Overview:
Wealthy Benjamin, grandson of ousted Haitian president Daniel Fignolé, unpacks household secrets and techniques and U.S. intervention in Haiti in his memoir Discuss to Me. The anthropologist explores id, exile, and the legacy of political trauma throughout generations.
BROOKLYN — Each household has secrets and techniques. Only a few although have secrets and techniques that modified the course of a complete nation’s historical past. However that’s precisely what Wealthy Benjamin’s household endured when its patriarch, Daniel Fignolé, was kidnapped from Haiti’s Nationwide Palace in a June 1957 presidential coup that introduced us François Duvalier.
Practically 70 years later, Benjamin, an anthropologist and journalist, digs into that journey and the affect on his exiled household in a brand new memoir – “Talk to Me: Lessons from a Family Forged by History.” Benjamin takes readers with him to uncover the occasions that then-U.S. President Ike Eisenhower, the CIA and American tycoons had a heavy hand in crafting. We see slices of a Haiti crammed with promise, even because it struggles to come back out of the U.S. occupation. We really feel the mass nervousness that ran by way of the nation within the weeks following the coup. We empathize with the trauma Benjamin’s household by no means spoke of throughout his childhood in suburban Maryland.
Stuffed with political intrigue and Benjamin’s exploration of his personal id, the memoir’s best reward is maybe the poignancy of scenes constructed round his mom Danielle Fignolé Benjamin and her many siblings. He paints an image of them arriving in New York as very bewildered, shock-shelled youngsters. Extra resonant than the stunning revelations are sure evocative moments–typically reducing or bittersweet–that could be acquainted to anybody with family members carrying trauma. Moments resembling:
“In the course of the night time, I heard wails from my room.
‘No. Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.’
By no means had I heard her shout in her sleep, and with such terror….
I walked towards the bed room, planning to sit down on the mattress beside her and take her arms in mine. Out of the blue, my toes couldn’t transfer….”
The Haitian Occasions sat down with Benjamin in April and June. We mentioned his grandfather’s iconic position even earlier than the transient presidency, affect on the household and Haiti. Benjamin additionally shares views on the broader historical past of U.S. intervention in Haiti, why assaults on Haitians in Springfield, Ohio have been notably “horrifying” and the kind of range some white Individuals need.
The interview is condensed for size and readability, with video snippets of key moments.
The Haitian Occasions / Macollvie J. Neel: Wealthy Benjamin — You lately wrote a memoir, “Talk to Me: Lessons from a Family Forged by History.” What’s it about and why did you write it?
Benjamin: I wrote this memoir as a result of I had this relationship with my mom, which was a bit vexed. I knew she was from Haiti, however I knew not way more than that. I knew that there have been secrets and techniques within the household that I’d by no means met my grandfather and that she got here from a political household, however I didn’t know the small print. After the earthquake in Haiti in 2010— that not realizing grew to become unsustainable. So I went to actually discover the story.
THT: What about 2010 made you say ‘That is the second to look into these household mysteries?’
Benjamin: On the time, I had a job engaged on financial justice, racial justice. Someday I left my workplace, and I observed CNN was enjoying. An earthquake had leveled Haiti. The presidential palace had been flattened. I started to consider the person who as soon as occupied that palace — my mom’s father.
THT: Daniel Fignolé was the occupant of the Nationwide Palace earlier than Duvalier. Inform us about him.
Benjamin: Sure, my grandfather. He was born in Haiti in 1913. He was born very poor. He grew to become a professor and a labor chief, at a time of rapacious exploitation of Haitian employees—particularly of dark-skinned Haitians in factories, bottling vegetation, sugarcane fields. He noticed that these hard-working individuals wanted illustration, and he grew to become a labor chief. His good friend on the time was François Duvalier, and so they ran for president towards one another in 1957. When my grandfather grew to become president, simply 19 days after his inauguration, he was ousted in a coup.
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Daniel Fignolé chatting with supporters at Institut Mopique, 1947. Picture by way of Wikimedia Commons -
Madame Daniel Fignolé, 12 months unknown. Picture by way of Wikimedia Commons -
Picture from Life Journal, June 3, 1957. The unique caption learn: “MAN OF THE MASSES Daniel Fignole guarantees F.D.R.-style New Deal. A Negro, he’s attempting as is Dejoie to interrupt Duvalier’s power among the many Negroes.” Picture by way of Wikimedia Commons, caption by way of College.webster.edu
THT: Take us out of your grandfather being ousted to your loved ones touchdown in New York.
