Yes. Haitians were in the nation-building business! This episode covers a little-known chapter in Haitian history. Dr. Regine Jackson offers a fascinating, multi-sited, and interdisciplinary study of the United Nations Organization in the Congo (ONUC), a civilian operation established after the Democratic Republic of Congo achieved independence from Belgium.
Through narrative interviews in New York City, Port-au-Prince, Montreal and Paris and analysis of archives in Haiti, Kinshasa, and at UN headquarters in New York and Paris, Dr. Jackson helps us understand better the lived experiences of the Haitian educators, engineers, and doctors in the ONUC during the Congo crisis. her previous research suggests that many of these Haitian professionals saw postcolonial Africa as a space of possibility (see Jackson 2014).
This episode seeks to answer crucial questions about our best and brightest: about their pre-migration experiences in Haiti under Duvalier, the role of international organizations such as the UN and WHO, relations between Haitians and the Congolese, as well the circumstances of their departure from the Congo under Mobutu Sese Seko.
Visit her guest page
https://neg.fm/dr-regine-ostine-jackson/
Enjoy!
I'm thrilled to bring you another episode from our Lakou series, delving into the rich tapestry of Haitian culture living in the diaspora and in Haiti. Today, we have a very special guest joining us all the way from London, Guilaine Brutus, who is an integral part of the Haitian community there.
In this episode, we explored a taboo topic in Haitian culture - the practice of Restavek, and child slavery. I'm not going to sugarcoat the practice by calling it child servitude. When people work for free, it's slavery. Period. Full stop.
Guilaine shared her mother's personal experience as a Restavek in Haiti and in the Turks & Cacos. Listen to how Guilaine's mom and family coped with the hardships and sacrifices of being a Restavek.
We examined the role of women in Haitian society, discussed the lack of recognition for their contributions and the importance of understanding the trauma individuals may carry with them.
So, get ready for a thought-provoking, emotionally heavy, and insightful conversation as we delve into the world of Restavek and its long-lasting consequences on individuals, families, and Haitian culture.
In the meantime, here are some top 10 questions worth considering as you listen to this episode:
1. How does the experience of being a Restavek shape a person's life and their relationship with their family?
2. What are some possible reasons why the speaker's mother chose to leave two of her children behind when she returned to the Turks and Caicos Islands?
3. How does the theme of sacrifice play a role in the speaker's mother's life and the choices she made for her family?
4. In what ways do cultural differences impact the expression of love and affection within families?
5. How does the speaker challenge societal norms and expectations surrounding women's contributions and recognition in society?
6. What role do ancestral traditions and practices, such as creating altars, play in Haitian culture and the speaker's personal experiences?
7. How does trauma, pain, and unspoken experiences impact the speaker's relationship with the person they are communicating with?
8. How do cultural traumas, like the Restavek system, continue to affect Haitian communities and individuals today?
9. How does education play a role in Haitian society, particularly in the context of the speaker's mother's determination to provide opportunities for her children?
10. In what ways do personal experiences of pain and trauma shape an individual's perspective on life and their ability to overcome adversity?
Let's dive right in!
In this episode of the Nèg Mawon Podcast, we delve deep into the roots of Haiti's complex political landscape with Dr. Robert Fatton. From its foundation, Haiti has grappled with a social, economic, and political apartheid system that has marginalized the majority of its population. Dr. Fatton discusses how this system, rooted in divisions of color, class, and colonial hierarchy, has led to exclusionary practices in education and culture.
Our guest emphasizes the economic basis of this system, calling for a more democratic and egalitarian society that meets the basic needs of all Haitians. He critiques the simplistic savior narrative often applied to Haiti and explores the historical context of the country's authoritarian tradition, advocating for a revolutionary transformation of both politics and the economy.
Join us as we explore the persisting issue of authoritarian governance in Haiti, the challenges faced after the revolution, and the potential for a more inclusive and accountable society. This thought-provoking discussion sheds light on the structural forces shaping Haiti's past and present, offering crucial insights into the complexities of its history and the path to a more inclusive future.
