Haiti’s peasantry as poto mitan: refocusing the foundations of prosperity and development

ABSTRACT

Peasant farmers in northern Haiti have lost more than access to state land in a recent public–private partnership between the agro-export corporation Agritrans and the Government of Haiti. Using the Haitian concept of poto mitan, characterised by locally defined attributes of the moral economy of community care, identity and autonomy, this research establishes how peasants lose the ability to make critical and strategic contributions to food security and social stability. This suggests that large-scale agro-export development trades peasants’ welfare for shareholders’ and for GDP growth and does not truly create a net benefit for Haiti.

RÉSUMÉ

Suite à la récente conclusion du partenariat public-privé entre la société agro-export Agritrans et le gouvernement d’Haïti, les paysans du nord du pays ont perdu bien plus que l’accès aux terres agricoles publiques. En utilisant le concept haïtien de poto mitan, caractérisé par des attributs localement définis de l’économie morale des soins communautaires, de l’identité et de l’autonomie, cette recherche montre comment les paysans ont perdu leur capacité à apporter des contributions stratégiques à la sécurité alimentaire et à la stabilité sociale. Cela suggère que le développement à grande échelle de l’agro-exportation échange le bien-être des paysans contre l’intérêt des actionnaires et la croissance du PIB, ne créant par conséquent aucun bénéfice net pour Haïti.

KEYWORDS:

• Land grab
• moral economy
• Haiti
• food security
• community-based organisations

Acknowledgements

The author graciously acknowledges the contribution made by Haitian interviewees and research assistants, without which this work would not be possible. Further, the author would like to thank colleagues and the CJDS editors for their valuable editorial suggestions.

Notes on contributor

Jennifer Vansteenkiste is a PhD candidate, SSHRC Doctoral Fellow and IDRC Doctoral Research Awardee at the Department of Geography, University of Guelph. Her research involves examining food security, international development and power in Haiti from a gendered, grassroots perspective. She is the 2016 CASID Institutional Member Prize winner for best paper.

ORCID

Jennifer Vansteenkiste http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5840-6394

Notes

1 Charles (2015). Moïse – with the election moniker Nèg Bannann (Banana Man) – ran on a platform promoting Agritrans as Haiti's future economic model.

2 Small farmers in Haiti refer to themselves as peyizan (peasants), as depicted in Mouvman Peyizan Papay (Peasant Movement of Papay). I too engage this word in an effort to revalorise its meaning away from often homogenous and negative connotations.

3 Bitasyon, or habitation in French, is a cluster of lakou (homes and yards), similar to a homestead or a family compound, and formerly a plantation.

4 Rainy seasons are November to January and mid-August to October. The subterranean water source is located 100–150 feet down (Agrisud 2013).

5 Charcoal production has been documented as a highly lucrative industry in the region, since the surge of imported foods and associated decline of national agricultural production beginning in the 1980s (Murray and Bannister 2004).

6 The Structural Adjustment Programme occurred post-Duvalier under the direction of the US-created National Governing Council. The conditionalities, designed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, impacted agriculture by liberalising domestic markets in pursuit of export-led growth (see Bernstein 2001; Steckley and Shamsie 2015).

7 USAID: United States Agency for International Development.

8 CASEC: Boards of Directors of Communal Sections; ASEC: Administration of Communal Sections.

9 N’Zengou-Tayo (1998) outlines the characteristics of women as poto mitan of the household, community and nation; roles shaped by the historical political economy of Haiti.

10 Haitian scholars have noted the power of negative narratives, conflating the Haitian body with food insecurity and abhorrent living conditions (Loth 2015). Dehumanised as subjects of research and representation, Haiitians are “often been portrayed as fractures, as fragments – bodies without minds, heads without bodies, or roving spirits” (Ulysse 2010a, 2) and “consistently heralded for its exceptional, superhuman ability to withstand. To be bullied. To be displaced and disenfranchised” (Glover 2012, 200).

11 Veterimed is led by a volunteer Board of Directors and has over 40 salaried professional employees across Haiti (Veterimed 2013).

12 This translation from Creole to English, as well as all the quotations in the present article, were performed by the research team; see section “Sampling and methods”.

13 Programme D’appui Au Developpement Agricole, the largest peasant organisation in northern Haiti.

14 Generally women produce for the household and men for export markets. Women are the centre of household economics and make claims on men to meet financial needs.

15 FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation) Dietary Diversity Survey, adapted for Haitian diets: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i1983e.pdf

16 With tariff reductions from 50 to 3 per cent in 1995 (McGuigan 2006), Haiti's rice region, the Artibonite valley, halved production between 1989 and 2004 (Lundahl 2004), despite a growing population.

17 All Dietary Diversity Study data are calculated with Wilcoxon-analysis, non-parametric, related.

18 The gourde is Haiti's basic monetary unit.

19 Types of wild food noted by respondents: soursop, mango, orange, guava, cashew, grapefruit, lime, passionfruit, avocado, watermelon, common purslane, lanman laye, cucumber, papaya, pumpkin, mushroom, yam, and elephant grass and cow spinach for animals.

20 Vodou is omnipresent in Haiti's social life and, “by providing moral coherence through cosmological understandings”, represents a key element of Haitian consciousness (Michel 1996, 283).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre under grant 107099-99906075-034; and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under grant 752-2013-1518.