I ordered the award-winning book just in time for it to be delivered before my plane left for Haiti in September of ’09. It goes a long way towards explaining why the Duvaliers rose and clung to power for so long; I can’t recommend it highly enough. I hope other American reporters have read the book as well so we can see start to see some desperately-needed decent journalism on Haiti in the establishment media. As Gina Athena Ulysse says, “Yes, we are poor and have a history of political strife, but it’s not innate. And hell no, it’s not because we are mostly black. We are not reducible to our conditions.”

What caused you to write Red & Black in Haiti? What kind of response did it generate – both within and outside in Haiti?

Growing up in Jamaica, I had seen how intense political rivalries create dangerous problems and in many instances lead to violent solutions. I wanted to find out to what extent this history was matched in Haiti, a country which I have always considered to be incredibly similar to Jamaica. An earlier generation of scholars, such as David Nicholls, Michel Hector, and J. Michael Dash had indicated in their work that the tension between Marxists and Black Nationalists in Haiti was a defining feature of the 1930s-1950s. This intrigued me and encouraged me to go further and explore this tension.

The two decades before Duvalier were very transformative for Haiti in terms of politics, but in a much larger sense in terms of culture and history. So much happened in the postoccupation period that deserved careful attention. It was really the beginning of a modern political era in Haiti, one that was defined by an increase in popular politicization.

Yet it had not been given the attention it deserved. The possibility of great positive change seemed very real in this period and Haiti could very well have evolved differently as a result. I also wanted to write a political history of Haiti that did not reduce Haitian politics to a series of failures but to give it rigorous and fair-minded assessment and to show that the radical generation of that era had invested a great deal in improving the welfare of their country.

The response to the book has been generally quite positive and I am grateful for the support the book has received in the Caribbean and North America. It recently was a co-winner of the Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Book Award from the Caribbean Studies Association. In Haiti people who have read it tell me how much they appreciate it. A Haitian press will be doing a French translation of the book and making it widely available in Haiti sometime in the near future. To have the book find an audience in Haiti is for me a tremendous honor.

Why do you call the uprising that brought down Lescot’s regime a revolution? You describe it as a moment of great promise and hope. How did it unravel? Do you see parallels to the broad-based dechoukaj that pushed out Jean-Claude Duvalier at the end of the 1980s and its subsequent fragmentation?

It is important to first appreciate that moments of upheaval and overthrow have usually been referred to as revolutions in Haiti. Prior to that many of the coups were regarded as ‘revolutions’ whether or not anything revolutionary actually occurred. The events of January 1946 were for the people who experienced them indeed a revolution. For many years following 1946, the anniversary of Elie Lescot’s departure would be publicly recognized as the anniversary of the revolution. It can of course be debatable as to whether there was anything truly revolutionary that came out of it. A Haitian friend once told me it was more properly a revolutionary movement but not a revolution.

But some notable transformations that occurred in 1946 marked the period as a revolution especially when compared to other revolutionary moments before. Estimé’s presidency (1946-50) is perhaps the important. It was the first attempt to really break away from the political traditions of the past. If one measures the strength of democracy on the nation’s investment in the idea that the state acts on its behalf, then the Estimé era was really a watershed for Haiti. It was indeed a period of incredible promise unlike any the country had experienced up to that time.

But a leader with enormous expectations as Estimé had in 1946, in a country that was divided socially and politically is going to be compromised. And indeed Estimé was greatly compromised. He did try at first to find common ground among these various groups so that he could effectively lead. But when he couldn’t get the balance he needed he began to display the authoritarian tendencies of his predecessors. After a transformation as dramatic as 1946 people were intolerant of any sign that resembled dictatorship and the forces that supported him, five years later worked to overthrow him.

There are many fascinating parallels between the post-1946 political landscape and the post-1986 one. For one, consider the two leaders they produced: Estimé and Aristide. Although there is very good reason to compare Aristide with Daniel Fignolé in terms of popularity, charisma, and organization, he also shares interesting parallels with Estimé. Both men came to power on a wave of democratic appeal, had to confront the army and contend with the strong threats from various sides jostling for power, including a new political elite and an entrenched bourgeoisie. In order to save their administrations they both resorted to controversial measures.

