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Haiti Land Tenure and Land Policy
After independence from France, Alexandre Pétion (and
later
Jean-Pierre Boyer) undertook Latin America's first, and
perhaps
most radical, land reform by subdividing plantations for
the use
of emancipated slaves
(see
Christophe's Kingdom and Pétion's Republic, ch. 6).
The reform measures were so extensive
that by
1842 no plantation was its original size. By the
mid-nineteenth
century, therefore, Haiti's present-day land structure was
largely in place. The basic structures of land tenure
remained
remarkably stable during the twentieth century, despite
steadily
increasing pressure for land, the fragmentation of land
parcels,
and a slight increase in the concentration of ownership.
For historical reasons, Haiti's patterns of land tenure
were
quite different from those of other countries in Latin
America
and the Caribbean. Most Haitians owned at least some of
their
land. Complex forms of tenancy also distinguished Haitian
land
tenure. Moreover, land owned by peasants often varied in
the size
and number of plots, the location and topography of the
parcels,
and other factors.
Scholars have debated issues related to land tenure and
agriculture in Haiti because they considered census data
unreliable. Other primary data available to them were
geographically limited and frequently out of date. The
three
national censuses of 1950, 1971, and 1982 provided core
information on land tenure, but other studies financed by
the
United States Agency for International Development (AID)
supplemented and updated census data. The final
tabulations of
the 1982 census were still unavailable in late 1989.
The 1971 census revealed that there were 616,700 farms
in
Haiti, and that an average holding of 1.4 hectares
consisted of
several plots of less than 1 hectare. Haitians, however,
most
commonly measured their land by the common standard, a
carreau, equal to about 3.3 hectares. The survey
concluded
that the largest farms made up only 3 percent of the total
number
of farms and that they comprised less than 20 percent of
the
total land. It also documented that 60 percent of farmers
owned
their land, although some lacked official title to it.
Twentyeight percent of all farmers rented and sharecropped land.
Only a
small percentage of farms belonged to cooperatives. The
1950
census, by contrast, had found that 85 percent of farmers
owned
their land.
Studies in the 1980s indicated a trend toward increased
fragmentation of peasant lands, an expanding role for
sharecropping and renting, and a growing concentration of
higherquality land, particularly in the irrigated plains. As a
consequence of high rural population density and
deteriorating
soils, competition over land appeared to be intensifying.
Haiti's
land density, that is, the number of people per square
kilometer
of arable land, jumped from 296 in 1965 to 408 by the
mid-1980s--
a density greater than that in India
(see Demographic Profile
, ch. 7).
The three major forms of land tenancy in Haiti were
ownership, renting (or subleasing), and sharecropping.
Smallholders typically acquired their land through
purchase,
inheritance, or a claim of long-term use. Many farmers
also
rented land temporarily from the state, absentee
landlords, local
owners, or relatives. In turn, renters frequently
subleased some
of these lands, particularly parcels owned by the state.
Renters
generally enjoyed more rights to the land they worked than
did
sharecroppers. Unlike sharecroppers, however, renters had
to pay
for land in advance, typically for a period of one year.
The
prevalence of renting made the land market exceedingly
dynamic;
even small farmers rented land, depending on the amount of
extra
income they derived from raising cash crops.
Sharecropping, also
very common, was usually a shorter-term agreement, perhaps
lasting only one growing season. Sharecropper and
landowner
partnerships were less exploitive than those in many other
Latin
American countries; in most agreements, farmers gave
landowners
half the goods they produced on the land.
Other land arrangements included managing land for
absentee
landlords, squatting, and wage labor. The practice of
having an
on-site overseer (jéran) manage land for another
owner,
usually another peasant residing far away, was a variation
of
sharecropping. Jérans were generally paid in-kind
for
their custodial services. Overgrazing, or unregulated
gardening,
was the most common form of squatting, which took place on
most
kinds of lands, especially state-owned land. A small
minority of
peasants were landless; they worked as day laborers or
leased
subsistence plots. In addition, thousands of Haitians
migrated
seasonally to the Dominican Republic as braceros
(temporary
laborers) to cut sugarcane under wretched conditions.
Data as of December 1989
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