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Underdevelopment in Haiti: Some Recent Contributions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Mats Lundahl
Mats Lundahl
Affiliation:
Professor of Development Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics.
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Extract

The most persistent theme in social science analyses of Haiti concerns the causes of the country's economic underdevelopment. During the past few years, a number of significant works have been published which touch upon this theme. The present article will comment on some of these contributions to the debate, beginning with the discussion of the Haitian state and the defence mechanisms employed by the peasants against the autorités. I will then move on to examine survival problems in urban areas before ending with a look at some of the controversies regarding the determinants of peasant poverty in Haiti.

Type
Commentary
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , May 1991 , pp. 411 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 Lundahl, M., Peasants and Poverty: A Study of Haiti (London, 1979)Google Scholar; ‘Government and Inefficiency in the Haitian Economy: The Nineteenth-Century Legacy’, in Connolly, M. B. and McDermott, J. (eds.), The Economics of the Caribbean Basin (New York, 1985)Google Scholar; Trouillot, M.-R., Les racines historiques de l'état duvalierien (Port-au-Prince, 1986)Google Scholar; Fass, S., Political Economy in Haiti: The Drama of Survival (New Brunswick, NJ and Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar; Barthélemy, G., Le pays en dehors (Port-au-Prince, 1989).Google Scholar

2 See Lundahl, , Peasants and Poverty, The Haitian Economy: Man, Land and Markets (London and Canberra, 1983)Google Scholar; ‘The Roots of Haitian Underdevelopment’, in Foster, C. R. and Valdman, A. (eds.), Haiti—Today and Tomorrow. An Interdisciplinary Study (Lanham, MD, 1984)Google Scholar; ‘Defense and Distribution: Agricultural Policy in Haiti during the Reign of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, 1804–1806’, Scandinavian Economic History Review, vol. 32 (1984)Google Scholar; ‘Papa Doc: Innovator in the Predatory State’, Scandia, vol. 50 (1984)Google Scholar; ‘Toussaint L'Ouverture and the War Economy of Saint-Domingue, 1796–1802’, Slavery and Abolition, vol. 6 (1985)Google Scholar; ‘Government and Inefficiency’, “History as an Obstacle to Change’, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, vol. 31 (1989)Google Scholar; Lundahl, M. and Vedovato, C., ‘The State and Economic Development in Haiti and the Dominican Republic’, Scandinavian Economic History Review, vol. 37 (1989), for details.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Trouillot, Les racines historiques.

4 Traditionally, this term is used for mulatto domination via a black puppet president.

5 Trouillot, , Les racines historiques, p. 72.Google Scholar

6 Plummer, B. G., Haiti and the Great Powers, 1902–1915 (Baton Rouge, LA and London, 1988), p. 24.Google Scholar

7 See e.g. Joachim, B. B., ‘La bourgeoisie d'affaires en Haïti de l'Indépendence à l'Occupation américaine’, Nouvelle Optique, vol. 1 (1971)Google Scholar, and Plummer, B. G., ‘The Metropolitan Connection: Foreign and Semiforeign Elites in Haiti, 1900–1915’, Latin American Research Review, vol. 19 (1984).Google Scholar

8 Cf. Rotberg, R. I., (with Clague, C. K.), Haiti: The Politics of Squalor (Boston, 1971), pp. 181–3.Google Scholar

9 Tullock, G., Autocracy (Dordrecht, 1987), p. 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Nicholls, D., From Dessalines to Duvalier. Race, Colour and National Independence in Haiti (second edition, London and Basingstoke, 1988), pp. xii–xiii.Google Scholar

11 Smucker, G. R., ‘Peasant Councils and the Politics of Community’, in Brinkerhoff, D. W. and Garcia-Zamor, J.-C. (eds.), Politics, Projects, and People. Institutional Development in Haiti (New York, 1986), p. 103.Google Scholar

12 Dupuy, A., Haiti in the World Economy. Class, Race, and Underdevelopment since 1700 (Boulder, CO and London, 1989), p. 163.Google Scholar

13 Lundahl, ‘Papa Doc’, ‘Government and Inefficiency’.

14 The chef de section is dealt with in Comhaire, J., ‘The Haitian “Chef de Section”’, American Anthropologist, vol. 57 (1955)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Lahav, P., ‘The Chef de Section: Structure and Functions of Haiti's Basic Administrative Institution’, in Mintz, S. W. (ed.), Working Papers in Haitian Society and Culture (New Haven, CT, 1975).Google Scholar

15 Lundahl, ‘Papa Doc’, p. 61.

16 Ibid., pp. 58–61.

17 Smucker, , ‘Peasant Councils’, pp. 102–5.Google Scholar

18 Lundahl, M., ‘Some Mechanisms of Protest in Haiti—from the Colonial Period to the End of the American Occupation’, Annales des Pays d'Amérique Centrale et des Caraïbes, No. 7 (1988)Google Scholar; ‘The Rise and Fall of the Haitian Labour Movement’, in Cross, M. and Heuman, G. (eds.), Labour in the Caribbean. From Emancipation to Independence (London and Basingstoke, 1988)Google Scholar; ‘Some Reflexions on the Cooperative Movement in Haiti’, Ibero Americana, vol. 20 (1990)Google Scholar; ‘Social Security in Haiti: Informal Initiative in a Welfare-Less State’, in Abel, C. and Lewis, C. M. (eds.), Welfare, Equity and Development in Latin America (London and Basingstoke, forthcoming).Google Scholar

