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Haiti THE UNITED STATES OCCUPATION, 1915-34
Unavailable
President Philippe Sudre Dartiguenave (seated at center)
with ministers and bodyguards
Courtesy National Archives
Representatives from the United States wielded veto
power
over all governmental decisions in Haiti, and Marine Corps
commanders served as administrators in the provinces.
Local
institutions, however, continued to be run by Haitians, as
was
required under policies put in place during the presidency
of
Woodrow Wilson. In line with these policies, Admiral
William
Caperton, the initial commander of United States forces,
instructed Bobo to refrain from offering himself to the
legislature as a presidential candidate. Philippe Sudre
Dartiguenave, the mulatto president of the Senate, agreed
to
accept the presidency of Haiti after several other
candidates had
refused on principle.
With a figurehead installed in the National Palace and
other
institutions maintained in form if not in function,
Caperton
declared martial law, a condition that persisted until
1929. A
treaty passed by the Haitian legislature in November 1915
granted
further authority to the United States. The treaty allowed
Washington to assume complete control of Haiti's finances,
and it
gave the United States sole authority over the appointment
of
advisers and receivers. The treaty also gave the United
States
responsibility for establishing and running public-health
and
public-works programs and for supervising routine
governmental
affairs. The treaty also established the Gendarmerie
d'Haïti
(Haitian Constabulary), a step later replicated in the
Dominican
Republic and Nicaragua. The Gendarmerie was Haiti's first
professional military force, and it was eventually to play
an
important political role in the country. In 1917 President
Dartiguenave dissolved the legislature after its members
refused
to approve a constitution purportedly authored by United
States
assistant secretary of the navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. A
referendum subsequently approved the new constitution (by
a vote
of 98,225 to 768), however, in 1918. Generally a liberal
document, the constitution allowed foreigners to purchase
land.
Dessalines had forbidden land ownership by foreigners, and
since
1804 most Haitians had viewed foreign ownership as
anathema.
The occupation by the United States had several effects
on
Haiti. An early period of unrest culminated in a 1918
rebellion
by up to 40,000 former cacos and other disgruntled
people.
The scale of the uprising overwhelmed the Gendarmerie, but
marine
reinforcements helped put down the revolt at the estimated
cost
of 2,000 Haitian lives. Thereafter, order prevailed to a
degree
that most Haitians had never witnessed. The order,
however, was
imposed largely by white foreigners with deep-seated
racial
prejudices and a disdain for the notion of
self-determination by
inhabitants of less-developed nations. These attitudes
particularly dismayed the mulatto elite, who had
heretofore
believed in their innate superiority over the black
masses. The
whites from North America, however, did not distinguish
among
Haitians, regardless of their skin tone, level of
education, or
sophistication. This intolerance caused indignation,
resentment,
and eventually a racial pride that was reflected in the
work of a
new generation of Haitian historians, ethnologists,
writers,
artists, and others, many of whom later became active in
politics
and government. Still, as Haitians united in their
reaction to
the racism of the occupying forces, the mulatto elite
managed to
dominate the country's bureaucracy and to strengthen its
role in
national affairs.
The occupation had several positive aspects. It greatly
improved Haiti's infrastructure. Roads were improved and
expanded. Almost all roads, however, led to
Port-au-Prince,
resulting in a gradual concentration of economic activity
in the
capital. Bridges went up throughout the country; a
telephone
system began to function; several towns gained access to
clean
water; and a construction boom (in some cases employing
forced
labor) helped restore wharves, lighthouses, schools, and
hospitals. Public health improved, partially because of
United
States-directed campaigns against malaria and yaws (a
crippling
disease caused by a spirochete). Sound fiscal management
kept
Haiti current on its foreign-debt payments at a time when
default
among Latin American nations was common. By that time,
United
States banks were Haiti's main creditors, an important
incentive
for Haiti to make timely payments.
In 1922 Louis Borno replaced Dartiguenave, who was
forced out
of office for temporizing over the approval of a debtconsolidation loan. Borno ruled without the benefit of a
legislature (dissolved in 1917 under Dartiguenave) until
elections were again permitted in 1930. The legislature,
after
several ballots, elected mulatto Sténio Vincent to the
presidency.
The occupation of Haiti continued after World War I,
despite
the embarrassment that it caused Woodrow Wilson at the
Paris
peace conference in 1919 and the scrutiny of a
congressional
inquiry in 1922. By 1930 President Herbert Hoover had
become
concerned about the effects of the occupation,
particularly after
a December 1929 incident in Les Cayes in which marines
killed at
least ten Haitian peasants during a march to protest local
economic conditions. Hoover appointed two commissions to
study
the situation. A former governor general of the
Philippines, W.
Cameron Forbes, headed the more prominent of the two. The
Forbes
Commission praised the material improvements that the
United
States administration had wrought, but it criticized the
exclusion of Haitians from positions of real authority in
the
government and the constabulary, which had come to be
known as
the Garde d'Haïti. In more general terms, the commission
further
asserted that "the social forces that created
[instability] still
remain--poverty, ignorance, and the lack of a tradition or
desire
for orderly free government."
The Hoover administration did not implement fully the
recommendations of the Forbes Commission, but United
States
withdrawal was well under way by 1932, when Hoover lost
the
presidency to Roosevelt, the presumed author of the most
recent
Haitian constitution. On a visit to Cap Haïtien in July
1934,
Roosevelt reaffirmed an August 1933 disengagement
agreement. The
last contingent of marines departed in mid-August, after a
formal
transfer of authority to the Garde. As in other countries
occupied by the United States in the early twentieth
century, the
local military was often the only cohesive and effective
institution left in the wake of withdrawal.
Data as of December 1989
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