16720: abulafia: Re: salut (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: abulafia3000@optonline.net

It's funny 'la cause de nos m'alheur' is so 'today'

the same interplay of color/class  interactions and the deal making between Nationalist and liberal.

My ancestor 'roche armand' was a tailor(poor mulatre) who was a follower of an (upper middle class dark skinned man/bourgeois) antenor firmin and was killed by a (very dark rich land owner) Nord Alexi who was backed by white merchants.

Now officialy the 'liberal' was the partie of 'lelite mulatre' but I read it as the party of urbanity and to be urban in those days and to have some education or money made you a little lighter, especially in port cities. Inversely I saw the Nationalist as the party of the rural bourgeoisie('l'elite noire' ) and that meant a little darker. Again this is Haiti and 'color' change with position.

One thing came and changed that. The AMERICAN invasion disturbed a 'balance' between rural and urban interest and REIFIED color/class. Meaning forcing black land owners form their lands and disturbing the rural power relationships at the same time structuring out 'dark skinned people from the state machinery created a situation whereby 'PERCEPTION' of class position became REALITY of class position. Couple that with the centralization of power now you have an explosive situation. BECAUSE 'oubien ou chef ou ou pa chef' now to be a chef you had to have color were before it made it easier.

THINK-You have an Aristocrat like Clement Jumelle(grandfather signed the Haitian constitution)- A feodal like Estime- a bourgois like duvalier(his father was a judge)-BUT people insist that they were la classe moyenne-SO DEEPLY INGRAINED WAS that prjudice. Estime got class supposedly from his 'middle' class mulatresse wife(how absurd), but these thing give POLITICAL CAPITAL.

But remember power 'perceived' can be power 'achieved' but POWER NEVER had any color unless backed by guns. The VESPER of jeremi was the ultimate conclusion. A plot ot overthrow a man who 'LEGITIMETALY STOLE' the election-ALL of them Were positioning and trying to steal it. BUT the refusal to acknowledge that he stole  it fair and square. Duvalier could have shot the plotters, but he massacred the village to prove a point. BUT he forgot that we are in a GLOBAL system of racial meanings-his son the son of a president and grandson of a judge was  considered to be marrying up because the daughter of a 'louche cafe speculator named bennet(duvalier's drinking buddy) was mulatresse.

Now you see Aristide playing the same game. When will it end. Mulato need color for perceived position and black oligarch need a certain idee of blackness for political capital.

Que penser vous?
RSVP

Herve

----- Original Message -----
From: Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>
Date: Thursday, September 11, 2003 4:58 pm
Subject: Re: salut

>
> Herve,
>
> I wish I had, but alas, nothing on-line.
>
>
> Bob Corbett
>
>
>