Benjamin: The explanation they wound up right here in America is as a result of the CIA participated in that coup. The CIA helped deliver my grandparents to New York Metropolis the place they landed, however they [the family] didn’t know that on the time.
They grew up right here in Crown Heights, only a stone’s throw away from right here, and so they had a really tough life. However my mom labored laborious right here, in New York. She struggled a bit. However by the point I used to be born, we have been rising up in Bethesda, Maryland, with a distinct, very center class childhood. However we by no means knew this story. The aunties, my mom, by no means talked about it. My mom simply put it in her previous.
THT: Within the ebook, you uncover how the U.S. President on the time, Ike Eisenhower, and the CIA had a heavy hand within the coup. With out giving it away, what does that episode inform you in regards to the relationship the U.S. and Haiti have, so far as the affect of U.S. insurance policies or preferences on Haiti.
Benjamin: My goodness, that was a narrative. That journey took me even additional again from the Eisenhower administration’s participation within the coup. It took me again to 1915 when America began occupying Haiti. America despatched troops, and so they redesigned Haiti’s politics. They designed Haiti’s economic system in a means that principally benefited America and U.S. firms. I didn’t know that rising up. Most Individuals don’t know that rising up. [Many] Haitians don’t know that rising up.
THT: You grew up with a Guinean father. How was it rising up in a dual-culture family?
Benjamin: It intellectually fascinated me, and likewise touched my coronary heart in a means that these international locations share a lot in frequent as proud, fierce Black republics that colonial powers wished to punish. I knew as little about Guinea and the Guinean heritage as I knew about Haiti once I was writing and researching the ebook. I used to be fascinated to be taught in regards to the hyperlink between Haiti and Guinea, and particularly the esteem that Haitians have, legendary and literal, for Guinea.
“Chopping off the lights, killing information”
THT: Switching gears a bit, let’s discuss you being an anthropologist. What made you go into that discipline?
Benjamin: I went into anthropology as a result of I’m fascinated by individuals. I’m fascinated by the human beings I meet. However I’m additionally fascinated by buildings and programs. I’m fascinated by the person human being in context to her society and to her tradition. So, I’ve at all times been observing. And I feel this can be a relic to being an immigrant, partially. You’re not at all times feeling protected, so that you’re at all times observing your environment. I simply made this skilled and have become an anthropologist.
THT: Anthropology looks like an awesome discipline to enter to form or change narratives about you, your loved ones and your nation. What are your ideas on connecting our youth to anthropology?
Benjamin: I really like this level that you simply’re making. You understand, typically immigrant dad and mom will say, ‘Go grow to be an engineer, go grow to be a medical physician.’ God bless these individuals, they’re so essential. However the cause I like you, too, is: Journalism. We have to inform these tales and we have to inform them, particularly when our communities are beneath assault and when these professions are beneath assault.
THT: Are you speaking about the entire anti-DEI motion anti-woke motion?
Benjamin: Past the anti-DEI or anti-woke motion, I’m additionally speaking in regards to the assault towards analysis, towards libraries, towards “realizing” itself. We have to know that it’s not unrelated. In case you’re more and more authoritarian, you need to assault the truth-tellers, you need to assault the dissidents. So our neighborhood and these professions are beneath assault for related causes. So journalists such as you, journalism just like the Haitian Occasions, are extra important than ever in my view.
THT: Thanks for saying that. Going again to the ouster of your grandfather, I ponder, based mostly in your analysis, how you’d contextualize what we’re seeing now with the American authorities in contrast with what occurred as soon as Duvalier got here into energy. Do you see parallels?
Benjamin: It was so fascinating to analysis what occurred straight after my grandparents have been kidnapped and despatched to America. As soon as Duvalier grew to become president, it grew to become unlawful to print my grandfather’s face or to utter his identify. They got here and slaughtered his supporters at gunpoint. And, Duvalier would reduce the lights. He would actually reduce the electrical energy. He would shut down the airports. To me, that was at all times a profound metaphor: To chop the lights is to chop information, to chop studying, so that you simply due to this fact management the narrative.
So there are very huge variations between the aftermath of my grandfather’s coup and what’s occurring now, however there are additionally similarities. For me, these similarities are to assault universities, to assault books, to assault training and to dominate with a story that’s false. In different phrases, when you flood the society with lies, then these lies permeate and sabotage the reality. However you additionally intimidate your enemies. That’s the primary similarity: To intimidate your enemies and to seize the federal government. By that I imply the army, the civil service, the civil society.
