The Muckraker of Port-au-Prince

During the United States occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934, few did more to challenge US officials or their Haitian partners than the muckraking journalist Joseph Jolibois Fils (1891–1936). In a careful reconstruction of Jolibois’s life, from the rise of his political career to his death by poisoning shortly after the occupation, Matthew Casey offers an insightful depiction of one of the most captivating—and enigmatic—figures in Haitian history. Jolibois spent much of the 1920s in jail for his fiery writings denouncing the occupation and its Haitian supporters, as well as for organizing Haiti’s urban poor against foreign rule. Between 1927 and 1930, he traveled to the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and throughout Central and South America, where he collaborated with emerging populist leaders and joined hemispheric anti-imperial movements. His embrace of the philosophy of Spiritism to craft an anti-imperialist critique increased his appeal and notoriety in the region.

When Jolibois returned to Haiti in 1930, his anti-colonialist campaign had attracted enough support to help him win a landslide victory in the election to the Chamber of Deputies in a new government that would transition the country from occupation to self-rule. He was imprisoned—and later confined to a psychiatric institution—after rivals framed his commitment to Spiritism as evidence of profound mental illness. Casey’s astonishingly nuanced portrait sheds new light on the precarious history of free speech and democracy in Haiti, the country’s unique relationships with its neighbors, and on Black political activism across Latin America.