Haiti

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The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of Jan Knippers Black, Howard I. Blutstein, Kathryn T. Johnston, David S. McMorris, Frederick P. Munson, and Thomas E. Weil, who wrote the 1973 editions of Haiti: A Country Study. Their work lent perspective to several chapters of the present volume. The authors also are grateful to individuals in various agencies of the United States government and international and private institutions who gave their time, research materials, and special knowledge to provide information and perspective. These individuals include Ralph K. Benesch, who oversees the Country Studies-Areas Handbook Program for the Department of the Army.

The authors also wish to thank those who contributed directly to the preparation of the manuscript. These include Richard F. Nyrop, who reviewed all drafts and served as liaison with the sponsoring agency; Sandra W. Meditz, who reviewed drafts and provided valuable advice at all stages of production; Dennis M. Hanratty, who contributed useful and substantive comments on several chapter drafts; Vincent Ercolano, who edited the Dominican Republic chapters, Richard Kollodge, who edited the Haiti chapters; Martha E. Hopkins, who edited portions of the manuscript and managed editing; Marilyn Majeska, who also edited portions of the manuscript and managed production; Barbara Edgerton, Janie L. Gilchrist, and Izella Watson, who did the word processing; who compiled the index; and Linda Peterson, of the Printing and Processing Section, Library of Congress, who prepared the camera-ready copy under the supervision of Peggy Pixley.

David P. Cabitto, Sandra K. Ferrell, and Kimberly A. Lord provided invaluable graphics support. David P. Cabitto designed the cover illustration, and Kimberly A. Lord prepared the illustrations for the title page of the chapters on Haiti. Map drafts were prepared by Harriett R. Blood, David P. Cabitto, and Kimberly A. Lord. Various individuals, libraries, and public agencies provided photographs.

Finally, the authors would like to thank several individuals who provided research support. Arvies J. Staton supplied information on ranks and insignia, and Karen Sturges-Vera wrote the geography sections in chapters 2 and 7.

Haiti - Preface

Like its predecessors, these studies represent an attempt to treat in a compact and objective manner the dominant contemporary social, political, economic, and military aspects of Haiti. Sources of information included scholarly books, journals, monographs; official reports of governments and international organizations; numerous periodicals; the authors' previous research and observations; and interviews with individuals who have special competence in Haitian, and Latin American affairs. To the extent possible, place-names conform with the system used by the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN). Measurements are given in the metric system.

Although there are numerous variations, Spanish surnames generally consist of two parts: the patrilineal name followed by the matrilineal one. In the instance of Joaqu�n Balaguer Ricardo, for example, Balaguer is his father's surname and Ricardo, his mother's maiden name. In nonformal use, the matrilineal name is often dropped. Thus, after the first mention, just Balaguer is used. A minority of individuals use only the patrilineal name.

Creole words used in the text may be presented in forms that are unfamiliar to readers who have done previous research on Haiti. The Creole orthography employed in this volume is that developed by the Institut P�dagogique National (IPN--National Pedagogic Institute), which has been the standard in Haiti since 1978.

Haiti - Introduction

Since the signing of the Treaty of Ryswick between the kingdoms of Spain and France in 1697, the island of Hispaniola (La Isla Espa�ola) has played host to two separate and distinct societies that we now know as the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. At first encounter, and without the benefit of historical background and context, most students or observers find it incongruous that two such disparate nations--one speaking French and Creole, the other Spanish--should coexist within such limited confines. When viewed in light of the bitter struggle among European colonial powers for wealth and influence both on the continent and in the New World, however, the phenomenon becomes less puzzling. By the late seventeenth century, Spain was a declining power. Although that country would maintain its vast holdings in mainland North America and South America, Spain found itself hard pressed by British, Dutch, and French forces in the Caribbean. The Treaty of Ryswick was but one result of this competition, as the British eventually took Jamaica and established a foothold in Central America. The French eventually proved the value of Caribbean colonization, in an economic as well as a maritime and strategic sense, by developing modern-day Haiti, then known as Saint-Domingue, into the most productive colony in the Western Hemisphere, if not the world.

Although the other European powers envied the French their island jewel, Saint-Domingue eventually was lost not to a colonial rival, but to an idea. That idea, inspired by the American Revolution and the French Revolution, was freedom; its power was such as to convince a bitterly oppressed population of African slaves that anything--reprisal, repression, even death-- was preferable to its denial. This positive impulse, liberally leavened with hatred for the white men, who had seized them, shipped them like cargo across the ocean, tortured and abused them, and forced women into concubinage and men into arduous labor, impelled the black population of Saint-Domingue to an achievement still unmatched in history: the overthrow of a slaveholding colonial power and the establishment of a revolutionary black republic.

The saga of the Haitian Revolution is so dramatic that it is surprising that it has never served as the scenario for a Hollywood production. Its images are varied and intense: the voodoo ceremony and pact sealed in the Bois Cayman (Alligator Woods) in anticipation of the slave revolt of 1791; the blazing, bloody revolt itself; foreign intervention by British and Spanish forces; the charismatic figure of Fran�ois-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, his rise and fateful decision to switch his allegiance from Spain to France, his surprisingly effective command of troops in the field, the relative restraint with which he treated white survivors and prisoners, the competence of his brief stint as ruler; the French expedition of 1802, of which Toussaint exclaimed, "All France has come to invade us"; Toussaint's betrayal and seizure by the French; and the ensuing revolution led by Jean-Jacque Dessalines, Henri (Henry) Christophe, and Alexandre P�tion.

Given the distinctive and auspicious origins of the Haitian republic, there is some irony in that the Dominicans commemorate as their independence day the date of their overthrow of Haitian rule. The Dominican revolt, however, came as a response to annexation by a Haitian state that had passed from the promise of orderly administration under Toussaint to the hard-handed despotism of Dessalines and had then experienced division, both racial and political, between the forces of Christophe and P�tion. By the time of its conquest of Santo Domingo (later to become the Dominican Republic), Haiti had come under the comparatively stable, but uninspired, stewardship of Jean-Pierre Boyer. Although viewed, both at the time and today, by most Dominicans as a crude and oppressive state dominated by the military, the Haiti that occupied both eastern and western Hispaniola from 1822 to 1844 can itself be seen as a victim of international political and economic isolation. Because they either resented the existence of a black republic or feared a similar uprising in their own slave-owning regions, the European colonial powers and the United States shunned relations with Haiti; in the process, they contributed to the establishment of an impoverished society, ruled by the military, guided by the gun rather than the ballot, and controlled by a small, mostly mulatto, ruling group that lived well, while their countrymen either struggled to eke out a subsistence-level existence on small plots of land or flocked to the banners of regional strongmen in the seemingly never-ending contest for power. To be sure, the French colonial experience had left the Haitians completely unprepared for orderly democratic self-government, but the isolation of the post-independence period assured the exclusion of liberalizing influences that might have guided Haiti along a somewhat different path of political and economic development. By the same token, however, it may be that Western governments of the time, and even those of the early twentieth century, were incapable of dealing with a black republic on an equal basis. The United States occupation of Haiti (1915-34) certainly brought little of lasting value to the country's political culture or institutions, in part because the Americans saw the Haitians as uncivilized lackeys and treated them as such.

Both nations of Hispaniola share--along with much of the developing world--the strong tendency toward political organization built upon the personalistic followings of strongmen, or caudillos, rather than on more legalistic bases, such as constitutionalism. This similarity in political culture helps to explain the chronologically staggered parallels between the brutal regimes of Rafael Le�nidas Trujillo Molina (1930-61) in the Dominican Republic and that of the Duvaliers--Fran�ois Duvalier (1957-71) and his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier (1971-86)-- in Haiti. Both regimes lasted for approximately thirty years; both were headed by nonideological despots; both regimes sustained themselves in power by employing terror and ruthlessly suppressing dissent; both drew the ire of an international community that ultimately proved incapable of directly forcing them from power; and both left their countries mired in political chaos and internal conflict upon their demise. One may only hope that the unstable situation in Haiti after the fall of the Duvalier regime will resolve itself without further analogy to Dominican history--that is, without a civil war. As of late 1990, however, the outcome of the situation remained extremely unpredictable.

Lieutenant General Prosper Avril took power in Haiti in September 1988, ousting the highly unpopular military regime led by Lieutenant General Henri Namphy. Avril, a product of the Haitian military tradition and the Duvalierist system, initially gave assurances that he would serve only as a transitional figure on the road to representative democracy. Whatever his personal feelings or motivations, however, Avril by his actions proved himself to be simply another corrupt Haitian military strongman. Having scheduled elections for 1990, he arrested and expelled leading political figures and declared a state of siege in January of that year. These actions triggered demonstrations, protests, and rioting among a population weary of exploitation and insincere promises of reform. Despite his public rhetoric, Avril presided over a military institution that perpetuated the Duvalierist traditions of extortion, graft, and price-gouging through state-owned enterprises. At the same time, the military made no substantive effort to address the problem of political violence. By early 1990, Haitians had had enough of promises; many decided to take action on their own, much as they had during the uprising of 1985 that swept Jean-Claude Duvalier from power.

Violent demonstrations began in earnest in early March 1990, ostensibly in response to the army's fatal shooting of an eleven- year-old girl in Petit Go�ve. Streets blazed across Haiti as demonstrators ignited tires and automobiles, chanted anti-Avril slogans, and fought with army troops. Avril soon recognized the untenable nature of his position; the United States ambassador reportedly influenced the general's decision to step down in a private meeting held on March 12. Avril's flight from Haiti on a United States Air Force transport added his name to a long list of failed Haitian strongmen, and it left the country under the guidance of yet another military officer, Major General (subsequently promoted to Lieutenant General) H�rard Abraham.

Consultations among civilian political figures produced a provisional government headed by a judge of the Court of Cassation (supreme court), Ertha Pascal-Trouillot, a woman little-known outside legal circles. Judge Pascal Trouillot reportedly accepted the post of provisional president after three other supreme court judges declined; she was sworn in on March 13. Appointed along with her was a nineteen-member Council of State, made up of prominent civic and political leaders. Although the new government announced no clear definitions of the powers of the council vis-�-vis the provisional president, some reports indicated that the president could exercise independent authority in some areas. The most compelling reality, however, was that all powers of the provisional government had been granted by the Haitian Armed Forces (Forces Arm�es d'Ha�ti--FAd'H), which would provide the government's only mandate--and perhaps its major political constituency--until valid popular elections could be held.

The Conseil Electoral Permanent (Permanent Electoral Council- -CEP) scheduled local, legislative, and presidential elections for sometime between November 4 and November 29, 1990. The prospects for their successful implementation, however, appeared highly problematical at best. Seemingly unchecked political violence, which conjured up for many the horrible images of the bloody election day of November 1987, presented the major obstacle to free and fair balloting. Negotiations between the FAd'H and the CEP sought to establish security mechanisms that would prevent a recurrence of the 1987 tragedy. Popular confidence in these efforts, however, did not appear to be very great.

In a larger sense, the utter absence of any democratic tradition, or framework, in Haiti stacked the odds heavily against a smooth governmental transition. Economist Mats Lundahl has referred to Haiti as a hysteretic state, "not simply one where the past has shaped the present, but also one where history constitutes one of the strongest obstacles to change." Several conditions prevailing in Haiti gave substance to this definition. Among the wide array of personalistic political parties, only three--Marc Bazin's Movement for the Installation of Democracy in Haiti (Mouvement pour l'Instouration de la D�mocratie en Ha�ti-- MIDH), Serge Gilles's National Progressive Revolutionary Haitian Party (Parti Progressiste R�volutionnaire Ha�tien--Ponpra), and Sylvio C. Claude's Christian Democrat Party of Haiti (Parti National Chr�tien d'Haiti--PDCH)--displayed any semblance of coherent programs or disciplined party apparatus. The odyssey of the Haitian military, from dominant power before the Duvaliers to subordinate status under the dynastic dictatorship, left uncertain the intentions of the FAd'H under Abraham's leadership. The return of such infamous Duvalierist cronies as former interior minister Roger LaFontant and persistent rumors that Jean-Claude himself was contemplating a return to the nation he had bled dry for fifteen years provoked outrage among a population that wanted nothing so much as to rid itself of the remaining vestiges of that predatory regime. According to some observers, internal conditions had approached, by the late summer of 1990, a sort of critical mass, which, if not defused by way of fair and free elections, could explode into generalized and ultimately futile violence.

In July one of the more responsible political leaders, Sylvio Claude, exhorted Haitians to block the return of undesirables by seizing the international airport outside Port-au-Prince. In a speech on Radio Nationale, he declared, "Instead of letting [the army] go kill you later, make them kill you now." Among the figures targeted by Claude for such action was former president Leslie F. Manigat, not previously considered a controversial figure by most observers. Perhaps in response to such rabble- rousing, the provisional government announced on August 1 that Manigat would be barred from returning to his native Haiti.

In late July, the Council of State issued a communiqu�, laying down four conditions that it deemed necessary for holding successful elections. First, effective legal action had to be initiated against those who had participated in the November 1987 attacks and other political murders; second, a general climate of public security needed to be established in order to encourage voters to go to the polls; third, the public administration should be purged of entrenched, corrupt bureaucrats; and fourth, some checks had to be established over the powers of the rural section chiefs (chefs de section), so that the rural population could vote in an atmosphere free of coercion and intimidation. It was not clear what action the Council would take if these conditions had not been met by November.

In the Dominican Republic, events unfolded along a much more predictable path. Although Dominican politics were boisterous, and physical clashes--occasionally punctuated by gunfire--between the members of contending political parties were not unusual, the democratic system established after the 1965 civil war and the United States intervention continued to function with comparative efficiency (especially when compared with that of Haiti). The elections of May 16, 1990, however, demonstrated the manifold weaknesses of this system. The most glaring example of the lack of institutionalization in Dominican politics was that the major contenders for the presidency were the same two men who had opposed each other in the elections of 1966, namely, Juan Bosch Gavi�o and incumbent Joaqu�n Balaguer Ricardo. Despite almost a quarter of a century of relatively free political organization and competition, the two modern-day caudillos, both octogenarians, still sallied into the arena flying their own personalistic banners rather than those of truly established parties. The one party that had displayed some level of institutionalization, the Dominican Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Dominicano--PRD), had split into antagonistic factions--each with its own caudillo--and never presented a serious challenge to the two elder statesmen.

The elections themselves, like most during the post-civil war era, were lively, controversial, and bitterly contested. Despite debilitating national problems, such as a chronic shortage of electricity, rising inflation, and persistent poverty, President Balaguer retained enough support in a presidential race contested by sixteen political parties (some running in coalition) to eke out a narrow victory over Bosch. The final tally showed Balaguer with 678,268 votes against Bosch's 653,423. Like most Dominican politicians before him, Bosch did not accept defeat with magnanimity; he lashed out at Balaguer and the Central Electoral Board, accusing both of fraud during balloting that impartial observers had judged to be fair and orderly. Bosch's early public statements exhorted his followers to stage public protests against the alleged electoral fraud. Early fears of widespread street violence initiated by disgruntled Bosch supporters proved unfounded, however, and Balaguer's reelection was confirmed by the Board on June 12, 1990.

