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3. Remembering Charlemagne Péralte and His Defense of Haiti’s Revolution
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51 The United States government illegally occupied the sovereign nation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934. While U.S. presidents and marines promoted this act as an intervention and a humanitarian gesture toward their neighbor, Haitian nationalists such as Charlemagne Péralte interpreted the U.S. presence as a war of conquest. For Péralte, the idea of an occupied Haiti was an affront to the nation’s sovereignty. Thus, in his efforts to protect the nation, heturnedtoHaiti’srevolutionarypast.UsingthememoryofHaiti’srebellious origins as a strategic ideological weapon, Péralte deployed this method in warnings to the U.S. occupiers and as inspiration for Haitians to defend their revolution.From1915untilhisassassinationin1919,Péraltedirectedarevolt against the occupation. His actions had repercussions in the early twentieth century and remain significant in twenty-first-century Haiti. As one Haitian expressed most recently, “The memory of Charlemagne Péraltereignshigh.”In2004,duringHaiti’scelebrationofitsbicentennial,soldiers from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) arrived to the island and remain there today. During these years, Haitians resurrected the memory of Péralte as a symbol of resistance. Here I engage the themes of occupation, resistance, and historical memory in my examination of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Haitian and U.S relations. Drawing on archival sources and oral histories conducted in both nations, I look at Péralte’s use of historical memory in resisting the U.S. occupation of Haiti 3 Remembering Charlemagne Péralte and His Defense of Haiti’s Revolution Yveline Alexis 52 yveline alexis in 1915 and the memory of Péralte’s resistance in present-day U.N.-occupied Haiti. I argue that the assassination of Péralte and his subsequent historical marginalization demonstrate how revolutionary his acts were in the twentieth century. Furthermore, the reimagining of Péralte among Haitians on the island attests to his revolutionary appeal in the twenty-first century. Silencing Haiti’s Resistance Narratives Polyné begins The Idea of Haiti with a provocative question: “Why is Haiti the exceptional case in the Americas, and perhaps globally to be feared and to be a foil?” From a variety of disciplines, the scholars in this volume offer equally provocative responses to this enduring question about Haiti’s past and present. Here, I look at this concept of fear via a historical approach that examinesHaitianandU.S.diplomacy.Iarguethatfromtheageofrevolutions throughtheU.S.occupationofHaiti,variousindividualsintheUnitedStates, including slaveholders, politicians, and soldiers, promoted an idea of Haiti as a feared—and later, failed—republic. Haiti became a danger to the United States once President Jean Jacques Dessalines declared the nation independent in 1804, and it remained a danger thanks to the nationalist rhetoric and actions of individuals like Charlemagne Péralte in the twentieth century. MichelRolphTrouillot’sSilencingthePast:PowerandtheProductionofHistory interrogates this global angst that Haiti’s revolution generated in 1804 and centuries afterward. In this collection, both Nesbitt and Beckett’s works offer key reflections on Trouillot’s seminal thesis about the recording and disseminating of this unthinkable history. The parallels between the silencing of Haiti’s revolution and the figurative burial of Péralte’s resistance movement in the histories reveal a striking trend. Though occurring in different eras, both moments were rendered invisible and nonrevolutionary, and were viewed as failures. Examples from both periods document the creation of the idea of Haiti and Haitians as an other. Immediately after Haiti’s declaration of sovereignty, U.S. vice president Thomas Jefferson concocted an ideology of fear. He used the Haitian revolution as an example to caution against abolition in the United States. Print culture also spreads this cautionary tale: U.S. newspapers decried Haiti’s revolution as a massacre by brigands and cannibals, a bloodbath that victimized French slaveholders and colonial administrators. [44.203.58.132] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:51 GMT) Remembering Charlemagne Péralte 53 The aspect of the Haitian revolution that was a battle against slavery and for freedom became constructed as a display of savagery and barbarianism. The delayed acknowledgment of Haiti’s independence by France and the United States, and the reparations paid to the French by Haitians, set up power systems that grossly marginalized Haiti and succeeded in promoting the myth of the nation as an other. Indeed, the surveillance of Haiti by officials in the U.S. government since its revolution gave way to the latter’s illegal occupation of the island in 1915. An examination of marines’ correspondence during the occupation finds similar tactics in depicting these twentieth-century Haitian resistors as the new brigands and...