Creole Economics: Caribbean Cunning under the French Flag

Chapter 5: Adaptations of Cunning: The Changing Forms of D

five Adaptations of Cunning the changing forms of débrouillardism The original wound of slavery conditions both the fact of creole-style débrouillardism and its form in the contemporary economy. So, however much islanders may claim they are French, the indignity of their histories, the continuing stigma of their skin, and the subsidized dependency of their material lives prevent the final healing of that original wound. In this gap of assimilation, local versions of débrouillardism affirm a creole identity of autonomy and cleverness in the face of another’s power. To explore the idea that creole identities can be discovered in economic practice, we need to consider the historic context in which creolized slaves learned to assert their humanity through regular attempts to undermine only rarely did a violent physical confrontation resolve the tensions that underlay the slave’s and the master ’s perpetual struggle for authority and power on the plantation. much more typically the slave used a kind of mental jujitsu, similar to the tactics of the slaves’ folk hero, brer rabbit, to deceive or divert his oppressors, thereby seizing mastery of the moment and gaining a measure of opportunity and freedom. —William L. Andrews and Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Civitas Anthology of African American Slave Narratives, 1999 practices 120 the master and to secure for themselves even the slightest gain. In this chapter, we will travel back in time to see how this profound ideology of economic survival and need for respect was born out of the conditions of slavery in Martinique. The heart of this ideology is symbolized in folktales of the individualistic, creole rabbit, who, in human form, is the débrouillard —smart and unorthodox, scheming, and successful on his own terms. Although the opportunities and constraints have altered in form over time, the spirit of the creole débrouillard lives on because the tensions he is striving to resolve live on. At all levels of society, the legacy of the débrouillard continues to express the energy of people who are proving their worth by making smart, self-interested economic choices. seedbeds of débrouillardism and creole economics slave strategies of resistance The French slave system in the New World was a construction of colonists who shared a cultural identity, a language, and common economic interests. In contrast, the slaves whose labor enabled colonists to realize their fortunes from sugar had been ripped from many areas of Africa and transported to the New World with their various native languages and cultural traditions. Beyond this imposed alienation from home and family , slaves were further denied any claims to their own ancestors, relatives, and even their own children. In a life that sociologist Orlando Patterson called “social death,”1 the isolation slaves endured served the interests of colonists well. The social divisions they created and the linguistic divisions they reinforced among slaves precluded early revolts by minimizing communication within and across plantations. Such controls were especially important in plantation society as the proportions of slaves increased to more than eight times the number of whites.2 Slaves did not passively accept their drastically shrunken, alienated new lives as property of white masters on sugar plantations an ocean away from home. Yet because of the brutal consequences for resisters (whipping was a standard means of coercion, and punishment with physical torture was not uncommon), it was in the best interests of slaves to keep resistance below the radar, to refrain from interfering with the power structure of the Adaptations of Cunning 121 plantation. Indeed, the odds of staging a successful revolt were very low; only in Haiti was the white planter class overthrown and kicked out.3 Apart from the sporadic occasions of violent revolt, slave resistance took the form of hidden acts of defiance that coexisted with apparent acts of compliance. Thus, on the one hand, the highly supervised, compliant work of slaves enabled the white planters to accumulate handsome profits from the sale of sugar in Europe. On the other hand, slaves found discrete ways to resist their exploitation by plotting sabotage and devising ways to serve their own self-interests. The “everyday tactics” slaves used to oppose the system included “work-stops,” disorganization in the fields, lying, mocking those in control, pretending to be sick, serving poisoned food, and stealing farm tools, supplies, and food.4 In addition, recorded incidents of infanticide and abortion suggest that some...