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Haiti Haiti: The Society and Its Environment
![[GIF]](http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/haiti/ht07_00a.gif)
Figure from a painting by Prosper Pierrelouis
HAITI IS A DRAMATIC COUNTRY in its terrain, history,
and
culture. In comparison with other countries in the
Caribbean,
Haiti is described in superlatives: it is the most rural
in its
settlement pattern, the poorest, and the most densely
populated.
It is also the only country in the region that was born of
a
successful slave rebellion, and it is the first modern
black
republic.
Many observers have described Haitian society as
stagnant,
but in recent years, changes have begun. By the 1980s, the
population of Haiti surpassed 5 million. Although the
country
continued to be overwhelmingly rural, urbanization was
accelerating as the impact of soil erosion and land
fragmentation
on agricultural productivity forced increasing numbers of
peasants to migrate to Port-au-Prince and even overseas.
The
population of Port-au-Prince was expected to reach 1
million by
the end of the 1980s. Haiti's peasants had traditionally
relied
on the extended family and cooperative labor as a means
for
taking care of each other, but by the late 1980s, this
aspect of
the culture had disintegrated. Deteriorating economic
conditions
were forcing the poor to find new ways to eke out a living
from
the land, or to survive in urban slums. An unstable, but
politically significant, black middle class had emerged
between
the traditional, mainly mulatto, elite and the peasantry.
Migration and the penetration of foreign missions and
nongovernmental organizations to the more remote parts of
Haiti
created new kinds of relationships with the outside world.
The
transportation and the communications systems had been
greatly
improved, and Creole-language radio brought news of
domestic and
international affairs to the country's isolated villages
(see Transportation and Communications
, ch. 8).
The weight of the past bore heavily on the daily lives
of all
Haitians in the 1980s. The country's legacy of slavery and
French
colonization had left a lasting imprint on the culture. In
the
past, members of the upper class cherished Franco-Haitian
culture
because the French language and manners separated them
from the
masses whom they wished to rule. At the same time, former
slaves
created a peasant culture, but always in the shadow of
their
urban superiors. Haiti's dual cultural heritage resulted
in
negative attitudes toward Haitian peasant life,
particularly
toward the Creole language, traditional marriages, and
voodoo,
the folk religion. The recent emergence of a middle class
has
only exacerbated the debate over what should be considered
"true"
Haiti.
Data as of December 1989
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