Population Control and Cold War Politics in Haiti

• In Event: Cincuenta Años de Debates en Población, Salud Sexual y Reproductiva, part 1

Abstract

This presentation will examine the population control movement in Haiti in the mid to late twentieth century and show how it evolved within debates about Cold War imperialism, postcolonial nationalism, religious freedom, and “modern motherhood.” It will take a close look at US Unitarian Universalist missionaries who empowered native physicians to promote birth control in the Haitian countryside. Both the US missionaries and the Haitian doctors saw contraception as a means to “modernize” Haitian motherhood, improve Haiti’s weak economy, and develop a universally-applicable strategy to resolve “Third World” dependency on the US and the Soviet Union. They transcended the anti-communist politics that pervaded the population control movement as described by historians Peter Donaldson and James Reed. Nevertheless, they adopted traditional discourse about “women’s work” in the home that perpetuated gender inequality. This case study will be used to reassess the linkages between political and cultural structures that governed the population control movement as a whole.

Author

• Adam M Silvia, Florida International University