Below are several comments on the relationship of the growth of the notion of democracy in Haiti and the birth and growth of the "Ti Legliz" movement, the movement which grew out of Liberation Theology. Bob Corbett posted the lead position and others then responded. Below is the original Corbett post and a few of the responses. This discussion was carried out on the Corbett mailing list in late June 1999.
Bob Corbett corbetre@webster.eduI want to make the case that the most significant move toward any serious notion of democracy in Haiti is quite new and I believe rooted in the coming of the "Ti Legliz" movement to Haiti in the 1970s. This movement was rooted in Liberation Theology which came out of South and Central America in the 1970s. It began with Gustavo Guitterez's book: TOWARD A THEOLOGY OF LIBERATION, and had a different and some what competing thrust centered in the work of Leonardo Boff who's best example of this theology is in ST. FRANCIS: MODEL OF HUMAN LIBERATION. The movement was enriched by a lay theory of human interaction provided in 1970 by Paulo Freire's, THE PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED.
It came to Haiti as early as 1974, but remained a very small, an threatened, harassed and oppressed movement until about 1985 when it really began to blossom, but exploded on the scene after Feb. 7, 1986 when Jean-Claude went his merry way to France compliments of the U.S. airforce.
I first ran into the movement when I was teaching in Vienna in 1983 and ran across a story of the work of Pere Pollux Byas working in Pilot in the near northwest, just 16 km west of Plaisance. I was just passing time in the University of Vienna library reading a German Marxist magazine and there is this story about Haiti. I was astonished. I arranged to meet Byas at Christmas of 1983, we met in Cap Haitien. He had 10 Ti Legliz groups working in the Pilot area, trying to do very simple co-operative projects. I was attracted to this and began to fund them.
The next summer I visited there my first time and began to sit in on the meetings. They were just mind-boggling to me, they seem to be Paulo Freire's theories in living color, but with a religious twist which came from the Liberation Theology. I sat in on hundreds of meetings in the next 10 years, in all parts of the country, but a typical meeting was pretty much the same all over and at any time.
A meeting begins with some prayers and religious songs, followed by a reading from scripture. These meetings are almost invariably led by a lay person, not a priest or minister (later on there were Protestant Ti Legliz groups, but most have been Catholic based). The reading done, the leader would ask about the reading and some general discussion would follow. However, after a while, 15 minutes to 1/2 hour (these meetings can be VERY long), the leader would shift the topic to:
What does this reading mean in our lives?
I suggest that is a very important shift. What the Liberation Theologians complain of, in part, is that traditional Christian theology of the past 2000 years was mainly "me and God" a theory of how the individual should behave in God's eyes, often in order to secure eternal reward, but at least in order to please God. The Liberation Theologian wanted to shift the focus away from the vertical axis of "me and God" to the horizontal plane of "us brothers and sisters working together in God's mode."
That's not only theologically radical, so radical and to threaten the Catholic church in it's very foundation, but extremely democratic. Gone is the hierarchy (which is the main reason they were lay-led and not clergy led). Gone is the authority (which is why the leader tends overwhelmingly to ask questions and not give answers). The people would then respond to these questions of what does this passage of scripture mean to us.
Sitting in meeting after meeting in those early days I can attest this was very grass roots local democracy being born. No talk of "Haiti" or "the nation" or any of that. It was stuff like: how can we grow more food for us (as opposed to the land owner) so we do not suffer hunger? How can we get schools for our children and our selves, so that we aren't so uninformed of what's going on? (Basic literacy was invariably understood by the simple peasants as indispensable to the growth. There was only ONE language ever mentioned or used in any meeting I ever attended, Creole, their language.) How can we get safer water to drink that isn't so distant from our village and home?
The emphasis was not on how do I, the individual get this, but how do WE, the community achieve this. And the central notion was that by putting our heads together we could achieve this. The Haitian nation had held for nearly two centuries that union creates force and that by joining together were make light work of the heavy. But it had never really translated these notions into a democratic ideal of people of equal worth working together to achieve these goals. That's what made it so democratic in my eyes, eyes that were often moved to tears by what I was seeing and hearing in the work of these Ti Legliz groups. Later they even pickup up the language by creating "Tet Ansanm" groups which were virtually indistinguishable from the Ti Legliz.
I can recall some critical moments in this growth in the area of Pandiassou, just west of Hinche where I spent a lot of time. A man whom I regard as an outstanding leader, Fre Franklyn Almand, has founded a Roman Catholic religious order of brothers (not priests) and then co-founded with Sister Emmanuel, an order of nuns. They worked alongside the Ti Legliz groups, but gave the people the leadership. When I started visiting there in 1984 (at the recommendation of list member David Callasano) there were nearly 40 groups already formed and working.
The exciting next stage, which didn't really come until after the fall of Jean-Claude in that short euphoric time of hope before the disastrous elections of Nov. 29, 1987, was that these small groups began meeting with other small groups and the ante was upped to not only the problems of OUR village, but of our ZONE, our region. That was so dramatic and earthshattering to the consciousness of the peasants that I was often sitting there with skin tingling listening the drama of democracy growing not in talk of intellectuals, but in the lives, dreams and commitments of ordinary people, changing an entire history of their nation.
