Right to Livelihoods in Haiti

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Importance of Understand the Adaptability of Rural Haitian Livelihood Strategies
What we see in household livelihood strategies and the rural market system described above are patterns
and relationships sometimes difficult for development practitioners who have not lived and worked in the
region to fully grasp. An examination of local livelihood strategies among the majority of farmers in rural
Haiti, particularly those who do not have access to illicit business opportunities or relatives in Miami,
suggests they differ little from those practiced during the pre-Columbian and buccaneer eras 350 to 500
years in the past and are far less technologically and organizationally complex than those that prevailed
during the colonial epoch. The anachronistic character and tenacity with which people all over Haiti cling
to these strategies and their resistance to adopting or maintaining new material and organizational
technologies is a major impediment to the success of most programs financed by international
development agencies. It confounds foreign development workers and corporate investors who come to
Haiti. Yet, from the perspective of adaptation to crisis the system is eminently logical.
Adapted over the past 209 years of independence to periodic droughts that occur on average one in every
eight years; the 25 wars and uprisings and 60 years of international trade embargoes that occurred during
the 1800s, a trend that continued through the 20th century with an equal number of violent
conflagrations, civil unrest, revolution, and more embargoes to the first tumultuous 15 years of the 21st
century, Haitians are stuck on an island surrounded on three sides by water and one side by a neighbor
(the Dominicans) who 78 years ago, under the influence of a despotic dictator dispatched convicts to
massacre, with blades and in the space of three days, 25,000 of those ethnic Haitians living on their side
of the border. The rural population has had little choice but to adapt. They have done so by cultivating
dependency on those forces they can control: the technologically simple, integrated production,
processing, and marketing strategies seen above. xxiii
In this way rural Haitian household livelihoods can be conceptualized as survival-oriented strategies that
link household, communities and ecological zones through the rotating market system, and in doing so
averages the impact of crisis out across the landscape. Part of the reason that it has been so effective is
that Haiti's mountainous terrain and corresponding micro climates have meant that environmental crises
that would impede production at the household level rarely impacts an entire region. When it does, such
as with Hurricane Sandy of 2012, the people are able to turn for food to their garden and artisanal fishing
or to cash reserves of their mama lajan (market money); for new cash, they turn to the sale of livestock
and charcoal production for the urban market. It should also be understood that up until the previous
decade, all that is being described occurred, and has been occurring for 2 centuries, in the near total
absence of State services. With the exception of taxing animal sales and market vendors, providing
security in the form of police, and assistance with education, the State has been largely absent. The vast
bulk of road work, investment in irrigation, and agricultural extensions services have come from NGOs,
missionaries, and international agencies. Even here, many times over the past 50 years “development”
and “relief” organizations have not helped but rather pulled out when the people in the region were faced
with crises such as the political crises of 1991-1994 and 2002-2004. Thus, in formulating new strategies to
assist rural Haitians we should keep in mind that, while not perfect in terms of business and maximizing
profits, the strategies they practice made it possible for them survive extreme hardships, in an extreme
environment and with very little outside help for over two centuries.
Returning to eggs, the most important point to understand in the previous summary of rural livelihood
strategies in Haiti is that whatever the exact configuration of these livelihood strategies, the guiding