Critical Analysis #2: Paternalism

The book ‘Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism’ by Mary A. Renda is based on an analysis she conducted in regards to the U.S. Occupation of Haiti in the early 1900’s. The running theme throughout the book is paternalism. One of Renda’s arguments for the first part of the book was that, “Paternalist discourse was one of the primary cultural mechanisms by which the occupation conscripted men into the project of carrying out U.S. Rule.” (Renda) She proves her argument by providing evidence from the experiences of the U.S. Marines leading up to and after their occupation of Haiti. Most prominently, she uses comments from Smedley Butler, a Marine, who was assigned to Haiti when the occupation occurred. It is through his thoughts and comments of which we see how she came upon her argument and theme for this first part of the text.

Through Butler I saw how he and other U.S. Americans saw it as their duty during this time period to occupy the role of parent to a suffering country.  Though it makes one wonder, how could anyone fall for the guise that the U.S. was trying to playing the role of the "good parent" to provide stability for the citizens of Haiti without a hidden agenda involved? The U.S. “installed a puppet president, dissolved the legislature at gunpoint, denied freedom of speech, and forced a new constitution on the Caribbean nation – one more favorable to foreign investment.” (Renda) These actions were thoroughly suspicious.

Luckily, for the Haitians, this remodeling of Haiti that the Marines tried to do did not work for long due to their resistance.  It was the Marines’ thoughts and attitudes that they brought with them under the cloak of paternalism to Haiti which was the cause of their failure and at the same time changed a small country.

It is in the second part of the book that Renda makes her second argument of which she acknowledges the fact that the Marines’ occupation of Haiti had an effect on the citizens back in the U.S. She sort of proved this argument by providing us with examples of plays and other sorts of fiction. She goes on further in this second part of her book to discuss another discourse, exoticism.   

According to Renda, “Exoticism reinforced paternalism by focusing American attention on the differences between the two cultures, often expressed as primitive shortcomings in Haitian life, which justified a paternal American presence in Haiti.” Why go this far? She provided exampled of exoticism in works by Blair Niles and William Seabrook.

Unlike her previous argument, I feel like she could not solidly prove her argument that the Marines’ occupation of Haiti had any effect on American citizens. She almost did, but came up short in my opinion. So I am left with the question of what effect did the occupation have on U.S. American citizens?