THT: How does it make you really feel to look at this unfold now? You’re no stranger to assaults, having appeared on Fox Information for a few years and folks not agreeing with you.
Benjamin: I’m very involved for this nation and one of many issues that considerations me most is people who find themselves both the youngsters or grandchildren of refugees who arrived in America as a result of they fled Hitler, as a result of they fled Pinochet, as a result of they fled Castro, as a result of they fled Duvalier. Individuals who really feel this of their genetics are all feeling this related type of déjà vu and concern. It’s not simply my concern as an anthropologist who research societies. We’re feeling this collectively, this solidarity of recognition. And also you would possibly have the ability to converse to that as properly and even higher than I.
THT: It’s scary to see individuals being snatched off the streets. Rising up in Haiti, I heard the whispers of ‘Fort Dimanche’ or ‘entèl disparèt’ [so-and-so vanished]. So once I see issues like CECOT in El Salvador, my thoughts goes to camps the place individuals is perhaps topic to torture, atrocities. I’m upset to see it occurring within the U.S.
Transferring to MAGA nation pre-Trump
THT: What’s odd too are a number of the Haitians inclined to assist Trump as a result of, they are saying, they respect a rustic with regulation and order, as a result of we don’t have that in Haiti. We’ve a various inhabitants in that sense.
Benjamin: Sure.
THT: Your prior ebook, “Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America,” took you throughout the U.S. years in the past. You bought to see how individuals have been feeling and discussing immigrants and variety then. What did you be taught?
Benjamin: In 2007, I packed my baggage and went on a 27,000-mile, two-year journey to the whitest, quickest rising communities within the nation, communities that have been rising with extra white migrants. I embedded myself in these communities and lived as a resident. Already then, I used to be discovering the anti-immigrant sentiment constructing within the deep pockets of this nation.
In precept and in concept, individuals stated they like range. By that, they meant a range of eating places or range of delicacies, not a range of precise individuals.
Wealthy Benjamin
Many of those communities are actually the bases of MAGA. Folks would flee Southern California or a diversifying Denver to inhabit these communities. A part of what I discovered is that in precept and in concept, individuals stated they like range. However by that, they meant a range of eating places or range of delicacies, not a range of precise individuals. This anti-immigrant motion, which I bought to witness throughout this anthropology undertaking, was typically directed at Central Individuals, at Mexicans, but in addition world wide.
THT: So range, provided that I can management how I work together with that range. Like, I don’t need my neighbor to be “various” kind of factor.
Benjamin: Sure, and concepts of tipping factors. One or two immigrants in a neighborhood of fifty,000, no drawback there. As soon as the range will get a magnitude that impacts me personally, then I grow to be towards it.
THT: So, it begins feeling like that Great Replacement Theory well-liked with MAGA.
Benjamin: Sure, we began listening to this. It’s not new, this substitute concept. I might doc newscasters on Fox as early as 2007 telling their white viewership, “Make extra infants. Make extra infants.” In equity to a few of these communities, they have been in no way explicitly racist. In different phrases, they have been shifting to have greater houses to be close to bike trails, climbing trails and operating trails—higher high quality of life. However in some side, for some residents, it was implicit bias. They have been implicitly drawn to those communities as a result of they have been native-born white communities.
“As an anthropologist, my abdomen is popping on the hypocrisy, on the lies, on the duplicity that they inflicted on this neighborhood… They wished Haitian employees revive Springfield.”
Wealthy benjamin
THT: So then final 12 months, when the entire lies erupted about Haitians in Springfield, how did you are feeling seeing this as an anthropologist who had completed this work?
Benjamin: Right here’s what’s horrifying. That specific neighborhood in Springfield, Ohio, is the other of a white utopia as a result of it’s not utopic. It’s a declining neighborhood economically. It’s a declining neighborhood socially. There’s an enormous mind drain. So that they wished these Haitian employees to type of revive the neighborhood to work there.
It’s not as if [the Haitians] discovered themselves there magically. They have been in some sense recruited there. After which, to have this blow up of their face and to have to make use of their presence weaponized, to libel them and to lie about them—it’s even worse. It was usually worse as a result of they have been such a profit and so they’re doing a lot for this neighborhood. Among the neighborhood members stated so, that Springfield is means off for the higher due to these Haitian immigrants. So, as an anthropologist, my abdomen is popping on the hypocrisy, on the lies, on the duplicity that they inflicted on this neighborhood.