Although it traditionally bends a little around election time, the Dominican democratic system showed few signs of breaking completely. Economic developments, however, will exercise a decisive impact on the nation's future stability. In that regard, Balaguer's reelection could prove to be a storm warning for the republic. At eighty-one years of age, Balaguer reportedly retained his enthusiasm for hands-on administration of government policy. The major economic aspects of that policy, however, did not promise a significant degree of improvement in the short term. Balaguer, since his days as a prot�g� of Trujillo, has believed in the liberal application of funds to public works projects--the construction of schools, housing, public buildings--in order to boost employment and purchase political support. Such gratuitous expenditures, however, largely served to exacerbate the government's fiscal problems, while masking to only a limited degree the consistently high levels of unemployment prevailing in the republic. Another tenet of Balaguer's economic creed was a refusal to submit to an economic adjustment program dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). By ruling out an IMF-mandated program, Balaguer avoided further short-term austerity measures, such as devaluation and price increases on subsidized items; this enabled him to stand on a platform of economic nationalism and to proclaim his opposition to economic hardship imposed from abroad (that is, from the United States, which is strongly identified with the IMF throughout Latin America). In the long run, however, his obstinacy diminished Dominican standing with foreign creditors, and it limited any new infusions of capital needed to sustain the impressive growth of nontraditional exports achieved during the latter 1980s. This, in turn, would hinder the accumulation of foreign exchange needed to finance the imports required to sustain industrial development. Moreover, although an austerity program undoubtedly would pinch still further an already hard-pressed population, it might also help to balance the budget, to stabilize domestic prices, and to boost exports, all highly desirable potential results.

If the Dominican situation demonstrated anything to Haitians, it was that democracy is not a panacea for domestic turmoil. As Winston Churchill observed, it is the worst political system "except for all the others." Since Trujillo's death, Dominicans have struggled to adjust to an imperfect system, under less than ideal conditions; the final outcome of this process is still in doubt. For Haitians, the small step represented by valid elections could be their first lurch along a much longer road to peace and stability.

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In the months following completion of research and writing of this book, significant political developments occurred in Haiti. On December 16, 1990, over 60 percent of registered voters turned out to elect political neophyte Jean-Bertrand Aristide president of Haiti. Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest and an advocate of liberation theology, registered an overwhelming first-round victory against a number of opponents. His popular identification as an outspoken opponent of the regime of Jean- Claude Duvalier apparently moved some 67 percent of voters to select Aristide as their leader. More traditional politicians such as Marc Bazin, Louis Dejoie, and Silvio Claude trailed badly, reflecting their lack of appeal beyond the upper and middle classes. Aristide's victory came as a result of what was arguably the first free and fair election in Haitian history.

Right-wing backlash against the election of the radical leftist Aristide expressed itself in a coup attempt led by Duvalierist Roger Lafontant on January 6, 1991. Assisted by a small contingent of army personnel, Lafontant seized the National Palace, took prisoner Provisional President Pascal-Trouillot, and announced his control of the government over the state-run television station. Lafontant's pronouncement turned out to be decidedly premature, however, as loyalist army forces stormed the palace twelve hours later on the orders of FAd'H commander Abraham. Lafontant and those of his fellow conspirators who survived the fighting were captured and incarcerated. The coup also ignited violent street demonstrations in which mobs lynched at least seven people they accused of Duvalierist ties or sympathies. Violence continued in the interim between the elections and the presidential inauguration on February 7, 1991. Particularly intense anti-Duvalierist demonstrations took place on the night of January 26, leaving more than a dozen dead. On the night of February 1, 1991, suspected Duvalierists set fire to an orphanage in Port-au-Prince administered by Aristide.

Aristide's inauguration on February 7, 1991, was a gala event, befitting its historic nature. As expected, the new president delivered a spellbinding inaugural address. In it, he renounced his US$10,000 a month salary as a "scandal in a country where people cannot eat." Although the address was short on specifics of policy, its tone was one of gratitude and support for the poverty-afflicted constituency that had provided such a striking electoral mandate. The address was also conciliatory with regard to the military. Aristide described a "wedding between the army and the people," and hinted that the army would henceforth function as a public security force in order to lessen the threat emanating from right-wing forces such as those directed by Lafontant.

Beyond his rhetorical outreach to the rank and file, Aristide moved quickly to shore up his rule in the face of possible opposition from within the officer corps of the FAd'H.In his inaugural address, he called on General Abraham to retire six of the eight highest-ranking generals as well as the colonel who commanded the Presidential Guard. The appeal reflected Aristide's surprisingly powerful position, based on his overwhelming electoral victory and his demonstrated popular support, which extended even to the ranks of the military. The fact that Abraham complied with the request confirmed the already rather obvious disarray of the FAd'H and the general unwillingness of the institution to reassume political power in Haiti.

On February 9, Aristide proposed Ren� Pr�val as Haiti's prime minister. Pr�val, a Belgian-trained agronomist and close associate of the president, was subsequently approved by the National Assembly. Although Aristide won a smashing personal victory in his presidential race, no one party or movement achieved a majority in the assembly. This fact promised a certain degree of stalemate and inertia in the legislative process under the Aristide administration. Such a situation did not seem conducive to the development of programs to deal effectively with the country's many severe problems. At the same time, however, an assembly based on coalition and compromise should serve to check any temptation by the new government toward heavy-handed or even authoritarian rule. In any case, the assembly was a new institution in a new government in what many hoped would be a new and democratic Haiti.

Haiti - History

HAITI FORMALLY RENOUNCED its colonial bond with France in January 1804, as the result of the only successful slave rebellion in world history. The country's longevity as an independent nation in the Western Hemisphere is second only to that of the United States. Over this span of almost two centuries, however, the country has never known a period free of tyranny, repression, political conflict, racial animosity, and economic hardship.

Haiti, the first black republic in modern times, sprang directly to self-governance from French colonialism, a system that had a profound impact on the nation. Haiti's colonial origins had demonstrated that an illiterate and impoverished majority could be ruled by a repressive elite. The slaveholding system had established the efficacy of violence and coercion in controlling others, and the racial prejudice inherent in the colonial system survived under the black republic. A lightskinned elite assumed a disproportionate share of political and economic power.

The chaotic and personalistic nature of Haitian political culture combined with chronic underdevelopment to provide fertile ground for a succession of despots, strongmen, and dictators. Even the few national leaders whose election apparently reflected popular sentiment, such as Dumarsais Estim� (1946-50) and Fran�ois Duvalier (1957-71), rejected constitutional procedures in favor of retaining personal power. The popular revolt that deposed President for life Jean-Claude Duvalier (1971-86) demonstrated the Haitian people's rejection of parasitic despotism. At the same time, however, the revolt reaffirmed another lesson of Haitian history: violence has often been the only effective route to change.

Haiti - SPANISH DISCOVERY AND COLONIZATION

The island of Hispaniola (La Isla Espa�ola), which today is occupied by the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, was one of several landfalls Christopher Columbus made during his first voyage to the New World in 1492. Columbus established a makeshift settlement on the north coast, which he dubbed Navidad (Christmas), after his flagship, the Santa Mar�a, struck a coral reef and foundered near the site of present-day Cap Ha�tien.

The Taino Indian (or Arawak) inhabitants referred to their homeland by many names, but they most commonly used Ayti, or Hayti (mountainous). Initially hospitable toward the Spaniards, these natives responded violently to the newcomers' intolerance and abuse. When Columbus returned to Hispaniola on his second voyage in 1493, he found that Navidad had been razed and its inhabitants, slain. But the Old World's interest in expansion and its drive to spread Roman Catholicism were not easily deterred; Columbus established a second settlement, Isabela, farther to the east.

Hispaniola, or Santo Domingo, as it became known under Spanish dominion, became the first outpost of the Spanish Empire. The initial expectations of plentiful and easily accessible gold reserves proved unfounded, but the island still became important as a seat of colonial administration, a starting point for conquests of other lands, and a laboratory to develop policies for governing new possessions. It was in Santo Domingo that the Spanish crown introduced the system of repartimiento, whereby peninsulares (Spanish-born persons residing in the New World) received large grants of land and the right to compel labor from the Indians who inhabited that land.

Columbus, Santo Domingo's first administrator, and his brother Bartolom� Columbus fell out of favor with the majority of the colony's settlers, as a result of jealousy and avarice, and then also with the crown because of their failure to maintain order. In 1500 a royal investigator ordered both to be imprisoned briefly in a Spanish prison. The colony's new governor, Nicol�s de Ovando, laid the groundwork for the island's development. During his tenure, the repartimiento system gave way to the encomienda system under which all land was considered the property of the crown. The system also granted stewardship of tracts to encomenderos, who were entitled to employ (or, in practice, to enslave) Indian labor.

The Taino Indian population of Santo Domingo fared poorly under colonial rule. The exact size of the island's indigenous population in 1492 has never been determined, but observers at the time produced estimates that ranged from several thousand to several million. An estimate of 3 million, which is almost certainly an exaggeration, has been attributed to Bishop Bartolom� de Las Casas. According to all accounts, however, there were hundreds of thousands of indigenous people on the island. By 1550 only 150 Indians lived on the island. Forced labor, abuse, diseases against which the Indians had no immunity, and the growth of the mestizo (mixed European and Indian) population all contributed to the elimination of the Taino and their culture.

Several years before the Taino were gone, Santo Domingo had lost its position as the preeminent Spanish colony in the New World. Its lack of mineral riches condemned it to neglect by the mother country, especially after the conquest of New Spain (Mexico). In 1535 the Viceroyalty of New Spain, which included Mexico and the Central American isthmus, incorporated Santo Domingo, the status of which dwindled still further after the conquest of the rich kingdom of the Incas in Peru. Agriculture became the mainstay of the island's economy, but the disorganized nature of agricultural production did not approach the kind of intense productivity that was to characterize the colony under French rule.

Haiti - FRENCH COLONIALISM

Although Hispaniola never realized its economic potential under Spanish rule, it remained strategically important as the gateway to the Caribbean. The Caribbean region provided the opportunity for seafarers from Britain, France, and the Netherlands to impede Spanish shipping, to waylay galleons crammed with gold, and to establish a foothold in a hemisphere parceled by papal decree between the Roman Catholic kingdoms of Spain and Portugal. This competition was carried on throughout the Caribbean, but nowhere as intensely as on Hispaniola.

Sir Francis Drake of England led one of the most famous forays against the port of Santo Domingo in 1586, just two years before he played a key role in the English navy's defeat of the Spanish Armada. Drake failed to secure the island, but his raid, along with the arrival of corsairs and freebooters in scattered settlements, was part of a pattern of encroachment that gradually diluted Spanish dominance.

Haiti - French Settlement and Sovereignty

Reportedly expelled by the Spanish from Saint Christopher (Saint Kitts), the original French residents of Tortuga Island (Ile de la Tortue), off the northwest coast of Hispaniola, sustained themselves mostly through two means: curing the meat and tanning the hides of wild game, and pirating Spanish ships. The former activity lent these hardy souls the colorful designation of buccaneers, derived from the Arawak word for the smoking of meat. It took decades for the buccaneers and the more staid settlers that followed them to establish themselves on Tortuga. Skirmishes with Spanish and English forces were common. As the maintenance of the empire tried the wit, and drained the energies, of a declining Spain, however, foreign intervention became more forceful.

The freewheeling society of Tortuga that was often described in romantic literature had faded into legend by the end of the seventeenth century. The first permanent settlement on Tortuga was established in 1659 under the commission of King Louis XIV. French Huguenots had already begun to settle the north coast of Hispaniola by that time. The establishment in 1664 of the French West India Company for the purpose of directing the expected commerce between the colony and France underscored the seriousness of the enterprise. Settlers steadily encroached upon the northwest shoulder of the island, and they took advantage of the area's relative remoteness from the Spanish capital city of Santo Domingo. In 1670 they established their first major community, Cap Fran�ois (later Cap Fran�ais, now Cap-Ha�tien). During this period, the western part of the island was commonly referred to as Saint-Domingue, the name it bore officially after Spain relinquished sovereignty over the area to France in the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697.

Haiti - Colonial Society

By the mid-eighteenth century, a territory largely neglected under Spanish rule had become the richest and most coveted colony in the Western Hemisphere. By the eve of the French Revolution, Saint-Domingue produced about 60 percent of the world's coffee and about 40 percent of the sugar imported by France and Britain. Saint-Domingue played a pivotal role in the French economy, accounting for almost two-thirds of French commercial interests abroad and about 40 percent of foreign trade. The system that provided such largess to the mother country, such luxury to planters, and so many jobs in France had a fatal flaw, however. That flaw was slavery.

The origins of modern Haitian society lie within the slaveholding system. The mixture of races that eventually divided Haiti into a small, mainly mulatto elite and an impoverished black majority began with the slavemasters' concubinage of African women. Today Haiti's culture and its predominant religion (voodoo) stem from the fact that the majority of slaves in SaintDomingue were brought from Africa. (The slave population totalled at least 500,000, and perhaps as many as 700,000, by 1791.) Only a few of the slaves had been born and raised on the island. The slaveholding system in Saint-Domingue was particularly cruel and abusive, and few slaves (especially males) lived long enough to reproduce. The racially tinged conflicts that have marked Haitian history can be traced similarly to slavery.

While the masses of black slaves formed the foundation of colonial society, the upper strata evolved along lines of color and class. Most commentators have classified the population of the time into three groups: white colonists, or blancs; free blacks (usually mulattoes, or gens de couleur--people of color), or affranchis; and the slaves.

Conflict and resentment permeated the society of SaintDomingue . Beginning in 1758, the white landowners, or grands blancs, discriminated against the affranchis through legislation. Statutes forbade gens de couleur from taking up certain professions, marrying whites, wearing European clothing, carrying swords or firearms in public, or attending social functions where whites were present. The restrictions eventually became so detailed that they essentially defined a caste system. However, regulations did not restrict the affranchis' purchase of land, and some eventually accumulated substantial holdings. Others accumulated wealth through another activity permitted to affranchis by the grands blancs--in the words of historian C.L.R. James, "The privilege of lending money to white men." The mounting debt of the white planters to the gens de couleur provided further motivation for racial discrimination.

Haiti - THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION

Violent conflicts between white colonists and black slaves were common in Saint-Domingue. Bands of runaway slaves, known as maroons (marrons), entrenched themselves in bastions in the colony's mountains and forests, from which they harried white-owned plantations both to secure provisions and weaponry and to avenge themselves against the inhabitants. As their numbers grew, these bands, sometimes consisting of thousands of people, began to carry out hit-and-run attacks throughout the colony. This guerrilla warfare, however, lacked centralized organization and leadership. The most famous maroon leader was Fran�ois Macandal, whose six-year rebellion (1751-57) left an estimated 6,000 dead. Reportedly a boko, or voodoo sorcerer, Macandal drew from African traditions and religions to motivate his followers. The French burned him at the stake in Cap Fran�ais in 1758. Popular accounts of his execution that say the stake snapped during his execution have enhanced his legendary stature.

Many Haitians point to the maroons' attacks as the first manifestation of a revolt against French rule and the slaveholding system. The attacks certainly presaged the 1791 slave rebellion, which evolved into the Haitian Revolution. They also marked the beginning of a martial tradition for blacks, just as service in the colonial militia had done for the gens de couleur. The maroons, however, seemed incapable of staging a broad-based insurrection on their own. Although challenged and vexed by the maroons' actions, colonial authorities effectively repelled the attacks, especially with help from the gens de couleur, who were probably forced into cooperating.

The arrangement that enabled the whites and the landed gens de couleur to preserve the stability of the slaveholding system was unstable. In an economic sense, the system worked for both groups. The gens de couleur, however, had aspirations beyond the accumulation of goods. They desired equality with white colonists, and many of them desired power. The events set in motion in 1789 by the French Revolution shook up, and eventually shattered, the arrangement.

