Agricultural Changes in Haiti: Patterns of Resistance and Acceptance

Abstract

During a few weeks in the spring of 1952, the author had the opportunity to participate on a planning board of Haitian and American specialists who had been convened in Port-au-Prince at the request of the Haitian Government (in collaboration with the Institute of Inter-American Affairs), to outline a program of agricultural development for the Artibonite Valley. In order to make some estimate of the types of resistance and acceptance the proposed changes might encounter among the illiterate farmers of the Valley, the anthropologist made a brief study of existing documentary materials on recent agricultural aid programs in Haiti; followed by a 15-day tour of a representative sample of active and completed projects. Without mentioning the agencies involved, nor the specific recommendations made by the anthropologist for the Artibonite Valley project, this paper will concern itself with a brief description of the patterns of resistance and acceptance demonstrated by the Haitian farmers toward attempts to alter their agricultural practices in the cases surveyed. We shall also give some attention to a case where plowing was successfully introduced into Haiti by accident rather than by design.