Haiti,an urban nation? Revisiting Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Haiti: State against Nation

Haiti, state against nation: Origins and legacy of Duvalierism

Trouillot describes nearly all of Haitian society as belonging to one of two camps. The majority of the people belong to the peasantry, the small landholders of the countryside who produce most of the country’s exports as well as much of the food for its domestic consumption. Culturally, they are defined by their use of the Creole language and their belief in the world of lwa (spirits) of Vodou. According to Trouillot, this peasant majority is the productive class; this is the nation. By contrast, he frequently describes the elite as “parasitic,” or the “parasite class,” because they extract the surplus value of the peasantry through a system of indirect taxation. They inhabit Port-au-Prince, and to a lesser extent the provincial capitals, removed from rural life. Their language is French, and their religion is Catholicism. The elite control the state; they live at the expense of the nation.

While praising the seriousness and insightfulness of Trouillot’s history of the Duvaliers, J. Michael Dash (1991) expresses concern regarding the “tempting neatness” of the work, asking “To what extent did Duvalierism appeal to an emergent black middle class in the towns and provinces?” (pp. 200–201). There is little room conceptually for the middle class or the urban masses in the division between the peasants and the elite described by Trouillot. This is not to say that he ignores these groups. He describes the middle class as an embattled minority but also as aspiring to be part of the parasite class. The urban masses are sometimes labeled another “parasitic group,” but at other times Trouillot considers them a by-product of the division between peasantry and state. Neither group fits neatly into the class of the urban elite or the rural peasantry.

The nation is not coterminous with humanity: as Benedict Anderson ([1983] 2006) notes, the concept demands a constitutive outsider (p. 6). Trouillot (1990) agrees with Anderson’s characterization of the nation as an “imagined political community,” while insisting that to leave it at that denies both “content” and “specificity.” Rather, he adds that “What is political is the projection of this community, or better said, perhaps, the field against which this projection operates” (p. 26, emphasis in the original). On the one hand, the nation may be imagined in defiance or critique of the state. Certainly, much of Haiti’s indigéniste literature on the peasantry was meant to conjure an idea of the peasant as a moral foil to the corrupt elite and as the “authentic” national character (Cook, 1947). On the other hand, the nation may be invoked to bolster support for an existing state or to establish the legitimacy of a new, emergent, or aspiring state. François Duvalier certainly acknowledged the power of peasant imagery in his elaborate Carnival spectacles. The act of imagining—whether it is in the form of a novel, a folkloric dance, or a painting—is always in relation to the field of politics.

According to Trouillot, the history and present political predicament of the Haitian nation reach back to Saint Domingue. Following the work of Sidney Mintz, Trouillot argues that the nation hails from a “proto-peasantry” that existed on the margins of plantation society. In Haiti, as in much of the Caribbean, the enslaved were allotted small plots of land to grow their own food. While meant to save plantation owners the expense of feeding their slaves, these garden plots became a means of creating surplus food that slaves could sell at Sunday markets. This small sphere of autonomy allowed slaves a legal means to participate in the local economy as agents, rather than commodities. These plots would become the basis of their religious practices, which centered on ancestral spirits. These slaves, as Mintz (1985) has noted, became a “proto-peasantry” and ultimately the basis of the “reconstituted” peasantry that supplanted slavery after emancipation.

Trouillot identifies the animosity between Haiti’s state and nation as stemming from conflicting ideas about liberty. By the end of the Revolution, broad sectors of colonial society—including the enslaved masses, the mulâtres, and gens de coleurs—had been united to defeat the French and end slavery. The formerly enslaved conceived of liberty as owning their garden plots and participating in local markets. For the leaders of the Revolution, however, freedom meant sovereign statehood, an end to external rule. In independent Haiti, this meant a return to the plantation system but with Haitian leadership. Early leaders strove to establish “militarized agriculture,” but the newly free masses refused (Trouillot, 1990: 43). Eventually, the elite retreated to the cities and the peasants to their small lots in the countryside. The rural culture of the peasantry took the form of oral tradition centered on service to the lwa (spirits) and organizing labor. In the cities, the elite developed a national literature and composed art music.

The geographic division between the elite and the peasantry, however, did not preclude an economic predation on the part of the elite that would eventually hasten the mass movement to the cities and the growth of the diaspora.

