Comparing Haiti, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico

Introduction
The Caribbean nations of Haiti, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico share in common a history of tumultuous colonial rule. Yet different Old World colonial governments had presided over each of these countries, leading to completely different languages, cultures, customs, and institutions. The French left the most lingering legacy on Haiti, and Haitian slaves ended up leading the world’s first successful large-scale slave rebellion. British rule in Jamaica would also eventually dissolve, as slavery became an untenable model for the global labor market. Spanish-ruled Puerto Rico likewise capitalized on the slave trade and the free labor extracted from it, but slavery in Puerto Rico was less linked to race as it was in either Haiti or Jamaica. This is not to say that Puerto Rico is not as marred by slavery as were Jamaica or Haiti, but the colonial system did ensure a lingering social stratification based on class status. This paper compares and contrasts Haiti, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico according to three main themes: slavery, family, and the peasantry. Slavery, family, and the peasantry are themselves interrelated concepts that contributed to the evolution of disparate cultures on these three Caribbean islands. Based on anthropological evidence, the central thesis of this paper is that in spite of their abundant historical and linguistic differences, Haiti, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico share in common similar sociological patterns related to power and labor exploitation.
Slavery
Slavery is the defining feature of the settlement of the New World, particularly in the Caribbean after the establishment of cash crop economies. The sugarcane industry became predominant throughout the Caribbean. However, Puerto Rico was a relative latecomer to the sugarcane economy. Sugarcane had been a thriving global commodity in Jamaica and Haiti before it became a viable cash crop in Puerto Rico, as Mintz points out in The Ancient Colonies. Although plantation-based slavery was not as salient in Puerto Rico as it was in Jamaica or in Haiti, Puerto Rico still employed slaves—some on plantations but many who worked more in urban centers as domestics (Godreau, Cruz, Ortiz, et al 120). As Puerto Rico evolved a different economy from that of Jamaica or Haiti, one less dependent on a single crop like sugarcane, the system of slavery manifested on the Spanish colony differently. By the time sugarcane plantations were established in Puerto Rico, various members of the peasant classes, not just non-whites, compromised the growing racially-mixed underclass (Mintz 143).
In Jamaica and Haiti, on the other hand, slavery and race were inextricably entwined. Describing the revolution in Haiti, Dubois describes the New World’s first large-scale successful slave rebellion in Avengers in the New World. Chapter Four, “Fire in the Cave,” describes the build-up of tension among the slaves, who “often found supporters ready and waiting,” (Dubois 96). Long before the advent of social media, the insurgents organized en masse as if beating to the sound of the same drums. One plantation manager named Pierre Mossut wrote with alarm, “There is a motor that powers them and that keeps powering them and that we cannot come to know,” (Dubois 96). The “success of the insurrection” in Haiti dealt a blow to the colonial governments in Haiti and resonated throughout the Caribbean (Dubois 96). Ironically, the Haitian slave revolt proved so successful that even some of the French plantation owners pleaded for the British to occupy the colony as “the only way to preserve the institution of slavery,” (Dubois 117).
Slaves were also socially stratified in both Jamaica and Haiti, with some having access to greater status, freedom of movement, and privileges than their subordinates. Remarkably, some of the most elite slaves were even permitted to carry weapons that were intended for uses like whipping the field slaves (Dubois 97). During the insurrection, these elite slaves played a decisive role. Another reason why the slave rebellion was successful in Haiti was that it was organized and planned. Major skirmishes were planned for Sundays or holidays, when the majority of slaves already had freedom of movement and would not arouse suspicion or be forced to fight after a long day’s work in the fields (Dubois 98). Unfortunately, the success of the rebellion also meant the demise of the Haitian economy, leaving the self-liberated slaves without any chance to rebuild or to establish a new society—the foundations of the Haitian economy had been literally burned to the ground. The same was true for Jamaica, in which a peasantry needed to revitalize the economy from the ground up. Geggus concurs, noting the revolution led to the “weakening in the Caribbean’s position in the world market,” albeit a position that had been artificially established via the presumption that free labor could be extracted indefinitely without consequence (83).
Family
Contrary to the patriarchal customs, norms, and institutions of their respective colonial governments, Caribbean societies evolved with matrifocal values. Even when the colonial governments and institutions like the church attempted to instill patriarchal values and gender norms, families evolved according to the dictates of the slave labor market. In “Planter Power, Freedom, and Oppression of Slaves in the 18th Century Caribbean,” Stinchcombe points out that plantation owners frequently purchased far more males than females to toil in the fields, preventing the formation of church-sanctioned legitimate nuclear family units among slaves. On paper and in law, both church and colonial government mandated official patriarchal marriages, but in practice such marriages were relatively rare. The situation led to an increase of tacit matrifocal values, norms, and institutions throughout the Caribbean. Matrifocal values are based on high levels of female autonomy and a relatively low value placed on the marital institution (Safa 333).
Within a matrifocal society, gender role segregation is as high as it is in patriarchal societies, but there is less gender power inequities within a matrifocal society such as those in the Caribbean. As Safa points out, “These consanguineal ties are seen as lasting in comparison to the often transient nature of the conjugal bond. Men are important for sexuality and reproduction, but their support cannot be relied upon (333). Women depend upon each other, having come to recognize the transient nature of the sexual union. Men and women occupy separate economic, social, and political spheres by necessity under the dictums of the slave-based labor economy and the political and social institutions that supported it.
