1946: (State Versus Nation and the Sociospatial Location of Women — Trouillot’s Formulation of the Guerrilla Warfare Between the State and the Nation Applied…

1946: (State Versus Nation and the Sociospatial Location of Women — Trouillot’s Formulation of the Guerrilla Warfare Between the State and the Nation Applied to Women, the State Being the Urban Educated Multirace Mostly Milat Resource-Wealthy Sector Concerned with Governance and Rights, the Nation Being the Rural and Urban Working-Class Black Majority Concerned with Culture and Production, the Unnamed Woman Being of the Nation — Moun Andeyò or People from the Outside — While the LFAS Women Were State-Adjacent, the Juxtaposition Meaning That Women’s Rights as a Liberal Claim for Representation Through the Government Were Elite and Middle-Class Women’s Domain, This Distance Dramatically Reinforced by the Physical Partitions at the Assembly Hall): The geographic distance announced in the assemblymen’s statements between the “women of the countryside” and the “spoiled women” of urban centers communicated a sociospatial difference between women that was not a political fabrication. As Trouillot captured in his analysis of class, color, and culture in modern Haiti, these differences located women within the guerrilla warfare between the state — the urban, educated, multirace, mostly milat, and resource-wealthy sector whose priority was governance and rights — and the nation — the rural and urban working-class Black majority whose purview was culture and production, who worked the land, traveled between rural and urban areas, and embodied the African ancestry of the colonial-era revolutionaries. The unnamed woman was of the nation: she likely lived or spent the majority of her week working in Port-au-Prince, but her social location was from the countryside, or moun andeyò (people from the outside). The du peuple qualifier connoted that she also represented pèp la — the people, the Black nation — and so her removal was met with uproar. In comparison, the LFAS women were within the urban center but state-adjacent: they could not yet represent the state but were affiliated through education and familial networks to men who had representation and power. The juxtaposition of the femme du peuple being completely outside the state while the LFAS leadership were state-adjacent meant that women’s rights — a liberal claim for representation through the government — were elite and middle-class women’s domain. This distance was dramatically reinforced by the physical partitions and separations of and between women at the assembly hall.