So, how do scholars get their books published? Notice I didn't say self-published. That's a topic for another day. I mean published via established publishers. That's one of many questions I wanted some answers to. On today's show, we have two guests who will help us understand how the process of book publishing works.
We have the historian and author Dr. Yveline Alexis, Associate Professor of Africana Studies & Comparative American Studies at Oberlin College. Dr. Alexis is the author of "Haiti Fights Back: The Life & Legacy of Charlemagne Péralte". This book is the first US scholarly examination of the politician and caco leader (guerrilla fighter) who fought against the US military occupation of Haiti from (1915 to 1934). Dr. Alexis will walk us through the peaks and valleys of what it took to get published.
The next guest you will hear from in this conversation is the actual gatekeeper, and I mean that in the most positive sense. Her name is Kimberly Guinta, Editorial Director and Associate Press Director for Rutgers University Press, which published Dr. Alexis' first book Haiti Fights Back.
The Title of today's episode is "Ink & Insights: A Scholar's Path to Publication." Hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.
Winner, of the Gilbert Chinard Prize, of the Society for French Historical Studies & the Institut Français d'Amérique.
Encountering Revolution looks afresh at the profound impact of the Haitian Revolution on the early United States. The first book on the subject in more than two decades, it redefined our understanding of the relationship between republicanism and slavery at a foundational moment in American history.
For postrevolutionary Americans, the Haitian uprising laid bare the contradiction between democratic principles and the practice of slavery. For thirteen years, between 1791 and 1804, slaves and free people of color in Saint-Domingue battled for equal rights in the manner of the French Revolution. As white and mixed-race refugees escaped to the safety of U.S. cities, Americans were forced to confront the paradox of being a slaveholding republic, recognizing their own possible destiny in the predicament of the Haitian slaveholders.
Historian Ashli White examines the ways Americans―black and white, northern and southern, Federalist and Democratic Republican, pro- and antislavery―pondered the implications of the Haitian Revolution.
Encountering Revolution convincingly situates the formation of the United States in a broader Atlantic context. It shows how the very presence of Saint-Dominguan refugees stirred in Americans as many questions about themselves as about the future of slaveholding, stimulating some of the earliest debates about nationalism in the early republic.
Bonjou, and welcome to another riveting episode of the Nèg Mawon Podcast, where we dive deep into the heart of Haitian politics, society, and the continuous struggles that shape our nation. I'm your host, Patrick Jean-Baptiste, and today, you're tuning in to the new series for 2024, 'Yon Zouti Koupe-Ep.#71.'
In this episode, we're grappling with the intense and complex currents ripping through our beloved Haiti. The youth, the beating heart of our country, are rallying behind a figure of change—a mysterious entity known as Guy Phillipe, yet many don't quite grasp the full breadth of his historical roots or ultimate agenda.
Amid rampant inflation, suffocating insecurity, and the scourge of gang violence leading to widespread displacement, a cry for revolution echoes again through the streets. However, Guy's plan and power base remain enigmatic, adding layers of uncertainty to an already volatile mix.
The government stares down a formidable challenge not just from Guy's armed supporters, but a myriad of factions and unforeseen possibilities that loom on the horizon.
And in an unusual twist, discussions of potential Kenyan intervention stir the pot further, but doubts loom over the viability and legality of such a mission, given the complexity of our country's gang situation.
But at the heart of this lies a deeper issue—the achingly pervasive poverty and limited rungs of social mobility that fuel gang affiliations. To truly combat this, we must address the socioeconomic roots and offer our youth alternative pathways, while at the same time using trusted force of arms to eliminate the pervasive presence of the gangs.
Joining me today to peel back the layers of this multifaceted crisis is Haiti's greatest political scientist, Dr. Robert Fatton, who'll share his insights into the dire state of our national police force, the evolving autonomy of Haitian gangs, and the economic paralysis gripping our society.
We'll also explore the duality of nostalgia for past dictatorships against the backdrop of the ongoing violence and the persistent dream of economic stability.