State revenue: Taxes and loans

In the absence of a “reconstituted plantation system,” the state was faced with the problem of generating revenue. By the end of Alexander Pétion’s tenure as president of the Republic of Haiti (1807–1818), a system of taxation was established that would remain more or less stable until the end of the 20th century. ³ Taxes were levied primarily against imports and exports, which passed costs onto the peasants’ products and to the foreign goods they consumed. In this way, the peasants were taxed indirectly without necessarily knowing that the state, with which most had little contact, lived at their expense.

Increasingly, Haiti came to depend on loans from foreign banks and merchants, typically with predatory rates of interest, to balance its national budget. The problem of foreign loans and state sovereignty was not unique to Haiti. The same period saw similar debacles unfold throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Yet, the audacity of foreign lenders, often backed by “gunboat diplomacy,” was, if not unique to Haiti, then certainly extraordinary in its case. Throughout the 19th century, German, British, and American gunboats would blithely enter Haiti’s waters at the first sign of default (Trouillot, 1990: 67–68).

Additionally, Haiti was yoked to an indemnity owed to France to cover “losses” from the Revolution. This indemnity was signed in 1823 as a condition of France recognizing Haiti’s independence. ⁴ This debt weighed on the treasury well into the 20th century. As historian Laurent Dubois notes, “when the National Bank of Haiti was founded in 1888, it was fully owned and controlled by a French bank” (Brière, 2008: 133; Dubois, 2012: 102). When Haiti could not pay its debts, it increased taxes on the export of coffee. Trouillot (1990) sums up the cycle of predation succinctly, “In short, throughout the 19th century, Haitian politicians turned the state Treasury over to foreign merchants and condemned the peasants to refill, day and night, the bottomless barrel of the Danaïdes” (p. 69).

Since the publication of State against Nation, however, Haiti’s system of taxation has changed. Initially, the challenge of reforming taxes was taken up by Aristide’s political party, Lavalas. In two treatises published before the inauguration of Aristide, as well as in an address by Prime Minister René Préval to parliament shortly thereafter, Lavalas articulated policy objectives prioritizing the peasantry. Their strategies included concrete measures to increase peasant representation in the federal government and to extend healthcare, education, literacy programs, and potable water to the countryside. They also promised land reform and an end to the system of indirect taxation. They made steps toward implementing an income tax as well as a graded tax on import items that eased the burden on necessities while taxing luxury goods at a higher rate (Dupuy, 1997: 98–100). All of these measures were meant in part to address the nation’s fundamental problem of rapid urbanization and centralized power in the capital.

Lavalas was taking a progressive approach to implementing the 1987 constitution, which, among other democratic reforms, balanced the power of the executive, called for agrarian reform, and declared Creole an official language (Dupuy, 1997: 54–55). In terms of Haitian history, the “Lavalas Project” was radical in prioritizing the rural majority, though it was moderate when compared to the New JEWEL movement in Grenada or the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Knowing that Haiti’s sovereignty was limited by its place in the global economy, authors of the Lavalas Project mapped a careful route between the neoliberal vision of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank and a “development with equity” model (Dupuy, 1997: 96–101). The changes were, nonetheless, too radical for the elite, the military, and their allies in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; see, for example, Nairn, 1994a, 1994b, 1996).

Aristide was ousted in a military coup after only 7 months in office. With little time to implement his party’s program, the rift between the state and nation, as described by Trouillot, had little chance to mend. Aristide spent 3 years in exile in the United States. The details of the coup—the human rights violations it unleashed, as well as the political machinations in Washington—have all been well documented elsewhere. ⁵ Aristide returned in 1994 with the support of the US Marines.

At first glance, it might appear a contradiction that the United States would first support the coup and then oppose it and reinstate Aristide. Alex Dupuy (1997) argues, however, that this change in approach was part of a historical transition from Cold War to neoliberal policy (pp. 1–3). The conditions of Aristide’s return, which were called the “Paris Plan,” included the lifting of barriers on trade, especially import and export tariffs, and selling off state industries. To mitigate the harshest effects of liberalization, the Paris Plan also included measures and aid to improve domestic production, especially agriculture (Hallward, 2007: 56–58). Many of the industries to be sold had been nationalized under François Duvalier for the sole purpose of expanding his influence into the economy. During his rule, it was nearly impossible to find stable employment in the capital without ties to the government. The Paris Plan did not demand that these industries be sold off immediately or on an open market.