This movement has been both growing and retreating since that period in my view. The movement is now fully open, nation wide and there are thousands of Ti Legliz and Tet Ansamn groups, Catholic, Protestant and non-sectarian. There are strong groups, which look like what I used to see in the birthing days, and weaker groups which are simply platforms for local leaders to take over the village. There are hard working and honest groups and less honest groups which seem as much pre-occupied with attracting foreign money as building the new society they struggled so hard toward in both Pilate and Pandiassou (my main areas of experience, not the only places it was happening).
It seems to me the country is in grave crisis over fundamental ideology. The cities, and especially Port-au-Prince, are mainly business as usual, and the classic historically normal struggle for power goes on. Aristide and Preval represent an attempt for this spirit of democracy to go fully national and move the country in that direction, but much altered as it became "big time." That has to be and is to be expected. Revolutions are not made in 10 year flashes.
But something dramatic has been unleashed in Haiti, mainly in the countryside where thousands of these groups have been born and are struggling for survival and growth. I don't mean growth in size, I mean growth in the spirit and practice of democratic living, a way of life that recognizes each person as having fundamentally equal worth, and that recognizes we are a society in which working and sacrificing together creates a better life for all.
In this sense then, I would argue that democracy in any meaningful and hopeful sense was born in Haiti in the mid-1970s, waxed strongly in the period of the overthrow of Duvalier, and was one of the key forces in that overthrow, and is now quietly surviving in the countryside and fighting for its life and the future of Haiti.
Within this spirit, I would argue that Haiti needs less "leadership" from the hierarchies of capital or religion, and more support in theology, economics and politics for the growth of this form of democracy which is there, but at a critical stage as to whether is grows or withers away.
Bob Corbett
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Patrick Bellegarde-Smith pbs@csd.uwm.eduFrom: Patrick Bellegarde-Smith
Corbett wrote: I want to make the case that the most significant move toward any serious notion of democracy in Haiti is quite new and I believe rooted in the coming of the "Ti Legliz" movement to Haiti in the 1970s.
This is more a dilemma than a paradox.
Corbett writes: The next summer I visited there my first time and began to sit in on the meetings. They were just mind-boggling to me, they seem to be Paulo Freire's theories in living color, but with a religious twist which came from the Liberation Theology. I sat in on hundreds of meetings in the next 10 years, in all parts of the country, but a typical meeting was pretty much the same all over and at any time.
This is not unlike what happens, at all levels -- that of the discourse, the songs, the ritual-- in Vodun and in Vodun ceremonies, hence the horrible fear of Haitian presidents (virtually all of whom knew Vodun intimately, many or most practicing it, even the mulatto presidents) some of us have researched this area and shall write about it. While some presidents banned Vodun, some persecuted it, they practiced it nonetheless. These presidents understood the role of Vodun in the Haitian Revolution, in the resistance to the American occupation in 1915-1934, and the further revolutionary potential in the message of Vodun, as presidents in the republics of Central America had understood the radical message of the Ti-Legliz, and acted accordingly. The United States government understood that challenge after its invasion of Haiti in 1915, and brought in U.S.-based Protestant missions. The point is made very explicitly in a number of U.S. documents. More contemporarily, some professors know that in the late 1970s, the CIA had realized the revolutionary potential of Vodun as being greater than that of the Haitian Communist Party, and had sought information and it seems, still does so.
Corbett writes: I suggest that is a very important shift. What the Liberation Theologians complain of, in part, is that traditional Christian theology of the past 2000 years was mainly "me and God" a theory of how the individual should behave in God's eyes, often in order to secure eternal reward, but at least in order to please God. The Liberation Theologian wanted to shift the focus away from the vertical axis of "me and God" to the horizontal plane of "us brothers and sisters working together in God's mode." That's not only theologically radical, so radical and to threaten the Catholic church in it's very foundation, but extremely democratic. Gone is the hierarchy (which is the main reason they were lay-led and not clergy led). Gone is the authority (which is why the leader tends overwhelmingly to ask questions and not give answers). The people would then respond to these questions....
What Corbett describes in the above paragraph, is a "primer" of Vodun theology. A number of Houngan and Manbo are working in the area of theology, and I am one of them. Individuals, in Haiti and the United States sociologists tell us, are often about "promotion sociale." They will attend a church service, preferably in a "tolerated and tolerable" Christian denomination in order to "advance socially." But they will also attend a service at the Ounfo the night before. They oftentimes do not want to relinquish the ancestral cultural link. By the way, there is enormous resistance in admitting that the Ounfo as well as the Ti-Legliz worked for the downfall of the Duvalier dynastic regime. Often, the same people belonged both to the Ti-Legliz and the Ounfo.
Corbett writes: It seems to me the country is in grave crisis over fundamental ideology.
The cities, and especially Port-au-Prince, are mainly business as usual,
and the classic historically normal struggle for power goes on. Aristide
and Preval represent an attempt for this spirit of democracy to go fully
national and move the country in that direction, but much altered as it
became "big time." That has to be and is to be expected. Revolutions
are not made in 10 year flashes.