An even more obvious parallel is the sentiment both movements evoked for people in Haiti. The dechoukaj of 1946 was seen as an uprooting of the political elite of the 1920s-1940s, and the beginning of a new era in Haiti. People genuinely believed that Haiti could transform into a strong democracy then. But it provided weak solutions for addressing the political divisions in Haiti, which eventually undermined the movement. This failing was costly as it produced François Duvalier and Duvalierism. The dechoukaj of 1986 was a means of trying to erase the system that Duvalier planted in Haiti. But as with 1946, the solutions were weak. The key difference between 1946 and 1986 was the increase in violence and brutality in the post-1986 period. This was partly due to the legacy of brutality that Duvalierism left behind, but also to the abuses of the armed forces.

In your book I was struck by Daniel Fignole‘s leadership of wide swaths of Port-au-Prince’s working class. Fignole wielded considerable political influence, yet he hardly served in any government – his presidency only lasting 19 days. Why is that? Would you characterize his quick overthrow and exile as a US-backed coup d’etat?

Daniel Fignolé was quite simply the most popular political personality of his time. He had incredible reach and a powerful charisma. He was an intelligent man with a deep conviction for his country. He was also the right man at the right time. His critics will make mention of his megalomania. Indeed there was a touch of that with Fignolé, as with many other leaders who command such massive popular support. Haiti has had no shortage of those types of personalities in its history.

But Fignolé brought something different to this history because he was able to channel popular energy into active mobilization and organization. His party MOP was quite unique in Haiti at the time in its outreach. It boasted several newspapers, union support/leadership, rural connections, headquarters, education programs, a social club, and a family paper run by his wife, Carmen.

Fignolé also did not resort to violence. As threatening as his language could be sometimes and as massive as his steam-roller support was, he never commanded it to exact violence on any sector of Haiti. But he did suffer from an enlarged sense of himself and his movement. This prevented him from allying with other radical groups in Haiti, such as the Socialist Party, that could have strengthened the radical movement. Instead, he made several miscalculations that forced him into alliances with people who were determined to bring him down.

The biggest miscalculation of his career was accepting the presidency in May 1957 which resulted in his kidnapping and exile by the army in 1957 after only 19 days in the National Palace. The United States certainly had knowledge of what the army was getting into in Haiti in 1957. And U.S. officials were indeed gravely concerned over what a Fignolé presidency meant to Haiti. But the politics on the ground had much to do with it too. Fignolé could have rejected the offer to be a provisional president and stay in the race. He could have won if he did. But his enemies recognized his weakness and offered him an option that in many ways amounted to political suicide. If he had stepped back and observed the situation more carefully, he would have seen it as a trap.

In general, how would you characterize Haiti’s relationship to its northern neighbor? Did the United States enhance or undermine Haitian democracy during this period?

Haiti and the United States have always shared a strange relationship. There have always been close ties and intersections in both histories since before the Haitian Revolution. As is well-known now, a regiment from St. Domingue fought in the American Revolution in the 1770s. Yet the U.S. was one of the last nations to recognize Haitian independence. So from the beginning there was always this interesting history of support and neglect between Haiti and the U.S. This continued during the Occupation which saw a fair amount of racism and exploitation toward Haiti.

The growth of radical currents in Haiti during the postoccupation was of great concern to the United States during a time when the U.S. was preoccupied with the containment of communism around the world. Because so much of Haiti’s politics of the period was radical (labor, black nationalism, communism etc) American policy-makers feared it would make Haiti more vulnerable to communist infiltration.

Political leaders in Haiti had to come to terms with the heavy presence of the United States in local politics (something that had been going on before and during the Occupation but increased a great deal after it) and sought to adjust their programs and strategies in order to win U.S. support. The U.S. also played a role in influencing the outcomes of the periods of crisis during the years covered in the book – 1930, 1946, 1950, 1957. This served to undermine democracy building in the country. However, while it is true that U.S. foreign policy significantly contributed to the direction that Haiti took to reach Duvalier, there are other factors that cannot be ignored. Local tensions among political actors in Haiti ultimately broke down the promise of democracy, a point the book makes clear.

Can you talk about what common threads, if any, that you see connecting the leftist opposition profiled in your book to today’s Haitian left? For example, is there a continuing disconnect between educated activists and the rural peasantry?

The situation has changed a lot in terms of urban left connections with the rural sectors. One major reason for this is that the rural sectors have become far more prominent through grassroots organizations and community development organizations than during the time covered in the book. The presence of peasant organizations and community-based organizations since the 1980s is an important development.