As Dupuy points out, these conditions represented massive changes to the Lavalas Project, which had been enthusiastically supported by the majority. These changes were made by the Aristide government in exile. There was no public debate or voice in the making of the Paris Plan (Dupuy, 1997: 148). Worse still, after Aristide’s return, the provisions in the Plan, which were intended to protect and develop the national economy, were either poorly implemented or ignored. Had the Plan been executed properly, it might have slowed, or at least not hastened, the pace of urbanization.

By 1995, conflicts between Aristide’s government, the United States, and the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) who had negotiated the Plan had come to a head, and aid and loans were suspended. As Peter Hallward (2007) notes, the effects were immediate: “almost overnight the gourde lost 20% of its value, and the price of basic foodstuffs began to rise” (p. 58).

Loans had become a leash used to rein in the Lavalas agenda. The “gunboat diplomacy” of the 19th-century merchants had passed, but Haiti’s dependency on foreign loans persisted. At this point, however, the tariffs on imports and exports had been removed. Aristide was meant to raise revenues by selling off national industries, cutting bureaucratic costs, and implementing other forms of taxation, most notably an income tax. While a new income tax was a progressive measure that Trouillot had advocated for in the closing pages of State against Nation, leveling it proved nearly impossible. Elite resistance to the idea and government corruption was too entrenched to carry out the taxation plan. When Aristide was ousted a second time in 2004, the interim Prime Minister Gérard Latortue immediately suspended the income tax (Hallward, 2007: 261).

With the removal of trade tariffs, the market was flooded with rice and other staples from the United States. Oxfam reports that in the period of liberalization, roughly 1985–1999, rice imports increased 30-fold. As part of the Paris Plan, import tariffs on rice dropped from 35% to 3%. In 1995 alone, Haiti’s national rice production fell by 27%, as the price that cultivators received for rice dropped nearly 50%. Concurrently, food aid, mostly in the form of subsidized American rice, increased from 0 in 1994 to 16,000 tons in 1999 (Charvériat and Fokker, 2002; Charvériat and Fowler, 2002: 10). ⁶ By the end of the 1990s, patterns of consumption for the nation’s primary starch had fundamentally changed. The peasants of the Artibonite region, where Haiti’s rice is grown, bore the brunt. When rice production became unviable, they moved to the cities.

There are now efforts underway to reinstate taxes on imported food—while decreasing tariffs on materials imported for manufacturing, like chemicals—to reverse the damage caused by the liberalization of trade. If this plan is executed, taxes on corn and beans will be raised fivefold, with smaller increases for pasta and wheat flour. In recognition of the country’s dependence on imported rice, its rate of taxation will remain 3%. Haiti has the most liberal tariffs in the Americas, but even so these increases generate concerns about raising the cost of living for the struggling majority (The Economist, 2013; Jamaica Gleaner Online, 2013). Circumstances have led to a tax reform that partially reverts to the predatory system described by Trouillot.

Near the end of State against Nation, Trouillot (1990) asserts, “Ultimately, there is only one Haitian question: that of the peasantry” (p. 229). Since he wrote those words, however, the system of taxation that positioned the peasantry as political subalterns has shifted. Given the decline in national production and the increase in imported foods, trends that Trouillot certainly recognized, what role do the consumption patterns of the majority play in the constitution of the nation today?

Writing for a recent column in Le Nouvelliste, economist Joseph Harold Pierre (2013) observes that

the 2013–14 budget will be financed by more than 25% aid (less than previous years); more than 55% of the products we consume are imported and more than 80% of our rice, alas, even though up until the present our geography books speak of Haiti as a country that is essentially agricultural.

Pierre contrasts the idea of the agrarian nation with the statistical reality that influences the daily lives of most Haitians. Demographics reflect an expanding divide between the idea of Haiti as an agriculture country and the direction the population is moving—to the cities and abroad.

Demographics

The decline in agricultural production is only part of the story of the nation’s urban migration. Behind this population shift lies a history of economic and political power becoming increasingly concentrated in cities, most notably Port-au-Prince. While the elite and the state have always resided in urban areas, the pull to leave the countryside began in earnest in the early 20th century with the occupation of Haiti by the United States.

