A Literary Icon For
"Les Dammés de la Terre"By Michael Deibert
13 April, 2007
Inter Press ServiceNEW YORK, Apr 11 (IPS) - He was born to an affluent family in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince in 1907, and spent much of the first 20 years of his life at schools in Belgium and Switzerland.
But there are few literary voices that have spoken more eloquently of the plight of Haiti's peasantry than that of Jacques Roumain. As the author of the timeless peasant fable "Gouverneurs de la Rosée" (Masters of the Dew), the centenary of Roumain's birth this year has thrown a spotlight on both Haiti's dizzyingly rich -- and often overlooked -- literary tradition, as well as the persistence of the problems that Roumain addressed in his iconic work, first published in 1943.
With symposiums in Haiti and elsewhere mulling over Roumain's oeuvre in light of recent literary and political developments in that tumultuous and impoverished Caribbean nation of eight million, both Roumain's storytelling skill and his political commitment are being hailed for the courage and naked honesty they displayed in a country whose political culture has historically known little of either.
"With a relatively limited literary production, Roumain remains one of the most influential Haitian novelists of the 20th century," says Carrol F. Coates, a respected translator of Haitian fiction and a professor of French and comparative literature at New York's Binghamton University. "Roumain embodied national pride and the will of peasants to survive against odds of natural violence and governmental repression."
After returning home from his studies in 1927, Roumain became active in agitating for an end to the U.S. occupation of Haiti, by then in its twelfth year (it would continue for eight more). His literary inclinations revealed themselves early on, as he helped to found La Revue Indigène, a magazine which attempted to articulate an authentically Haitian and nationalist voice in the face of the U.S. presence in the country.
Roumain's fondness for direct political action lead to his helping to create the Ligue de la Jeunesse Patriote Haitienne, whose often chaotic strikes against the U.S. and the government of Haitian President Louis Borno resulted in Roumain's being jailed for eight months beginning in December 1928. Roumain later helped to form the Parti Communiste Haitien and was again jailed, this time for three years, by the government of President Stenio Vincent. After his release in 1936, Roumain went into exile in the United States and Europe.
Returning to Haiti in 1941, Roumain's great respect for Haitian folk traditions led him to establish the Bureau d'Ethnologie, which sought to institutionalise and legitimise the study of the Haitian peasantry. Deeply influenced by the writings of the Haitian ethnologist Jean-Price Mars -- whose pivotal book "Ainsi parla l'Oncle" (Thus Spoke Uncle) was published the year of Roumain's first arrest and had proved influential in the growth of the Negritude movement in the French Caribbean -- Roumain befriended the French anthropologist Alfred Metraux, and the two traveled widely in the Haitian countryside, documenting vodou traditions in research that would eventually become Metraux's acclaimed book, "Voodoo in Haiti".
Appointed chargé d'affaires to Mexico in 1943 by then-Haitian President Elie Lescot (who chose a more delicate way to deal with the troublesome author than prison), Roumain used the time abroad to complete "Gouverneurs de la Rosée", as well as a book of verse, "Bois d'Alene". The last contained a line referring to "les dammés de la terre," which would be later appropriated by the Algerian author Frantz Fanon as the title for his own book of anti-colonial polemics, translated into English as "The Wretched of the Earth."
Like many of Haiti's brightest lights, Roumain's candle did not burn for long, and he died at age 37 in August 1944.
Though Roumain's early writings largely depicted his own elite class in withering relief, his justly most famous work remains his novel "Gouverneurs de la Rosée", which begins with a desperate Haitian peasant woman clutching a handful of dry dust slipping through her fingers and uttering the words "We're all going to die."
The books tells the story of Manuel, a young peasant who returns to his impoverished village of Fonds Rouge after having cut cane in Cuba for 15 years, and nearly despairs looking around him at the state his country is in. In a finely drawn portrait of Haitian country life, Roumain leads the reader through Manuel's ultimately tragic quest to stem the environmental devastation and fratricidal hared that he sees, as well as of Manuel's love for a delicate country girl, Annaise.
"Life had dried up at Fonds Rouge," Roumain writes in his novel. "One only had to listen to this silence to hear death."
Sadly, the conditions that Jacques Roumain bemoaned in 1943 have only worsened in the intervening years. Massive deforestation, which has destroyed 90 percent of Haiti's tree cover for charcoal and to make room for farming in the past 50 years, has exacerbated the problems of Haiti's peasantry, leading to massive internal migration to the capital, Port-au-Prince, and externally to the neighbouring Dominican Republic and North America.
Haiti's farmers were likewise devastated by the U.S.-Canadian-funded Programme for the Eradication of Porcine Swine Fever and Development of Pig-Raising in the early 1980s. The programme destroyed 1.2 million of the country's Creole pigs, which formed one of the backbones of its peasant economy, when tests showed nearly a quarter of the island's pigs were infected with African swine fever.
Haiti, which for many years produced low-cost, inexpensive rice for domestic consumption, lost the ability to do so competitively in 1995, when the government of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, implementing an economic adjustment plan mandated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), cut tariffs on rice imports to the country to 3 percent, from 35 percent.
Haiti's political landscape has also remained chaotic, with only one leader -- current President René Préval -- having finished his elected term in the nation's seemingly ill-fated highest office in the last 50 years.
Political power remains largely concentrated in the capital, with precious little attention being paid to the nation's countryside.
"Roumain's powerful condemnation of the marginalisation of the vast majority of the Haitian population resonates with today's reality," says Robert Fatton Jr., a professor at the University of Virginia and author of "Haiti's Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democracy".
"The great divides of class and colour continue to poison the country, the peasantry is still confronting a wretched existence, and the urban poor have grown larger and poorer," Fatton observes. "Roumain's analysis of Haiti's problems and his vision for a new society remain an inspiration to those who seek a more democratic and egalitarian Haiti."
Roumain's influence remains pervasive in Haiti's intellectual life, often crossing genres and mediums. He served as a key influence on Jacques Stephen Alexis, who, as the author of the novels "Compere General Soleil" (General Sun, My Brother) and "L'espace d'un cillement" (In the Flicker of an Eyelid) could perhaps lay claim to being Haiti's greatest writer, living or dead. Alexis was murdered by agents of the Haitian dictator Francois Duvalier in 1961.
The example of Jacques Roumian, however, did not die with Alexis and in fact, say Haitian intellectuals, continues to arouse the imagination and conscience of his compatriots to this day.
"The reality of Haiti has always been difficult to decipher and render in a universal and original artistic way, while at the same time remaining politically engaged," says Raoul Peck, a Haitian filmmaker whose work has tackled such subjects as the fate of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba and the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
"Jacques Roumain will stay forever as one of the first who was able to break this difficult barrier, and he paved the way for many others afterwards," Peck says.
Michael Deibert is the author of "Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti" (Seven Stories Press). His blog of journalism and opinion can be read at www.michaeldeibert.blogspot.com.
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