So stay tuned as we confront these pressing issues and more—right here on Nèg Mawon Podcast.
Welcome back to Nèg Mawon Podcast, where we mine the rich history of Haiti and its impact on the world. In today's episode, "Encountering Revolution-part 2," we continue our conversation with the esteemed Dr. Ashli White, a leading expert in early North American history and the history of Haiti and its revolution. We explore the captivating connections between the Haitian revolution and the United States during the 18th century, shedding light on the experiences of Haitian exiles in the US. From linguistic diversity and cultural influences to economic adaptations and philanthropic complexities, we uncover the intricate web of interactions between these two pivotal nations during a time of significant social and political change. Join us as we navigate the fascinating encounters and adaptations of Haitian exiles in the United States, unveiling the enduring impact of this momentous period in history.
Welcome to another enlightening episode of the Nèg Mawon Podcast, your go-to platform for in-depth discussions that unearth the complexities of Haitian history, culture, and contemporary challenges. I'm your host, Patrick Jean-Baptiste, and today we're diving deep into a topic that is fundamental to understanding Haiti's present by exploring its past.
This episode is about the Haitian people, not their early leaders, some of whom we’ve literally turned into gods. This episode is about the moun endeyo and what remains of their legacy.
In the cacophony of hardship that reverberates through Haitian history, we find the silent echoes of their resistance—they’re the Army of Sufferers who shaped the nation in anonymity and struggle. In this episode, titled "The Struggle for Soil: Haitian Peasantry and the Seeds of Rebellion," I am immensely privileged to welcome Dr. Mimi Sheller, a beacon of scholarship and the Dean of the Global School at WPI. We're here to unravel the threads of Haitian fortitude and democratization embodied in the resistance of the moun endeyo, whose efforts and processes are seldom reflected in mainstream historical narratives.
Our conversation traverses the deep economic desperation that has led to waves of outmigration that we see today on our screens, the assertion of the gangs, filling the security vacuum in response to the absence of the state, and the disruptions in the rural economy that have torn the fabric of traditional living that existed for hundreds of years. Haiti’s story, it seems, is likened to a war, not of arms, but of power and provision and the endless fight for positive developmental opportunities in the shadow of military might coupled with domestic and foreign interests.
Untold generations of our ancestors are buried in unvisited tombs and silenced in the historical records. But thanks to the efforts of imminent scholars like Dr. Mimi Sheller, some of them escaped the colonial archives. Dr. Sheller takes us through the everyday lives of 19th century Haitians, revealing the voices of the Haitian peasantry manifested through resistance. We reflect on the phrase, "You Signed My Name, but Not My Feet” as Dr. Sheller dissects the layers of democratization and the struggles inherent in Haiti's fight against slavery and external powers.
We revisited the Piquet Rebellion, spearheaded by the enigmatic, barefoot Jean Jacques Acau, who carried the mantle of the common people against the forces of the ruling class. We explore the deep roots of resistance, the African-derived collective ownership traditions, and the intricate bureaucracy entwined with land distribution, all within the context of Haiti’s revolutionary legacy—a legacy that redefined democracy and stirred the Atlantic world yet remains on the periphery of historiographical recognition.
So, sit back, tune in, and journey through time as we delve into "The Struggle for Soil: Haitian Peasantry and the Seeds of Rebellion," with the inimitable Dr. Mimi Sheller on the Nèg Mawon Podcast.
We're joined today by the esteemed Dr. Greg Beckett, a cultural anthropologist with deep insights into Haitian studies.
In today's conversation, we will unpack the complexities outlined in Michel-Rolph Trouillot's pivotal book “Haiti: State Against Nation. The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism” and connect its themes to the ongoing political turmoil in Haiti.
Dr. Beckett will guide us through the importance of anthropology's tools—deep listening, relationship building, and grasping local languages and cultures—to authentically interpret terms like "blackout" in the Haitian context.
Dr. Beckett brings us a distilled essence of Michel-Rolph Trouillot book with just five words: "the state, history, crisis, dictatorship, and nation." He then navigates us through Trouillot's Marxist analysis of the Haitian state, revealing how power dynamics and historical legacies have paved the way for enduring crises and the shadow of the Duvalier dictatorship.