A major weakness of the leftists of the 1940s was their inability to develop strong regional networks. This is not to say that rural sectors were not politically involved then. They probably were. But the evidence connecting them to the larger movements in Port-au-Prince is not strong. So the fact that activists today include the rural peasantry in their focus is a major difference.

The urban situation has also changed a great deal. During the forties the population of Port-au-Prince was less than half a million people. Today it is edging closer to 3 million. This has had enormous implications for politics in the country, not to mention social and economic standards as well. One unfortunate commonality that remains is the divisions among different political sectors. We saw some of this in the 2004 coup and we are seeing it again with the presidential campaign this year.

There were encouraging signs of unity among political rivals immediately following the earthquake, but that seems to be dissolving now that we are moving closer to elections. Democracy has advanced a great deal since the forties, but the division along with current crisis produces a combustible situation.

The media often talk about Haiti as a failed state or lacking in democratic traditions. In one recent story about Wyclef Jean, the Associated Press concluded, ” Presidents have only rarely completed a constitutional five-year term — most in history have been overthrown, assassinated, declared themselves “president-for-life” or some combination of the three.” What do you make of the mainstream media’s treatment of Haitian history, to the extent that it is referenced at all?

There is a tradition of misinformation about Haiti and its history is often reduced to being simply one of chaotic politics. It is true that Haiti has had a great many short-term presidents. That is undeniable and a part of historical record. But it is easy to highlight the short rule of presidents and the weaknesses of democratic institutions in the country.

I would doubt that any of the overthrown or assassinated presidents expected to be assassinated or exiled when they took the oath of office. There are deeper issues about why democracy has not been successful in Haiti that are never really addressed in media reports. Since the earthquake there have been really abysmal treatments of Haiti’s history in the mainstream media that seems to insinuate that the Haitian Revolution was the root cause of the country’s problems, including the earthquake. I can’t think of any other country that has been subject to this sort of massive misinformation. Some will argue that it is deliberate.

But there is also an element of blatant disregard for proper contextualization when it comes to Haiti. It is almost as if the standards applicable to other countries don’t seem to matter. The Caribbean generally suffers from this but Haiti suffers most. This has come about from nearly two centuries of negative stereotyping of Haiti to the point where the negatives are accepted as part of the reality. So we get reports that fail to do the simple fact-checking on dates and names, or make easy conclusions on some very complicated situations. False information is repeated so frequently that it becomes regarded as facts.

To be fair, the mainstream media did provide a very important service in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake with its around the clock coverage. The attention to Haiti by media outlets via websites, blogs, news reports, and broadcasts was unprecedented. This had the advantage of getting more people interested and involved in offering support to this great human tragedy. But it also presented a unique opportunity for a better understanding of Haitian history. Sadly I don’t think that has been the result.

One good thing that I have noticed is the role of the alternative media. In this age of new media several alternative news sources and journalists have impressed me by including Haiti’s history in coverage of the aftermath of the earthquake. They usually tend to be more careful in avoiding the pitfalls of the mainstream by providing more details and considered assessment.

Does it appear to you that those charting Haiti’s development today understand Haitian history? Do you think the outpouring of charitable giving towards Haiti after the earthquake, most of directed at international NGOs, will have an impact?

That’s a good question. I would agree that there is a limited understanding or even engagement with Haiti’s history on the part of the people leading the recovery project. The view that Haiti is constantly in trouble suits present interests who use the moment of disaster to advance their own agendas. This has always been the case.

My concern with this is that the experiences of the past are seldom recalled in any meaningful way that examines the reasons why past solutions didn’t work. Sympathizers for Haiti’s plight are also guilty of this. There is a tendency among some to see the reasons for Haiti’s problems to be entirely a result of external forces, when the reality is always more complex. The postoccupation is a great example. I should stress, however, that Haitians have always had a very sharp sense of their history. History is everywhere in Haiti. You just have to look at the names of streets in Port-au-Prince to realize the heavy presence of history in the country.

The support for Haiti today can only have an impact with good leadership. One person cannot do this alone especially given the dire circumstances the country is in following January 12. Ideally it would be good to see a coalition of sorts among various political groups and leaders evolving out of the November elections. A leading party or president that acknowledges that the situation is so utterly overwhelming at present, that they will have to work together to ensure that the money is properly accounted for and the rebuilding will be properly monitored. To do so, however, would mean they would have to consciously work to avoid the divisiveness and corruption of the past. In this instance I sincerely hope that history will not repeat itself.

