13 Aug The Mystery of the Service d’Hygiene

It’s been two weeks, now, and i’ve not found a single set of records pertaining to the Service d’Hygiene. I’ve followed every lead imaginable – i’ve read countless reports of rapes, murders, court martials, food shortages, tobacco taxes, squabbles about who does and doesn’t have a phone line in their office, missing clothing rolls, coffee exports, traffic violations, “bandit” attacks, and on and on… but almost nothing on health. It’s pretty amazing, actually. The few interesting tidbits i’ve managed to come across have had to do with syphilis (of course) and the use of the notion of “infection” and “infestation” in regards to the Cacos (apparently, they are disease-like in the mind of the military commanders doing the report writing).

That’s not to say that the military weren’t interested in sanitation – indeed, there are plenty of reports of military illness and even illnesses encountered in morning roll cal of the Gendarmes d’Haiti. And there are occasional mentions of American military personnel being assigned to a Haitian hospital, but there are no reports of the Great Good Works that the military apparently were so deeply engaged in during the 19 year occupation. I’m beginning to wonder about the imaginary history that has been written about militarized humanitarianism that is so often trotted out when anyone wants to defend the Occupation, specifically, or military interventions more generally.

Suffice to say, each Gendarme station was supposed to be sending monthly reports back to Headquarters. I found the Annual Medical Reports (still – only reports of Gendarmes’ illnesses, but something, none-the-less). I am now in the very tedious process of going through, page-by-page, 20 boxes (pictured right here for your amusement!) of reports in English and French that were coming from all over Haiti during the occupation. They are disorganized, incomplete, and never include their medical reports… this is beyond frustrating…