the political and commercial sectors. As Trouillot (1990) would argue in Haiti, State against the Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism, the dictatorship “systematically violated the codes governing the use of force by the state” (p. 160). Without these codes, state-sanctioned violence could target the clergy, women, and intellectuals, including students. By 1964, Numa, 21 years, and Drouin, 31 years, formerly students, orchestrated one of many plots composed in New York City to topple the first Duvalier (Diederich and Burt, 1970). Once they decided to take direct action, they returned to the Haitian countryside, engaged the military in an unsuccessful guerilla war, and were disguised in the ubiquitous garb of peasant farmers.

At their execution, the private henchmen of Duvalier Senior escorted Numa and Drouin to their death poles, then, soldiers pinned with official symbols of the nation executed them. The interconnectedness of illegitimate and legal armed forces was put on public display. State-run media and cinemas continuously replayed images of the execution and lauded the government for eliminating domestic terrorists. The symbolic pact between the state, media, and armed forces was all too clear for those who witnessed the spectacle. This execution demonstrated that power was shared between Duvalier’s legal and extra-legal forces against the nation. Presumably, by the time a 19-year-old dictator was installed in 1971, the sentiment of rebellion against the Haitian state was sufficiently stifled.

Or was it? Edwidge Danticat, in Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work, examines the formation of a legend based on the November 1964 executions. Whenever a politically motivated murder occurred under the Duvalier regime, underground groups performed subversive plays or read banned literature. Each slaughter fanned the flames of what appeared to be hopeless rage. Through artistic expression, many found a way to construct images and words for a beautiful tomorrow. They desperately needed to convince themselves that “they would not die the same way Numa and Drouin did […] and that words could still be spoken” (Danticat, 2010: 8). The investment in narrative was one method employed by Haitians to protest the political oppression in their country.

An immigrant artist at work

Michel-Rolph Trouillot emerged from a family of politically active intellectuals—his uncle directed the Haitian National Archives and the first female Haitian president was a relation. It seems unimaginable that the legend of Numa and Drouin, especially their youthfulness and conviction to dislodge the Duvaliers, did not impact Trouillot’s generation of emigrating Haitians. Living in exile and periodically supporting himself as a taxi driver, Trouillot cultivated his mode of artistic expression to create a small space of autonomy. Before he entered Johns Hopkins, where he earned his doctorate in 1985, “Roro,” as he was known in those spaces, was an active member of Brooklyn’s activist and creative community. In the early 70s, he was a member of the theater company, Tanbou Libete (Trouillot, 2012a). Their shows—Si Kacho pran pale (1971) and Malere tou patou (1973)—were similar to the experiments popularized by the Living Theatre, which pioneered the unconventional staging of poetic drama. Trouillot’s theatrical productions, particularly those in Creole, were part of a flourishing Haitian literary movement of the 60s and 70s. Artists made the political choice to communicate to their audiences in Haitian Creole. The movement to recognize Haitian Creole was still in its infancy and the development of a standard Haitian phonetic alphabet was still years (1980) away. Though it is unclear when Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s study group began meeting, it is within this space full of artists that he continued to study the relevant texts for his first publication.

In 1977, a small printing house, funded by members of the study group, called itself Kolèksion Lakansièl and published Ti Dife Boule sou Istwa Ayiti. Members of the group—Jean Coulanges, Evelyne Trouillot, Lionel Trouillot, and Cauvin Paul—knew that the writing of Ti Dife was historic (Trouillot, 2012b). The text was “a revolt against silence, creating when both the creation and reception, the writing and the reading, [were] dangerous undertakings” (Danticat, 2010: 11). The revolt against silence occurred on two fronts. By writing Ti Dife in Haitian Creole, he equipped the non-French-speaking majority with the first social scientific text written in the only language intelligible to all Haitians. Although there was a movement by Haitian artists to produce in Creole, scholars were, at this point, resistant, thereby contributing to locking out the Creole-speaking majority out of scholarly and intellectual discourse. In the 1970s, the average Haitian worker was based in the countryside and employed in the agricultural produce sector. Education opportunities, then as now, are concentrated in Port-au-Prince and studies are conducted in French (INURED, 2010). Second, Trouillot shattered many “foundational fictions” about the Haitian Revolution that, though accepted by the nation’s majority, contributed to their exploitation (Sommer, 1991). In Ti Dife, Trouillot examines the consequences of the founding fathers’ acceptance of a “bourgeois French” ideology on rural Haitian workers (Trouillot, 2012c: 125). This “corrupt indigenist ideology” (Past, 2004) follows the classic prescription of Plato’s “Rule of the Wise.” The idea that those with the best education ought to lead the masses, though a cornerstone of Western political philosophy, failed in Haiti for various reasons Trouillot explores in Ti Dife Boule sou Istwa Ayiti.