THT: As a Haitian American particular person, was there one other layer of feeling realizing it was that very same negativity you skilled again within the ‘80s or ‘90s, when so many youngsters hid being Haitian?
Benjamin: Sure, listening to that in Springfield, Ohio, was like a way of déjà-vu. So within the 80s, it was ‘Haitians are boat individuals,’ ‘they’ve HIV’—improper, the poorest nation on Earth. All these caricatures we witnessed within the ‘80s, however in some kind, it’s a regression as a result of ‘consuming pets’ is even worse than ‘boat individuals.’
The one distinction I might say is that this time, I really feel many Haitian Individuals rallied in pleasure. I feel that there was a spontaneous sense of pleasure, listening to these Springfield tales that rallied communities in a means that I by no means witnessed within the Eighties. So I feel we’re in a distinct period now the place individuals simply don’t take these lies and these caricatures mendacity down.
Making progress, collectively and on our personal
THT: It’s positively value emphasizing that this isn’t the ‘80s. It’s fortifying to see individuals decided to outlive. So, how can we guarantee that we don’t revert to a Eighties or Nineteen Nineties expertise? How can we be sure that we don’t regress, however proceed to progress as a neighborhood?
Benjamin: So, in my thoughts, the optimistic side is there are extra Haitian position fashions who’re seen. Seen because the operative phrase—such as you, like Patrick Gaspard. Folks perceive many individuals who’ve succeeded within the society are Haitian Individuals. Second, there are fewer gatekeepers within the media. Again within the day, you had three TV information channels, Institution white gatekeepers controlling the narrative. Now we now have extra avenues by way of media, by way of digital expertise, to insert our personal experiences and truths into the narrative. Lastly, I feel there’s a much bigger community of activists, a much bigger community of individuals within the non-profit sector who’re extra able to pushing again, of constructing neighborhood, of constructing pleasure and sharing sources.
It’s a distinct story too now. We’re taking higher care of ourselves for essentially the most half. This enterprise of care just isn’t seen as a weak point, as a lot.
Wealthy benjamin
THT: ‘Discuss to Me’ additionally brings to mild the difficulties a few of your loved ones members confronted. How do you assume we are able to begin to navigate a few of these challenges that happen inwardly or largely inside the house, as people?
Benjamin: With our grandparents’ technology, the reply was at all times [to] muscle by way of it, put your chin up and be robust. However now, there are extra sources and a much bigger consciousness of how deadly not caring for these points is inside the residence. When you could have the tradition coping with it, whether or not it’s in literature, in songs, in rap, we’re taking higher care of ourselves for essentially the most half, if not at all times. However it’s a distinct story too. This enterprise of care just isn’t seen as a weak point, as a lot.
THT: Talking of which, how has your mom responded to you taking up this household undertaking, dredging up a lot of those intimate particulars? Is she speaking extra to you now?
Benjamin: My mom’s relationship to this ebook has been fairly fixed and contradictory. On the one hand, she’s proud that somebody is writing about her father and all that he’s completed. However then again, she’s at all times been very squeamish and skittish a few private ebook and placing “soiled laundry” out within the public. She hasn’t learn the ebook and I doubt she’ll learn the ebook. You understand once you reside one thing, you don’t essentially need to examine it.
THT: Sure. I used to be at this screening just lately of a brand new documentary in regards to the Nineteen Nineties hip hop scene by dream hampton. She stated she felt like as soon as she shares a narrative or reminiscence publicly, it’s not her story. It’s only a story.
Benjamin: I like what dream hampton is saying. If you consider that on a communal degree, there are specific tales and myths and proverbs which are particular to us as Haitian Individuals, however as soon as we put them on the market, it’s type of a worldwide story that everybody can share.
I hope individuals take pleasure in ‘Discuss to Me’ as a vibrant story of arriving on these shores, and what it meant, what it took, to have resilience in our neighborhood
“Wealthy benjamin
THT: As we have fun Haitian heritage, is there something you’d like so as to add about this id?
Benjamin: I hope individuals are in a position to learn and revel in this ebook for instance of 1 Haitian American’s expertise in overcoming the caricatures and the secrecy that I grew up beneath due to how America was, from 1957 to the Nineteen Nineties. I simply hope they take pleasure in it as only a vibrant story of arriving on these shores, and what it meant, what it took, to have resilience in our neighborhood.
THT: Completely. Thanks a lot, thanks.
Benjamin: Thanks to your time. That is unbelievable.