Jacques Roumain has been identified by many as one of the leading Haitian intellectuals and politicians of the twentieth century. He was a passionate nationalist who advocated for the rights of the poor in his native land. As a political leader, he founded the Haitian Communist Party and was one of the early proponents of socialism and communism in the Caribbean.
Background
Jean Baptiste Roumain, known mostly by the name of Jacques Roumain, was born in Port-au-Prince on June 4,1907. Roumain grew up in Port-au-Prince's sub-urb of Bois Verna, known for its affluence and prestige, as a member of a distin-guished Haitian family who had been active in Haitian politics and who owned substantial agricultural land. His maternal grandfather, Tancrede Auguste, was president of Haiti from 1912 to 1913.
Education
Roumain, who was considered to be part of Haiti's "mulatto elite," received his primary education at the Institution St. Louis the Gonzague in Port-au-Prince, a school run by French priests and friars. After completing primary school around 1920, his family sent him to Switzerland to provide him with a sophisticated education that was not available in Haiti at the time. During his stay in Switzerland he studied in Berne at the Institut Grtinau, and after completing his secondary education there, he traveled through Europe and expanded his education by attending schools in France, Germany, and Spain. In Europe he was exposed to the leading European intellectuals, political philosophers, and literary figures of the time such as Karl Marx, Friederich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Charles Darwin.
Career
Roumain returned to Haiti in 1927 when he was 20 years old to find the island in a state of social, political, and economic turmoil that had been fermenting since the American occupation of the island in 1915. The oppressive economic and so-cial policies imposed by the American government had led to great resentment among the populace. This, in turn, led to the emergence of a nationalist movement among Haitian intellectuals and local political leaders who wanted to liberate the island. Roumain immediately identified with the fight for Haitian liberation and became one of the most vocal spokespersons against the occupation. One of his first accomplishments was the foundation of the Haitian Youth Patriotic League, which organized Haitian youth against military intervention. With the assistance of many other intellectuals, he helped to establish La Trouée, and La Revue Indigene (Indigenous Review), two publications that provided a platform for criticizing the American occupation forces. In addition to using these publications for political activism, he also used them as literary journals to showcase and value Haitian native forms of popular culture and expression. His writings were also seen as a way to empower Haitian people and to reduce the inferiority complex fostered by the occupation forces and by the economic power elites.
Throughout the occupation of Haiti, French elements within Haiti's Catholic church and some members of the Haitian power elite had been extremely supportive of American policies and their armed intervention. Roumain resented what he thought were reactionary and submissive postures among the power elite. After he published an article criticizing their position and the political stance of the Catholic Church, he was arrested held in prison for seven months.
When the Americans left Haiti in 1930 and a new government was chosen, Roumain was appointed minister of the interior. Because he was a revolutionary at heart, he realized that to accomplish change the existing economic order in Haiti had to be transformed radically. Growing frustrated with Iris position and with the status quo, he resigned and founded the Haitian Communist Party in 1934. His party, like many others established around the world at the time, was based on Karl Marx's economic and political theories.
Toward the end of his life, and almost in a forced exile, Roumain took a position as Haiti's charge d'affaires in Mexico. He died at the age of 37 on August 18, 1944, in Port-au-Prince.
Politics
Unfortunately, the Catholic Church and the political regime at the time saw Roumain's ideals as a threat to their interests. He was charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government and sentenced to three years in prison. By the time he left prison in 1936, the government had forbidden the existence of the Communist Party. Because Roumain was still deeply committed to Iris communist ideals, he left the island and went into an extended exile that took him back to Europe and eventually to the United States, where he pursued studies in sociology and anthropology.
Roumain was finally allowed back to Haiti in 1941. Using his newly acquired knowledge of anthropology and his interest in Haiti's indigenous cultural forms, he established the Bureau of Ethnology of Haiti in 1941. The bureau was mostly concerned with researching, recording, and protecting the culture of the indigenous people of Haiti. As a member of the bureau, Roumain valued the native cultural forms of Haitians such as their voodoo religion, their music, their painting, and their uniquely Haitian Creole language. The bureau was entrusted with preserving any archeological sites or artifacts that would help to explain the relationships between, race, culture, class, and the development of Haitian civiliza-tion. At the time of its foundation, it was considered to be one of the Caribbean's premier archeology institutions in the Caribbean.
While Roumain's political and anthropological legacies are certainly significant, his literary works are undoubtedly his most important contribution to Haitian and Caribbean literature and arts. He wrote essays, poetry, short stories, and novels and was also a journalist. Among his most important works are La proie et L'ombre (The Prey and the Darkness), a collection of short stories published in 1930; Les Fantoches (The Puppets) and La Montagne Ensorcelé (The Enchanted Mountain), two novels published in 1931); and Gouverneurs de la Rosée (Masters of the Dew), a novel published in 1947.