The National Assembly in Paris required the white Colonial Assembly to grant suffrage to the landed and tax-paying gens de couleur. (The white colonists had had a history of ignoring French efforts to improve the lot of the black and the mulatto populations.) The Assembly refused, leading to the first mulatto rebellion in Saint-Domingue. The rebellion, led by Vincent Og� in 1790, failed when the white militia reinforced itself with a corps of black volunteers. (The white elite was constantly prepared to use racial tension between blacks and mulattoes to advantage.) Og�'s rebellion was a sign of broader unrest in Saint-Domingue.

A slave rebellion of 1791 finally toppled the colony. Launched in August of that year, the revolt represented the culmination of a protracted conspiracy among black leaders. According to accounts of the rebellion that have been told through the years, Fran�ois-Dominique Toussaint Louverture helped plot the uprising, although this claim has never been substantiated. Among the rebellion's leaders were Boukman, a maroon and voodoo houngan (priest); Georges Biassou, who later made Toussaint his aide; Jean-Fran�ois, who subsequently commanded forces, along with Biassou and Toussaint, under the Spanish flag; and Jeannot, the bloodthirstiest of them all. These leaders sealed their compact with a voodoo ceremony conducted by Boukman in the Bois Cayman (Alligator Woods) in early August 1791. On August 22, a little more than a week after the ceremony, the uprising of their black followers began.

The carnage that the slaves wreaked in northern settlements, such as Acul, Limb�, Flaville, and Le Normand, revealed the simmering fury of an oppressed people. The bands of slaves slaughtered every white person they encountered. As their standard, they carried a pike with the carcass of an impaled white baby. Accounts of the rebellion describe widespread torching of property, fields, factories, and anything else that belonged to, or served, slaveholders. The inferno is said to have burned almost continuously for months.

News of the slaves' uprising quickly reached Cap Fran�ais. Reprisals against nonwhites were swift and every bit as brutal as the atrocities committed by the slaves. Although outnumbered, the inhabitants of Le Cap (the local diminutive for Cap Fran�ais) were well-armed and prepared to defend themselves against the tens of thousands of blacks who descended upon the port city. Despite their voodoo-inspired heroism, the ex-slaves fell in large numbers to the colonists' firepower and were forced to withdraw. The rebellion left an estimated 10,000 blacks and 2,000 whites dead and more than 1,000 plantations sacked and razed.

Even though it failed, the slave rebellion at Cap Fran�ais set in motion events that culminated in the Haitian Revolution. Mulatto forces under the capable leadership of Andr� Rigaud, Alexandre P�tion, and others clashed with white militiamen in the west and the south (where, once again, whites recruited black slaves to their cause). Sympathy with the Republican cause in France inspired the mulattoes. Sentiment in the National Assembly vacillated, but it finally favored the enfranchisement of gens de couleur and the enforcement of equal rights. Whites, who had had little respect for royal governance in the past, now rallied behind the Bourbons and rejected the radical egalitarian notions of the French revolutionaries. Commissioners from the French Republic, dispatched in 1792 to Saint-Domingue, pledged their limited support to the gens de couleur in the midst of an increasingly anarchic situation. In various regions of the colony, black slaves rebelled against white colonists, mulattoes battled white levies, and black royalists opposed both whites and mulattoes. Foreign interventionists found these unstable conditions irresistible; Spanish and British involvement in the unrest in Saint-Domingue opened yet another chapter in the revolution.

Haiti - Toussaint Louverture

Social historian James G. Leyburn has said of Toussaint Louverture that "what he did is more easily told than what he was." Although some of Toussaint's correspondence and papers remain, they reveal little of his deepest motivations in the struggle for Haitian autonomy. Born sometime between 1743 and 1746 in Saint-Domingue, Toussaint belonged to the small, fortunate class of slaves employed by humane masters as personal servants. While serving as a house servant and coachman, Toussaint received the tutelage that helped him become one of the few literate black revolutionary leaders.

Upon hearing of the slave uprising, Toussaint took pains to secure safe expatriation of his master's family. It was only then that he joined Biassou's forces, where his intelligence, skill in strategic and tactical planning (based partly on his reading of works by Julius Caesar and others), and innate leadership ability brought him quickly to prominence.

Le Cap fell to French forces, who were reinforced by thousands of blacks in April 1793. Black forces had joined the French against the royalists on the promise of freedom. Indeed, in August Commissioner L�ger-F�licit� Sonthonax abolished slavery in the colony.

Two black leaders who warily refused to commit their forces to France, however, were Jean-Fran�ois and Biassou. Believing allegiance to a king would be more secure than allegiance to a republic, these leaders accepted commissions from Spain. The Spanish deployed forces in coordination with these indigenous blacks to take the north of Saint-Domingue. Toussaint, who had taken up the Spanish banner in February 1793, came to command his own forces independently of Biassou's army. By the year's end, Toussaint had cut a swath through the north, had swung south to Gona�ves, and effectively controlled north-central Saint- Domingue.

Some historians believe that Spain and Britain had reached an informal arrangement to divide the French colony between them-- Britain to take the south and Spain, the north. British forces landed at J�r�mie and M�le Saint-Nicolas (the M�le). They besieged Port-au-Prince (or Port R�publicain, as it was known under the Republic) and took it in June 1794. The Spanish had launched a two-pronged offensive from the east. French forces checked Spanish progress toward Port-au-Prince in the south, but the Spanish pushed rapidly through the north, most of which they occupied by 1794. Spain and Britain were poised to seize Saint- Domingue, but several factors foiled their grand design. One factor was illness. The British in particular fell victim to tropical disease, which thinned their ranks far more quickly than combat against the French. Southern forces led by Rigaud and northern forces led by another mulatto commander, Villatte, also forestalled a complete victory by the foreign forces. These uncertain conditions positioned Toussaint's centrally located forces as the key to victory or defeat. On May 6, 1794, Toussaint made a decision that sealed the fate of a nation.

After arranging for his family to flee from the city of Santo Domingo, Toussaint pledged his support to France. Confirmation of the National Assembly's decision on February 4, 1794, to abolish slavery appears to have been the strongest influence over Toussaint's actions. Although the Spanish had promised emancipation, they showed no signs of keeping their word in the territories that they controlled, and the British had reinstated slavery in the areas they occupied. If emancipation wasToussaint's goal, he had no choice but to cast his lot with the French.

In several raids against his former allies, Toussaint took the Artibonite region and retired briefly to Mirebalais. As Rigaud's forces achieved more limited success in the south, the tide clearly swung in favor of the French Republicans. Perhaps the key event at this point was the July 22, 1794, peace agreement between France and Spain. The agreement was not finalized until the signing of the Treaty of Basel the following year. The accord directed Spain to cede its holdings on Hispaniola to France. The move effectively denied supplies, funding, and avenues of retreat to combatants under the Spanish aegis. The armies of Jean-Fran�ois and Biassou disbanded, and many flocked to the standard of Toussaint, the remaining black commander of stature.

In March 1796, Toussaint rescued the French commander, General Etienne-Maynard Laveaux, from a mulatto-led effort to depose him as the primary colonial authority. To express his gratitude, Laveaux appointed Toussaint lieutenant governor of Saint-Domingue. With this much power over the affairs of his homeland, Toussaint was in a position to gain more. Toussaint distrusted the intentions of all foreign parties--as well as those of the mulattoes--regarding the future of slavery; he believed that only black leadership could assure the continuation of an autonomous Saint-Domingue. He set out to consolidate his political and military positions, and he undercut the positions of the French and the resentful gens de couleur.

A new group of French commissioners appointed Toussaint commander in chief of all French forces on the island. From this position of strength, he resolved to move quickly and decisively to establish an autonomous state under black rule. He expelled Sonthonax, the leading French commissioner, who had proclaimed the abolition of slavery, and concluded an agreement to end hostilities with Britain. He sought to secure Rigaud's allegiance and thus to incorporate the majority of mulattoes into his national project, but his plan was thwarted by the French, who saw in Rigaud their last opportunity to retain dominion over the colony.

Once again, racial animosity drove events in Saint-Domingue, as Toussaint's predominantly black forces clashed with Rigaud's mulatto army. Foreign intrigue and manipulation prevailed on both sides of the conflict. Toussaint, in correspondence with United States president John Adams, pledged that in exchange for support he would deny the French the use of Saint-Domingue as a base for operations in North America. Adams, the leader of an independent, but still insecure, nation, found the arrangement desirable and dispatched arms and ships that greatly aided black forces in what is sometimes referred to as the War of the Castes. Rigaud, with his forces and ambitions crushed, fled the colony in late 1800.

After securing the port of Santo Domingo in May 1800, Toussaint held sway over the whole of Hispaniola. This position gave him an opportunity to concentrate on restoring domestic order and productivity. Like Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henri (Henry) Christophe, Toussaint saw that the survival of his homeland depended on an export-oriented economy. He therefore reimposed the plantation system and utilized nonslaves, but he still essentially relied on forced labor to produce the sugar, coffee, and other commodities needed to support economic progress. He directed this process through his military dictatorship, the form of government that he judged most efficacious under the circumstances. A constitution, approved in 1801 by the then still-extant Colonial Assembly, granted Toussaint, as Governor-general-for-life, all effective power as well as the privilege of choosing his successor.

Toussaint's interval of freedom from foreign confrontation was unfortunately brief. Toussaint never severed the formal bond with France, but his de facto independence and autonomy rankled the leaders of the mother country and concerned the governments of slave-holding nations, such as Britain and the United States. French first consul Napol�on Bonaparte resented the temerity of the former slaves who planned to govern a nation on their own. Moreover, Bonaparte regarded Saint-Domingue as essential to potential French exploitation of the Louisiana Territory. Taking advantage of a temporary halt in the wars in Europe, Bonaparte dispatched to Saint-Domingue forces led by his brother-in-law, General Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc. These forces, numbering between 16,000 and 20,000--about the same size as Toussaint's army--landed at several points on the north coast in January 1802. With the help of white colonists and mulatto forces commanded by P�tion and others, the French outmatched, outmaneuvered, and wore down the black army. Two of Toussaint's chief lieutenants, Dessalines and Christophe, recognized their untenable situation, held separate parleys with the invaders, and agreed to transfer their allegiance. Recognizing his weak position, Toussaint surrendered to Leclerc on May 5, 1802. The French assured Toussaint that he would be allowed to retire quietly, but a month later, they seized him and transported him to France, where he died of neglect in the frigid dungeon of Fort de Joux in the Jura Mountains on April 7, 1803.

The betrayal of Toussaint and Bonaparte's restoration of slavery in Martinique undermined the collaboration of leaders such as Dessalines, Christophe, and P�tion. Convinced that the same fate lay in store for Saint-Domingue, these commanders and others once again battled Leclerc and his disease-riddled army. Leclerc himself died of yellow fever in November 1802, about two months after he had requested reinforcements to quash the renewed resistance. Leclerc's replacement, General Donatien Rochambeau, waged a bloody campaign against the insurgents, but events beyond the shores of Saint-Domingue doomed the campaign to failure.

By 1803 war had resumed between France and Britain, and Bonaparte once again concentrated his energies on the struggle in Europe. In April of that year, Bonaparte signed a treaty that allowed the purchase of Louisiana by the United States and ended French ambitions in the Western Hemisphere. Rochambeau's reinforcements and supplies never arrived in sufficient numbers. The general fled to Jamaica in November 1803, where he surrendered to British authorities rather than face the retribution of the rebel leadership. The era of French colonial rule in Haiti had ended.

Haiti - INDEPENDENT HAITI

On January 1, 1804, Haiti proclaimed its independence. Through this action, it became the second independent state in the Western Hemisphere and the first free black republic in the world. Haiti's uniqueness attracted much attention and symbolized the aspirations of enslaved and exploited peoples around the globe. Nonetheless, Haitians made no overt effort to inspire, to support, or to aid slave rebellions similar to their own because they feared that the great powers would take renewed action against them. For the sake of national survival, nonintervention became a Haitian credo.

Dessalines, who had commanded the black and the mulatto forces during the final phase of the revolution, became the new country's leader; he ruled under the dictatorial 1801 constitution. The land he governed had been devastated by years of warfare. The agricultural base was all but destroyed, and the population was uneducated and largely unskilled. Commerce was virtually nonexistent. Contemplating this bleak situation, Dessalines determined, as Toussaint had done, that a firm hand was needed.

White residents felt the sting most sharply. While Toussaint, a former privileged slave of a tolerant white master, had felt a certain magnanimity toward whites, Dessalines, a former field slave, despised them with a maniacal intensity. He reportedly agreed wholeheartedly with his aide, Boisrond-Tonnerre, who stated, "For our declaration of independence, we should have the skin of a white man for parchment, his skull for an inkwell, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for a pen!" Accordingly, whites were slaughtered wholesale under the rule of Dessalines.

Although blacks were not massacred under Dessalines, they witnessed little improvement in the quality of their lives. To restore some measure of agricultural productivity, Dessalines reestablished the plantation system. Harsh measures bound laborers to their assigned work places, and penalties were imposed on runaways and on those who harbored them. Because Dessalines drew his only organizational experience from war, it was natural for him to use the military as a tool for governing the new nation. The rule of Dessalines set a pattern for direct involvement of the army in politics that continued unchallenged for more than 150 years.

In 1805 Dessalines crowned himself Emperor of Haiti. By this point, his autocratic rule had disenchanted important sectors of Haitian society, particularly mulattoes such as P�tion. The mulattoes resented Dessalines mostly for racial reasons, but the more educated and cultured gens de couleur also derided the emperor (and most of his aides and officers) for his ignorance and illiteracy. Efforts by Dessalines to bring mulatto families into the ruling group through marriage met with resistance. P�tion himself declined the offer of the hand of the emperor's daughter. Many mulattoes were appalled by the rampant corruption and licentiousness of the emperor's court. Dessalines's absorption of a considerable amount of land into the hands of the state through the exploitation of irregularities in titling procedures also aroused the ire of landowners.

The disaffection that sealed the emperor's fate arose within the ranks of the army, where Dessalines had lost support at all levels. The voracious appetites of his ruling clique apparently left little or nothing in the treasury for military salaries and provisions. Although reportedly aware of discontent among the ranks, Dessalines made no effort to redress these shortcomings. Instead, he relied on the same iron-fisted control with which he kept rural laborers in line. That his judgement in this matter had been in error became apparent on the road to Port-au-Prince as he rode with a column of troops on its way to crush a mulattoled rebellion. A group of people, probably hired by P�tion or Etienne-Elie G�rin (another mulatto officer), shot the emperor and hacked his body to pieces.

Under Dessalines the Haitian economy had made little progress despite the restoration of forced labor. Conflict between blacks and mulattoes ended the cooperation that the revolution had produced, and the brutality toward whites shocked foreign governments and isolated Haiti internationally. A lasting enmity against Haiti arose among Dominicans as a result of the emperor's unsuccessful invasion of Santo Domingo in 1805. Dessalines's failure to consolidate Haiti and to unite Haitians had ramifications in the years that followed, as the nation split into two rival enclaves.

Haiti - Christophe's Kingdom and P�tion's Republic

Many candidates succeeded Dessalines, but only three approached his stature. Most Haitians saw Henry Christophe as the most logical choice. He had served as a commander under Toussaint and could therefore claim the former leader's mantle and some of his mystique. Christophe was black like Dessalines, but he lacked Dessalines's consuming racial hatred, and he was much more pragmatic in this regard. His popularity, especially in the north, however, was not strong enough to offset the mulatto elite's growing desire to exert control over Haiti through a leader drawn from its own ranks. The mulattoes had two other candidates in mind: G�rin and P�tion, the presumed authors of Dessalines's assassination.