The education enterprise in Haiti excluded the average worker. Without the financial resources to pay for schooling, the majority of Haitians remained without an education and could never enter into the ranks of the “most capable.” Trouillot’s text is immediately subversive because of the language it is written in. It does not aim to speak “truth to power”; rather, it speaks a truth to the seemingly powerless majority—they were the engine powering the Haitian Revolution (James, 1989). Considering the history of failed insurgencies against Duvalier, power would neither listen nor make concessions to poorly armed Haitian freedom fighters. By writing directly to the disempowered, Trouillot defied a long-standing directive to marginalize the Haitian majority. He used the terrain of literacy—often denied to most because of unequal access to education—as a mode of empowerment. His goal was to distill the elaborate theories of Karl Marx, Nikos Poulantzas, Louis Althusser, Antonio Gramsci, and other Marxist intellectuals into a “beautiful Creole.” Ti Dife’s prose condenses the rich resources of the language—words, images, and idiosyncratic expressions—into an analytical weapon (Trouillot, 2012b). The combination of a complex analysis of Haiti’s founding myths with a deep understanding of Haitian cultural mores proved to be a threat against Jean-Claude Duvalier’s regime. After Ti Dife’s publication in Brooklyn, it was sent to Haiti and was read in secret by students, grade school teachers, and college professors living under dictatorship. As a young immigrant working in New York City, Trouillot produced a text that became part of the same clandestine reading groups that commemorated Numa and Drouin (Trouillot, 2012b: 4).

In less than a decade (1969–1977), a very specific historical trajectory transformed Trouillot from mere immigrant to a dangerously creative artist. Although his scholarly contributions to the fields of anthropology, history, and political science are well known, this period of his intellectual development provides the context from which Ti Dife was produced. It is important to highlight this period of his life because the transformation he intended—empowering the Haitian worker with literacy and analytic weapons—remains incomplete. Along with the new introduction written by Michel-Rolph’s brother, the novelist, Lionel, the 2012 edition updated the text to reflect the, now, standard orthography. There was a consensus among study group members that researchers, like intellectuals, were afraid of developing critical thought and analysis in Creole. Perhaps the fear stemmed from the stigma surrounding Haitian cultural practices, or it was considered beneath the intellectual class to speak directly to popular classes (Trouillot, 2012c: 16, 45–46). Because of exile, there were certain licenses taken by Haitians living in the diaspora that may have constituted class banishment if practiced within the country. Trouillot used his elite education to equip those of his generation—abroad and home—with a history that emphasized the potential of the average worker.

Community-centered education

“Ti Dife Boule” is a common Haitian expression that can be translated as fanning the flames over a contentious issue; it connotes the image of an instigator. The title, Ti Dife Boule sou Istwa Ayiti, then, suggests someone is fanning the flames over Haitian history and seeks to provoke debate. The narrator of the text, Grenn Pwomennen (one traveler), functions simultaneously as our knowledgeable guide through Haiti’s revolutionary past and as an instigator who intends to cause debate. He forces his audiences—both the local, the fictional audience within the text; and the assumed literate public overhearing/reading the text—to rethink and challenge narratives of the Haitian Revolution. For Trouillot, narratives of the Haitian Revolution needed revision and ought to provoke deeper thought among its inheritors. The desired result of rethinking these narratives would provide the reader a chronicle of history that centers popular participation in the revolution. By rendering the average Haitian worker visible, Trouillot sought to remind them of their capacity under times of duress. Although the text never encourages rebellion against the Duvalier regime, it systematically challenges the epistemological basis of its authority.

