1915–1934: (Surveillance Embedded in Infrastructure — Women’s Knowledge Being a Threat to the Occupation and the Occupiers Responding with a Culture of Surve…

1915–1934: (Surveillance Embedded in Infrastructure — Women’s Knowledge Being a Threat to the Occupation and the Occupiers Responding with a Culture of Surveillance, Military Reports on Road Construction Showing That Surveillance Was Embedded in Infrastructural Development, US Military Officials Explicitly Denying the Connection Between Road Construction and Military Penetration — One High-Ranking Officer Testifying the Corvée System Was Employed for Building Roads and the Sole Objects Were Not Military Although They Had Great Military Value, Yet Military Reports Repeatedly Addressing Insurgent Whereabouts Community Sentiment and Capacity to Recruit Occupation Enthusiasts): Women’s knowledge was a threat to the occupation, and the occupiers responded to this threat with a culture of surveillance that threaded itself into the very infrastructure they were building. The military reports on road construction reveal that surveillance was embedded in infrastructural development — every road built was also a corridor of intelligence. US military officials explicitly denied the connection between road construction and military penetration into the country’s interior. One high-ranking officer testified that the corvée system was employed for the purpose of building roads, and the sole objects of these roads were not military, although they undoubtedly had great military value. Yet the military reports repeatedly addressed insurgent whereabouts, community sentiment toward the occupation, and capacity to recruit occupation enthusiasts. The denial was itself a performance: roads that were supposedly built for commerce and civilization also served as the veins through which occupation power circulated and through which surveillance of Haitian populations — particularly women who traversed them daily — was intensified. Every bridge, every cleared path, every widened thoroughfare extended the reach of the foreign military’s gaze into communities that had previously governed their own movement.