As we translate theories across languages and audiences, we'll see how the French and English versions of Trouillot's work diverge, each speaking to different readers with varying political contexts.
At the heart of this episode is the intersection of culture, power, and history, and how they have shaped the Haitian nation and identity.
Join us as we explore the critical role of the Haitian elite, the cultural translation of Marxist critique, and the three pivotal conditions that solidify Duvalierism's hold on Haiti.
This is a journey to uncover the roots of Haiti's challenges and the intricate web of social, economic, and cultural elements that support them.
Stay with us for this enlightening session on the enduring effects of totalitarianism and the fight for democracy in Haiti.
1. Did you know that... Dr. Marlene Daut was initially urged to avoid publishing her work about the literature of the Haitian Revolution due to market concerns?
2. Did you know that... institutional biases often impede authors from diverse backgrounds in the publishing world?
3. Did you know that... Dr. Daut prioritizes publishing in spaces that allow for true expression over merely prestigious places?
4. Did you know that... Dr. Daut advocates for dismantling large-scale institutional power rather than striving to obtain it?
5. Did you know that... pregnancy in academia is still met with stigma, as noted by Dr. Daut based on her personal experiences?
6. Did you know that... Dr. Daut advises new academics to be cautious with social academic settings, particularly those involving alcohol and late-night discussions?
7. Did you know that... debates on job security in academia persist, affecting even full professors, especially those who are black?
8. Did you know that... Dr. Daut has faced significant challenges and microaggressions in academia but continues to pursue her passion for Haitian literature and history?
9. Did you know that... Dr. Daut operates onscientiously as a gatekeeper in academic publishing to amplify diverse voices and perspectives?
10. Did you know that... Dr. Daut emphasizes the importance of more dedicated centers and departments for Haitian studies within academia to overcome marginalization?
In this episode, Dr. Popkin discusses his riveting book "Facing Racial Revolution: Eyewitness Accounts of the Haitian Insurrection."
We discussed the underdeveloped state of French scholarship on the Haitian Revolution, the controversial accounts of white colonial survivors, and the critical role of literacy and correspondence in maintaining the slave regime.
The Haitian revolution represented the scales of power tipping in an unexpected direction. For the first time in Atlantic history, blacks wielded control over the lives of whites, giving rise to the then unheard of publication of white captivity narratives.
This conversation with Dr. Sophie Maríñez is less an interview than a reckoning for me, an excavation of Haitian and Dominican ghosts, of histories silenced and distorted, the way the past never quite stays in the past–“The past is never dead. It’s not even past”. She walks us through the troubled narratives of Haiti and the Dominican Republic—not as distant, separate nations, but as entangled siblings, bound by history, betrayal, and resistance.
At the heart of her book (and this discussion), Spirals in the Caribbean: Representing Violence and Connection in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, is the idea that history is not linear. Instead, it circles back on itself, shifts, adapts, repeats but never in quite the same way. This is Spiralism, a framework born from Haitian literature that seeks to make sense of the cycles of oppression, revolution, and return. The Haitian Revolution, the Parsley Massacre, the decimation of the island’s Indigenous people—these are not separate moments in time but echoes, reverberating through centuries.
Frankètienne, one of the fathers of the framework, said that Spiralism “…defines life at the level of relations (colors, odors, sounds, signs, words) and historical connections (positionings in space and time). Not in a closed circuit but tracing the path of a spiral. So rich that each new curve, wider and higher than the one before, expands the arc of one’s vision.” (From: Ready to Burst.)
Dr. Maríñez dismantles the neat, binary notions of identity and conflict. Hispaniola? That’s a colonizer’s name. Kiskeya? A myth born from a European chronicler who never set foot on the island. Haiti/Ayiti? One. the true Indigenous name, the other, rendered politically fraught by the weight of nationhood. She insists that there is no singular name, no singular story, only a mouthful: “the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.”