Each chapter of the text exposes a historical injustice and Trouillot utilizes a series of tools—proverbs, Vodou chants, work songs, riddles, archival matter, and theory—to kindle the flames of outrage. The first and last chapters are titled, “M pral fè yon rasanbleman,” which translates as “I’m going to hold an assembly.” To open and close the text with the title of a popular work song immediately selects a certain type of audience. This selected audience consists of the country’s agricultural workforce who popularized and consumed such music. In between the call for an assembly, the chapters of the text tackle major issues that contributed to the success of the Haitian Revolution. For example, the fifth chapter, titled “Louvri baryè” (Open the Gate), discusses, what has been called elsewhere “an opening in the world system” (Blackburn, 1988). This “opening” refers to the opportunity enslaved laborers seized when political and economic rifts divided the ruling classes in colonial Saint-Domingue and the National Assembly of France. Before delving into any explanation of historical process, Trouillot carefully selects an epigraph that captures the sentiment of agricultural workers participating within that particular moment of history. By doing so, he challenges one of the biggest tropes of the Haitian Revolution, that of the “great man” who led the masses into history (see Fick, 1990). In chapter 4, titled “Dife nan kay” (Fire in the House), the epigraph tauntingly encourages the fanning of the flames in order to destroy the house. The house functions as a symbol of oppression, whether it is enslavement or colonial governance. The chapter then explains why the house needed to burn down in the first place (Trouillot, 2012c: 34). By linking what may be deemed a protest work song with an analysis of the forces at play to incite the Haitian Revolution, Trouillot invites the Creole speaker analyze history on their own terms.

Though Trouillot includes some direct quotes in the text, the work of explanation is left to Grenn Pwomennen. He is either a farmer or landless peasant, who was chosen by members of his community to seek out the cause of their poverty (Trouillot, 2012c: 7–8). To be conferred this duty, signals to the reader that Grenn Pwomennen is respected and holds a place of authority for the fictional audience. His travels across the country and through historical time establish him as an expert on material and immaterial realities. His mission was to gather information on matters pertinent to those assembling in the lakou (yard or garden), where the storytelling takes place. It is significant that an agricultural laborer functions as the authoritative and knowledgeable narrator. Although a ubiquitous figure in Haiti, the peasant is institutionally stripped of citizenship rights, labeled ignorant, and placed outside the margins of society (see Roumain, 1941). The epistemologies of the agricultural worker, at least within the established education system, are deemed inferior. The marginalized masses, moun andeyo (outsider people), which it is evident that Grenn Pwomennen belongs to, are never given a chance to speak or be heard (Fatton, 2002: 28). Pwomennen becomes the spokesperson for the silenced majority. The fact that history is also produced outside of academia reveals itself through the lesson in the lakou (Trouillot 1995: 21). Interestingly, Trouillot decided against making Grenn Pwomennen an omniscient narrator. To make him omniscient would elevate him above the knowledge status of other participants of the assembly. Though he is an expert on the history of the revolution, he is not an expert on all things; throughout the text he refers to the knowledge base of members within the assembly to either substantiate his claims or to provoke debate, which refines the collective’s understanding of history. Grenn Pwomennen functions as a member in a collective learning environment. In this quasi-democratic class, his position destabilizes the authority line that privileges the knowledge of teacher above that of the student. Pwomennen’s status as teacher and student is an implicit critique of traditional learning spaces, which would deny most members of this assembly. These fuzzy boundaries reveal themselves in the text’s subtitles, “atansyon chofè” (Attention Chauffeur) and “peze fren” (Step on the Brakes), which suggest Grenn Pwomennen is being engaged or challenged by his students or teachers. Even within the text, we hear one member of the lakou distressfully noting how Pwomennen’s attire reeks of city-dweller pretentions (Trouillot, 2012c: 7). Nonetheless, most of the narrative is presented to the reader by Grenn Pwomennen, who splices his account with riddles, questions the audience on their memory, requests tea and ginger breaks to maintain an alert audience, and pauses to ensure his audience understands the complex theories that explain Haitian history.

What makes this social scientific text enjoyable to read is how Trouillot packages the problems. For example in the chapter titled “Kòd nwa” (Code Noir), Grenn Pwomennen sets out to explain the founding of Saint-Domingue and the difficult history between Haitians and Dominicans, inheritors to the other side of the shared island. The subheading “Little Cucumbers and Eggplants” taps into the assumed technical and cultural knowledge of agricultural workers (Trouillot, 2012c: 11). Skilled planters know that it is unwise to plant cucumbers next to eggplants. Cucumbers often grow in bushes and require space to grow horizontally. Eggplants, on the hand, grow to tower in height. If planted near each other, the eggplant, as is its nature, will block the cucumber growing beneath from the sun’s resources. Without going into the intricacies of 17th-century colonial geopolitics, Trouillot simply presents farmers who already know why the competition between eggplants (Spanish) and cucumbers (French) required the addition of a trellis of sorts. That trellis, the 1697 Treat of Ryswick, established the border that partitions the island. Though the division helped colonial economies thrive, the rupture instilled deep division among the people who came to populate to the island (Trouillot, 2012c: 20). However, Grenn Pwomennen, the cautious instigator, points out those rivalries began with European imperialists and should not be thought to originate with Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Pierre Boyer, or Rafael Trujillo. ¹ He encourages his audience to understand their ancestors—whether on the French or Spanish side of the island. The enmity is a consequence of colonialism and the race to fill up European treasuries.