In November 1806, army officers and established anciens libres (pre-independence freedmen) landowners--an electorate dominated by the mulatto elite--elected a constituent assembly that was given the task of establishing a new government. Members of the assembly drafted a constitution that established a weak presidency and a comparatively strong legislature. They selected Christophe as president and P�tion as head of the legislature, the earliest attempt in Haiti to establish what would later be known as the politique de doublure (politics by understudies). Under this system, a black leader served as figurehead for mulatto elitist rule.

The only defect in the mulattoes' scheme was Christophe himself, who refused to be content with his figurehead role. He mustered his forces and marched on Port-au-Prince. His assault on the city failed, however, mainly because P�tion had artillery and Christophe did not. Indignant, but not defeated, Christophe retreated to north of the Artibonite River and established his own dominion, which he ruled from Cap Ha�tien (which he would later rechristen Cap Henry). Periodic and ineffectual clashes went on for years between this northern territory and P�tion's republic, which encompassed most of the southern half of the country and boasted Port-au-Prince as its capital.

The northern dominion became a kingdom in 1811, when Christophe crowned himself King Henry I of Haiti. Unlike Dessalines, who as emperor declared, "Only I am royal," Christophe installed a nobility of mainly black supporters and associates who assumed the titles of earls, counts, and barons.

Below this aristocratic level, life in the northern kingdom was harsh, but not nearly so cruel as the conditions that had prevailed under Dessalines. Laborers remained bound to their plantations, but working hours were liberalized, and remuneration was increased to one-fourth of the harvested crop.

Christophe was a great believer in discipline. He brought African warriors from Dahomey (present-day Benin), whom he dubbed Royal Dahomets. They served as the primary agents of his authority. Incorruptible and intensely loyal to Christophe, the Dahomets brought order to the countryside.

Many people were dissatisfied with the strictness of Christophe's regime. As productivity and export levels rose, however, the quality of their lives improved in comparison with revolutionary and immediately post-revolutionary days.

In the more permissive southern republic, where P�tion ruled as president-for-life, people's lives were not improving. The crucial difference between the northern kingdom and the southern republic was the way each treated landownership. Christophe gave ownership of the bulk of the land to the state and leased large tracts to estate managers. P�tion took the opposite approach and distributed state-owned land to individuals in small parcels. P�tion began distributing land in 1809, when he granted land to his soldiers. Later on, P�tion extended the land-grant plan to other beneficiaries and lowered the selling price of state land to a level where almost anyone could afford to own land.

P�tion's decision proved detrimental in the shaping of modern Haiti. Smallholders had little incentive to produce export crops instead of subsistence crops. Coffee, because of its relative ease of cultivation, came to dominate agriculture in the south. The level of coffee production, however, did not permit any substantial exports. Sugar, which had been produced in large quantities in Saint-Domingue, was no longer exported from Haiti after 1822. When the cultivation of cane ceased, sugar mills closed, and people lost their jobs. In the south, the average Haitian was an isolated, poor, free, and relatively content yeoman. In the north, the average Haitian was a resentful but comparatively prosperous laborer. The desire for personal autonomy motivated most Haitians more than the vaguer concept of contributing to a strong national economy, however, and defections to the south were frequent, much to the consternation of Christophe.

P�tion, who died in 1818, left a lasting imprint upon his homeland. He ruled under two constitutions, which were promulgated in 1806 and 1816. The 1806 document resembled in many ways the Constitution of the United States. The 1816 charter, however, replaced the elected presidency with the office of president for life.

P�tion's largely laissez-faire rule did not directly discriminate against blacks, but it did promote an entrenched mulatto elite that benefited from such policies as the restoration of land confiscated by Dessalines and cash reimbursement for crops lost during the last year of the emperor's rule. Despite the egalitarianism of land distribution, government and politics in the republic remained the province of the elite, especially because the control of commerce came to replace the production of commodities as the focus of economic power in Haiti. P�tion was a beneficent ruler, and he was beloved by the people, who referred to him as "Papa Bon Coeur" (Father Good Heart). But P�tion was neither a true statesman nor a visionary. Some have said that his impact on the nations of South America, through his support for rebels such as Sim�n Bol�var Palacios and Francisco de Miranda, was stronger and more positive than his impact on his own impoverished country.

Although Christophe sought a reconciliation after P�tion's death, the southern elite rejected the notion of submission to a black leader. Because the president-for-life had died without naming a successor, the republican senate selected P�tion's mulatto secretary and commander of the Presidential Guard (Garde Pr�sidentielle), General Jean-Pierre Boyer, to fill the post. In the north, King Henry committed suicide in October 1820, after having suffered a severe stroke that caused him to lose control of the army, his main source of power. The kingdom, which had been ruled by an even narrower clique than the republic, was left ripe for the taking. Boyer claimed it on October 26 at Cap Ha�tien at the head of 20,000 troops. Haiti was once again a single nation.

Haiti - Boyer: Expansion and Decline

Boyer shared P�tion's conciliatory approach to governance, but he lacked his stature as a leader. The length of Boyer's rule (1818-43) reflected his political acumen, but he accomplished little. Boyer took advantage of internecine conflict in Santo Domingo by invading and securing the Spanish part of Hispaniola in 1822. He succeeded where Toussaint and Dessalines had failed. Occupation of the territory, however, proved unproductive for the Haitians, and ultimately it sparked a Dominican rebellion.

Boyer faced drastically diminished productivity as a result of P�tion's economic policies. Most Haitians had fallen into comfortable isolation on their small plots of land, content to eke out a quiet living after years of turmoil and duress. Boyer enacted a Rural Code (Code Rural), designed to force yeomen into large-scale production of export crops. The nation, however, lacked the wherewithal, the enthusiasm, and the discipline to enforce the code.

Boyer perceived that France's continued refusal to settle claims remaining from the revolution and to recognize its former colony's independence constituted the gravest threat to Haitian integrity. His solution to the problem--payment in return for recognition--secured Haiti from French aggression, but it emptied the treasury and mortgaged the country's future to French banks, which eagerly provided the balance of the hefty first installment. The indemnity was later reduced in 1838 from 150 million francs to 60 million francs. By that time, however, the damage to Haiti had been done.

As the Haitian economy stagnated under Boyer, Haitian society ossified. The lines separating mulattoes and blacks sharpened, despite Boyer's efforts to appoint blacks to responsible positions in government. The overwhelming rate of illiteracy among even well-to-do blacks foiled Boyer's intentions. Still, his government effected no substantial improvements in the limited educational system that P�tion had established. The exclusivity of the social structure thus perpetuated itself. Many blacks found no avenues in the bureaucracy for social mobility, and they turned to careers in the military, where literacy was not a requirement.

As P�tion's successor, Boyer held the title of president-for- life. The length and relative placidity of his rule represented a period of respite for most Haitians after the violence and disorder that had characterized the emergence of their nation. Pressures gradually built up, however, as various groups, especially young mulattoes, began to chafe at the seemingly deliberate maintenance of the political and social status quo.

In the late 1830s, legislative opposition to Boyer clustered around H�rard Dumesle, a mulatto poet and liberal political thinker. Dumesle and his followers decried the anemic state of the nation's economy and its concomitant dependence on imported goods. They also disdained the continued elite adherence to French culture and urged Haitians to forge their own national identity. Their grievances against Boyer's government included corruption, nepotism, suppression of free expression, and rule by executive fiat. Banding together in a fraternity, they christened their organization the Society for the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The group of young mulattoes called for an end to Boyer's rule and for the establishment of a provisional government.

The government expelled Dumesle and his followers from the legislature and made no effort to address their grievances. The perceived intransigence of the Boyer government triggered violent clashes in the south near Les Cayes. Forces under the command of Charles Rivi�re-H�rard, a cousin of Dumesle, swept through the southern peninsula toward the capital. Boyer received word on February 11, 1843, that most of his army units had joined the rebels. A victim of what was later known as the Revolution of 1843, Boyer sailed to Jamaica. Rivi�re-H�rard replaced him in the established tradition of military rule.

Haiti - DECADES OF INSTABILITY, 1843-1915

Leyburn summarizes this chaotic era in Haitian history. "Of the twenty-two heads of state between 1843 and 1915, only one served out his prescribed term of office, three died while serving, one was blown up with his palace, one presumably poisoned, one hacked to pieces by a mob, one resigned. The other fourteen were deposed by revolution after incumbencies ranging in length from three months to twelve years." During this wide gulf between the 1843 revolution and occupation by the United States in 1915, Haiti's leadership became the most valuable prize in an unprincipled competition among strongmen. The overthrow of a government usually degenerated into a business venture, with foreign merchants--frequently Germans--initially funding a rebellion in the expectation of a substantial return after its success. The weakness of Haitian governments of the period and the potential profits to be gained from supporting a corrupt leader made such investments attractive.

Rivi�re-H�rard enjoyed only a brief tenure as president. It was restive and rebellious Dominicans, rather than Haitians, who struck one of the more telling blows against this leader. Nationalist forces led by Juan Pablo Duarte seized control of Santo Domingo on February 27, 1844. Unprofessional and undisciplined Haitian forces in the east, unprepared for a significant uprising, capitulated to the rebels. In March Rivi�re-H�rard attempted to reimpose his authority, but the Dominicans put up stiff opposition. Soon after Rivi�re-H�rard crossed the border, domestic turmoil exploded again.

Discontent among black rural cultivators, which had flared up periodically under Boyer, re-emerged in 1844 and led to greater change. Bands of ragged piquets (a term derived from the word for the pikes they brandished), under the leadership of a black, former army officer named Louis Jean-Jacques Acaau, rampaged through the south. The piquets who were capable of articulating a political position demanded an end to mulatto rule and the election of a black president. Their demands were eventually met but not by the defeated Rivi�re-H�rard, who returned home to a country where he enjoyed little support and wielded no effective power. In May 1844, his ouster by several rebel groups brought to power Philippe Guerrier, an aged black officer who had been a member of the peerage under Christophe's kingdom.

Guerrier's installation by a mulatto-dominated establishment represented the formal beginning of politique de doublure; a succession of short-lived black leaders was chosen after Guerrier in an effort to appease the piquets and to avoid renewed unrest in the countryside. During this period, two exceptions to the pattern of abbreviated rule were Faustin Soulouque (1847-59) and Fabre Nicolas Geffrard (1859-67). Soulouque, a black general of no particular distinction, was considered just another understudy when he was tapped by the legislature as a compromise between competing factions. Once in office, however, he displayed a Machiavellian taste for power. He purged the military high command, established a secret police force--known as the zinglins--to keep dissenters in line, and eliminated mulatto opponents. In August 1849, he grandiosely proclaimed himself as Haiti's second emperor, Faustin I.

Soulouque, like Boyer, enjoyed a comparatively long period of power that yielded little of value to his country. Whereas Boyer's rule had been marked by torpor and neglect, Soulouque's was distinguished by violence, repression, and rampant corruption. Soulouque's expansive ambitions led him to mount several invasions of the Dominican Republic. The Dominicans turned back his first foray in 1849 before he reached Santo Domingo. Another invasion in 1850 proved even less successful. Failed campaigns in 1855 and in 1856 fueled mounting discontent among the military; a revolt led by Geffrard, who had led a contingent in the Dominican campaign, forced the emperor out of power in 1859.

Geffrard, a dark-skinned mulatto, restored the old order of elite rule. After the turmoil of Soulouque's regime, Geffrard's rule seemed comparatively tranquil and even somewhat progressive. Geffrard produced a new constitution based largely on P�tion's 1816 document, improved transportation, and expanded education (although the system still favored the upper classes). Geffrard also signed a concordat with the Vatican in 1860 that expanded the presence of the Roman Catholic Church and its preponderantly foreign-born clergy in Haiti, particularly through the establishment of parochial schools. The move ended a period of ill will between Haiti and the church that had begun during the revolutionary period.

Intrigue and discontent among the elite and the piquets beset Geffrard throughout his rule. In 1867 General Sylvain Salnave--a light-skinned mulatto who received considerable support from blacks in the north and in the capital- -forced Geffrard from office. The overthrow profoundly unsettled the country, and Salnave's end came quickly. Rural rebellion among anti-Salnavist peasants who called themselves cacos (a term of unknown derivation) triggered renewed unrest among the piquets in the south. After several military successes, Salnave's forces weakened, and the leader fled Port-au-Prince. Caco forces captured him, however, near the Dominican border, where they tried and executed him on January 15, 1870. Successive leaders claimed control of most of the country and then regularly confirmed their rule ex post facto through a vote by the legislature, but none succeeded in establishing effective authority over the entire country.

Rebellion, intrigue, and conspiracy continued to be commonplace even under the rule of Louis Lysius F�licit� Salomon (1879-88), of the National Party (Parti National--PN), the most notable and effective president of the late nineteenth century. During one seven-year term and the beginning of a second, Salomon revived agriculture to a limited degree, attracted some foreign capital, established a national bank, linked Haiti to the outside world through the telegraph, and made minor improvements in the education system. Salomon, the scion of a prominent black family, had spent many years in France after being expelled by Rivi�re- H�rard. Salomon's support among the rural masses, along with his energetic efforts to contain elite-instigated plots, kept him in power longer than the strongmen who preceded and followed him. Still, Salomon yielded--after years of conflict with forces led by the Liberal Party (Parti Liberal--LP), and other disgruntled, power-hungry elite elements.

Political forces during the late nineteenth century polarized around the Liberal and the National parties. Mulattoes dominated the Liberal ranks, while blacks dominated the National Party; both parties were nonideological in nature. The parties competed on the battlefield, in the legislature, within the ranks of the military, and in the more refined but limited circles of the literati. The more populist Nationalists marched under the banner of their party slogan, "the greatest good for the greatest number," while the blatantly elitist Liberals proclaimed their preference for "government by the most competent."

Haitian politics remained unstable. From the fall of Salomon until occupation by the United States in 1915, eleven men held the title of president. Their tenures in office ranged from six and one-half years in the case of Florvil Hyppolite (1889-96) to only months--especially between 1912 and 1915, the turbulent period that preceded the United States occupation--in the case of seven others.

Although domestic unrest helped pave the way for intervention by the United States, geostrategic concerns also influenced events. The United States had periodically entertained the notion of annexing Hispaniola, but the divisive issue of slavery deterred the nation from acting. Until 1862 the United States refused to recognize Haiti's independence because the free, black, island nation symbolized opposition to slavery. President Ulysses S. Grant proposed annexation of the Dominican Republic in 1870, but the United States Senate rejected the idea. By the late nineteenth century, the growth of United States power and the prospect of a transoceanic canal in either Nicaragua or Panama had increased attention given to the Caribbean. Annexation faded as a policy option, but Washington persistently pursued efforts to secure naval stations throughout the region. The United States favored the M�le Saint-Nicolas as an outpost, but Haiti refused to cede territory to a foreign power.

The French and the British still claimed interests in Haiti, but it was the Germans' activity on the island that concerned the United States most. The small German community in Haiti (approximately 200 in 1910) wielded a disproportionate amount of economic power. Germans controlled about 80 percent of the country's international commerce; they also owned and operated utilities in Cap Ha�tien and Port-au-Prince, the main wharf and a tramway in the capital, and a railroad in the north. The Germans, as did the French, aiming to collect the nation's customs receipts to cover Haiti's outstanding debts to European creditors, also sought control of the nearly insolvent National Bank of Haiti. This kind of arrangement was known technically as a customs receivership.

