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Talk:Haitian Communist Party

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Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. Track your hook after promotion. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by GGOTCC (talk) 23:37, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

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  • ... that the first leader of the Haitian Communist Party was arrested for requesting 'materiel', which the authorities interpreted to mean explosives but which turned out to be literature?
  • Source: Smith, Matthew J. (2009). Red & Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934-1957. University of North Carolina Press. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-8078-5937-7. Retrieved 1 May 2026. In August, following a police raid on his house, Roumain was again arrested and court-martialed for treason when correspondence with a Haitian communist living in New York was discovered by the police. The authorities based their charges on the contents of one letter in particular, in which Roumain asked for "matériel" to be sent to Haiti. This was deliberately interpreted as a request for explosives to launch a communist overthrow. In reality, Roumain had been supporting a New York organization for the release of the nine black youths convicted in the Scottsboro case in Alabama and was merely asking for literature he purchased in that regard to be sent to him.
5x expanded by Yue (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 51 past nominations.

Yue🌙 (talk) 05:38, 2 May 2026 (UTC).

  • Article recently expanded and is certainly long enough. Hook is interesting, cited inline, and verified in the book source. Copyvio not detected (some short quotes gave it a 15% score). QPQ has been provided, so good to go. Juxlos (talk) 12:26, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Source access for a Good Article Review

Those interested in doing a Good Article Review for this article can email me for the PDFs of the book and journal sources cited in this article. Yue🌙 (talk) 03:36, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

GA review

PASSED
Issues with prose, verifiability and broadness were all addressed, bringing the article in line with GA criteria. --Grnrchst (talk) 09:40, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This review is transcluded from Talk:Haitian Communist Party/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Yue (talk · contribs) 08:22, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

Reviewer: Grnrchst (talk · contribs) 11:04, 6 July 2026 (UTC)


I will be taking this on for review, as part of my pledge for the review at Talk:Asociación Continental Americana de Trabajadores/GA1. --Grnrchst (talk) 11:04, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

Comments

Founding and original program

  • "(abbreviated as PCH, from French)" I'd recommend instead showing this as (French: Parti communiste haïtien; PCH), similar to how it is in the lead.
     Done. Yue🌙 (talk)
  • Spotcheck: [1] Verified.
  • Recommend trimming the citation to The Haitian Times, as this is a review of a fiction novel by Roumain that only briefly mentions Roumain being a founder of the PCH, and nothing else in this paragraph; everything is already verified by Smith 2009.
     Done. Yue🌙 (talk)
  • This second paragraph is a bit too closely paraphrased from Smith 2009 for comfort. I'd recommend rewriting it.
     Done. Yue🌙 (talk)
  • Spotcheck: [3][4][5] Page 87 of Smith 2009 doesn't appear to reference anything here, so I'm not sure why it's cited, when all this information seems to come from page 19. Neither Smith nor Strupp describe the programme as being "subscribed to Marxism–Leninism", they both refer to it simply as "Marxist". Without a clear and explicit description of the programme or party as "Marxist-Leninist" in the cited sources, I don't think it's right for us to describe it as such in the body, lead and infobox of the article. I don't have access to Kaussen 2024, could you provide a quote from that?
    I am going to rewrite the second and third paragraphs, but my mistake you caught is the program is described as Marxist, and on pages 87 and 127 Smith writes that the party followed "orthodox Marxism-Leninism": "In a departure from the orthodox Marxism-Leninism they held as their guiding doctrine, the communists emphatically declared the color question as an 'essential aspect of the present class struggle in Haiti' that, if ignored, would lead to the reinstallation of a bourgeois dictatorship (87). ... We have seen how the events of 1946 precipitated a shift in the ideology of the PCH from orthodox Marxism-Leninism toward a peculiar form of Marxism in which the color issue became infused in the party ideology (127)."
    The quote from Kaussen 2024 is "Roumain, Charlier, and Beaulieu launched the first Haitian Communist Party with the publication of L'Analyse schématique (1934), a Marxist analysis of Haiti’s historical conflicts that argues that class rather than color was the determining category defining the structures of inequality that maintained the rural population's abject poverty, exploitation by foreign and local elites, an exclusion from national life." Yue🌙 (talk)
  • Both Smith and Strupp connect the founding of the PCH with the end of the United States occupation of Haiti, so I'm curious why that's not mentioned.
    Overlooked; added. Yue🌙 (talk)
  • Spotcheck: [6] Verified.
  • Spotcheck: [7] Verified, although this citation is redundant with the previous one. Per the Manual of Style on block quotes, the citation should be appended to the introductory line, which it already has been, so this extra citation could well be trimmed.
    Removed citation 7. Yue🌙 (talk)
  • Could we summarise this block quote rather than quoting this passage in full? There's a lot more to the programme than just this critique of nationalism, so I think quoting an entire paragraph of one section, while not quoting extensively from the others, might be giving it undue weight.
     Done. Yue🌙 (talk)
  • The second sentence of the third paragraph is also quite closely paraphrased from Smith and could do with a bit of rewording.
    Paragraph rewritten. Yue🌙 (talk)
  • This photograph of Roumain claims to be public domain under a generic life+70 years tag, but doesn't provide information about the photographer. If the author isn't known (try looking into this first) and the photograph was taken in Haiti, then it should be public domain under Haitian copyright law.
    I did some digging and the photograph was taken from the archives of the International Center for Haitian, Caribbean, and Afro-Canadian Documentation and Information, or CIDIHCA. To confirm the photograph's origins I'd have to go to the actual archives in Montreal or get someone to look up the file for me, which could take a while by email. If the file information is a big enough issue for you, I'd remove it altogether for now. Yue🌙 (talk)