Within pages, Grenn Pwomennen introduces his audience to analytical concepts from the social sciences to understand their current condition. The principal concept—contradictions in the world system—is articulated throughout the text to explain to the members of the lakou the root cause of their poverty. One of Trouillot’s long-standing intellectual preoccupations is the nature of global political economy and how peripheral economies develop and function within it (see Trouillot, 1982, 1988, 2003). Grenn Pwomennen explains how plantation societies, like colonial Saint-Domingue, came to occupy a peripheral space within the wider global economy. In a section titled, “Maladi nan san” (Blood Ailment), the narrator outlines four intersected parts that contribute to Caribbean dependency: one, cash-crop plantation society; two, enslaved labor; three, provision plots; and four, dependency on world market for all other goods (Trouillot, 2012c: 22). Pwomennen explains to his audience that because places like Saint-Domingue were constructed to produce cash crops like coffee and sugar, there was little land left to produce food for the populations. In their limited time, enslaved workers were to cultivate food, which often ended up on slaveholder’s tables. He, then, makes the connection between the colonial property-holding classes with contemporary classes that profit off of his audience’s labor in the agricultural sector. For Trouillot, it is critical for his peasant intellectual to readily make these connections that highlight the enduring role of Haiti’s rural majority. The Blood Ailment that contributed to the lakou’s impoverishment, according to Grenn Pwomennen stems from the imbalance of importing most of what is consumed within the country. The undisrupted colonial legacy of imbalanced trade explains the current ailment afflicting the assembly.

Grenn Pwomennen concludes this system is unsustainable. To further elaborate his point, once again, he taps into the reservoirs of his audience’s experience. He reminds his audience that even the sturdiest pot will explode under the pressure of a continuously unattended fire (Trouillot, 2012c: 18). The metaphorical flame was, in this instance, the demand of Saint-Domingue’s sugar. Without the production of agricultural exports, the colonial economy would decline. Planters aligned themselves with metropolitan merchants for large investments of capital needed to purchase and discipline enslaved laborer. People of European descent who were not wealthy found themselves in competition with free people of color for nutrient-dense land (Garrigus, 2006). The imperial government of metropolitan France, especially after the Seven Years’ War ended in 1763, resisted granting colonial governments the autonomy necessary to maintain a rigid color hierarchy or to determine economic policy (Blackburn, 1988: 17 and 59). In order to explain these clashing tensions, Grenn Pwomennen employed every analogy he could think of that would conjure up the image of an exploding apparatus.

Conclusion: Ti Dife as civic education

The ideas that Grenn Pwomennen discussed with the lakou came to dominate Trouillot’s subsequent work. In Haiti State against the Nation, published over a decade after Grenn Pwomennen’s travels, Trouillot refined his analysis of world-systems theory and the role of Haitian elites in maintaining a dependency that seems to be intrinsic to the capitalist world economy. In Silencing the Past: Power and Production of History, Trouillot returns to Grenn Pwomennen’s objective of opening up history for debate by tracing how certain narratives gain power over others. By including Ti Dife in the long arc of Trouillot’s work, we can trace the development of the ideas that made him an intellectual voice worthy of note.

The model of community-centered education, as performed by Grenn Pwomennen, could be a liberating one. His respect and awareness of his audience’s life stories allow him to utilize images and analogies from their unique epistemological framework. By packaging complex analysis within culturally relevant categories, Pwomennen demystifies history and empowers his audience to challenge narratives of their past. Contrary to messages perpetuated by the state, their presence, and, as exemplified by this text, their epistemologies are not only celebrated but also central to the construction of this narrative of the Haitian Revolution. Without compromising his intellectual work, Trouillot selected images and words that occupy an agricultural worker’s imaginary to explain the Haitian Revolution. His scathing criticism of the founding fathers’ attachment to the plantation mode of production challenges the heroic narratives written by Haitian and non-Haitian scholars. In writing Ti Dife, Trouillot identified an enduring challenge—unequal access to education—and attempted to resolve it in the pace of the lakou, the garden or plot. He constructed the lakou as a site of democratic knowledge transmission. In this text, the place where families live, work, can also function as a site of higher learning and intellectual debate.