My short story on this for FSRN is here. Image from the Associated Press.

I spoke earlier today by phone to Dr. Eloisa Tamez, who owns a tract of property on the Texas-Mexico border and has been fighting the government’s attempt to construct a wall on it for over a year. She is a member of the Lipan Apache tribe and her family has owned the land for several centuries. Federal judge Andrew Hanen ruled in March that the Department of Homeland Security must negotiate with landowners before property can be seized, but yesterday he ordered Tamez to allow DHS to start construction on her land.

Dr. Tamez told me that she is disappointed with the ruling and will continue speaking out. She said she has seen nothing to indicate President Obama will change the border wall policy – especially since wall construction is providing jobs in the area. Tamez believes she can still appeal the ruling, but says Homeland Security contractors have already been trespassing on areas of her land.

Here’s a complete transcript of my interview with her (I’ve added emphasis in certain places).

Mediahacker: Dr. Tamez, could you just share with me your reaction to the ruling yesterday?

Tamez: Well, of course I was very saddened by it but my lawyers worked very hard to respond to every motion that was set forth by the government. And we worked hard at finding out a different result, so I guess in that respect we had exhausted all possible answers to whatever the goverment was claiming. So I have a lot of respect for Judge Hanen. I think that he has given us, here in South Texas the landowners here in El Calaboz, many opportunities to be heard. And for that I am grateful, to see that there are some judges and especially Judge Hanen, who uphold the Constitution. So I’m proud of that.

Other than that I think that the whole situation started out as a political thing, and it’s still a political thing. Because currently if President Obama and Secretary Napolitano were to put a stop to this, that would mean canceling contracts, jobs for those who are working with the contractors, and that would that wouldn’t be [inaudible] for President Obama, who is claiming to want to create jobs – that’s one of his priorities. So again, some of us have to suffer continually for corporations and also at the hands of our own government for political reasons.

Mediahacker: So do you have any appeals left available to you in the process, or not at this point?

Tamez: I believe that there is an opportunity for appeal. We have not been told that there is not one. I don’t know at this point. We’re talking about our options, I don’t know which direction we’re going to go. I know that we will concentrate on using our energies to think about what we will discuss when we sit down and negotiate, because Judge Hanen has presented us with a very nicely written paragraph an opportunity to sit down and discuss various factors that are of importance, before the government comes in and takes my land. So we want to work on that and make sure that we have a good chance to be heard as we sit down through that process.

Mediahacker: In March Judge Hanen ruled that DHS needed to negotiate with you and other landowners. I guess I’m wondering, is it his position or his ruling that those negotiations effectively took place already or is that still going to happen?

Tamez: We still have some things to work out, for example the fair market value of the land they want. And so the hearing is still set for that to take place in October. It’s been rolled up to October because we were not able to find appraisers for our land. We couldn’t hire anybody, the government had apparently contracted all the ones available in the valley. So it was difficult to come up with some answers when we couldn’t get an appraiser to do the job for us. When the hearing, the trial that takes place in October, is to look at the compensation, from what I understand from the document from the judge.

Mediahacker: What are your plans in the near-term? This ruling allows DHS to start building effective immediately, I guess. What are you going to do from here? I know that you have been trying to resist this for a long time.

Tamez: I’m going to continue to speak out and tell the story. And continue to be the voice of the people in the El Calaboz area. Because even some of those people who signed the waiver are talking about the process and from their stories they were pretty much forced into making a decision and threatened to turn over their property to the government. There were varying amounts of compensation given to them for what appear to be equal amounts of land. So the story will continue. And we will continue to talk about it so that more and more people will learn about the injustices that low-income people face as opposed to those on the path of the wall that didn’t even have a wall built because they just happen to be [inaudible], a resort or maybe a plantation owner or [inaudible]. Those who are fortunate enough to have those kinds of resources don’t get a wall as opposed to low-income Mexican Americans living in communities – yeah, we get the wall. So I will continue to talk about that. They ain’t gonna stop me. They can build this wall but they’re not going to take my voice away.

Mediahacker: And can you real briefly summarize what this is physically going to do your tract of property in terms of the environment and vegetation, and also your quality of life?

