The 10th Department

Nearly one out of every four Haitians now resides outside the
country. Its size and strong ties with the homeland have made this
diaspora-Haiti’s “10th Department”-a political and economic
force that every Haitian government must reckon with.
When at a cam-
paign-planning
session in Octo-
ber, 1990, President Jean-
Bertrand Aristide referred
to Haitians living abroad
as the “10th Department,”
he had little idea how
indelible a mark this new
concept would leave on
the Haitian sociopolitical
landscape. Although the
then priest of St. Jean-
Bosco-one of the poor-
est parishes of Port-au-
Prince-was well-known
as a consummate neolo-
gist, even some of his A family at a street fair in one of Brooklyn’s Haitian neighborhoods.
closest advisors dismissed
the new term as another passing fad in the succulent
and colorful Haitian Creole language.
Haiti is divided into nine regions known in French
as “departments.” Aristide christened as the “10th
Department” the estimated 1.5 million Haitians resid-
ing in major cities such as New York, Boston, Miami, Chicago, Montreal, and Paris, as well as in Africa, the
Dominican Republic, and elsewhere in the Caribbean.
Nearly one out of every four Haitians now resides in
the diaspora. Its size and strong ties with the home-
land have made the “10th Department” a political and
economic force that every Haitian government must
reckon with.
Haitian immigration began when laborers started
traveling to Cuba to harvest sugar cane in the 1920s,
in the midst of the U.S.
occupation of Haiti. By
the 1930s, due to deteri-
orating working condi-
tions in Cuba, these
braceros started mov-
ing across the border
into the Dominican
Republic to work in the
sugar fields there. With-
in a few years, tens of
thousands of Haitians
of varied professions
followed the cane cut-
ters, and successfully
integrated into Domini-
can society. Although
these Haitian workers
were crucial to the
Dominican economy, some Dominicans-mainly
politicians and intellectuals-saw their presence as a
second occupation of their country. (Haiti had occu-
pied the Dominican Republic from 1823 to 1844.)
This deep resentment culminated in the massacre of
30,000 Haitians in 1937 by Dominican dictator Gener-
al Leonidas Trujillo, who felt the migrants threatened
his country’s security. This temporarily halted the
migration of Haitians to the Dominican Republic. But
by the early 1950s, it had resumed, and continues to
this day.
When the brutal dictator Franqois “Papa Doc”
Duvalier took power in fraudulent elections in 1957,
the ensuing repression changed the nature of Haitian
immigration. Intellectuals were the first group to be
targeted as the Tontons Macoute-Duvalier’s private
militia-brutally suppressed academia’s opposition to
his rule. Papa Doc openly encouraged the Haitian
intelligentsia to leave the country. In fact, he invited
VOL XXVII, No 4 JAN/FEB 199441
Jean Jean-Pierre is a musician and radio journalist He is the host of the weekly English and Haitian Creole program Radyo Neg Mawon on the short-wave radio station Radio for Peace Interna-
tional.
VOL XXVII, No 4 JAN/FEB 1994 41REPORT ON HAITI
the United Nations to open offices
in Haiti to recruit Haitian profes-
sionals to go to Zaire and other
newly independent African
nations which were in dire need
of doctors, nurses, teachers and
lawyers. Haitian journalist Andre
Charlier refers to that early wave
of Haitian exiles, which included
him, as the “first Haitian brain
drain.” In subsequent years, a sys-
tematic terror campaign orches-
trated by Duvalier, combined
with labor shortages in the United
States, generated a substantial
flow of immigrants to the United
States.
In December, 1972, a group of
Haitian refugees landed on the
shores of Miami in a flimsy craft
after braving the high seas. These
Haitians were not truly the first
Haitian boat people. After all, the
first boat leaving Haiti for the
United States sailed in 1776, car- A family at home in QL
rying recently freed Haitian ferredrelocation sites
slaves who had volunteered to of an earlier generation
participate in the War of Indepen-
dence against England. Furthermore, prior to 1972,
hundreds of Haitians had sailed to the Bahamas, where
it was easier to obtain a U.S. tourist visa. The
Bahamas’ open immigration policy and proximity to
Miami made it a perfect corridor to the United States.
