February 23, 2010
Soulouquerie and "Haiti's Bad Press" (1)
With the publishing of "The Serpent and the Rainbow" in 1985 (2), Wade Davis soared onto best-seller lists in Amrica and around the world, gaining fame and recognition as the entrepreneurial Harvard anthropologist who journeyed into the heart of Voodoo-land (Haiti) and returned home with what can be called the Holy Grail of Haitian witchcraft, namely, the highly-kept secret recipe for bringing a seemingly dead person back to life, creating what is generally known as a zombie. Since then, Davis has remained in the public eye as the preeminent authority on the Haitian zombie. But, despite all the accolades generated by that publication, more than anything else, Davis's investigation should be remembered as an unfortunate contribution to Haiti's bad press.
Davis's claim to fame rested and continues to rest on the mistaken belief that he had actually uncovered the mystery of the Haitian zombie legend, that he provided objective, scientific evidence of the zombie's reality as a resurrected dead person, brought back from his grave with the use of Voodoo magic. In reality, Davis achieved none of such thing. He first jumped to the conclusion that the zombie state was the result of Tetradotoxin (TTX) poisining, but then, toxicology experts were quick to refute that conclusion, since TTX has no known zombigenic property (3). It is indeed a matter of simple clinical observation that recovery from accidental TTX intoxication is complete, without the slightest physical or psychological damage (4.) Stung by the critics of his TTX-theory, Davis eventually conceded the point, but then he went on to theorize that zombification is a psychological process initiated by a magical Voodoo spell, a theory that cannot possibly be taken seriously given the inherent incompatibility between science and the supernatural. In the end, what Davis managed to do was to give credibility to the power of Voodoo and the idea that, through magic, one can in fact bring the dead back to life. But whatever the virtues of Voodoo may be, it should be beyond dispute that no religions can confer God-like powers to anyone, and the idea that Haitians routinely resurrect their dead to make zombies should strike any reasonable person as nonsense. But then again, when it comes to Haiti, people seem predisposed to accept the most absurd iterations as truth. What seems to matter is to keep Haiti in the spotlight as a punch-line and the whipping boy of the world. Such is the power of what we would call "the Soulouquerie legacy."
It all began immediately after the guns fell silent with the triumph of the Revolutionary Army under the joint-command of Jean Jacques Dessalines and Alexandre Petion. Chosen by the military high-command to lead the newly minted independent nation, Dessalines lost no time; he declared himself Emperor Jean-Jacques I of Haiti and created a military aristocracy. On the pressing issue of land ownership, he is said to have favored an equitable distribution of the land to include the entire population of former slaves. Unfortunately, he had to contend with the intransigence of the mulattoes who saw themselves as the legitimate heirs of the departing French and, therefore, saw no need to compromise. In the end, few blacks, mainly those in the military high command, were awarded enough acrage to be counted among the wealthy landowners. The great majority of the population was then left as landless pariahs in the new nation. On October 17, 1806, that is, two years into his reign as Emperor of Haiti, Dessalines was assassinated by his political enemies. His mutilated body was abandoned by the roadside and was feasted on by wild animals. There was no State funerals for the Emperor or, for that matter, for the war hero. No gratitude! No mercy! Not even respect for the dead!
General Henri Christophe, another leading figure in the War of Independence, was then installed to succeed Dessalines as President. But soon after his nomination, he came to fear for his life. He abandoned the presidential palace, retreated to the North of the country, established his own little Empire (separate from the rest of the country) and declared himself King Henri I of Haiti. His rule, which lasted until his death of natural cause, was despotic and ruthless. He was however able to bring prosperity to the North with the adoption of stringent laws and the effective continuation of the colonial plantation system. The irony did not get lost on the French. And they started laughing, needless to say, out of Schadenfreude.