Stinchcombe in “Planter Power” notes that the differences between Spanish and British rule led to major differences in the social institutions of family and marriage. Whereas the British enabled or even encouraged marriage among slaves, the Spaniards did not, resulting in fewer restrictions upon either men or women regarding their personal lives, sexual behavior, or family practices (911). In “Race as a Social Boundary,” Stinchcombe also points out how the free blacks became its own distinct subculture, with profound impacts on kinship and family. Marriages only happened within the particular subculture, leading to social stratification among both blacks and whites—just as Dubois notes the ways in which some free blacks were enlisted to try and stop the rebellion by fighting for the colonialists against other blacks. Inequality is not just about plantation life and white owners versus black slaves. The family became an important location in which race relations and social power relations played out.
Peasantry
Slavery meant the legal creation of an underclass. Even after emancipation (or in Haiti’s case, self-liberation), the underclass remained and morphed into the peasantry. Jamaican and Haitian slaves had been able to sell some surplus in local markets, enabling them to become “proto-peasants,” or to at least form the basis of what would become a subsistence agricultural economy in the post-colonial era (Mintz 55). The peasant classes in Puerto Rico were already racially mixed by the time slavery was abolished. Therefore, the underclass was defined less by race and more by class. Race relations were as a result “less toxic” throughout the society than in Jamaica or Haiti (Mintz 181). The population on Puerto Rico was also more widely dispersed than in Haiti or Jamaica, where plantation life tended to centralized labor markets and slave populations. Plantation labor in PR was undertaken by all of the peasantry, not just non-whites (Mintz 143).
Another difference between Puerto Rico and Jamaica and Haiti is that the latter two developed a distinct creole culture among the peasantry. Puerto Rico did not. “Creolization,” which is defined as ““the creative cultural synthesis undertaken primarily by the slaves, interacting with each other and with free people, particularly in the tropical New World sugar plantation colonies” differentiates Jamaica and Haiti from Puerto Rico (Mintz 190). Mintz’s fieldwork in the Caribbean shows that different Caribbean island nations can be compared because they shared in common the core features related to slavery, such as the plantation economy and racism.
Religion also served as a feature to unite and define the peasantry, empowering them in spite of their low social status. For example, in Jamaica, the church contributed to the creation of free villages after abolition. Mintz also claims Haiti and Jamaica both had a vibrant peasant class to establish new post-colonial sociological institutions (115). In Haiti, religion was crucial for the empowerment of the peasantry, all of which were liberated slaves. Religion can be a means to oppress or to liberate the peasantry, and is a potent form of cultural identity construction. For example, voodoo in Haiti is central to culture, custom, and identity. The peasnatry adapted the religion of the oppressor to serve their own needs, and to resist their African traditions from being subsumed by Catholicism (Laguerre 36). Voodoo has borrowed continually from the religions and customs of the colonial powers, enabling the people of Haiti to retain power and control over social norms and sociological institutions. As Laguerre puts it, voodoo “expressed the solidarity of the village,” (36). In Haiti, the voodoo religion literally became the bastion of power for the peasantry. In Jamaica and Puerto Rico, religion served also as a vital force for social and psychological empowerment of the peasantry.
Conclusion
Colonialism, racism, and slavery have all “defined the Caribbean region,” but it would be a grave mistake to assume that the will and character of the people did not transcend or subvert the ravages of the exploitative labor market and brutal colonial regimes (Geggus 83). This paper has examined the ways slavery, the family, and the peasantry manifested differently in Haiti, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. Because each of these three nations was presided over by a totally different culture and colonial government, their histories and cultures naturally evolved differently from one another. Yet in spite of differences in language and custom, Haiti, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico demonstrate remarkable similarities in the ways the peasant class regained their power in the post-colonial era.
Works Cited
Dubois, Laurent. “Fire in the Cane,” in Avengers of the New World, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Geggus, David. “The Caribbean in the Age of Revolution.”
Godreau, Isar P., Cruz, Mariolga Reyes, Ortiz, Mariluz, et al. “The Lessons of Slavery: Discourses of Slavery, Mestizaje, and Blanqueamiento in an Elementary School in Puerto Rico.” American Ethnologist, Vol. 35, No. 1, 2008, pp. 115-135.
Laguerre, Michael. “The Place of Voodoo in the Social Structure of Haiti.” Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 3, 1973, pp. 36-50.
Mintz, Sidney Three Ancient Colonies: Caribbean Themes and Variations, Harvard University Press, 2012.
Safa, Helen. “The Matrifocal Family and Patriarchal Ideology in Cuba and the Caribbean,” Journal of Latin American Anthropology, Vol. 10, No.2, 2005.
Stinchcombe, Arthur. “Planter power, Freedom, and Oppression of Slaves in 18th century Caribbean”, from Sugar Island Slavery in the Age of Enlightenment, Princeton University Press, pp. 125-158.
Stinchcombe, Arthur. “Race as a Social Boundary: Free Colored versus Slaves and Blacks,” from Sugar Island Slavery in the Age of Enlightenment, Princeton University Press, pp. 159-172.