19 Hirschman, A. O., Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge, MA and London, 1970).Google Scholar

20 G. Barthélemy, Le pays en dehors.

21 The term derives from Clastres, P., La société contre l'état (Paris, 1974).Google Scholar

22 Fass, , Political Economy, p. 4.Google Scholar

23 Laguerre, M. S., ‘The Black Ghetto as an Internal Colony: Socio-economic Adaptation of a Haitian Urban Community’, PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1976Google Scholar, later published as Urban Life in the Caribbean. A Study of a Haitian Urban Community (Rochester, VT, 1987).Google Scholar

24 Fass, , Political Economy, p. 6.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., p. 54.

26 Fass, Political Economy.

27 Ibid., p. 172.

28 Ibid., p. 195.

29 Cf. Laguerre, ‘The Black Ghetto’, and Locher, H. C., ‘The Fate of Migrants in Urban Haiti—A Survey of Three Port-au-Prince Neighborhoods’, PhD diss., Yale University, 1978.Google Scholar

30 See Lundahl, ‘Social Security’.

31 Ibid.

32 Lundahl, , Peasants and Poverty, ch. 5.Google Scholar

33 Dupuy, , Haiti in the World Economy, p. 109.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., p. 110.

35 Cf. Lundahl, Peasants and Poverty.

36 If land is in unlimited supply, as Dupuy contends it was as late as the mid-1880s (Dupuy, , Haiti in the World Economy, p. 98)Google Scholar, labour productivity will not fall if the land is of uniform quality. In practice, however, it was not. Most probably, a Ricardian sequence applied, where labour was added to land of declining quality, so that labour productivity was falling.

37 Dupuy, A., ‘Peasant Poverty in Haiti’, Latin American Research Review, vol. 24 (1989), p. 264.Google Scholar

38 Lundahl, , Peasants and Poverty, pp. 195–200.Google Scholar

39 A given plot typically undergoes the following sequence as the population increases: forest, pasture, land-intensive crops, labour-intensive crops, eroded land (Lundahl, , Peasants and Poverty, pp. 194–5).Google Scholar Grazing land thus tends to disappear over time and the typical pattern in contemporary Haiti is that of animals left to find food for themselves wherever they can.

40 That no population growth is needed once the process has got underway is a different matter. This does not change the fact that population growth is the trigger of the process. Besides, Haiti is far from being in a zero population growth situation.

41 Cf. Lundahl, , Peasants and Poverty, ch. 3Google Scholar, and Y. Bourdet and M. Lundahl, ‘Una reevaluación del mercadeo del café haitiano’, in Lundahl, M. and Pelupessy, W. (eds.), Crisis económica en Centroamérica y el Caribe (San José, 1989), for overviews.Google Scholar

42 The spéculateurs generally buy from the peasants and sell to the exporters.

43 Mainly Girault, C., Le commerce du café en Haïti. Habitants, spéculateurs et exportateurs (Paris, 1981).Google Scholar

44 See Bourdet and Lundahl, ‘Una reevaluación’, for a detailed examination. The conclusions therein also cover the arguments advanced by Dupuy, ‘Peasant Poverty’, who simply echoes Girault, Le commerce du café.

45 Notably Girault, Le commerce du café.

46 Lundahl, , Peasants and Poverty, ch. 11Google Scholar, examines the determinants of interest rates in some detail. Cf. also Smucker, , L'offre de crédit au paysan haïtien (Mimeo, Washington, D. C, 1983).Google Scholar

47 Fass, , Political Economy, ch. 7.Google Scholar

48 Brisson, G., Les relations agraires dans l' Haïti contemporaine (Mimeo, Mexico City, 1968)Google Scholar, Pierre-Charles, G., La economia haitiana y su vía de desarrollo (Mexico City, 1965)Google Scholar, Radiografía de una dictadura. Haití bajo el régimen del doctor Duvalier (Mexico City, 1969).Google Scholar

49 Griffin, K., Underdevelopment in Spanish America. An Interpretation (London, 1969)Google Scholar, Chapter 1, provides a succinct analysis of this pattern.

50 For a summary, see Lundahl, , Peasants and Poverty, pp. 48–54.Google Scholar

51 Dupuy, ‘Peasant Poverty’.

52 Ibid., p. 268.

53 Murray, G. F., The Evolution of Haitian Peasant Land Tenure: A Case Study in Agrarian Adaptation to Population Growth (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1977).Google Scholar

54 Barthélemy, , Le pays en dehors, pp. 51–3.Google Scholar

55 Locher, U., Land Distribution, Land Tenure and Land Erosion in Haiti, paper presented at the Twelfth Annual Conference of the Society for Caribbean Studies, 07 12–14Google Scholar, High Leigh Conference Centre, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, UK (Mimeo, 1988), p. 9.

56 Ibid. The following draws on Locher's excellent critical summary of the available information.

57 Ibid., p. 6.

58 Locher, , Land Distribution, pp. 15–16.Google Scholar

59 Ibid., p. 16.