Officials in Washington were especially concerned about Germany's aggressive employment of military might. In December 1897, a German commodore in charge of two warships demanded and received an indemnity from the Haitian government for a German national who had been deported from the island after a legal dispute. Another German warship intervened in a Haitian uprising in September 1902. It forced the captain of a rebel gunboat (that had waylaid a German merchant ship) to resort to blowing up his ship--and himself--to avoid being seized.

Reports reached Washington that Berlin was considering setting up a coaling station at the M�le Saint-Nicolas to serve the German naval fleet. This potential strategic encroachment resonated through the White House, at a time when the Monroe Doctrine (a policy that opposed European intervention in the Western Hemisphere) and the Roosevelt Corollary (whereby the United States assumed the responsibility for direct intervention in Latin American nations in order to check the influence of European powers) strongly shaped United States foreign policy, and when war on a previously unknown scale had broken out in Europe. The administration of President Woodrow Wilson accordingly began contingency planning for an occupation of Haiti.

Escalating instability in Haiti all but invited foreign intervention. The country's most productive president of the early twentieth century, Cincinnatus Leconte, had died in a freak explosion in the National Palace (Palais National) in August 1912. Five more contenders claimed the country's leadership over the next three years. General Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, who had helped to bring Leconte to power, took the oath of office in March 1915. Like every other Haitian president of the period, he faced active rebellion to his rule. His leading opponent, Rosalvo Bobo, reputedly hostile toward the United States, represented to Washington a barrier to expanded commercial and strategic ties. A pretext for intervention came on July 27, 1915, when Guillaume Sam executed 167 political prisoners. Popular outrage provoked mob violence in the streets of Port-au-Prince. A throng of incensed citizens sought out Guillaume Sam at his sanctuary in the French embassy and literally tore him to pieces. The spectacle of an exultant rabble parading through the streets of the capital bearing the dismembered corpse of their former president shocked decision makers in the United States and spurred them to swift action. The first sailors and marines landed in Port-au-Prince on July 28. Within six weeks, representatives from the United States controlled Haitian customs houses and administrative institutions. For the next nineteen years, Haiti's powerful neighbor to the north guided and governed the country.

Haiti - THE UNITED STATES OCCUPATION, 1915-34

Representatives from the United States wielded veto power over all governmental decisions in Haiti, and Marine Corps commanders served as administrators in the provinces. Local institutions, however, continued to be run by Haitians, as was required under policies put in place during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. In line with these policies, Admiral William Caperton, the initial commander of United States forces, instructed Bobo to refrain from offering himself to the legislature as a presidential candidate. Philippe Sudre Dartiguenave, the mulatto president of the Senate, agreed to accept the presidency of Haiti after several other candidates had refused on principle.

With a figurehead installed in the National Palace and other institutions maintained in form if not in function, Caperton declared martial law, a condition that persisted until 1929. A treaty passed by the Haitian legislature in November 1915 granted further authority to the United States. The treaty allowed Washington to assume complete control of Haiti's finances, and it gave the United States sole authority over the appointment of advisers and receivers. The treaty also gave the United States responsibility for establishing and running public-health and public-works programs and for supervising routine governmental affairs. The treaty also established the Gendarmerie d'Ha�ti (Haitian Constabulary), a step later replicated in the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. The Gendarmerie was Haiti's first professional military force, and it was eventually to play an important political role in the country. In 1917 President Dartiguenave dissolved the legislature after its members refused to approve a constitution purportedly authored by United States assistant secretary of the navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. A referendum subsequently approved the new constitution (by a vote of 98,225 to 768), however, in 1918. Generally a liberal document, the constitution allowed foreigners to purchase land. Dessalines had forbidden land ownership by foreigners, and since 1804 most Haitians had viewed foreign ownership as anathema.

The occupation by the United States had several effects on Haiti. An early period of unrest culminated in a 1918 rebellion by up to 40,000 former cacos and other disgruntled people. The scale of the uprising overwhelmed the Gendarmerie, but marine reinforcements helped put down the revolt at the estimated cost of 2,000 Haitian lives. Thereafter, order prevailed to a degree that most Haitians had never witnessed. The order, however, was imposed largely by white foreigners with deep-seated racial prejudices and a disdain for the notion of self-determination by inhabitants of less-developed nations. These attitudes particularly dismayed the mulatto elite, who had heretofore believed in their innate superiority over the black masses. The whites from North America, however, did not distinguish among Haitians, regardless of their skin tone, level of education, or sophistication. This intolerance caused indignation, resentment, and eventually a racial pride that was reflected in the work of a new generation of Haitian historians, ethnologists, writers, artists, and others, many of whom later became active in politics and government. Still, as Haitians united in their reaction to the racism of the occupying forces, the mulatto elite managed to dominate the country's bureaucracy and to strengthen its role in national affairs.

The occupation had several positive aspects. It greatly improved Haiti's infrastructure. Roads were improved and expanded. Almost all roads, however, led to Port-au-Prince, resulting in a gradual concentration of economic activity in the capital. Bridges went up throughout the country; a telephone system began to function; several towns gained access to clean water; and a construction boom (in some cases employing forced labor) helped restore wharves, lighthouses, schools, and hospitals. Public health improved, partially because of United States-directed campaigns against malaria and yaws (a crippling disease caused by a spirochete). Sound fiscal management kept Haiti current on its foreign-debt payments at a time when default among Latin American nations was common. By that time, United States banks were Haiti's main creditors, an important incentive for Haiti to make timely payments.

In 1922 Louis Borno replaced Dartiguenave, who was forced out of office for temporizing over the approval of a debtconsolidation loan. Borno ruled without the benefit of a legislature (dissolved in 1917 under Dartiguenave) until elections were again permitted in 1930. The legislature, after several ballots, elected mulatto St�nio Vincent to the presidency.

The occupation of Haiti continued after World War I, despite the embarrassment that it caused Woodrow Wilson at the Paris peace conference in 1919 and the scrutiny of a congressional inquiry in 1922. By 1930 President Herbert Hoover had become concerned about the effects of the occupation, particularly after a December 1929 incident in Les Cayes in which marines killed at least ten Haitian peasants during a march to protest local economic conditions. Hoover appointed two commissions to study the situation. A former governor general of the Philippines, W. Cameron Forbes, headed the more prominent of the two. The Forbes Commission praised the material improvements that the United States administration had wrought, but it criticized the exclusion of Haitians from positions of real authority in the government and the constabulary, which had come to be known as the Garde d'Ha�ti. In more general terms, the commission further asserted that "the social forces that created [instability] still remain--poverty, ignorance, and the lack of a tradition or desire for orderly free government."

The Hoover administration did not implement fully the recommendations of the Forbes Commission, but United States withdrawal was well under way by 1932, when Hoover lost the presidency to Roosevelt, the presumed author of the most recent Haitian constitution. On a visit to Cap Ha�tien in July 1934, Roosevelt reaffirmed an August 1933 disengagement agreement. The last contingent of marines departed in mid-August, after a formal transfer of authority to the Garde. As in other countries occupied by the United States in the early twentieth century, the local military was often the only cohesive and effective institution left in the wake of withdrawal.

Haiti - POLITICS AND THE MILITARY, 1934-57

The Garde was a new kind of military institution in Haiti. It was a force manned overwhelmingly by blacks, with a United States- trained black commander, Colonel D�mosth�nes P�trus Calixte. Most of the Garde's officers, however, were mulattoes. The Garde was a national organization; it departed from the regionalism that had characterized most of Haiti's previous armies. In theory, its charge was apolitical--to maintain internal order, while supporting a popularly elected government. The Garde initially adhered to this role.

President Vincent took advantage of the comparative national stability, which was being maintained by a professionalized military, to gain absolute power. A plebiscite permitted the transfer of all authority in economic matters from the legislature to the executive, but Vincent was not content with this expansion of his power. In 1935 he forced through the legislature a new constitution, which was also approved by plebiscite. The constitution praised Vincent, and it granted the executive sweeping powers to dissolve the legislature at will, to reorganize the judiciary, to appoint ten of twenty-one senators (and to recommend the remaining eleven to the lower house), and to rule by decree when the legislature was not in session. Although Vincent implemented some improvements in infrastructure and services, he brutally repressed his opposition, censored the press, and governed largely to benefit himself and a clique of merchants and corrupt military officers.

Under Calixte the majority of Garde personnel had adhered to the doctrine of political nonintervention that their Marine Corps trainers had stressed. Over time, however, Vincent and Dominican dictator Rafael Le�nidas Trujillo Molina sought to buy adherents among the ranks. Trujillo, determined to expand his influence over all of Hispaniola, in October 1937 ordered the indiscriminate butchery by the Dominican army of an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Haitians on the Dominican side of the Massacre River. Some observers claim that Trujillo supported an abortive coup attempt by young Garde officers in December 1937. Vincent dismissed Calixte as commander and sent him abroad, where he eventually accepted a commission in the Dominican military as a reward for his efforts while on Trujillo's payroll. The attempted coup led Vincent to purge the officer corps of all members suspected of disloyalty, marking the end of the apolitical military.

In 1941 Vincent showed every intention of standing for a third term as president, but after almost a decade of disengagement, the United States made it known that it would oppose such an extension. Vincent accommodated the Roosevelt administration and handed power over to Elie Lescot.

Lescot was a mulatto who had served in numerous government posts. He was competent and forceful, and many considered him a sterling candidate for the presidency, despite his elitist background. Like the majority of previous Haitian presidents, however, he failed to live up to his potential. His tenure paralleled that of Vincent in many ways. Lescot declared himself commander in chief of the military, and power resided in a clique that ruled with the tacit support of the Garde. He repressed his opponents, censored the press, and compelled the legislature to grant him extensive powers. He handled all budget matters without legislative sanction and filled legislative vacancies without calling elections. Lescot commonly said that Haiti's declared state-of-war against the Axis powers during World War II justified his repressive actions. Haiti, however, played no role in the war except for supplying the United States with raw materials and serving as a base for a United States Coast Guard detachment.

Aside from his authoritarian tendencies, Lescot had another flaw: his relationship with Trujillo. While serving as Haitian ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Lescot fell under the sway of Trujillo's influence and wealth. In fact, it was Trujillo's money that reportedly bought most of the legislative votes that brought Lescot to power. Their clandestine association persisted until 1943, when the two leaders parted ways for unknown reasons. Trujillo later made public all his correspondence with the Haitian leader. The move undermined Lescot's already dubious popular support.

In January 1946, events came to a head when Lescot jailed the Marxist editors of a journal called La Ruche (The Beehive). This action precipitated student strikes and protests by government workers, teachers, and shopkeepers in the capital and provincial cities. In addition, Lescot's mulatto-dominated rule had alienated the predominantly black Garde. His position became untenable, and he resigned on January 11. Radio announcements declared that the Garde had assumed power, which it would administer through a three-member junta.

The Revolution of 1946 was a novel development in Haiti's history, insofar as the Garde assumed power as an institution, not as the instrument of a particular commander. The members of the junta, known as the Military Executive Committee (Comit� Ex�cutif Militaire), were Garde commander Colonel Franck Lavaud, Major Antoine Levelt, and Major Paul E. Magloire, commander of the Presidential Guard. All three understood Haiti's traditional way of exercising power, but they lacked a thorough understanding of what would be required to make the transition to an elected civilian government. Upon taking power, the junta pledged to hold free elections. The junta also explored other options, but public clamor, which included public demonstrations in support of potential candidates, eventually forced the officers to make good on their promise.

Haiti elected its National Assembly in May 1946. The Assembly set August 16, 1946, as the date on which it would select a president. The leading candidates for the office--all of whom were black--were Dumarsais Estim�, a former school teacher, assembly member, and cabinet minister under Vincent; F�lix d'Orl�ans Juste Constant, leader of the Haitian Communist Party (Parti Communiste d'Ha�ti--PCH); and former Garde commander Calixte, who stood as the candidate of a progressive coalition that included the Worker Peasant Movement (Mouvement Ouvrier Paysan--MOP). MOP chose to endorse Calixte, instead of a candidate from its own ranks, because the party's leader, Daniel Fignol�, was only twenty-six years old--too young to stand for the nation's highest office. Estim�, politically the most moderate of the three, drew support from the black population in the north, as well as from the emerging black middle class. The leaders of the military, who would not countenance the election of Juste Constant and who reacted warily to the populist Fignol�, also considered Estim� the safest candidate. After two rounds of polling, legislators gave Estim� the presidency.

Estim�'s election represented a break with Haiti's political tradition. Although he was reputed to have received support from commanders of the Garde, Estim� was a civilian. Of humble origins, he was passionately anti-elitist and therefore generally antimulatto. He demonstrated, at least initially, a genuine concern for the welfare of the people. Operating under a new constitution that went into effect in November 1946, Estim� proposed, but never secured passage of, Haiti's first social- security legislation. He did, however, expand the school system, encourage the establishment of rural cooperatives, raise the salaries of civil servants, and increase the representation of middle-class and lower-class blacks in the public sector. He also attempted to gain the favor of the Garde--renamed the Haitian Army (Arm�e d'Ha�ti) in March 1947--by promoting Lavaud to brigadier general and by seeking United States military assistance.

Estim� eventually fell victim to two of the time-honored pitfalls of Haitian rule: elite intrigue and personal ambition. The elite had a number of grievances against Estim�. Not only had he largely excluded them from the often lucrative levers of government, but he also enacted the country's first income tax, fostered the growth of labor unions, and suggested that voodoo be considered as a religion equivalent to Roman Catholicism--a notion that the Europeanized elite abhorred. Lacking direct influence in Haitian affairs, the elite resorted to clandestine lobbying among the officer corps. Their efforts, in combination with deteriorating domestic conditions, led to a coup in May 1950.

To be sure, Estim� had hastened his own demise in several ways. His nationalization of the Standard Fruit banana concession sharply reduced the firm's revenues. He alienated workers by requiring them to invest between 10 percent and 15 percent of their salaries in national-defense bonds. The president sealed his fate by attempting to manipulate the constitution in order to extend his term in office. Seizing on this action and the popular unrest it engendered, the army forced the president to resign on May 10, 1950. The same junta that had assumed power after the fall of Lescot reinstalled itself. An army escort conducted Estim� from the National Palace and into exile in Jamaica. The events of May 1946 made an impression upon the deposed minister of labor, Fran�ois Duvalier. The lesson that Duvalier drew from Estim�'s ouster was that the military could not be trusted. It was a lesson that he would act upon when he gained power.

The power balance within the junta shifted between 1946 and 1950. Lavaud was the preeminent member at the time of the first coup, but Magloire, now a colonel, dominated after Estim�'s overthrow. When Haiti announced that its first direct elections (all men twenty-one or over were allowed to vote) would be held on October 8, 1950, Magloire resigned from the junta and declared himself a candidate for president. In contrast to the chaotic political climate of 1946, the campaign of 1950 proceeded under the implicit understanding that only a strong candidate backed by both the army and the elite would be able to take power. Facing only token opposition, Magloire won the election and assumed office on December 6.