Arrest of Roumain and decline

  • Spotcheck: [8] Verified.
  • Spotcheck: [9] Verified.
  • Spotcheck: [10] I can't seem to verify the claim that "Sténio Vincent pardoned Roumain and other leftists because he no longer felt threatened by the left". Smith says Vincent released them because he had been re-elected (which could be interpreted as "no longer feeling threatened by the left", but it's not explicit enough for me to feel comfortable agreeing with that interpretation) and because of pressure from USian leftists.
    Removed in the rewrite of the section. Yue🌙 (talk)
  • All in all, considering this first paragraph is focused almost exclusively on Roumain, and is not directly discussing the PCH, I think it could be trimmed down for concision and its full contents integrated into the article about Roumain himself. As this is an article about the PCH, this section should focus more on how Roumain's arrest and imprisonment affected the party, rather than the ins and outs of what happened to him.
    Section rewritten. Yue🌙 (talk)
  • Spotcheck: [10] Second paragraph verified.

Attempted revival by Roumain

  • "Roumain decided to attempt a revival of the PCH" Suggest shortening to "Roumain attempted to revive the PCH".
     Done. Yue🌙 (talk)
  • Spotcheck: [11] Verified.
  • Spotcheck: [11] Verified.
  • Spotcheck: [12] Verified.
  • Spotcheck: [13] Verified.
  • There's parts in Smith 2009, p. 53 that talk about what the government hoped to achieve by giving Roumain the post, and whether Roumain taking it may have been a part of a broader PCH strategy, that might be worth including.
    Added. Yue🌙 (talk)
  • Spotcheck: [14] Verified.
  • Spotcheck: [15] Verified.

Second iteration under Juste Constant

  • Worth linking to History of Haiti#Revolution of 1946.
     Done. Yue🌙 (talk)
  • "Lescot and his cabinet were overthrown and exiled by the Haitian military, amid student protests against his authoritarian rule" Suggest switching the order here to demonstrate cause of effect, so "amid student protests against his authoritarian rule, Lescot and his cabinet were overthrown and exiled by the Haitian military".
  • Spotcheck: [16] Verified first sentence but not the second sentence (at least not in this page range?). Is the second sentence verified by Sepinwall? If so, recommend moving each citation inline with the specific sentence that is being verified, rather than bundling them.
    Fixed the page range of Smith. "The immediate success of the radical movement in deposing Lescot was but the beginning of a wider movement for social change. Within days of Lescot's exit, the Haitian press was liberated, with an unprecedented explosion in the number of political and social papers. ... This freedom and the collective sense of hope that accompanied it was manifest in the widespread formation of political parties for the first time in the country's recent history (83). ... The CEM issued a major decree on 28 January legalizing labor unions (88)." Yue🌙 (talk)
  • Spotcheck: [18] Verified.
  • Spotcheck: [20] Verified.
  • "Saint-Armand, Felix Dorléans Juste Constant, Max Menard, and Roger Mercier, with Juste Constant" Are any of these people notable enough to red link? If not, then considering only Constant is mentioned afterwards, it might be worth just trimming this down to focus on him.
     Done. Yue🌙 (talk)
  • "unions, whose legality had been restored following Lescot's ouster" This is repeating information we were already told earlier in this section.
    Removed. Yue🌙 (talk)
  • "the PCH would abandon this line in regard to race" This follows a sentence that had nothing to do with race, so the wording of "this line" is a bit confusing; suggest saying "its line" or something similar.
     Done. Yue🌙 (talk)
  • "The CDN's threat of a general strike" Did they follow through on this threat, or was it just bluster?
    Added some more information. Yue🌙 (talk)

Second decline and dissolution

Membership

  • Do we have membership numbers for any year other than 1946?
    None that I could find in English- or French-language scholarly sources. I did reach out to a Haitian colleague to see if she could find something in the National Archives of Haiti, but she didn't find anything. I kind of expect this given the party's clandestine nature, and if there were other figures available, I'm sure Smith would have included it in his Red and Black. Yue🌙 (talk)
  • Spotcheck: [7] Verified.