The new “boat people” phenomenon, however, was
a direct result of the unremitting hardship wrought by
a rudimentary economy and a repressive dictatorship.
These conditions were reinforced by the passing of
power from Papa Doc to his 19-year-old son, Jean-
Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier in 1971. It did not take
long before this new wave of refugees became an inte-
gral part of the Haitian community living in the United
States. They participated in weekly church services, in
music dance parties, and other community activities.
But all did not go smoothly. The Haitians who immi-
grated to the United States during Baby Doc’s reign
tended to be blacker, poorer and less skilled than the
earlier generation of immigrants. The new mix was a
microcosm of Haitian society.
Haiti is structured by a complex caste system that
stems from French colonial rule. While economic sta-
tus can be either inherited or acquired, social status–
in a country that is 95% black-is mainly based upon
epidermal hue. The lighter the skin, the heftier the
privileges. Although dark-skinned, middle-class
Haitians traditionally headed the great majority of
ue fo
n.
governments, the mulatto elite
retained significant spheres of
power and influence in every
regime. Even at the height of
Franqois Duvalier’s so-called
“noiriste” (black-oriented) rev-
olution, the mulatto elite kept
its privileged status. Papa Doc
once bragged about his daugh-
ter marrying a rich mulatto.
For those Haitian mulattos
who were used to these advan-
tages, life became more com-
plicated in the United States,
where race is not solely deter-
mined by skin shade. Some
Haitian mulattos found them-
selves grouped in the same cat-
egory with the poorer, dark-
skinned new immigrants.
Being in large part non-profes-
sionals, some upper middle-
class, light-skinned Haitians
had to compete for the same
ens-one of the pre- manufacturing and cleaning
r wealthier immigrants jobs with people who were
once their gardeners, cooks,
and maids. Haitian-born maga-
zine editor Joel Dreyfuss alludes to this phenomenon
when he calls the United States “the great equalizer.”
The Haitian elite found some solace in French-lan-
guage Sunday church services, and certain social
activities where women could wear beautiful dresses
and men, stylish suits. In a nation where Haitian Cre-
ole is the vernacular, the elite has always used French
to alienate the masses. In New York, former residents
of Petionville and other wealthy Haitian neighbor-
hoods preferred to live in Queens, Long Island or
Manhattan rather than Brooklyn, where most of the
new immigrants settled. These artificial and imaginary
boundaries went beyond geography. These upper-class
Haitians derisively referred to the newly arrived as the
“just come,” or the “unsophisticated ones.” Ironically, even among the post-1971 immigrants, many of those
who had arrived in the United States by airplane felt
compelled to distinguish themselves from the “boat
people.”
With the overthrow of Baby Doc Duvalier on Febru-
ary 7, 1986, Haitians in the diaspora began returning
in droves to Haiti. For a brief period, thousands of
Haitians poured back into the country. Some complet-
ed construction of the homes they had started years
ago; others established new businesses. But when the
military-taking advantage of the democratic move-
ment’s divisions-stepped in to fill the political vacu-
42 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
0
4
NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 42REPORT ON HAITI
um, these new returnees turned
around and left. Once again, Haitians
in the diaspora entered a state of
limbo.
It is a commonplace in the Haitian The Haiti
community that most discussions
among more than two Haitians will people” b
inevitably revolve around politics.
Haitians in the diaspora are no excep- impetus fI
tion to the rule. Politics in the home-
land has always captured their atten- of new
tion. Prior to 1971, the single purpose
of most Haitian political groups in the America
diaspora was the overthrow of the organizati Duvalier regime. Most Haitians of
this generation believed that they their tr( would return to their country once this
temporary obstacle disappeared. became
The politically ambitious took
advantage of this deep-seated desire cry for exit
to return that so many Haitians har-
bored. Some of these “candidates”
raised-and many pocketed for them-
selves-large sums of money to plot
the overthrow of Papa Doc. One such
candidate, Bernard Sansaric, a Sena-
tor in the current Haitian parliament, organized annual
invasions of Haiti over the course of almost two
decades. With two exceptions-when he sent a few
subordinates to their deaths-his groups never
reached Haitian shores. (A recently published docu-
ment alleged that the Senator was a CIA operative.)
