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Haiti Peasants
Haiti's peasantry constituted approximately 75 percent
of the
total population. Unlike peasants in much of Latin
America, most
of Haiti's peasants had owned land since the early
nineteenth
century. Land was the most valuable rural commodity, and
peasant
families went to great lengths to retain it and to
increase their
holdings.
Peasants in general had control over their
landholdings, but
many lacked clear title to their plots. Haiti has never
conducted
a cadastral survey, but it is likely that many families
have
passed on land over generations without updating land
titles.
Division of land equally among male and female heirs
resulted in
farm plots that became too small to warrant the high costs
of a
surveyor. Heirs occasionally surveyed land before taking
possession of it, but more frequently, heirs divided plots
among
themselves in the presence of community witnesses and
often a
notary. Some inherited land was not divided, but was used
in
common, for example, for pasture, or it was worked by
heirs in
rotation. Families commonly sold land to raise cash for
such
contingencies as funerals or to pay the expenses of
emigration.
Purchasers often held land with a notarized paper, rather
than a
formal deed
(see Land Tenure and Land Policy
, ch. 8).
There were strata within the peasantry based on the
amount of
property owned. Many peasants worked land as sharecroppers
or
tenants, and some hoped eventually to inherit the plots
they
worked. Some tenant farmers owned and cultivated plots in
addition to the land they worked for others. The number of
entirely landless peasants who relied solely on wage labor
was
probably quite small. Agricultural wages were so low that
peasants deprived of land were likely to migrate to urban
areas
in search of higher incomes. Wealthier peasants maintained
their
economic positions through the control of capital and
influence
in local politics.
Peasants maintained a strong, positive identity as
Haitians
and as cultivators of the land, but they exhibited a weak
sense
of class consciousness. Rivalries among peasants were more
common
than unified resentment toward the upper class.
Cooperation among peasants diminished during the
twentieth
century. Farms run by nuclear families and exchanges among
extended families had formed the basis of the agrarian
system.
Until the middle of the twentieth century, collective
labor
teams, called kounbit, and larger labor-exchange
groups
were quite common. These groups were formed to carry out
specific
tasks on an individual's land; the owner provided music
and a
festive meal. After the 1940s, smaller groups, called
eskouad,began to replace the kounbit. The
eskouad carried out tasks on a strictly reciprocal
basis
or sold their collective labor to other peasants.
Although Haitian peasant villages generally lacked a
sense of
community and civic-mindedness, some civic-action groups
had
emerged over the years. After the 1960s, wealthy peasants
led
rural community councils, which were supervised by the
government. These councils often served more to control
the flow
of development resources into an area than to represent
the local
population. In the 1980s, a countervailing movement of
small
peasant groups (groupman) emerged with support from
the
Roman Catholic Church, principally in the Plateau Central.
The
groupman discussed common interests and undertook
some
cooperative activities. Both the Duvalier governments and
the
succeeding National Council of Government (Conseil
National de
Gouvernement--CNG), headed by Lieutenant General Henri
Namphy,
took steps to curb the activities of these peasant groups.
The first generation of Haitian peasants pursued selfsufficiency , freedom, and peace. The necessity of devoting
at
least some share of their limited hectarage to the
production of
cash crops, however, hindered the peasants' ability to
achieve
self-sufficiency in the cultivation of domestic staples.
Although
they acquired a degree of freedom, they also found
themselves
isolated from the rest of the nation and the world. In the
second
half of the twentieth century, the Haitian peasantry
gradually
became much less isolated. Several factors accelerated the
peasants' involvement with the outside world in the 1970s
and the
1980s. Road projects improved the transportation system,
and
foreign religious missions and private development
agencies
penetrated the rural areas. These organizations brought
new
resources and provided an institutional link to the
outside
world. Many people from almost every community had
migrated to
Port-au-Prince or overseas, and they sent money home to
rural
areas. Cassette tapes enabled illiterate people who had
traveled
far from home to communicate with their families. Creole,
which
became widely used on radio, brought news of Haiti and the
world
to remote villages. And in 1986, media coverage of the
fall of
the Duvalier regime put rural Haitians in touch with the
political affairs of the nation.
Data as of December 1989
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