The American Occupation and the Beginning of a Literature of Protest

Abstract

By the turn of the century, the political disorder that contributed to the atmosphere of gloom and futility in the poetry of La Ronde, had reached a state of absolute chaos. A tragic pattern was established in Haiti’s political life. Unscrupulous individuals with political ambitions would raise a caco¹ peasant army in the countryside (usually in the north), march on Port-au-Prince plundering the country on the way and be elected president on arrival there. The first act of these presidents was to share the spoils of victory with their army — except when the incumbent president managed to escape into exile with part of the treasury. Such a state of anarchy can be dramatically illustrated by the rapid succession of revolts which managed to place six presidents in office between 1911 and 1915.²