Magloire restored the elite to prominence. The business community and the government benefited from favorable economic conditions until Hurricane Hazel hit the island in 1954. Haiti made some improvements on its infrastructure, but most of these were financed largely by foreign loans. By Haitian standards, Magloire's rule was firm, but not harsh: he jailed political opponents, including Fignol�, and shut down their presses when their protests grew too strident, but he allowed labor unions to function, although they were not permitted to strike. It was in the arena of corruption, however, that Magloire overstepped traditional bounds. The president controlled the sisal, cement, and soap monopolies. He and other officials built imposing mansions. The injection of international hurricane relief funds into an already corrupt system boosted graft to levels that disillusioned all Haitians. To make matters worse, Magloire followed in the footsteps of many previous presidents by disputing the termination date of his stay in office. Politicians, labor leaders, and their followers flocked to the streets in May 1956 to protest Magloire's failure to step down. Although Magloire declared martial law, a general strike essentially shut down Port-au-Prince. Again like many before him, Magloire fled to Jamaica, leaving the army with the task of restoring order.

The period between the fall of Magloire and the election of Duvalier in September 1957 was a chaotic one, even by Haitian standards. Three provisional presidents held office during this interval; one resigned and the army deposed the other two, Franck Sylvain and Fignol�. Duvalier is said to have engaged actively in the behind-the-scenes intrigue that helped him to emerge as the presidential candidate that the military favored. The military went on to guide the campaign and the elections in a way that gave Duvalier every possible advantage. Most political actors perceived Duvalier--a medical doctor who had served as a rural administrator of a United States-funded anti-yaws campaign before entering the cabinet under Estim�--as an honest and fairly unassuming leader without a strong ideological motivation or program. When elections were finally organized, this time under terms of universal suffrage (both men and women now had the vote), Duvalier, a black, painted himself as the legitimate heir to Estim�. This approach was enhanced by the fact that Duvalier's only viable opponent, Louis D�joie, was a mulatto and the scion of a prominent family. Duvalier scored a decisive victory at the polls. His followers took two-thirds of the legislature's lower house and all of the seats in the Senate.

Haiti - FRAN�OIS DUVALIER, 1957-71

Like many Haitian leaders, Duvalier produced a constitution to solidify his power. In 1961 he proceeded to violate the provisions of that constitution, which had gone into effect in 1957. He replaced the bicameral legislature with a unicameral body and decreed presidential and legislative elections. Despite a 1957 prohibition against presidential reelection, Duvalier ran for office and won with an official tally of 1,320,748 votes to zero. Not content with this sham display of democracy, he went on in 1964 to declare himself president for life. For Duvalier, the move was a matter of political tradition; seven heads of state before him had claimed the same title.

An ill-conceived coup attempt in July 1958 spurred Duvalier to act on his conviction that Haiti's independent military threatened the security of his presidency. In December the president sacked the armed forces chief of staff and replaced him with a more reliable officer. This action helped him to expand a Presidential Palace army unit into the Presidential Guard. The Guard became the elite corps of the Haitian army, and its sole purpose was to maintain Duvalier's power. After having established his own power base within the military, Duvalier dismissed the entire general staff and replaced aging Marinetrained officers with younger men who owed their positions, and presumably their loyalty, to Duvalier.

Duvalier also blunted the power of the army through a rural militia formally named the Volunteers for National Security (Volontaires de la S�curit� Nationale--VSN), but more commonly referred to as the tonton makouts (derived from the Creole term for a mythological bogeyman). In 1961, only two years afterDuvalier had established the group, the tonton makouts had more than twice the power of the army. Over time, the group gained even more power. While the Presidential Guard secured Duvalier against his enemies in the capital, the tonton makouts expanded his authority into rural areas. The tonton makouts never became a true militia, but they were more than a mere secret police force. The group's pervasive influence throughout the countryside bolstered recruitment, mobilization, and patronage for the regime.

After Duvalier had displaced the established military with his own security force, he employed corruption and intimidation to create his own elite. Corruption--in the form of government rake-offs of industries, bribery, extortion of domestic businesses, and stolen government funds--enriched the dictator's closest supporters. Most of these supporters held sufficient power to enable them to intimidate the members of the old elite who were gradually co-opted or eliminated (the luckier ones were allowed to emigrate).

Duvalier was an astute observer of Haitian life and a student of his country's history. Although he had been reared in Port-au- Prince, his medical experiences in the provinces had acquainted him with the everyday concerns of the people, their predisposition toward paternalistic authority (his patients referred to him as "Papa Doc," a sobriquet that he relished and often applied to himself), the ease with which their allegiance could be bought, and the central role of voodoo in their lives. Duvalier exploited all of these points, especially voodoo. He studied voodoo practices and beliefs and was rumored to be a houngan. He related effectively to houngan and bok� (voodoo sorcerers) throughout the country and incorporated many of them into his intelligence network and the ranks of the tonton makouts. His public recognition of voodoo and its practitioners and his private adherence to voodoo ritual, combined with his reputed practice of magic and sorcery, enhanced his popular persona among the common people (who hesitated to trifle with a leader who had such dark forces at his command) and served as a peculiar form of legitimization of his rapacious and ignoble rule.

Duvalier weathered a series of foreign-policy crises early in his tenure that ultimately enhanced his power and contributed to his megalomaniacal conviction that he was, in his words, the "personification of the Haitian fatherland." Duvalier's repressive and authoritarian rule seriously disturbed United States president John F. Kennedy. The Kennedy administration registered particular concern over allegations that Duvalier had blatantly misappropriated aid money and that he intended to employ a Marine Corps mission to Haiti not to train the regular army but to strengthen the tonton makouts. Washington acted on these charges and suspended aid in mid-1962. Duvalier refused to accept United States demands for strict accounting procedures as a precondition of aid renewal. Duvalier, claiming to be motivated by nationalism, renounced all aid from Washington. At that time, aid from the United States constituted a substantial portion of the Haitian national budget. The move had little direct impact on the Haitian people because most of the aid had been siphoned off by Duvalierist cronies anyway. Renouncing the aid, however, allowed the incipient dictator to portray himself as a principled and lonely opponent of domination by a great power. Duvalier continued to receive multilateral contributions. After Kennedy's death in November 1963, pressure on Duvalier eased, and the United States adopted a policy of grudging acceptance of the Haitian regime because of the country's strategic location near communist Cuba.

A more tense and confrontational situation developed in April 1963 between Duvalier and Dominican Republic president Juan Bosch Gavi�o. Duvalier and Bosch were confirmed adversaries; the Dominican president provided asylum and direct support to Haitian exiles who plotted against the Duvalier regime. Duvalier ordered the Presidential Guard to occupy the Dominican chancery in P�tionville in an effort to apprehend an army officer believed to have been involved in an unsuccessful attempt to kidnap the dictator's son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, and daughter, Simone Duvalier. The Dominican Republic reacted with outrage and indignation. Bosch publicly threatened to invade Haiti, and he ordered army units to the frontier. Although observers throughout the world anticipated military action that would lead to Duvalier's downfall, they saw events turn in the Haitian tyrant's favor. Dominican military commanders, who found Bosch's political leanings too far to the left, expressed little support for an invasion of Haiti. Bosch, because he could not count on his military, decided to let go of his dream to overthrow the neighboring dictatorship. Instead, he allowed the matter to be settled by emissaries of the Organization of American States (OAS).

Resistant to both domestic and foreign challenges, Duvalier entrenched his rule through terror (an estimated 30,000 Haitians were killed for political reasons during his tenure), emigration (which removed the more activist elements of the population along with thousands of purely economic migrants), and limited patronage. At the time of his death in 1971, Fran�ois Duvalier designated his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, as Haiti's new leader. To the Haitian elite, who still dominated the economy, the continuation of Duvalierism without "Papa Doc" offered financial gain and a possibility for recapturing some of the political influence lost under the dictatorship.

Haiti - JEAN-CLAUDE DUVALIER, 1971-86

The first few years after Jean-Claude Duvalier's installation as Haiti's ninth president-for-life were a largely uneventful extension of his father's rule. Jean-Claude was a feckless, dissolute nineteen-year-old, who had been raised in an extremely isolated environment and who had never expressed any interest in politics or Haitian affairs. He initially resented the dynastic arrangement that had made him Haiti's leader, and he was content to leave substantive and administrative matters in the hands of his mother, Simone Ovid Duvalier, while he attended ceremonial functions and lived as a playboy.

By neglecting his role in government, Jean-Claude squandered a considerable amount of domestic and foreign goodwill and facilitated the dominance of Haitian affairs by a clique of hard- line Duvalierist cronies who later became known as the dinosaurs. The public displayed more affection toward Jean-Claude than they had displayed for his more formidable father. Foreign officials and observers also seemed more tolerant toward "Baby Doc," in areas such as human-rights monitoring, and foreign countries were more generous to him with economic assistance. The United States restored its aid program for Haiti in 1971.

Jean-Claude limited his interest in government to various fraudulent schemes and to outright misappropriations of funds. Much of the Duvaliers' wealth, which amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars over the years, came from the R�gie du Tabac (Tobacco Administration). Duvalier used this "nonfiscal account," established decades earlier under Estim�, as a tobacco monopoly, but he later expanded it to include the proceeds from other government enterprises and used it as a slush fund for which no balance sheets were ever kept.

Jean-Claude's kleptocracy, along with his failure to back with actions his rhetoric endorsing economic and public-health reform, left the regime vulnerable to unanticipated crises that were exacerbated by endemic poverty, including the African Swine Fever (ASF) epidemic and the widely publicized outbreak of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in the 1980s. A highly contagious and fatal disease, ASF plagued pigs in the Dominican Republic in mid-1978. The United States feared that the disease would spread to North America and pressured Jean-Claude to slaughter the entire population of Haitian pigs and to replace them with animals supplied by the United States and international agencies. The Haitian government complied with this demand, but it failed to take note of the rancor that this policy produced among the peasantry. Black Haitian pigs were not only a form of "savings account" for peasants because they could be sold for cash when necessary, but they were also a breed of livestock well-suited to the rural environment because they required neither special care nor special feed. The replacement pigs required both. Peasants deeply resented this intrusion into their lives.

Initial reporting on the AIDS outbreak in Haiti implied that the country might have been a source for the human immune deficiency virus. This rumor, which turned out to be false, hurt the nation's tourism industry, which had grown during Jean-Claude Duvalier's tenure. Already minimal, public services deteriorated as Jean- Claude and his ruling clique continued to misappropriate funds from the national treasury.

Jean-Claude miscalculated the ramifications of his May 1980 wedding to Mich�le Bennett, a mulatto divorc�e with a disreputable background. (Fran�ois Duvalier had jailed her father, Ernest Bennett, for bad debts and other shady financial dealings.) Although Jean-Claude himself was light-skinned, his father's legacy of support for the black middle class and antipathy toward the established mulatto elite had enhanced the appeal of Duvalierism among the black majority of the population. By marrying a mulatto, Jean-Claude appeared to be abandoning the informal bond that his father had labored to establish. The marriage also estranged the old-line Duvalierists in the government from the younger technocrats whom Jean-Claude had appointed. The Duvalierists' spiritual leader, Jean-Claude's mother, Simone, was eventually expelled from Haiti, reportedly at the request of Mich�le, Jean-Claude's wife.

The extravagance of the couple's wedding, which cost an estimated US$3 million, further alienated the people. Popular discontent intensified in response to increased corruption among the Duvaliers and the Bennetts, as well as the repulsive nature of the Bennetts' dealings, which included selling Haitian cadavers to foreign medical schools and trafficking in narcotics. Increased political repression added to the volatility of the situation. By the mid-1980s, most Haitians felt hopeless, as economic conditions worsened and hunger and malnutrition spread.

Widespread discontent began in March 1983, when Pope John Paul II visited Haiti. The pontiff declared that "Something must change here." He went on to call for a more equitable distribution of income, a more egalitarian social structure, more concern among the elite for the well-being of the masses, and increased popular participation in public life. This message revitalized both laymen and clergy, and it contributed to increased popular mobilization and to expanded political and social activism.

A revolt began in the provinces two years later. The city of Gona�ves was the first to have street demonstrations and raids on food-distribution warehouses. From October 1985 to January 1986, the protests spread to six other cities, including Cap Ha�tien. By the end of that month, Haitians in the south had revolted. The most significant rioting there broke out in Les Cayes.

Jean-Claude responded with a 10 percent cut in staple food prices, the closing of independent radio stations, a cabinet reshuffle, and a crackdown by police and army units, but these moves failed to dampen the momentumof the popular uprising against the dynastic dictatorship. Jean-Claude's wife and advisers, intent on maintaining their profitable grip on power, urged him to put down the rebellion and to remain in office.

A plot to remove him had been well under way, however, long before the demonstrations began. The conspirators' efforts were not connected to the popular revolt, but violence in the streets prompted Jean-Claude's opponents to act. The leaders of the plot were Lieutenant General Henri Namphy and Colonel Williams Regala. Both had privately expressed misgivings about the excesses of the regime. They and other officers saw the armed forces as the single remaining cohesive institution in the country. They viewed the army as the only vehicle for an orderly transition from Duvalierism to another form of government.

In January 1986, the unrest in Haiti alarmed United States president Ronald Reagan. The Reagan administration began to pressure Duvalier to renounce his rule and to leave Haiti. Representatives appointed by Jamaican prime minister Edward Seaga served as intermediaries who carried out the negotiations. The United States rejected a request to provide asylum for Duvalier, but offered to assist with the dictator's departure. Duvalier had initially accepted on January 30, 1986. The White House actually announced his departure prematurely. At the last minute, however, Jean-Claude decided to remain in Haiti. His decision provoked increased violence in the streets.

The United States Department of State announced a cutback in aid to Haiti on January 31. This action had both symbolic and real effect: it distanced Washington from the Duvalier regime, and it denied the regime a significant source of income. By this time, the rioting had spread to Port-au-Prince.

At this point, the military conspirators took direct action. Namphy, Regala, and others confronted the Duvaliers and demanded their departure. Left with no bases of support, Jean-Claude consented. After hastily naming a National Council of Government (Conseil National de Gouvernement--CNG) made up of Namphy, Regala, and three civilians, Jean-Claude and Mich�le Duvalier departed from Haiti on February 7, 1986. They left behind them a country economically ravaged by their avarice, a country bereft of functional political institutions and devoid of any tradition of peaceful self-rule. Although the end of the Duvalier era provoked much popular rejoicing, the transitional period initiated under the CNG did not lead to any significant improvement in the lives of most Haitians. Although most citizens expressed a desire for democracy, they had no firm grasp of what the word meant or of how it might be achieved.

Haiti - GEOGRAPHY

Haiti is a country of only about 28,000 square kilometers, about the size of the state of Maryland. It occupies the western third of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (La Isla Espa�ola); the Dominican Republic takes up the eastern two-thirds. Shaped like a horseshoe on its side, Haiti has two main peninsulas, one in the north and one in the south. Between the peninsulas is the Ile de la Gon�ve.

Northwest of the northern peninsula is the Windward Passage, a strip of water that separates Haiti from Cuba, which is about ninety kilometers away. The eastern edge of the country borders the Dominican Republic. A series of treaties and protocols--the most recent of which was the Protocol of Revision of 1936--set the 388-kilometer eastern border, which is formed partly by the Pedernales River in the south and the Massacre River in the north.

The mainland of Haiti has three regions: the northern region, which includes the northern peninsula; the central region; and the southern region, which includes the southern peninsula. In addition, Haiti controls several nearby islands.

The northern region consists of the Massif du Nord (Northern Massif) and the Plaine du Nord (Northern Plain). The Massif du Nord, an extension of the central mountain range in the Dominican Republic, begins at Haiti's eastern border, north of the Guayamouc River, and extends to the northwest through the northern peninsula. The Massif du Nord ranges in elevation from 600 to 1,100 meters. The Plaine du Nord lies along the northern border with the Dominican Republic, between the Massif du Nord and the North Atlantic Ocean. This lowland area of 2,000 square kilometers is about 150 kilometers long and 30 kilometers wide.

