Indigeniste Movement

The Indigeniste movement, or Mouvement Indigéniste, started in the 1920s as an attempt by Haitian intellectuals to properly define Haitian culture as African, rather than an extension of French culture, as it was then commonly assumed to be. This movement was a catalyst for literary and social change in the way Haitians, and blacks around the world, viewed themselves and their culture. It was largely inspired by the ideas of Jean Price-Mars (1876–1969), considered by many as the greatest Haitian intellectual of the first half of the 20th century. Price-Mars was a multitalented man. Trained as a physician, he served as Minister of Foreign Affairs, as well as Haitian Ambassador to France and the Dominican Republic. He was also a prolific and extremely influential writer.

The Indigeniste movement, with which Price-Mars is closely associated, is primarily identified as a literary movement. Haitian writers such as Carl Brouard, J. B. Cineas, and Jacques Roumain, author of the famous Gouverneurs de la Rosée (Masters of the Dew), founded La Revue Indigène in 1927. La Revue Indigène regularly renounced slavish imitation of French literature and looked to peasant culture for inspiration. It can be said, however, that these writers fell short of their goal, for they wrote in ultra modern French instead of Creole, the language of the peasants that Price-Mars championed as the true language of the Haitian people. Another Haitian literary group swept by the Indigeniste movement was the group of poets known as the Griot, which included François Duvalier—the future dictator of Haiti. Others, however, took a nonliterary road in the call to return to Africa and pursued the scientific exploration of African civilization and its presence in Haitian culture. In this pursuit, Jacques Roumain founded the Bureau of Ethnology in 1941, while Price-Mars himself founded the Institute of Ethnology and became chair of Africology and sociology there.

The historical development that inspired the birth of the Indigeniste movement was the U.S. occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934. Resistance to the U.S. occupation by Haitian intellectuals was ambiguous and modest, at best. Haiti's claim to be the first free black republic in the Western Hemisphere had always been a source of pride and shaped its national identity. However, this identity (for the elite in particular) was always circumscribed by an emotional attachment to France, Haiti's former colonial ruler. With the American occupation in full force, Haitians endured humiliating racism that undermined the glory and principles of the founding of their republic. In addition, the occupation failed to deliver what many intellectuals had secretly hoped it would—a dramatic change in the technology and material wealth of Haiti.

In a series of lectures and articles, as well as in the 1928 publication of Ainsi Parla l'Oncle (So Spoke the[Page 272]Uncle), Price-Mars identified the cause of Haitian malaise as the Haitians' failure to embrace their own traditions and their denial of the African origins of their culture. With his wide breadth of knowledge of African culture, Price-Mars systematically identified the African roots of Haitian culture and Vodu. He called for elevating the pride of Haitians and for fortifying their resistance to the American occupation through the glorification of the Haitian peasants. He believed that in their ways was the source of Haitian strength and national pride. Price-Mars devoted five chapters of his book to the assertion of the African roots of Haitian culture: Chapter II, “Popular Beliefs”; Chapter III, “Africa, Its Races and Its Civilization”; Chapter IV, “Africa and the External World”; Chapter V, “African Animism”; and Chapter VI, “The Religious Sentiments of the Haitian Masses.”

...