Other would-be invaders only succeeded in dropping
a few gas explosives on the Haitian capital. These
attempts consistently failed because the opposition
movement never had a strong and well-organized base
in Haiti. In addition, unlike its support for the Miami
Cubans, the United States consistently applied the
Neutrality Act to prevent these Haitian exile groups
from reaching Haiti.
The Haitian “boat people,” although not admitted to
the United States in great numbers, became the impe-
tus for the rise of new Haitian-American political
organizations while their treatment became a rallying
cry for existing ones. This new influx, says Lionel
Legros of the Haitian Information Center in Brooklyn,
represented “a turning point in Haitian immigration to
the United States.” In contrast to the secretiveness of
traditional political activity in the diaspora, the new
groups began to stage public demonstrations to
denounce the U.S. role in Haitian politics. Until then,
Haitians had protested with their faces hidden for fear
of being recognized by the hundreds of spies working
for Papa Doc Duvalier.
a
e
H
a
st
Divisions between the old and new
generations of Haitian immigrants
made unity within the diaspora almost
impossible to achieve. A multitude of
political organizations-80 at last
in “boat count-have sprung up in the last cou-
ple of years. “90% of these groups are
came the composed of 20 people or fewer,” says
Jocelyn McCalla, executive director for
r the rise National Coalition for Haitian
Refugees. This fragmentation, he adds,
Iaitian- makes it “hard to politically influence
their representatives, whether local or
political national.” In a “permanent ad hoc”
ns, while approach, these groups come and go depending on the nature and duration
atment of the crisis at hand.
These differences were momentarily
rallying put in abeyance in April, 1990 when
over 85,000 Haitians and Haitian- ing ones. Americans shook the Brooklyn Bridge
in one of the largest marches ever orga-
nized in New York. They came out to
protest against the U.S. Federal Drug
Administration (FDA), which had
included Haitian-born immigrants
among the high-risk groups prohibited
from donating blood because of the HIV-virus. The
specter of ostracism, job losses and stigma forced
Haitians of all walks of life-doctors, lawyers, and
factory workers-to come together in protest. The
FDA lifted the ban a few weeks later. Many saw this
important victory as the seed that would grow into a
more organized, unified diaspora. But the “10th
Department” remains riven by divisions among the
different Haitian groups.
The common thread weaving all the different politi-
cal groups into a single fabric has always been oppo-
sition to the Duvalier regimes and their military suc-
cessors. But marring even this basis of unity is the
knot of conflicting political and social interests. These
conflicts are reflected in the fractious relations among
the three major competing Haitian weeklies. Pub-
lished mostly in French, these newspapers were-
before the advent of daily radio programs-the way
that the “10th Department” kept abreast of events in
Haiti. A mirror of the rips and tears in Haitian society,
the rivalry among these weeklies often borders on ide-
ological war.
Haiti Observateur, the voice of the conservative
sector, is the oldest of the three. It was founded in
1971 in Manhattan. Raymond Joseph, its owner and
editor, staunchly opposes Aristide. His virulent
attacks against the exiled president have earned him
the ire of most of the “10th Department.” Indeed,
VOL XXVII, No 4 JAN/FEB 1994 43 VoL XXVII, No 4 JAN/FEB 1994 43REPORT ON HAITI
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The rivalry among Haiti’s three weekly newspapers–all published in the United States–borders on ideological war.
many consider Haiti Observateur the voice of the
putschists. Joseph’s acidic editorials are often direct-
ed at HaYti Progras, the second oldest newspaper.