The central region consists of two plains and two sets of mountain ranges. The Plateau Central (Central Plateau) extends along both sides of the Guayamouc River, south of the Massif du Nord. It runs eighty-five kilometers from southeast to northwest and is thirty kilometers wide. To the southwest of the Plateau Central are the Montagnes Noires, with elevations of up to approximately 600 meters. The most northwestern part of this mountain range merges with the Massif du Nord. Southwest of the Montagnes Noires and oriented around the Artibonite River is the Plaine de l'Artibonite, measuring about 800 square kilometers. South of this plain lie the Cha�ne des Matheux and the Montagnes du Trou d'Eau, which are an extension of the Sierra de Neiba range of the Dominican Republic.

The southern region consists of the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac and the mountainous southern peninsula. The Plaine du Cul-de-Sac is a natural depression, twelve kilometers wide, that extends thirtytwo kilometers from the border with the Dominican Republic to the coast of the Baie de Port-au-Prince. The mountains of the southern peninsula, an extension of the southern mountain chain of the Dominican Republic (the Sierra de Baoruco), extend from the Massif de la Selle in the east to the Massif de la Hotte in the west. The range's highest peak, the Morne de la Selle, is the highest point in Haiti, rising to an altitude of 2,715 meters. The Massif de la Hotte varies in elevation from 1,270 to 2,255 meters.

The four islands of notable size in Haitian territory are Ile de la Gon�ve, Ile de la Tortue (Tortuga Island), Grande Cayemite, and Ile � Vache. Ile de la Gon�ve is sixty kilometers long and fifteen kilometers wide. The hills that cross the island rise to heights of up to 760 meters. Ile de la Tortue is located north of the northern peninsula, separated from the city of Port-de-Paix by a twelve-kilometer channel. Ile � Vache is located south of the southern peninsula; Grande Cayemite lies north of the southern peninsula.

Numerous rivers and streams, which slow to a trickle during the dry season and which carry torrential flows during the wet season, cross Haiti's plains and mountainous areas. The largest drainage system in the country is that of the Artibonite River. Rising as the Lib�n River in the foothills of the Massif du Nord, the river crosses the border into the Dominican Republic and then forms part of the border before reentering Haiti as the Artibonite River. At the border, the river expands to form the Lac de P�ligre in the southern part of the Plateau Central. The 400-kilometer Artibonite River is only one meter deep during the dry season, and it may even dry up completely in certain spots. During the wet season, it is more than three meters deep and subject to flooding.

The ninety-five-kilometer Guayamouc River is one of the principal tributaries of the Artibonite River. The most important river in the northern region is Les Trois Rivi�res, or The Three Rivers. It is 150 kilometers long, has an average width of sixty meters, and is three to four meters deep.

The most prominent body of water in the southern region is the salt-water Etang Saum�tre, located at the eastern end of the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac. At an elevation of sixteen meters above sea level, the lake is twenty kilometers long and six to fourteen kilometers wide; it has a circumference of eighty-eight kilometers.

Haiti has a generally hot and humid tropical climate. The north wind brings fog and drizzle, which interrupt Haiti's dry season from November to January. But during February through May, the weather is very wet. Northeast trade winds bring rains during the wet season.

The average annual rainfall is 140 to 200 centimeters, but it is unevenly distributed. Heavier rainfall occurs in the southern peninsula and in the northern plains and mountains. Rainfall decreases from east to west across the northern peninsula. The eastern central region receives a moderate amount of precipitation, while the western coast from the northern peninsula to Port-au-Prince, the capital, is relatively dry. Temperatures are almost always high in the lowland areas, ranging from 15� C to 25� C in the winter and from 25� C to 35� C during the summer.

Haiti - Society

HAITI IS A DRAMATIC COUNTRY in its terrain, history, and culture. In comparison with other countries in the Caribbean, Haiti is described in superlatives: it is the most rural in its settlement pattern, the poorest, and the most densely populated. It is also the only country in the region that was born of a successful slave rebellion, and it is the first modern black republic.

Many observers have described Haitian society as stagnant, but in recent years, changes have begun. By the 1980s, the population of Haiti surpassed 5 million. Although the country continued to be overwhelmingly rural, urbanization was accelerating as the impact of soil erosion and land fragmentation on agricultural productivity forced increasing numbers of peasants to migrate to Port-au-Prince and even overseas. The population of Port-au-Prince was expected to reach 1 million by the end of the 1980s. Haiti's peasants had traditionally relied on the extended family and cooperative labor as a means for taking care of each other, but by the late 1980s, this aspect of the culture had disintegrated. Deteriorating economic conditions were forcing the poor to find new ways to eke out a living from the land, or to survive in urban slums. An unstable, but politically significant, black middle class had emerged between the traditional, mainly mulatto, elite and the peasantry. Migration and the penetration of foreign missions and nongovernmental organizations to the more remote parts of Haiti created new kinds of relationships with the outside world. The transportation and the communications systems had been greatly improved, and Creole-language radio brought news of domestic and international affairs to the country's isolated villages.

The weight of the past bore heavily on the daily lives of all Haitians in the 1980s. The country's legacy of slavery and French colonization had left a lasting imprint on the culture. In the past, members of the upper class cherished Franco-Haitian culture because the French language and manners separated them from the masses whom they wished to rule. At the same time, former slaves created a peasant culture, but always in the shadow of their urban superiors. Haiti's dual cultural heritage resulted in negative attitudes toward Haitian peasant life, particularly toward the Creole language, traditional marriages, and voodoo, the folk religion. The recent emergence of a middle class has only exacerbated the debate over what should be considered "true" Haiti.

Haiti - Population

The estimated population of Haiti in 1989 was 6.1 million, with an average population density of 182 people per square kilometer. Some 75 percent of the population lived in rural areas, while only 25 percent remained in urban areas; this was one of the lowest urban-to-rural population ratios in Latin America and the Caribbean. The estimated annual population growth rate between 1971 and 1982 was 1.4 percent. The crude mortality rate in 1982 was estimated to be 16.5 percent, with a crude birth rate of 36 percent. A profile of the population reveals that the majority of Haitians are young.

Haiti has conducted only a few censuses throughout its history. A survey taken during 1918 and 1919 indicated that there were about 1.9 million people in the country. The first formal census, taken in 1950, showed that the population had reached 3.1 million. The second census, in 1971, indicated a population of 4.2 million. Critics have argued that these censuses, along with one taken in 1982 (the final results of which were still unavailable as of 1989), were deficient and that they seriously undercounted the population.

Urban areas, particularly Port-au-Prince, grew significantly in the 1970s and the 1980s. The annual population growth rate of metropolitan Port-au-Prince was estimated to be 3.5 percent between 1971 and 1982, substantially above the 1.4 percent national rate for that period. The growth rate for other urban areas was estimated at 2.4 percent. Metropolitan Port-au-Prince, which includes the capital and the suburbs of Delmas and Carrefour, was by far the largest urban area, in 1982, with a population of 763,188, or about 61 percent of the total urban population. The population of the second largest city, CapHa�tien , was estimated to be 64,400 in 1982. The next two largest towns, Gona�ves and Les Cayes, had estimated populations of slightly more than 34,000. Six other towns had populations greater than 10,000.

The rural population, which grew about 1 percent a year between 1971 and 1982, was estimated to be 3.8 million in 1982, 3.4 million in 1971, and 2.7 million in 1950. In 1982 there were about 464 people per square kilometer in rural areas, one of the highest population densities in the Western Hemisphere.

The population growth rate in Haiti's rural areas has been lower than the rate for urban areas, even though fertility rates are higher in rural areas. The main reason for this disparity is outmigration. People in rural areas have moved to cities, or they have emigrated to other countries, mostly the United States and the Dominican Republic. An estimated 1 million people left Haiti between 1957 and 1982.

Many of the emigrants in the 1950s and the 1960s were urban middle-class and upper-class opponents of the government of Fran�ois Duvalier (1957-71). Throughout the 1970s, however, an increasing number of rural and lower-class urban Haitians emigrated, too. In the 1980s, as many as 500,000 Haitians were living in the United States; there were large communities in New York, Miami, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Thousands of Haitians also illegally emigrated to the United States through nonimmigrant visas, while others entered the United States without any documentation at all.

The first reports of Haitians' arriving in the United States, by boat and without documentation, occurred in 1972. Between 1972 and 1981, the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) reported more than 55,000 Haitian "boat people" arrived in Florida. The INS estimated that because as many as half of the arrivals escaped detection, the actual number of boat people may have exceeded 100,000. An unknown number of Haitians are reported to have died during their attempts to reach the United States by sea.

Though poorer than earlier immigrants, the boat people were often literate and skilled, and all had families who could afford the price of a passage to Florida. About 85 percent of these boat people settled in Miami.

In September 1981, the United States entered an agreement with Haiti to interdict Haitian boats and return prospective immigrants to Haiti. Under the agreement, 3,107 Haitians had been returned by 1984. Nevertheless, clandestine departures by boat continued throughout the 1980s. The Bahamas was another destination of Haitian emigrants; an estimated 50,000 arrived there by boat during the 1980s. The Bahamas had welcomed Haitian immigrants during the 1960s, but in the late 1970s, it reversed its position, leading to increased emigration to Florida.

Since the early twentieth century, the Dominican Republic has received both temporary and permanent Haitian migrants. The International Labour Office estimated that between 200,000 and 500,000 Haitians resided in the Dominican Republic in 1983. About 85,000 of them lived on cane plantations. In the early 1980s, about 80 to 90 percent of the cane cutters in the Dominican Republic were reported to be Haitians. Through an accord with the Haitian government, the Dominican Republic imported Haitian workers to cut cane. In 1983 the Dominican Republic hired an estimated 19,000 workers. Evidence presented to the United Nations (UN) Working Group on Slavery revealed that the Dominican Republic paid wages that were miserably low and that working and living conditions failed to meet standards set by the two governments. According to some reports, Haitian cane cutters were unable to leave their workplaces, and they were prevented from learning about the terms of the contracts under which they had been hired.

Emigration helped moderate Haiti's population growth. Furthermore, annual remittances from abroad, estimated to be as high as US$100 million, supported thousands of poor families and provided an important infusion of capital into the Haitian economy. At the same time, emigration resulted in a heavy loss of professional and skilled personnel from urban and rural areas.

A number of studies show that Haiti's fertility rate declined significantly from the early 1960s to the early 1980s. As was true in other countries, there appeared to be a correlation among declining fertility rates, urban residence, and literacy. The 1977 Haitian Fertility Survey found that between 1962 and 1977, the fertility rate of urban literate women declined by 33 percent. In contrast, the rate for rural illiterate women declined by only 7 percent during the same period. Moreover, the fertility rate of literate rural women declined by 27 percent, while that of illiterate urban women declined by 15 percent.

Haitian women interviewed in the 1977 survey indicated that they desired between three and four children, but at that time, the average woman had more than five children.

Expressed desire for family planning services exceeded available programs, and many women lacked access to modern contraceptives and birth-control information. The survey found that, despite the widespread desire for fewer children, only 7 percent of women of childbearing age were using modern contraceptives. Haitian men traditionally shunned the use of condoms. The fertility survey reported a condom-use rate of only 1 percent. The absence of more recent surveys made it impossible to determine whether or not condom use had risen in response to the high incidence of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in Haiti.

As a result of the extinction of the indigenous population by the beginning of the seventeenth century, the population of preindependence Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) was entirely the product of the French colonists' slaveholding policies and practices. The major planters and government officials who constituted the ruling class carefully controlled every segment of the population, especially the majority of African slaves and their descendants. Society was structured for the rapid production of wealth for the planters and their investors in France.

In the colonial period, the French imposed a three-tiered social structure. At the top of the social and political ladder was the white elite (grands blancs). At the bottom of the social structure were the black slaves (noirs), most of whom had been transported from Africa. Between the white elite and the slaves arose a third group, the freedmen (affranchis), most of whom were descended from unions of slaveowners and slaves. Some mulatto freedmen inherited land, became relatively wealthy, and owned slaves (perhaps as many as one-fourth of all slaves in Saint-Domingue belonged to affranchis). Nevertheless, racial codes kept the affranchis socially and politically inferior to the whites. Also between the white elite and the slaves were the poor whites (petits blancs), who considered themselves socially superior to the mulattoes, even if they sometimes found themselves economically inferior to them. Of a population of 519,000 in 1791, 87 percent were slaves, 8 percent were whites, and 5 percent were freedmen. Because of harsh living and working conditions, many slaves died, and new slaves were imported. Thus, at the time of the slave rebellion of 1791, most slaves had been born in Africa rather than in Saint-Domingue.

The Haitian Revolution changed the country's social structure. The colonial ruling class, and most of the white population, was eliminated, and the plantation system was largely destroyed. The earliest black and mulatto leaders attempted to restore a plantation system that relied on an essentially free labor force, through strict military control, but the system collapsed during the tenure of Alexandre P�tion (1806-18). The Haitian Revolution broke up plantations and distributed land among the former slaves. Through this process, the new Haitian upper class lost control over agricultural land and labor, which had been the economic basis of colonial control. To maintain their superior economic and social position, the new Haitian upper class turned away from agricultural pursuits in favor of more urban-based activities, particularly government.

The nineteenth-century Haitian ruling class consisted of two groups, the urban elite and the military leadership. The urban elite were primarily a closed group of educated, comparatively wealthy, and French-speaking mulattoes. Birth determined an individual's social position, and shared values and intermarriage reinforced class solidarity. The military, however, was a means of advancement for disadvantaged black Haitians. In a shifting, and often uneasy, alliance with the military, the urban elite ruled the country and kept the peasantry isolated from national affairs. The urban elite promoted French norms and models as a means of separating themselves from the peasantry. Thus, French language and manners, orthodox Roman Catholicism, and light skin were important criteria of high social position. The elite disdained manual labor, industry, and commerce in favor of the more genteel professions, such as law and medicine.

A small, but politically important, middle class emerged during the twentieth century. Although social mobility increased slightly, the traditional elite retained their economic preeminence, despite countervailing efforts by Fran�ois Duvalier. For the most part, the peasantry continued to be excluded from national affairs, but by the 1980s, this isolation had decreased significantly. Still, economic hardship in rural areas caused many cultivators to migrate to the cities in search of a higher standard of living, thereby increasing the size of the urban lower class.

In the 1980s, Haiti's upper class constituted as little as 2 percent of the total population, but it controlled about 44 percent of the national income. The upper class included not only the traditional elite, which had not controlled the government for more than thirty years, but also individuals who had become wealthy and powerful through their connections with the governments of Fran�ois Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier. Increased access to education helped carry some individuals into the ranks of the upper class. Others were able to move upward because of wealth they accrued in industry or export-import businesses.

The traditional elite held key positions in trade, industry, real estate, and the professions, and they were identified by membership in "good families," which claimed several generations of recognized legal status and name. Being a member of the elite also required a thorough knowledge of cultural refinements, particularly the customs of the French. Light skin and straight hair continued to be important characteristics of this group. French surnames were common among the mulatto elite, but increased immigration from Europe and the Middle East in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries had introduced German, English, Danish, and Arabic names to the roster.