While the state and nation were divided from the very beginning of Haiti’s history, regionalism and militarism had limited the power of the central state over the nation. Regions had relatively autonomous local economies and active ports. Port-au-Prince may have been an important economic center, but its power was not overwhelming. In the late 19th century, for example, approximately 70% of total customs revenues came from provincial towns (Trouillot, 1990: 96). The rugged terrain of the island nation also stymied centralization. Mountains separated regions and complicated efforts to create a national system of roads. Regionalism also effectively separated the military into relatively discrete units. As Trouillot (1990) notes, “Though the army had supposedly been unified under Boyer, its main regional divisions acted as semiautonomous bodies, at least insofar as their allegiance to the local commanders was stronger than their sworn obedience to the chief of state” (p. 95). Regional chiefs could in fact threaten the power of the executive, as they did during the presidencies of Fabre Geffrard (1859–1867) and Sylvain Salnave (1867–1869).

These balances to state power were restructured during the United States occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934. Although it was ostensibly intended to stabilize the economy, the occupation in fact increased the market share of coffee, making Haiti’s export economy more dependent on a single commodity, one that was primarily controlled by a handful of large landowners. At the end of the occupation, Haiti’s trade deficit with the United States had worsened (Trouillot, 1990: 103). Additionally, the implicit, but not necessarily totalizing, color discrimination that existed in Haiti before the occupation was intensified by the unabashed preference of the US Marines for working with light-skinned officials. As Trouillot (1990) has noted, the occupation permanently “exacerbated the contradictions embedded in the socioeconomic structure, reinforced traditional conflicts, and broadened the dimensions of the crisis by centralizing the system” (p. 102).

The military occupation centered its command of the state and economy in Port-au-Prince, undermining the balance of power between the capital and the regional centers. According to Trouillot (1990), “The complete disarming of the peasantry by the Garde, the strengthening of the police rurale, and the centralization of the military force all contributed to the concentration of political power in Port-au-Prince” (p. 105). While the occupation is often credited with building extensive roadways and some railways, these conduits were devised to facilitate the movement of raw materials from the countryside to Port-au-Prince.

New institutions of higher learning were also concentrated in the capital. According to historian Hans Schmidt, the occupation ultimately left “the rest of the country unable to restrain the hegemonic tendencies of the ‘Republic of Port-au-Prince.’” This consequence, as Schmidt (1995 [1971]) notes, has proved to be an enduring one, “In time the Garde deteriorated along with the roads and telephone system, but patterns of central political domination persisted” (p. 235).

The occupation reorganized the Haitian military, state bureaucracy, roads and transportation, and economy to be better controlled from Port-au-Prince. Greater employment opportunities were also to be found in the capital. At the same time, the only efforts made to modernize agricultural techniques were focused on improving industrial agriculture and export crops, which were funneled through the capital. The occupation affected little in terms of the production of subsistence farmers in the rural majority, but as the benefits of development focused primarily on the capital, the population followed.

Statistics reflect this migration to the city, although Trouillot (1990) cautions that we must attend to the politics behind them:

demography is not a neutral science: its powers of explanation can only make sense within a socially determined space. Haiti’s population growth is a handicap, but only within the context of the production and distribution relations imposed by the ruling alliance. (p. 91)

Statistics demonstrate that the effects of centralization, at the cost of rural development, have spurred urban migration. In the decades following the occupation, the population of Port-au-Prince began to swell. Between 1950 and 1955, the population of the capital grew at annual rate of 6%. In the 1950s, roughly 50% of the residents of Port-au-Prince had been born outside the city (Lundahl, 1979: 629). By 1990, when State against Nation was published, nearly one-third of the population lived in urban areas (Institut Haïtien de Statistique et d’Informatique (IHSI), 2007: 15).

This migration trend continued through the 20th century and persists to the present. According to the IHSI, the government bureau that conducts regular censuses, 59.2% of the population in 2003 lived in the countryside and 40.8% lived in urban areas. Of the total population, 37% lived in the west, the region of Port-au-Prince. And the IHSI report revealed that the peasantry is still on the move. According to the census, 7.9% of the population lives in a city to which they have migrated (IHSI, 2003). By 2010, the year of the earthquake, the demographic scales had tipped. According to the World Factbook and projections made by the IHSI, in that year, the population was dispersed roughly 52% urban and 48% rural (IHSI, 2007, 15; The World Factbook, 2013).