But something dramatic has been unleashed in Haiti, mainly in the countryside
where thousands of these groups have been born and are struggling for
survival and growth. I don't mean growth in size, I mean growth in the
spirit and practice of democratic living, a way of life that recognizes each
person as having fundamentally equal worth, and that recognizes we are a
society in which working and sacrificing together creates a better life
for all.
................
Within this spirit, I would argue that Haiti needs less "leadership" from
the hierarchies of capital or religion, and more support in theology,
economics and politics for the growth of this form of democracy which is
there, but at a critical stage as to whether is grows or withers away.
I have been making many of the same points in all my books and
articles for the past 15 years. Some have listened. Democracy in Haiti,
will be an "africanizing" process as the structures of the state are
made to reflect the institutions of the nation. I wrote these lines in
1975. I am a bit surprised that my buddy Bob, an avowed atheist did such a
"spirited" defense of the Ti-Legliz movement. (I actually approve). But
Haiti will also find solace in indigenous social thought and theology, and
those are not related Christianity!
Patrick Bellegarde-Smith
=========================
Guy Antoine GuyAntoine@windowsonhaiti.comFrom: Guy Antoine
It was satisfying reading the reports from Michele Karshan about the children of LaFanmi and Bob Corbett's testimonial of the birthing of the democratic movement in Haiti in the 1970's. The latter in particular clearly dispels the notion that needy people cannot think for themselves, and must be led by a hierarchy of intellectuals with no sentimentality. It's the guns, and the most brutal repression in recent memory, that finally stifled a promising democratic movement in Haiti, not bad judgment on the part of the people. What surprises me is that, in spite of his often protesting to the contrary, I detect plenty of hope in Corbett's writing on the subject.
The Ti Legliz movement made the Jean-Bertrand Aristide presidency possible, which was a colossal challenge to the religious, political, economic, and diplomatic elites of Haiti. So, in the space of a few months, they regrouped and delivered their response which resonates still today. Strangely enough, I don't see millions of dollars offered on the heads of the coup leaders. Haiti is not Yugoslavia, not by a long shot.
Where I believe the movement has gone astray was in the cult of personality that followed, people no longer believing in the movement, but being caught up in the politics of WHO will save Haiti, as opposed to HOW they can resuscitate the democratic movement, regardless of what is happening in Port-au-Prince. Instead of Port-au-Prince reacting to them, they are reacting to Port-au-Prince and its infernal machinations. So there appears to be a crisis of confidence. But does not this happen to every battered child or adult? In time, the people of Haiti will realize that true power does not reside with Aristide or Preval or OPL or any coalition of political parties, but truly within themselves, because the elites cannot survive without their subservience or cooperation. Subservience or cooperation, that is the choice to be made, and the stakes are getting somewhat clearer every day. I am not writing this with prejudice to any of the parties cited above... Whichever can rise above their current level of narcissism, and ally themselves once more to a renaissance of the democratic movement, as described in Bob Corbett's thoughtful analysis, well more power to (the people).
Guy Antoine
==============================
Max Blanchet MaxBlanchet@worldnet.att.netFrom: Max Blanchet
More on democracy in Haiti
I enjoyed reading Bob Corbett's piece on the development of democracy and the role played by Ti Legliz in this process.
While I agree that the Ti Legliz role was indeed central, certain other elements played a vital role in the process. Among them:
There was synergy among these various elements.
I am sure that the work of the Baptists at Radio Lumi=E8re gave ideas to the Catholic Church when it started Radio Soleil which played such an important role in raising the consciousness of people and Radio Sole's broadcasts, in turn, emboldened folks in civil society such as Marcus, Konpe Filo and so many others.
As noted above, the Protestants stress on improving the material conditions of people no doubt helped steer the Catholic Church towards the idea and praxis of development.
Likewise, their reliance on Bible reading sessions certainly played a role in the emergence of the TKLs (Ti Kominote Legliz.)
The PUCH's armed struggle did shake people out of their lethargy in demonstrating that certain highly-placed Duvalierists were not immune from retaliation. It is worth noting that at about the same time, the PUCH entered into a tactical alliance with certain elements of the Church in order to bring about the defeat of their common enemy.
The PUCH's interest in establishing a connection and partnership with the rural world reflects the emphasis the Christian Churches have placed on reaching out to common people, especially the rural poor.
Max Blanchet
=========================
Mark Gill markgill@clas.net
From: Mark Gill
let us hope that the movement toward cooperation that Ti Legliz promotes continues, since cooperation between individuals and groups is not a characteristic of the Haitian personality.....if nothing else, this would be a very positive move.....
and, Ti Legliz can work IF they keep the marxism out of it....meaning, the methodology that marxism promotes......trying to use this methodology is the major reason for the failure of liberation theology in Nicaragua, for example....Ortega and his buddies were more interested in the control that marxism offered than they were in solving social problems........this has often been the case.....one can read Humberto Belli (Beyond Liberation Theology) to see why this movement has faltered in a serious way in South America and Central America.....
Mark Gill
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