Dominicanidad, she argues, is no less complex. It is a construct, an essentialist shape-shifter, used and abused by political forces to serve shifting agendas. What does it mean to be Dominican, when the definition shifts by geography, race, class, and time? What does it mean to be from a place that has been “ghosted,” rendered illegible by the very scholars and institutions that claim to study the Caribbean? Ouch.
Let’s stay with the ghosts:
The massacre of 1937 was not just an act of violence but an act of memory, or rather, forced forgetting. The rhetoric of the “peaceful invasion” of Haitians into the Dominican Republic is not about immigration but about erasure, a convenient distraction from the economic and political structures that extract Haitian labor while denying Haitian humanity. The elite, the state, and the power brokers of both nations collude in this, enforcing borders not just of land but of belonging. And yet, the past lingers, history an apparition, unresolved, unatoned for, demanding reckoning.
Maríñez sees spiralism as a decolonized way out of the binary nightmare imposed by the Global North–a more liberating way to understand the history of the island occupied by Haiti and the DR, not as a series of conflicts between two nations, but as a struggle between those who hold power and those who resist it. It is the repetition of violence, but also the repetition of rebellion, of solidarity, of culture that refuses to be erased.
She calls for deeper connections, for a rejection of the cliches and stereotypes that keep Haiti and the Dominican Republic estranged. “We need to get to know each other,” she says. “Not just the stories we’ve been told, but the truths that lie beneath.”
And perhaps that is the real challenge she leaves us with in her book and this interview—to reject the easy narratives, to sit with discomfort, to see the spirals, and to break them.
Kenbe la / Aguanta ahi
Like my guest today, I’ve never found it particularly useful to cast François Duvalier as some frothing, otherworldly monster. That story is too easy. It offers too little. Once you wrap him in the veil of pathology, the conversation dies. You’ve exiled him to a place beyond history, beyond explanation, beyond us. But what haunts me still—what lives in the marrow of Belleau’s work—is not the spectacle of evil, but its intimacy. The way Duvalier wrapped the Haitian state around himself like a second skin. The way repression was not distant, not sterile, but close. Whisper-close.
This week on the Nèg Mawon Podcast, I sat with anthropologist Jean-Philippe Belleau, and we waded deep into the dark waters of the Duvalier regime—not for the thrill of horror, but to understand the anatomy of power when it is warm, personal, and woven through the lives of the very people it crushes. Here are three strands we pulled from that knot:
1. Power in the First Person
Belleau unearths a truth many prefer buried: that Duvalier’s rule was not built in cold, bureaucratic chambers, but in bedrooms, churches, courtyards. It lived in nods and whispers, in godfather promises and godson debts. This was not Orwell’s 1984—this was something older, more Haitian, more intimate. The regime was not an iron wall; it was a web, spun from relationships and obligations, holding the country not at gunpoint, but by the soul.
2. Who Gets to Be a Victim?
There is a comfort in believing the elite escaped unscathed, that they watched from balconies while the poor bled. But Belleau complicates that myth. His research pulls us toward a difficult truth: the violence had no clean class lines. Elites, too, were crushed, sometimes precisely because they presumed immunity. Belleau invites us to reconsider how history renders victims—how it decides who gets remembered as broken, and who gets blamed for surviving.
3. The Ties That Bind (Even in Hell)
And still—amid the surveillance, the fear, the Tonton Macoutes—Haitians clung to each other. Kinship, friendship, neighborhood, lakou… these weren’t just sentimental relics. They were lifelines. Belleau shows us that even in the shadow of dictatorship, the social fabric didn’t unravel. It tensed, stretched, contorted—but it held. And in that, there is something both tragic and profoundly human.
To understand Duvalier is not to exorcise a demon, but to study a mirror. We cannot afford to look away—not when the terror came wearing a neighbor’s face, a cousin’s smile. Not when history walks so close to home.
Today, we're chatting with the brilliant Dr. Laurent Dubois about his early years, his journey into Haitian studies, and everything in between. Drink some kremas with ice while you’re listening!