Founded in Brooklyn in 1983, the paper has a Marx-
ist-Leninist political slant. An early supporter of Aris-
tide, HaYti Progrds became one of his most outspoken
critics, even though its co-director, Ben Dupuy, was
the Haitian President’s ambassador-at-large until last
July. The paper accuses Aristide of selling out to the
international community.
Completing this three-way literary scrimmage is
Ha’ti en Marche. Following a more moderate line, this
Miami weekly, founded in 1986, is perhaps the most
recognized among the three by the international com-
munity. Its editors, Marcus Garcia and Elsie Etheart, won the 1990 Maria Moors Cabot Prize awarded
annually by Columbia University for excellence in
journalism. The unyielding support of Harti en
Marche for Aristide has landed it the sobriquet
“mouthpiece of the bourgeoisie” by Haiti Progras.
With circulations ranging from ten to 50 thousand
each, these three weeklies are filled with political
analyses and commentaries, and are considered the
Haitian “think tanks.” Even though Harti Progrds and
Haiti en Marche are opponents of the military regime,
all three newspapers are allowed to be distributed in
Haiti. Of course, because the majority of Haitians do
not read French, the papers’ influence is somewhat
muted.
Radio, by contrast, seems to be the optimum medi-
um of communication among the diaspora as it has
always been in Haiti. Wherever Haitians reside, a
radio program in Haitian Creole on AM/FM or short-
wave can be found. The oldest, L’Heure Haitienne, is
a political weekly program on Columbia University’s
WKCR FM. It was founded in 1972. The latest addi-
tions in the tri-state area are sub-stations Radio Tropi-
cale and Radyo Solby. Transmitting on special AM
frequencies, these two stations do not fall under the
direct control of Federal Communications Commis-
sion (FCC) regulations, and listeners must have spe-
cial receivers to pick up their programs.
Because of the Haitian passion for politics, the sum
of all the programs on these stations amounts to a 24-
hour-a-day-long talk show in New York. The frustra-
tion and anger at the political situation back home
among radio hosts and listeners who call in sometimes
translate into high-decibel shouting matches. Radio is
also the foremost vehicle for political activism.
Through radio announcements, thousands of Haitians
can be assembled for a demonstration with only a
day’s notice. In the “10th Department,” radio gives a
voice to the voiceless. Even the Haitian military and
their supporters have managed to use this medium in
the diaspora-some say for large sums of money-to
spread their propaganda.
W hen Aristide took office in February, 1991,
he suggested to a visiting group of Haitian
6migr6s that they form a “10th Department”
organization. He understood that the “10th Depart-
ment” had tremendous financial and political clout.
Haitians living abroad annually send over $100 mil-
lion back home to families and relatives, estimates
Fritz Martial, a prominent Haitian economist in New
York. The U.S. State Department last year publicly
denounced such transfers for spoiling the already
porous OAS embargo against the military regime. In
addition to remittances, Haitians also dig deep to con-
tribute to political causes. According to Cesar Dismay,
Aristide’s campaign treasurer, two thirds of the
$300,000 spent on the priest’s 1990 presidential bid
came from the diaspora. In a gesture of solidarity with
the newly elected Haitian president, the “10th Depart-
ment” raised nearly $600,000 on April 28, 1991, to
help finance a number of development projects.
Yet the wealth of Haitian emigrants is a double-
edged sword. Haitians returning home have come to
be disparagingly called “diaspo” because those who
had never left the country resented their “developed”
44NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 44REPORT ON HAITI
attitude. Many visiting Haitians were
easily recognized by the “air of superi-
ority” they exuded, the American lingo
they sometimes interjected in their
Haitian Creole conversation, and their
flashy material acquisitions. Friction
arose from the perception that Haitians
on the outside saw themselves as “bet-
ter” than those who live in Haiti.
