On July 28, 1915, United States Marines landed at Port-au-Prince initiating an era of US rule over the Republic of Haiti that lasted nineteen years, until 1934. The immediate justification for
US invasion and occupation was in a desire to protect US life and property, especially in light of a spate of political violence in Port-au-Prince that saw the killing of opponents of Haitian President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam and Sam’s subsequent murder. The US also expressed concern about an alleged threat of German influence in Haiti. For many people, these justifications, and occupation itself, were entirely legitimate. Haiti was seen as a perennial, irredeemable political basket-case, marred by political mayhem and chaos. This view was bolstered by racist, commonsense beliefs in the United States and elsewhere that the Black people of Haiti, like African Americans and other African people, were not fit to govern themselves. Such beliefs justified US military intervention in Haiti while concealing the intervention’s actual causes, and consequences. As is the case today, the competing imperial interests in, and machinations over, Haiti that enabled Haiti’s internal political crises were obscured, ignored, and erased.
James
Weldon Johnson was among the first writers to draw public attention to the occupation. Johnson, at the time the field secretary for the NAACP, travelled to Haiti in February, 1920 to investigate conditions in the country under US military rule and occupation. He remained in Haiti until May. In September and August of 1920, Johnson published a blistering four-part series on the US occupation in the
Nation . Johnson’s articles upended the taken-for-granted knowledge about the Occupation circulating in the US press, and in some cases disseminated by the Occupation forces. He described a country governed by foreign martial law and press censorship, where Haiti’s political classes were muzzled, and where thousands of peasants were wantonly tortured and murdered. Johnson also brought to light a “pacification” campaign that, in practice, saw the hunting of Haiti’s peasant guerrillas, or “
Cacos ,” by the US Marines for “sport.” Pacification also involved the impressment of hundreds of Haitians into forced labor projects, and a ruthless
counterinsurgency campaign that witnessed the
assassination of
Caco leader and Haitian patriot Charlemagne
Peralte among many, many others.
“Johnson’s articles upended the taken-for-granted knowledge about the Occupation circulating in the US press.”
Johnson’s
Nation articles also recovered the little-known role of
Wall Street in the US intervention in Haiti. In the third installment of the
Nation series, titled “Government of, by, and for the National City Bank,” Johnson describes in detail how the
City Bank’s investments in Haiti , and its desire to control Haiti’s financial system, prompted its executives to assume a prominent role in US-Haitian diplomacy. In 1914, a year before intervention occurred, City Bank vice president Roger Leslie Farnham had drafted and sent to US Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan the notorious “Farnham Plan,” a statement on US-Haitian affairs calling for US military intervention. Also in 1914, the City Bank requested that the State Department ask US Marines to land in Haiti to move the $500,000 gold reserve from the country’s
Banque National d’Haiti in Port-au-Prince to a Wall Street vault. Bank officials claimed the action was to protect their investments; Haiti’s politicians viewed it as theft, and a deliberate attack on the Republic’s sovereignty.
The stated goals of the US in Haiti were to build infrastructure, expand education, and provide internal and regional stability. None of this was achieved. Instead, the most “successful” achievement of the US occupation was the building and training of a local police force, the Gendarmerie d'Haïti. Years after the occupation, this police force was used to terrorize the Haitian people.
The four parts of Johnson’s
Nation series were bundled together and re-issued as the pamphlet
Self-Determining Haiti .
Self-Determining Haiti remains a remarkable example of investigative journalism and Haitian advocacy and a damning testament to the perils and pitfalls of US military intervention. We reproduce below the first part, “The American Occupation,” originally published in the
Nation August 28, 1920 issue.
Self-Determining Haiti: The American Occupation
James Weldon Johnson
To know the reasons for the present political situation in Haiti, to understand why the United States landed and has for five years maintained military forces in that country, why some three thousand Haitian men, women, and children have been shot down by American rifles and machine guns, it is necessary, among other things, to know that the National City Bank of New York is very much interested in Haiti. It is necessary to know that the National City Bank controls the National Bank of Haiti and is the depository for all of the Haitian national funds that are being collected by American officials, and that Mr. R. L. Farnham, vice-president of the National City Bank, is virtually the representative of the State Department in matters relating to the island republic. Most Americans have the opinion-–if they have any opinion at all on the subject-–that the United States was forced, on purely humane grounds, to intervene in the black republic because of the tragic coup d’état which resulted in the overthrow and death of President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam and the execution of the political prisoners confined at Port-au-Prince, July 27-28, 1915; and that this government has been compelled to keep a military force in Haiti since that time to pacify the country and maintain order.
