The Children of San Souci, Dessalines/Toussaint, and Petion

Abstract

This work, using a structurationist, structural Marxist understanding of consciousness constitution, i.e., phenomenological structuralism, explores the origins of the contemporary Haitian oppositional protest cry, “the children of Pétion v. the children of Dessalines.” Although viewed within racial terms in regards to the ideological position of Pétion representing the neoliberal views of the mulatto elites, and economic reform and social justice representing the ideological position of Dessalines as articulated by the African masses, this article suggests that the metaphors, contemporarily, have come to represent Marxist categories for class struggle on the island of Haiti within the capitalist world-system under American hegemony at the expense of the African majority, i.e., the Children of Sans Souci.