Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies
the 1980s and 1990s. Nevertheless, the middle class remains a
small minority in the late 1990s, perhaps 15 percent of the population.
Despite greater access to political power, the middle class
tends to be insecure in its social position and culturally ambivalent,
subject to conflict between Franco-Haitian and .Afro-Haitian
cultural traditions. Social characteristics of members of the
middle class include a moderate income, literacy, knowledge of
French, a preference for occupations that do not require manual
labor, and upward mobilitv through education and urban
residence. Despite their emulation of the upper class, middleclass
Haitians resent the social preeminence and class and
color prejudice of the elite.
Peasants
Since 1950 the population of rural Haiti has increased by an
estimated 167 percent to a total of 4.5 million people, mostly
small peasant farmers. During this period, rural areas dropped
proportionally from 88 percent to only 59 percent of the population.
Current evidence indicates that rural poverty is more
severe than urban poverty. The majority of rural households
are highly vulnerable to food shortages, and more than 80 percent
fall below the poverty line according to FAO standards.
Peasant occupation of the agricultural landscape is based on
widely dispersed homesteads and several noncontiguous plots
within each farm unit (see Natural Resources, this ch.). Most
farms include productive activity on sites the farmer does not
own. Farmers are simultaneously owner-operators, landlords,
and tenants, depending on the plot. Many are land poor, but
the number of landless farmers who rely solely on wage labor is
relatively small. Landless peasants are likely to migrate to urban
areas.
Unlike peasants in much of Latin America, most of Haiti's
peasants have owned land since the early nineteenth century.
Land is the most valuable rural commodity, and peasant families
go to great lengths to retain it and to increase their holdings.
Peasants in general have control over their landholdings.
to their plots. Haiti has never con-
but many lack clear title
ducted a cadastral survey, but it is likely that many families have
passed on land over generations without updating land titles.
Division of land equally among male and female heirs has
resulted in farm plots that are too small to warrant the high
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