1940: (Closing Ranks and the Kombit Model — Sylvain-Bouchereau Explaining That the LFAS Leadership Was Closing Ranks: “For the Moment It Is a Question of Uni…

1940: (Closing Ranks and the Kombit Model — Sylvain-Bouchereau Explaining That the LFAS Leadership Was Closing Ranks: “For the Moment It Is a Question of Uniting a Conscious Group Free from Lukewarm or Doubtful Elements” Who by “Studying Can Prepare and Train Executives on the Necessary Philosophies of the Major Questions Which Concern the Future of the Country” — This Semihorizontal Leadership Structure Running in the Face of Institutional and State Governing Practices in Haiti, What Sylvain-Bouchereau Described Sounding Like the Haitian Rural Agricultural Practice of a Kombit in Which Crops Are Grown Rotated and Shared Through the Labor of a Committed Community Network So That Everyone Can Be Nourished): Articulating the desire for a broader political reach, Sylvain-Bouchereau further explained that the LFAS leadership was closing ranks. For the moment, it was a question of uniting a conscious group, free from lukewarm or doubtful elements, who by studying could prepare and train executives on the necessary philosophies of the major questions which concerned the future of the country. This semihorizontal leadership structure ran in the face of institutional and state governing practices in Haiti. Instead, what Sylvain-Bouchereau described sounded like the Haitian rural agricultural practices of a kombit, in which crops are grown, rotated, and shared through the labor of a committed community network so that everyone can be nourished. Far from a romanticized vision of political solidarities, Sylvain-Bouchereau recognized that their desired impact would require multiple seasons of hard and concentrated work — the irony was exquisite: the elite women who had struggled to see peasant women as equals were now reaching for a peasant model of collective labor to describe their own organizational renewal.