Istwa Nou

American officials recorded the deaths of Haitian women struck by occupation vehicles and machinery as unavoidable, or as the consequence of the women being careless. The classification did the work of a verdict. Adirenng and Estrea, among others, were injured and then written into the file as the cause of their own destruction, and their broken bodies became curiosities in the record. What made them liable was the way they used the occupied street: walking in it, or being in it at all. Nineteen years of foreign rule ran alongside a settled American belief that Haitians were prone to injury and answerable for it, and together the two turned everyday violence into paperwork. Both women gave statements in hospital days before they died. They understood how badly they were hurt, and what they dictated carries the pressure of a final accounting. Their words also show how much these women knew about the roads, the machines and the changing shape of the country they moved through.

On 15 July 1919 Marie Louise wrote to Charlemagne Péralte. She told him his tactics were wearing down the morale of the American soldiers in Port-au-Prince and that his name was carrying further, at home and abroad. Then she gave him the reason she was writing. The occupation had built a bridge at Arcahaie, and there was a trap set there with a car. Warn your men. She signed herself his affectionate sister. Hers was one of many letters carried by women who worked for the Cacos or for the Americans, and the intelligence in it turns on the same infrastructure the occupation listed in its annual reports as achievement. A bridge counted as progress in Washington and as a killing ground in her letter, and both descriptions were accurate. Marie Louise took real risks for what she believed. She later mortgaged the value of her house to cover the travel costs of an Englishman who was going to carry news of the revolution through Europe.