Haitian Political Justice: Reeding Between the Lines
In the dockside seizure of Hinkle and Safecracker, Reed twists the conventional narrative of U.S.--Caribbean history as satire. The tactic once used by the U.S. to extract Haitian sovereignty becomes the exact stage where Haiti asserts its justice. The U.S. occupation of Haiti happened from 1915 to 1934, nearly 20 years. Yet, it is not covered in a traditional school curriculum. Reed notes that the history that most Americans know selectively omits the occupation, yet we now know it happened. Clearly, history can be warped, and the version of history that most know and understand is flawed. He raises the following question: is any version of history objectively correct? Rooted in postmodernist thought, he (somewhat satirically) claims that a version of history with secret orders, African spirits, and ancient Egyptian scripts is equally correct. Another layer of this story is that the Black Plume is literally docked at a U.S. port. This satirizes the "gunboat diplomacy"...