But if any one person deserves credit for making Haiti the undisputed laughing stock of the world, it ought to be Faustin Elie Soulouque. Elected President in 1847 by the mulatto elite who expected him to do their bidding in accordance with the time-honored quid pro quo, the illiterate Soulouque, to the consternation of the mulattoes, surprised everyone. He reshuffled the army brass, consolidated power in his own hands, routed his political enemies, and crowned himself Emperor Faustin I of Haiti. He created a bloated black aristocracy, surrounding himself with hundreds of Princes, Princesses, Dukes, Duchesses, Barons, Baronesses and other sycophants, with ruinous results for the economy.
A Voodooist in his own right, Soulouque even organized Voodoo ceremonies in the National Palace. The mulattos were dumbfounded. On the other side of the Atlantic, Parisians could not conceal their delight. They coined the word "Soulouquerie," from the name of Faustin Soulouque, to refer to the tasteless extravaganzas and wasteful spending of the regime. It did not take long before the French media began to draw comparison between Soulouque's profligacy and the wasteful spending at Versailles, poking fun at their own Emperor Louis Napoleon. "Soulouquerie jokes" became the rage. They were so virulent and effective at ridiculing Napoleon and his entourage that an imperial edict banned the use of the word "Soulouquerie" in France.
Not to be completely deterred, the French media then took to criticizing and mocking Soulouque more ferociously than ever, adroitly avoiding the forbidden word and any direct reference to the French Emperor in their discourses or writings. But by then, no one in Paris needed to be told that Soulouque had long become a scapegoat, a whipping boy for the French Monarch, in other words, a synonym for Napoleon. In the end though, Haiti itself became synonymous with Soulouquerie, a metaphor for every act of stupidity, waste, or gross mismanagement in the affairs of the State (5.) Since then, it has become a habit among foreign reporters or writers dealing with Haitian society to look for "le weird," the irrationel, and to report any such nonsense as truth. And that is where real zombie, voodoo, necromancy and stories of cannibalism in Haiti fit in. The intent behind such stories is to titillate and, sometimes, mock. (Of course, the subtext of the punch-line has always been Africa and the black race as people seemingly addicted to Soulouquerie, and perhaps too feeble-minded to adapt to modernity. One should not be fooled!)
But in the aftermath of the earthquake that leveled a large swath of the country, leaving thousands dead or gravely wounded, Soulouquerie was exposed to the world, and what the world saw was not at all funny. On that fateful day when the earth shook and, all of a sudden, cities were reduced to rubbles while thousands laid buried underneath, there was no one rushing to the rescue. In what can be described as the ultimate act of Soulouquerie, not a single State Authority came out with a few words of sympathy for the victims, and to reassure them that help would be forthcoming. Instinctively, they all ran home to tend to their own family. And, most remarkably, there was no public outcry. The popullation remained stoic to the end. But then and again, since the birth of the Republic, er, Empire, no Haitian Heads of State have ever behaved as, or pretended to be, a Servant of the people. And the people, for their part, have come to expect nothing from the State. As it turns out, Soulouquerie is not about governing, the greater good, or collective responsibility. It is unmitigated, shameless individualism; "Chacun pour soi!" is the guiding ethos. While some might find that hilarious as a philosophy of governance, the joke, obviously, would be on the Haitian people, the very victims of this philosophy. That, of course, is not funny!
1. Lawless, Robert. 1992. Haiti's Bad Press. Schenkman Books, Inc. Rochester, Vermont
2. Davis, Wade. 1985. The Serpent and the Rainbow. University of North Carolina Press. Chapel Hill
3. Yasumoto, T. and Kao, CY. Tetrodotoxin in "Zombie Powder." Toxicon, 1990. No 28, pp129-132
4.Tetradotoxin Poisoning Associated with Puffer Fish Transported from Japan. JAMA1996;275:1631
5. Sparks, J. Everett, E. Powell, JR. and Henry Cabot Lodge. New Life in China. North American Revew. 1891, Vol 153 pp 424-425