The fact is that for nearly a year before forcible intervention on the part of the United States this government was seeking to compel Haiti to submit to “peaceable” intervention. Toward the close of 1914 the United States notified the government of Haiti that it was disposed to recognize the newly-elected president, Theodore Davilmar, as soon as a Haitian commission would sign at Washington “satisfactory protocols” relative to a convention with the United States on the model of the Dominican-American Convention. On December 15, 1914, the Haitian government, through its Secretary of Foreign Affairs, replied: “The Government of the Republic of Haiti would consider itself lax in its duty to the United States and to itself if it allowed the least doubt to exist of its irrevocable intention not to accept any control of the administration of Haitian affairs by a foreign Power.” On December 19, the United States, through its legation at Port-au-Prince, replied, that in expressing its willingness to do in Haiti what had been done in Santo Domingo it “was actuated entirely by a disinterested desire to give assistance.”
Two months later, the Theodore government was overthrown by a revolution and Vilbrun Guillaume was elected president. Immediately afterwards there arrived at Port-au-Prince an American commission from Washington–the Ford mission. The commissioners were received at the National Palace and attempted to take up the discussion of the convention that had been broken off in December, 1914. However, they lacked full powers and no negotiations were entered into. After several days, the Ford mission sailed for the United States. But soon after, in May, the United States sent to Haiti Mr. Paul Fuller, Jr., with the title Envoy Extraordinary, on a special mission to apprise the Haitian government that the Guillaume administration would not be recognized by the American government unless Haiti accepted and signed the project of a convention which he was authorized to present. After examining the project the Haitian government submitted to the American commission a counter-project, formulating the conditions under which it would be possible to accept the assistance of the United States. To this counter-project Mr. Fuller proposed certain modifications, some of which were accepted by the Haitian government. On June 5, 1915, Mr. Fuller acknowledged the receipt of the Haitian communication regarding these modifications, and sailed from Port-au-Prince.
“The Government of the Republic of Haiti would…not to accept any control of the administration of Haitian affairs by a foreign Power.”
Before any further discussion of the Fuller project between the two governments, political incidents in Haiti led rapidly to the events of July 27 and 28. On July 27 President Guillaume fled to the French Legation, and on the same day took place a massacre of the political prisoners in the prison at Port-au-Prince. On the-morning of July 28 President Guillaume was forcibly taken from French Legation and killed. On the afternoon of July 28 an American man-of-war dropped anchor in the harbor of Port-au-Prince and landed American forces. It should be borne in mind that through all of this the life of not a single American citizen had been taken or jeopardized.
The overthrow of Guillaume and its attending consequences did not constitute the cause of American intervention in Haiti, but merely furnished the awaited opportunity. Since July 28, 1915, American military forces have been in control of Haiti. These forces have been increased until there are now somewhere near three thousand Americans under arms in the republic.
From the very first, the attitude of the Occupation has been that it was dealing with a conquered territory. Haitian forces were disarmed, military posts and barracks were occupied, and the National Palace was taken as headquarters for the Occupation. After selecting a new and acceptable president for the country, steps were at once taken to compel the Haitian government to sign a convention in which it virtually foreswore its independence. This was accomplished by September 16, 1915; and although the terms of this convention provided for the administration of the Haitian customs by American civilian officials, all the principal custom houses of the country had been seized by military force and placed in charge of American Marine officers before the end of August. The disposition of the funds collected in duties from the time of the military seizure of the custom houses to the time of their administration by civilian officials is still a question concerning which the established censorship in Haiti allows no discussion.
It is interesting to note the wide difference between the convention which Haiti was forced to sign and the convention which was in course of diplomatic negotiation at the moment of intervention. The Fuller convention asked little of Haiti and gave something, the Occupation convention demands everything of Haiti and gives nothing. The Occupation convention is really the same convention which the Haitian government peremptorily refused to discuss in December, 1914, except that in addition to American control of Haitian finances it also provides for American control of the Haitian military forces. The Fuller convention contained neither of these provisions. When the United States found itself in a position to take what it had not even dared to ask, it used brute force and took it. But even a convention which practically deprived Haiti of its independence was found not wholly adequate for the accomplishment of all that was contemplated. The Haitian constitution still offered some embarrassments, so it was decided that Haiti must have a new constitution. It was drafted and presented to the Haitian assembly for adoption. The assembly balked–chiefly at the article in the proposed document removing the constitutional disability which prevented aliens from owning land in Haiti. Haiti had long considered the denial of this right to aliens as her main bulwark against overwhelming economic exploitation; and it must be admitted that she had better reasons than the several states of the United States that have similar provisions.