Tamez: That’s really what’s interesting is that we still don’t have the very specific answers from the government on where they plan to build it or what’s going to look like or anything like that. They have failed in their explanations, even though they were ordered by the court, they have failed. So that’s what needs to be clarified. As for [inaudible] plant life and animal life? Yes! I’ve been going there where they’re building the wall all around me and I see some of the wildlife escaping from the area. I see a lot of the plant life just totally crushed and scooped out. And many of the plants in those grounds are plants that we use for medicinal purposes. And so they’re completely scraped away…

Mediahacker: I know that you met Barack Obama while he was campaigning. Have you seen any changes in terms of DHS policy since his taking office and do you hold out any hope that him and the new Homeland Security Secretary will change plans at all?

Tamez: I see no change. I’ve seen no comment on it. I don’t know what the plans are, because, well, they haven’t said much. So I’m still wondering what we’re going to see. And I still remember that he voted for the wall when he was a Senator. He voted for it. And I also know that all the counties except two, along the river, went Democrat. Now, if the Democrats want to see Texas become blue, they had better pay attention to the political power that we can have when we start mobilizing.

Mediahacker: As a member of the Lipan Apache tribe, how do you feel, again, to have the federal government encroaching on your land?

Tamez: Well once again, it’s losing land to the government but this time it’s even more distressing because some of the plant life that we depend on for medicinal purposes is being eviscerated from the property. You know, DHS said they have no interest in the south part of my property, but you should see what they’ve done to it. If they have no interest then why are they trespassing?

It’s too bad I didn’t discover Blue Scholars earlier, say, in 2004 when I felt disillusioned and fed up with school during my freshmen year at the University of Washington. “Fuck class, get your education on the Ave,” the rallying cry of the song “The Ave,” was exactly what I wanted to do (video here). Finally listening to their debut EP got me hooked on underground hip-hop – that fiercely independent, worldwide, beat-infused CNN of the streets. This genre would become the soundtrack to my radio show. And whenever I miss home here in Austin, I play a Blue Scholars track. They are all about representing Seattle from the bottom up, from the Southside to the 2000 WTO riots to the daily ride on the Metro bus.

When I heard MC Geologic and producer Sabzi were coming to Austin for SXSW 2008, I arranged to skip work to interview them. I met them in their hotel room and had a wonderful chat with two of the most down-to-earth and inspiring “cultural workers” in the game right now. Tune in below the jump.

(I had the raw of this interview up after I did it last March, but my post died when I redesigned the site in September. It’s about time I get it back up – this time, the audio is diced nicely into clips. PDF of the full transcript here, raw mp3 here.)

On community radio:

“When we first got started the first folks who embraced us were college radio. . .it’s essential and I respect all the people that put in all the hard work, which I know it is.”

On SXSW, withstanding the pressures of commercialization, and party politics:

“There’s contradictions everywhere and we just gotta stay sharp. Also like Saba said we stay rooted in the community that we come from.”

On growing up and becoming politicized:

“I learned that there’s a difference between an activist and an organizer, basically. You can just be rah-rah-rah all the time and have your actions be limited to just vocalizing, and then you’re an activist.”

On the hip-hop inspired riot at Evergreen:

“You know, people are scared of the police, up and down. They can do what they want and get away with it. So to say that the people provoked it, I think is 99 percent of the time wrong.”

On masculinity and misogyny in hip-hop:

“Any time there’s a space, an open space, a space of resistance re-claimed by women and for women, I think it’s always going to be the brothers’ role to respect that and support it.”

On counter-recruitment and Seattle arsons targeted at gentrification:

“The principle behind being critical about new housing developments and how they displace people, all the class implications – it’s relevant and needs to be talked about more…Recruiters out of schools now!”

On Nas’ “Untitled” (also known as Nigger) album:

“The thing about Nas to me is that I think that guy has some integrity in him. When I listen to Nas I hear somebody who is more – like what he has to say is more important than how he thinks people who perceive him and maintaining his career.”

On file sharing:

“I still liberate music, back to where it belongs. It’s culture. Culture belongs to the people.”

On the next album, origins of the Prometheus Brown persona, and words for up and coming artists:

“In the words of Dead Prez, it’s bigger than hip-hop. And I think a lot of people get caught up in boxes…I think there’s a lot of groups, when they get started, they only see, like, “Ima be the biggest thing on my block.”

On the news media:

“I just default to thinking things are more messed up than they are…There’s nothing more democratic than doubt.”

Thanks for listening! Feel free to copy and re-broadcast the interview.