Aristide helped create the “10th
Department” organization in an effort to
bridge the chasm that traditionally
divided the diaspora from Haiti. Father
Gerard Jean-Juste, a long-time activist,
became general coordinator. Jean-Juste,
a liberation theologian and the first
Haitian priest to be ordained in the
United States, defines the organization
as a “gathering of the large Haitian fam-
ily organically connected to the native
Ra
is the fc
vehicle fo
active
Throug
announce
thousa
Haitians
assembled
not
land and united by the same ideal to work, so that one
day the sun of freedom and prosperity will shine on our
beloved Haiti.” His committee held a democratic gen-
eral assembly on April 14, 1991. A central committee
was formed to oversee regional committees represent-
ing each city of the diaspora. The “10th Department”
organization was supposed to be the big tent that
would house Haitians from all walks of life. The orga-
nization held numerous fundraising appeals, which
raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to help the new
government. In this context, it is important to remem-
ber that the United States, which has a tradition of sup-
porting Haitian dictators, never assisted the Aristide
Administration financially or otherwise.
The “10th Department” organization is not, howev-
er, without its critics. Activist Jocelyne Mayas of New
York, a staunch supporter of the democratic move-
ment, thinks it could have accomplished more. A
founding member of the group, she complains about
the organization’s lack of “transparency.” She
acknowledges the group’s efforts to hold periodic
organizational elections, but says they have not been
really democratic and that “nepotism dominates the
process.” Others feel that the “10th Department” orga-
nization has been too directly linked to the Aristide
government. The September 29, 1991 coup caught the “10th
Department” organization in the middle of consolidat-
ing and defining the roles of the many groups working
under its umbrella. “We were forced to shift our focus
to mobilizing the community,” says Guy Victor, presi-
dent of the New York chapter of the organization.
Indeed, it was a daunting challenge to stretch an
embryonic group to play the roles both of social unifi-
er and of messenger to the world of the disastrous con-
sequences of the coup. Yet the orga-
nization managed to spearhead sever-
Jio al successful political actions. On
)remost October 11, 1991, over 60,000 people blocked downtown Manhattan for
r political hours to protest against apparent tacit
U.S. support of the military coup. The /ism. “10th Department” organization also
h radio deserves credit for the turnout of
between 260,000 and 300,000 Hait-
:ements, ian-Americans who voted over-
tnds of whelmingly for Bill Clinton in the
last U.S. presidential election.
S can be The coup had, ironically, the salu-
tary effect of bringing together the at a day’s different factions of the “10th Depart-
ice. ment.” Haitians not previously
“involved in politics became active.
They discovered that the decision-
making center affecting Haiti’s future
is not Port-au-Prince, but Washington, D.C. Increas-
ingly, the community is making its voice heard
through the telephone and the fax machine. Many
Haitians now routinely contact their U.S. political rep-
resentatives, the White House, the State Department
and the Pentagon. The Haitian President reciprocates
the “10th Department’s” loyalty through his frequent
radio addresses and his many public appearances at
community functions.
Haiti’s history abounds with military coups. But
thanks to the tenacity and courage of Haitians in Haiti
and the diaspora-both dark-skinned and mulattos-
the latest coup has not taken hold. While the interna-
tional community led by the United States waffles, the
“10th Department” has kept the issue of President
Aristide’s return alive for over two years. Illustrative
of its influence is the fact that negotiations between
Aristide and coup leader Raoul C6dras last July were
moved from United Nations headquarters to Gover-
nors Island for fear of “disruption” by the Haitians of
the “10th Department.”
Now that the Haitian military has reneged on the
Governors Island accord, there is talk once again with-
in the “10th Department” of armed struggle. The vis-
ceral reaction of most Haitians is a desire to wipe out
the Haitian thugs who have in the past two years dri-
ven Haiti into the abyss. The majority of Haitians
abroad, however, believe that the best way to restore
democracy in Haiti is to continue exerting pressure on
the international community to compel the military to
abide by the agreement. A consensus on how to do
this, however, has yet to emerge. Nonetheless, as
diplomatic efforts fizzle, the “10th Department”
remains an invaluable sociopolitical and financial
asset for Haiti today, and in the years to come.