Making Banana: Food, Power, and Popular Support in the 2015-2016 Haitian Elections

• In Event: Imagining the Spaces and Faces of the Nation: History, Migration, and Diaspora in/beyond Hispaniola

Abstract

In the last Haitian presidential campaign, Jean Charles Moïse, national senator and important politician from Milot, brought together a political campaign centered on the mobilization of a vocabulary linked to magical powers, ancestor figures, and spiritual connections. His opponent, Jovenel Moïse, was Martelly’s second successor and was known as Nèg Bannann (Banana Man). He relied on his image as an entrepreneur and banana exporter and centered his political campaign on the ideas of labor, development, and food sovereignty. Both candidates were in search of popular support and decided on different strategies to generate popular debates in urban streets, local communities, and rural villages. Drawing from an ethnography in Milot, North of Haiti, and the surrounding region, this paper seeks to debate how popular political support is built through linked understandings of history, nationhood, religion, and food.

Author

• Rodrigo C Bulamah, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)