Alliances

  • Spotcheck: [36] Verified.
  • "People's Democratic Party of Young Haitians" What was this party's orientation? Were they also communists? Why did they support Juste Constant's presidential bid?
    Changed the sentence to "The People's Democratic Party of Young Haitians, a leftist party that had also been a part of the FRH, was the only other party that supported Juste Constant's presidential bid," and moved it to the "Second iteration under Juste Constant" section. Yue🌙 (talk)

Lead and infobox

  • As per my earlier comments, I couldn't see in any of the cited sources that the party was described as "Marxist-Leninist", only that it was described as "Marxist". If this descriptor can't verified by the cited sources, then it should be change to simply say "Marxist"/"Marxism".
    I added a sentence to the first paragraph of the History section (instead of making a short Ideology section) that states: "The party's first iteration subscribed to a traditional interpretation of Marxism–Leninism." The quotes from Smith 2009 are: "In a departure from the orthodox Marxism-Leninism they held as their guiding doctrine, the communists [second iteration of the PCH] emphatically declared the color question as an "essential aspect of the present class struggle in Haiti" that, if ignored, would lead to the reinstallation of a bourgeois dictatorship (87). ... We have seen how the events of 1946 precipitated a shift in the ideology of the PCH from orthodox Marxism-Leninism toward a peculiar form of Marxism in which the color issue became infused in the party ideology (127)." Yue🌙 (talk)
  • "orthodox Marxism–Leninism" and "orthodox following of Marxism–Leninism" The MLism aside, I didn't see anything in the cited sources or in the article body that said Roumain's line was "Orthodox" either.
    I changed "orthodox" to "traditional" to avoid confusion with Orthodox Marxism. I'm pretty sure Smith is using "orthodox" to mean there were no adaptations or reinterpretations made by the first PCH, given he uses the adjective in the context of the second PCH having a new interpretation of the Haitian racial conflict in relation to Marxism–Leninism. Yue🌙 (talk)
  • "Black nationalism (1946)" The body of the article doesn't seem to verify this descriptor either?
    Removed. Probably too big of a leap from the PCH adopting one line from the noiristes. Yue🌙 (talk)

Checklist

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

  1. Is it well written?
    A. The prose is clear, concise and understandable to an appropriately broad audience, and the spelling and grammar are correct:
    All prose is clear and for the most part concise, although there's a couple cases where it could be trimmed down.
    B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:
    It contains a word to watch, and there's a minor issue with the manual of style on block quotes.
  2. Is it verifiable with no original research, as shown by a source spot-check?
    A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:
    All references are properly laid out and consistent.
    B. Reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose):
    Reliable sources are cited inline throughout.
    C. It contains no original research:
    There seems to be a couple cases of novel interpretation, and places where I couldn't verify information.
    D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:
    There's some close paraphrasing in the earlier parts of the article that should be dealt with.
  3. Is it broad in its coverage?
    A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:
    I noticed some bits of information from some of the cited sources that could fill out the article a bit more.
    B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):
    It focuses a bit too much on Roumain at parts, rather than keeping the focus on the PCH.
  4. Is it neutral?
    It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:
    It's neutral throughout, not taking a side on the subject one way or another.
  5. Is it stable?
    It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:
    No major changes since the article was expanded prior to the GA nomination. Only reversions were of clear vandalism by a temp account.
  6. Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?
    A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content:
    Party logo does not meet the threshold for originality, so it's fine. The image of Roumain claims to be Public Domain under life+70, but provides no supporting evidence (photographer is unknown, for example). 60 years have passed since publication of the Combat piece, so it should be public domain under Haitian copyright law.
    B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:
    All images are relevant to the topic.
  7. Overall:
    Pass or Fail:
    This was an interesting article and I'm happy to have read it. There are still some issues holding it back from a GA rating, particularly to do with verifiability and broadness. Feel free to ping me once my comments have been addressed and/or if you have any questions and I'll be happy to give this another look. Great work so far! --Grnrchst (talk) 11:04, 6 July 2026 (UTC)
    @Grnrchst: Thank you for doing this review! I will work through your feedback and suggestions today. Yue🌙 (talk) 19:11, 9 July 2026 (UTC)
    @Grnrchst: Hello again, I have responded to all your feedback and have made these edits accordingly. Take your time in reviewing these changes and let me know what other tweaks you would like to see. Thanks! Yue🌙 (talk) 09:50, 12 July 2026 (UTC)
    Thanks for addressing everything so thoroughly. All my concerns have been addressed and this has brought it in line with GA criteria, so I'm more than happy to pass this review. Excellent work, Yue! --Grnrchst (talk) 09:37, 13 July 2026 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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