The problem becomes more complicated still when the population of the diaspora is taken into account. Estimates for the number of Haitians living abroad (mostly in the United States, Dominican Republic, Canada, France, and the Bahamas) vary between 1.8 and 2 million—roughly the population of Port-au-Prince. In 2012, the diaspora sent 1.98 billion dollars worth of remittances back to Haiti, which constituted nearly 25% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP; Maldonado and Hayem, 2013). The value of remittances is now more than the value of agricultural and manufactured exports combined (Index Mundi, 2013). In 2011, President Michel Martelly introduced a flat tax on incoming remittances, which has increased state revenues. Reflecting on State against Nation today, in light of the growing economic influence of the diaspora raises the question: Who constitutes the “productive class”?

Defining the nation is more than a matter of statistics and demographics. Figures about the population and the economy give no real sense of the movement of people between the cities and the countryside. They cannot account for the women who travel almost ceaselessly between farms and markets, for example, or for the movement across borders by those such as the migrant workers who find seasonal work in the Dominican Republic. Official statistics on the economy cannot account for the amount of money brought in the form of cash by those returning to their families, nor do they reflect the money generated from illicit trades such as drug trafficking. Figures about the economy and population also cannot tell us about the history of the state’s antagonism toward its people, and to what extent, therefore, people willingly and openly participated in the censuses and surveys that generated these numbers. Statistics and demographics do, nonetheless, paint broadly the picture of a nation in transition.

Haiti as imagined political community

Ultimately, as Benedict Anderson ([1983] 2006) argues, it is the faculty of the imagination, and the collective endeavor to imagine a shared history, that makes the nation real. For Anderson, the rise of “print capitalism” and the employment of local dialects in print were two historical moments critical to making the concept of the nation conceivable. Other writers have added that other forms of cultural production, such as dance, or the visual arts, can serve the same purpose.

For most of Haiti’s history, the vocation of culture belonged to a small, embattled group within the elite. They did not fully identify with the local peasantry, or the French, yet they created copious volumes of history and literature, and to a lesser extent works of visual art and art music. France was certainly the measure of high culture, and most of their works adhered to European artistic form. Distinguishing themselves from the local peasantry was also another means of measuring up to French culture. Following the defeat of Napoleon, however, an imagined identification with the peasantry allowed the elites a sense of moral superiority over the French. Haitian intellectuals were often brilliant, and even radical, at defending their country’s position in the world against the racist slander of travelogue writers, pseudo-scientists, and diplomats. However, the peasant and peasant culture appear in the culture of the 19th-century elite as “local color” at best. Depictions of peasant life ranged from paternalistic to apologetic, but seldom challenged the established hierarchy of state and nation.

Trouillot (1990) summarizes the elite production of national culture as follows:

While (Haitian elite) proudly adopted European manners, they also engaged proudly in many indigenous practices that they judged worthy of their time and attention. This in turn meant that the peasantry—and many customs or features that the elites’ imagination associated with that peasantry, including “blackness”—were often ennobled in words, even if kept a safe distance in practice. (p. 116)

The peasant was the object of national culture, but not its agent. However, the US occupation caused a national identity crisis, as white soldiers occupied the country for the first time since the colonial epoch. Partly as a reaction to this crisis, writer and diplomat Jean Price-Mars published Ainsi Parla L’Oncle (Thus Spoke the Uncle) in 1928. Price-Mars ([1928] 1973) accused the elite of “collective Bovaryism,” in that they identified with a European heritage that was not their own. He attacked the elites’ sense of nationalism by claiming they had chosen to disavow the true culture and religion of the Haitian people. His defense of Vodou in particular was rigorous and groundbreaking, insisting that it was rightfully the national religion.

The impact of the indigéniste movement, which Price-Mars galvanized with the publication of Ainsi, extended to dance and the visual arts as well. ⁷ Access to participate in national culture expanded along with the new forms of indigénisme. As Michel Lerebours (1992) demonstrates, the indigéniste movement paved the way for the so-called renaissance in painting in the 1940s. The peasant was no longer just a motif, but became a culture producer. The best-known artists of this generation—painters like Hector Hyppolite, Rigaud Benoit, and Castera Bazile—came from the peasant class. Yet, the growth in such arts coincided with the increasing centralization of resources in the capital and its rapid growth. Even the artists who remained in the provinces and provincial towns relied on the institutions and galleries based in Port-au-Prince, as well as the supplies available there. The arts stemmed from rural peasant traditions, but needed the access and resources of the city to survive.

