Taking the world - again, and again, and again.

Taking Haiti is a very insightful book that tells about the U.S. occupation in Haiti between 1915 and 1940. The analysis is based on the accounts of this occupation from the perspectives of the soldiers deployed to take on this feat. The details of various part of the occupation are explained in the text, giving one of the best accounts of U.S. military occupation. It’s necessary, for any historical accounts of wars, so-called wars and occupations, to understand the types of beliefs and customs soldiers brought with them to a foreign land, what they brought back, and the meanderings of those interactions.

I found a number of aspects of the text disheartening. For one, military occupations, battles, wars, and genocides that the U.S. – or any imperial, colonial power, for that matter – has taken part in all seem to be (if not overtly are) with the same mindset. The same set of lies, presuppositions, ignorance, paternalism, racism, and barbarity always seem to be present amongst colonial powers fighting against or occupying a foreign land. From the time of colonialism until the current conflicts and occupations happening where the U.S. has sent troops or dropped bombs of waged wars – the rhetoric all seems eerily, and lamentably, similar. Even with the war in Iraq, there was this same paternalism Renda details. The rape of native women (and in some cases, native men) by soldiers from these colonial powers has been documented in nearly every war or occupation. I can recall reading about an ostracized community of women in Kenya, who after being raped by U.N. soldiers and impregnated, they were left with bi-racial children and forced to leave their communities due to stigmas associated with rape and bi-racial (or simply “white” as they were labelled) children. The paternalism Renda so delicately details an reiterates throughout the text was present in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan where Americans (politicians, celebrities, and citizens) were constantly remarking on the ways in which this war was helping Afghan and Iraqi women because they were so desperately oppressed (as we read about in the first week of class). What else could a wholesome, moral and Christian nation do but help the lowly and helpless victims of Brown Muslim men? The U.S. also posits itself as the moral big brother of Israel in many instances as well. And while Israel is more than capable of taking care of itself, there is still this rhetoric that the U.S. has to help out it’s “brother”. The supposed threat that always seems to be exaggerated to absurd degrees, and the fears that are fostered by these supposed threats always seems to be evident prior to these invasions. Furthermore, the puppet governments that were set up by the U.S. prior to the military occupation she details and afterwards, have all been set up in Iraq and Afghanistan. The fact that history seems to be repeating itself over and over again with the same people making the same arguments, with the same paternalistic and racist rhetoric, with the same quasi-independent nation being set up post-occupation causes me to question how we have done this so many times and have yet to learn from them. Of course, those in power know this blueprint of occupation and war, and use it because it has been so effective in the past and continues to be. How is it that lay men and women are still being taken for fools when these schemes come up again and again in their lifetimes?

On another note, the fact that there were no African American soldiers deployed during this occupation is quite interesting. As we were discussing in last week’s class (prompted by Becky’s question about who benefitted from U.S. Americans being ignorant to slavery outside U.S. borders), I think this is yet another example of where African Americans and Haitian Americans were kept ignorant of each other as a conscious action. Of course, there were Americans who knew about the occupation and wrote about it, as well as African American missionaries who were in Haiti during the occupation. However, the soldier’s insight would have been an asset to African Americans, who were on the verge of fighting for their own dignities in the states.

I also found it important that Renda pointed out the ways in which anti-Black racism has no boundaries, as seen in the treatment shown to Haitians by the U.S. Marines. U.S. American Marines, on a sub-conscious and conscious level, felt the same superiority and hatred against Haitians as they did African Americans.  One anecdote from the book recalls one soldier drawing parallels between shooting Hatian rebels and games in the U.S. where one had to wack a Black person on the head as the game’s objective. The games, probably argued as harmless by whites during that time, were obviously not differentiated when it came to killing Haitians whose heads poked out from behind boulders in battles. This cannot be separated from recent situations (or rather, on-going situations) in which police-officers and lay citizens shoot or beat Black men and women to death. The same "target" that Marine Wirkus saw on the Haitians faces, and the same target that was drawn on the faces on Black people in amusement parks is the same target that is still on us as a collective. 

On a more constructive note, I wished that Renda would have gone into much more detail than she did about the ways in which religion and religious ignorance about Vodun played a part in the Marines’ interactions with Haitians.