Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies
costs of a surveyor. Heirs occasionally survey land before taking
but more frequently heirs divide plots among
possession of it,
themselves in the presence of community witnesses and often a
notary. Undivided plots are often used for grazing or farmed
on a rotating basis. Families commonly sell land to raise cash
for such contingencies as funerals or to pav the expenses of
emigration. Purchasers often hold land with a notarized
receipt rather than formal registtation and transfer of tide.
Peasants have a strong sense of identity as Haitians and cultivators
of the land. However, thev have little or no sense of class
solidarity, and rivalries among peasant families and local factions
are common. Since the 1940s, small rotating labor groups
have tended to replace large labor societies more common earlier
in the century. Peasants organize work parties and
exchange labor to supplement family labor and meet the intensive
labor requirements of peasant agriculture. Peasants also
buy and sell daily wage labor.
Rural social arrangements are firmly rooted in kin ties, fictive
kinship, patron-client relations, other special ties and obligations,
and competing factions. Community solidaritv is
weakly developed. In the late 1950s, outside development agencies
began to organize peasant councils as a self-help strategy to
promote community development. By the 1980s, such councils
had been organized in most of rural Haiti. In the early 1980s,
the government ofJean-Claude Duvalier sought to politicize
and control this widespread network of rural councils. Despite
rhetoric of local autonomy and democratic representation,
peasant councils came to be dominated by traditional power
holders and outside interests.
In the 1960s and 1970s, church leaders and other reformers
promoted small pre-cooperative groups called gwoupman in
lieu of the old community councils. The most successful of
these groups were built on indigenous sociocultural forms oriented
to kinship, labor exchange, or traditional rotating credit
groups. In the period since 1986, the gwoupman movement and
other peasant organizations have been severely persecuted
under various military regimes, especially under the de facto
government of Raoul Cedras (1991-94). With the return of
constitutional rule in late 1994, this persecution ceased. In the
latter 1990s, few of the older community councils remained
active, and the small group movement has expanded into many
areas of rural Haiti. In a distinct break with the past, numerous
members of local peasant organizations have been elected to
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