1921-02: (The UP Delegation to Washington — Haitian Women Witnessing Remembering Recalling and Recording Each Other’s Lives and Transformation, In February 1…

1921-02: (The UP Delegation to Washington — Haitian Women Witnessing Remembering Recalling and Recording Each Other’s Lives and Transformation, In February 1921 the UP Delegation Including Future President Sténio Vincent and Perçeval Thoby Departing Haiti with the Stories Women Collected, Arriving in Washington During Political Repositioning as Senator Harding Had Used the Occupation as an Example of Wilson’s Chaotic Foreign Policy — Accusing the Wilson Administration of “the Rape of Haiti” During the 1920 Elections, But by the Time the UP Collected Money and Arrived the Election Season Had Passed and President-Elect Harding Found Haiti’s Conditions Less Useful — the Timing Inopportune and Compromising Imagined Goals): Haitian women witnessed, remembered, recalled, and recorded each other’s lives and transformation. In February 1921, during the first weeks of the Warren Harding administration, the UP delegation — which included future Haitian president Sténio Vincent and Haitian representative to Washington Perçeval Thoby — departed Haiti carrying the stories that women had collected. The men arrived in Washington during a season of political positioning and readjustment. In the months preceding their arrival, then senator Harding had repeatedly discussed Haiti and used the US occupation as an example of President Woodrow Wilson’s chaotic and unorganized foreign policy. With hints of US Marines’ misconduct circulating in the air of US public and political opinion, Harding had capitalized on the rumors of naval abuse during the 1920 presidential elections, accusing the Wilson administration of the rape of Haiti. The savvy campaign strategy for Harding, however, adversely affected the UP’s initiatives months later. By the time the UP collected the money to send a delegation to Washington and testify to the US military’s abuses toward Haitians, the election season had passed and Senator Harding was president-elect Harding. The conditions in Haiti were less useful to the president-elect. The stories women had gathered door to door across sixty-one committees — stories of women burned alive, hung, shot — had been carried across the sea only to arrive at a political moment that had already consumed and discarded Haitian suffering as campaign rhetoric.