The florescence of the arts in the 1940s evidenced another social order beyond the prevailing one:

The history of urban arts, of painting and music—as well as religion, language, and the organization of kinship networks—all indicate the existence within civil society of another order of relationships alongside the dominant one. The peasantry cannot be said to be victorious in the cultural sphere, but it has an implicitly acknowledged presence there, to a degree as yet unmatched in the political and economic arenas. (Trouillot, 1990: 114)

Trouillot indicates that the urban arts stem from the social world of the peasantry. Working in the realm of culture allows the urban artists, who are typically not far removed from the countryside, a small means of autonomy. Like the “embattled cultivators,” who formed their communities in the margins of plantation society, urban artists exist in a city where their best economic prospects are often low-end service jobs or manufacturing (Mintz, 1985: 132). Perhaps, then we should look to the embattled artists of Port-au-Prince to glimpse Haiti, the urban nation.

To some extent, Haiti’s present resembles the moment of the indigénistes. Another foreign occupation has brought a questioning of class schisms, governance, and national identity. Since 2004, the United Nations has had troops on the ground to stabilize the country and promote democracy. For most Haitians, their presence has meant another occupation by foreign troops. The most tangible impact of the mission has been the introduction of cholera, which to date has killed over 8000 people (Transnational Development Clinic et al., 2013). The arts have not been slow to respond. Carnival songs, not surprisingly, have been the first line of defense. Each year brings a new generation of songs deriding the “tourists” and “goat thieves” in blue helmets.

The current florescence of arts in Port-au-Prince is, however, more than a reaction to foreign intervention. Forms of art that are specifically urban have burgeoned since the 1990s. Creole rap is one prominent example. In their 2013 Carnival song, Konpe Tòf (Stand Strong), the group Barikad Crew urged youth to “stand tough with King Christophe,” and to not wait “with arms crossed” for the state to help. The group was invoking the memory of Henry Christophe to rebuke the state claiming that the youth are “tired of lies.”

Graffiti murals have also become part of the cityscape, coming out of the tradition of street murals, but executed in spray paint with a particular urban esthetic (Bhatia, 2010). Jerry Rosembert’s work, for example, of the map of Haiti personified as a grieving woman became iconic after the earthquake. The nation is a recurrent theme in his work where it appears sometimes as a child, or an old man, or a peasant.

The international coverage of the earthquake conveyed the image of Haiti as an endless morass of broken slum-scapes and corpses. The textile artist Myrlande Constant draws on much of the same imagery in her masterpiece Haiti, Tuesday, January 12, 2012, but painstakingly renders Port-au-Prince’s destruction in beads (Polk, 2012: 140–141). The visual effect is astonishing. Furthermore, the beading technique she employs was learned while working in a wedding dress factory. Constant draws on the tradition of Vodou flag-making, but her medium is ultimately part of the history of light industry in Port-au-Prince.

The arts, however, are only one means of envisioning the nation. The nation is also the subject of zealous sermons in evangelical churches and radio stations. Those sermons have recently been concerned with who, exactly, should be excluded from the nation. In July, some of these groups reacted against Haiti’s nascent movement for gay and lesbian rights. In their demonstration against gay marriage, a mob killed two men assumed to be gay (The Sentinel, 2013). This is not the first time religious extremists have targeted groups they define as “outsiders.” After the departure of Jean-Claude Duvalier and after the earthquake, extremists attacked Vodou practitioners (Beauvoir and Dominique, 2003). While growth in religious extremism is not a specifically urban phenomenon, massive demonstrations where the political masquerades as the moral are particular to city life. As David Harvey (2007) notes, the “invocation of moral values,” connected with virulent forms of cultural nationalism, is one means to reimagine the connection between state and nation in the age of neoliberalism (pp. 84–86).

From these few examples, it should be clear that there is no consensus on how Haiti, the urban nation, is to be imagined. In the closing pages of State against Nation, Trouillot (1990) asserts that “Ultimately there is only one Haitian question: that of the peasantry” (p. 229). In light of the history that has followed that publication, will Haiti’s growing urban underclass be seen as a domestic diaspora—a peasantry and nation displaced—or as an urban and peasant nation?