Haitian thought. Between La Revue Indigène and the Patriotic Union, 1920-1930

Abstract

The new intellectual generation that was born between the last five years of the 19th century and the first of the 20th century identified with Alexandre Pétion, the hero of their independence, and with Charlemagne Péralte, the guerrilla leader who fought against the American occupation. Both were references for weaving networks beyond organizations. Their members suffered from the racist and oppressive logic of the occupation troops from 1915 onwards. The avant-garde sector assumed, in its own way, the cultural appeal of the essayist Jean Price-Mars. They gathered around the Patriotic Union from 1920 and La Revue Indigène (1927-1928), under the coordinates of the juvenilismo antiyanqui, the revaluation of Creole cultural autochthony and their sympathies for the socialism of Manuel Ugarte. Several of them had to go into exile, continuing their intellectual work through the national newspapers, as well as the cultural magazines in Paris and in Latin America to which they had access: Repertorio Americano (Costa Rica); Atuei, Carteles y Revista de Avance (Cuba), Claridad (Argentina), Amauta (Peru), among others. In line with the above, the Haitian question motivated texts and acts of solidarity from numerous Latin American intellectuals, in its great majority of the new generation. On the other hand, the Patriotic Union had joined the struggle against the US military occupation, without annulling its ideological heterogeneity.