The only group described as an ethnic minority in Haiti was the "Arabs," people descended from Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian traders who began to arrive in Haiti and elsewhere in the Caribbean in the late nineteenth century. From their beginnings, as itinerant peddlers of fabrics and other dry goods, the Arabs moved into the export-import sector, engendering the hostility of Haitians and foreign rivals. Nevertheless, the Arabs remained. Many adopted French and Creole as their preferred languages, took Haitian citizenship, and integrated themselves into the upper and the middle classes. Formerly spurned by elite mulatto families and excluded from the best clubs, the Arabs had begun to intermarry with elite Haitians and to take part in all aspects of upper-class life, including entry into the professions and industry.

Haiti - The Middle Class

The middle class was essentially nonexistent during the nineteenth century. But at about the time of the United States occupation (1915-34), it became more defined. The creation of a professional military and the expansion of government services fostered the development of Haiti's middle class. Educational reform in the 1920s, an upsurge in black consciousness, and the wave of economic prosperity after World War II also contributed to the strengthening of the class. In the late 1980s, the middle class probably made up less than 5 percent of the total population, but it was growing, and it was becoming more politically powerful.

The mulatto elite dominated governments in the 1930s and the early 1940s and thwarted the political aspirations of the black middle class. President Dumarsais Estim� (1946-50) came to power with the aim of strengthening the middle class. The Duvalier government also claimed the allegiance of the black middle class, at least through the 1970s. During the Duvalier period, many in the middle class owed their economic security to the government. A number of individuals from this class, however, benefited from institutionalized corruption.

Some members of the middle class had acquired political power by the 1980s, but most continued to be culturally ambivalent and insecure. Class solidarity, identity, and traditions were all weak. The criteria for membership in the middle class included a nonmanual occupation, a moderate income, literacy, and a mastery of French. Middle-class Haitians sought upward mobility for themselves and their children, and they perceived education and urban residence as two essential keys to achieving higher status. Although they attempted to emulate the lifestyle of the upper class, middle-class Haitians resented the social preeminence and the color prejudice of the elite. Conflicts between the FrancoHaitian and the Afro-Haitian cultural traditions were most common among the middle class.

Haiti - Peasants

Haiti's peasantry constituted approximately 75 percent of the total population. Unlike peasants in much of Latin America, most of Haiti's peasants had owned land since the early nineteenth century. Land was the most valuable rural commodity, and peasant families went to great lengths to retain it and to increase their holdings.

Peasants in general had control over their landholdings, but many lacked clear title to their plots. Haiti has never conducted 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 resulted in farm plots that became too small to warrant the high costs of a surveyor. Heirs occasionally surveyed land before taking possession of it, but more frequently, heirs divided plots among themselves in the presence of community witnesses and often a notary. Some inherited land was not divided, but was used in common, for example, for pasture, or it was worked by heirs in rotation. Families commonly sold land to raise cash for such contingencies as funerals or to pay the expenses of emigration. Purchasers often held land with a notarized paper, rather than a formal deed.

There were strata within the peasantry based on the amount of property owned. Many peasants worked land as sharecroppers or tenants, and some hoped eventually to inherit the plots they worked. Some tenant farmers owned and cultivated plots in addition to the land they worked for others. The number of entirely landless peasants who relied solely on wage labor was probably quite small. Agricultural wages were so low that peasants deprived of land were likely to migrate to urban areas in search of higher incomes. Wealthier peasants maintained their economic positions through the control of capital and influence in local politics.

Peasants maintained a strong, positive identity as Haitians and as cultivators of the land, but they exhibited a weak sense of class consciousness. Rivalries among peasants were more common than unified resentment toward the upper class.

Cooperation among peasants diminished during the twentieth century. Farms run by nuclear families and exchanges among extended families had formed the basis of the agrarian system. Until the middle of the twentieth century, collective labor teams, called kounbit, and larger labor-exchange groups were quite common. These groups were formed to carry out specific tasks on an individual's land; the owner provided music and a festive meal. After the 1940s, smaller groups, called eskouad,began to replace the kounbit. The eskouad carried out tasks on a strictly reciprocal basis or sold their collective labor to other peasants.

Although Haitian peasant villages generally lacked a sense of community and civic-mindedness, some civic-action groups had emerged over the years. After the 1960s, wealthy peasants led rural community councils, which were supervised by the government. These councils often served more to control the flow of development resources into an area than to represent the local population. In the 1980s, a countervailing movement of small peasant groups (groupman) emerged with support from the Roman Catholic Church, principally in the Plateau Central. The groupman discussed common interests and undertook some cooperative activities. Both the Duvalier governments and the succeeding National Council of Government (Conseil National de Gouvernement--CNG), headed by Lieutenant General Henri Namphy, took steps to curb the activities of these peasant groups.

The first generation of Haitian peasants pursued selfsufficiency , freedom, and peace. The necessity of devoting at least some share of their limited hectarage to the production of cash crops, however, hindered the peasants' ability to achieve self-sufficiency in the cultivation of domestic staples. Although they acquired a degree of freedom, they also found themselves isolated from the rest of the nation and the world. In the second half of the twentieth century, the Haitian peasantry gradually became much less isolated. Several factors accelerated the peasants' involvement with the outside world in the 1970s and the 1980s. Road projects improved the transportation system, and foreign religious missions and private development agencies penetrated the rural areas. These organizations brought new resources and provided an institutional link to the outside world. Many people from almost every community had migrated to Port-au-Prince or overseas, and they sent money home to rural areas. Cassette tapes enabled illiterate people who had traveled far from home to communicate with their families. Creole, which became widely used on radio, brought news of Haiti and the world to remote villages. And in 1986, media coverage of the fall of the Duvalier regime put rural Haitians in touch with the political affairs of the nation.

Haiti - Urban Lower Class

The urban lower class, which made up about 15 percent of the total population in the early 1980s, was concentrated in Port-au- Prince and the major coastal towns. Increased migration from rural areas contributed greatly to the growth of this class. Industrial growth was insufficient, however, to absorb the labor surplus produced by the burgeoning urbanization; unemployment and underemployment were severe in urban areas. The urban lower class was socially heterogeneous, and it had little class consciousness. One outstanding characteristic of this group was its commitment to education. Despite economic hardships, urban lower-class parents made a real effort to keep their children in school throughout the primary curriculum. Through education and political participation, some members of the lower class achieved mobility into the middle class.

The poorest strata of the urban lower class lived under Haiti's worst sanitary and health conditions. According to the World Bank, one-third of the population of Portau -Prince lived in densities of more than 1,000 people per hectare in 1976. The poorest families consumed as few as seven liters of water per person, per day, for cooking, drinking, and cleaning, and they spent about one-fifth of their income to obtain it. For many of these families, income and living conditions worsened in the 1980s.

Haiti - GENDER ROLES AND FAMILY LIFE

In rural areas, men and women played complementary roles. Men were primarily responsible for farming and, especially, for heavy work, such as tilling. Women, however, often assisted with tasks such as weeding and harvesting. Women were responsible for selling agricultural produce. In general, Haitian women participated in the labor force to a much greater extent than did women in other Latin American countries. Haiti's culture valued women's economic contribution to the farm in that all income generated through agricultural production belonged to both husband and wife. Many women also acquired sufficient capital to become full-time market traders, and they were thus economically independent. The income that they earned from nonfarm business activities was recognized as their own; they were not required to share it with their husbands.

The most common marital relationship among peasants and the urban lower class was known as plasaj. The government did not recognize plasaj as legitimate marriage, but in lowerclass communities, these relationships were considered normal and proper. The husband and wife often made an explicit agreement about their economic relationship at the beginning of a marriage. These agreements usually required the husband to cultivate at least one plot of land for the wife and to provide her with a house. Women performed most household tasks, though men often did heavy chores, such as gathering firewood.

For the most part, lower-class men and women had civil and religious marriages for reasons of prestige rather than to legitimize marital relations. Because weddings were expensive, many couples waited several years before having them. In the 1960s, this pattern began to change among Protestant families who belonged to churches that strongly encouraged legal marriage and provided affordable weddings. It was not unusual for peasants to have more than one marital relationship. Some entered into polygamous marriages, which only a few men could afford.

Legal marriages were neither more stable nor more productive than plasaj relationships. Also, legal marriages were not necessarily monogamous. In fact, legally married men were often more economically stable than men in plasaj relationships, so it was easier for them to separate from their wives or to enter into extramarital relationships.

Men and women both valued children and both contributed to child care, but women generally bore most of the burden. Parents were proud of their children, regardless of whether they were born in a marital relationship or as "outside children." Parents took pains to ensure that all of their children received equal inheritances.

Family structure in rural Haiti has changed since the nineteenth century. Until the early part of the twentieth century, the lakou, an extended family, usually defined along male lines, was the principal family form. The term lakou referred not only to the family members, but to the cluster of houses in which they lived. Members of a lakou worked cooperatively, and they provided each other with financial and other kinds of support. Land ownership was not cooperative, however, and successive generations of heirs inherited individual plots. Under the pressure of population growth and the increasing fragmentation of landholdings, the lakou system disintegrated. By the mid-twentieth century, the nuclear family had become the norm among peasants. The lakou survived as a typical place of residence, but the cooperative labor and the social security provided by these extended families disappeared. Haitian peasants still relied on their kin for support, but the extended family sometimes became an arena for land disputes as much as a mechanism for cooperation.

Family life among the traditional elite was substantially different from that of the lower class. Civil and religious marriages were the norm, and the "best" families could trace legally married ancestors to the nineteenth century. Because of the importance of intermarriage, mulatto elite families were often interrelated. Marital relationships have changed somewhat since the mid-twentieth century. Divorce, once rare, has become acceptable. Elite wives, once exclusively homemakers surrounded by servants, entered the labor force in increasing numbers in the 1970s and the 1980s. The legal rights of married women, including rights to property, were expanded through legislation in the 1980s. In addition, the elite had a broader choice of partners as economic change and immigration changed the composition of that group.

Haiti - LANGUAGE

Two languages were spoken in Haiti: Creole and French. The social relationship between these languages was complex. Nine of every ten Haitians spoke only Creole, which was the everyday language for the entire population. About one in ten also spoke French. And only about one in twenty was fluent in both French and Creole. Thus, Haiti was neither a francophone country nor a bilingual one. Rather, two separate speech communities existed: the monolingual majority and the bilingual elite.

All classes valued verbal facility. Public speaking played an important role in political life; the style of the speech was often more important than the content. Repartee enlivened the daily parlance of both the monolingual peasant and the sophisticated bilingual urbanite. Small groups gathered regularly in Port-au-Prince to listen to storytellers. Attitudes toward French and Creole helped to define the Haitians' cultural dilemma.

Language usually complicated interactions between members of the elite and the masses. Haitians of all classes took pride in Creole as a means of expression and as the national tongue. Nevertheless, many monolingual and bilingual Haitians regarded Creole as a nonlanguage, claiming that "it has no rules." Thus, the majority of the population did not value their native language and built a mystique around French. At the same time, almost every bilingual Haitian had ambivalent feelings about using French and did so uncomfortably. In Creole the phrase "to speak French" means "to be a hypocrite."

Fluency in French served as an even more important criterion than skin color for membership in the Haitian elite. The use of French in public life excluded the Creole-speaking majority from politics, government, and intellectual life. Bilingual families used French primarily for formal occasions. Because Creole was the language of informal gatherings, it was filled with slang and was used for telling jokes. Haitian French lacked these informal qualities. Monolingual Creole speakers avoided formal situations where their inability to communicate in French would be a disadvantage or an embarrassment. In an attempt to be accepted in formal or governmental circles, some monolingual Creole speakers used French-sounding phrases in their Creole speech, but these imitations were ultimately of little or no use. Middle-class bilinguals in Port-au-Prince suffered the greatest disadvantage because they frequently encountered situations in which the use of French would be appropriate, but their imperfect mastery of the language tended to betray their lower-class origins. It was in the middle class that the language issue was most pressing. The use of French as a class marker made middle-class Haitians more rigid in their use of French on formal occasions than Haitians who were solidly upper class.

The origins of Creole are still debated. Some scholars believe that it arose from a pidgin that developed between French colonists and African slaves in the colonies. Others believe that Creole came to the colony of Saint-Domingue as a full-fledged language, having arisen from the French maritime-trade dialect. Whatever its origins, Creole is linguistically a separate language and not just a corrupted French dialect. Although the majority of Creole words have French origins, Creole's grammar is not similar to that of French, and the two languages are not mutually comprehensible.

There are regional and class variations in Creole. Regional variations include lexical items and sound shifts, but the grammatical structure is consistent throughout the country. Bilingual speakers tend to use French phonemes in their Creole speech. The tendency to use French sounds became common in the Port-au-Prince variant of Creole. By the 1980s, the Port-au- Prince variant was becoming perceived as the standard form of the language.

The use of French and Creole during the colonial and the independence periods set speech patterns for the next century. During the colonial period, it was mostly whites and educated mulatto freedmen who spoke French. When the slaves gained their freedom and the plantation system disintegrated, the greatest barriers among the various classes of people of color collapsed. French language became a vital distinction between these who had been emancipated before the revolution (the anciens libres) and those who achieved freedom through the revolution, and it ensured the superior status of the anciens libres. French became the language not only of government and commerce, but also of culture and refinement. Even the most nationalist Haitians of the nineteenth century placed little value on Creole.

Attitudes toward Creole began to change during the twentieth century, however, especially during the United States occupation. The occupation forced Haitian intellectuals to confront their non-European heritage. A growing black consciousness and intensifying nationalism led many Haitians to consider Creole as the "authentic" language of the country. The first attempt at a Creole text appeared in 1925, and the first Creole newspaper was published in 1943.

Beginning in the 1950s, a movement to give Creole official status evolved slowly. The constitution of 1957 reaffirmed French as the official language, but it permitted the use of Creole in certain public functions. In 1969 a law was passed giving Creole limited legal status; the language could be used in the legislature, the courts, and clubs, but not in accredited educational institutions. In 1979, however, a decree permitted Creole as the language of instruction in the classroom. The constitution of 1983 declared that both Creole and French were the national languages but specified that French would be the official language. The suppressed 1987 Constitution (which was partially reinstated in 1989) gave official status to Creole.

The use of Creole, even in formal settings, increased throughout the 1970s and the 1980s. Conversations at elite dinner tables, once held rigidly in French, switched fluidly between French and Creole, even within the same sentence. Radio and television stations increased broadcasts in Creole as advertisers learned the utility of reaching the vast majority of their market. Radio provided widespread access to news, which helped to break down the isolation of the peasantry and to galvanize the population during the crisis that led to the fall of the Duvalier regime. In 1986 it became obvious that important changes had taken place in Haiti, as people who had been in exile for years began to return home to run for the presidency. Many arrived at the Port-au-Prince airport with French speeches in hand but found themselves confronted by journalists who insisted on speaking Creole.

The emergence of English as an important language of business affected attitudes toward French. Growing trade with the United States and the development of assembly industries funded by investors from the United States led to greater use of English in commercial settings. English also became more important as Haitians migrated to the United States and as many members of the elite sent their children to North American educational institutions.

English cut across class lines. Hundreds of French-speaking elite families spent years of exile in the United States during the Duvalier period, and they returned to Haiti fluent in English. Many Creole speakers who went to the United States also returned to Haiti as fluent English speakers. Haitian migration to the United States and trade with North America also resulted in the introduction of English words into the Creole lexicon. For many monolinguals, learning English appeared more practical than learning French, and English posed fewer psychological and social obstacles. The availability and the popularity of Englishlanguage television programs on Haiti's private cable service helped familiarize Haitians with the language. Spanish also had become fairly wide in Haiti, largely because of migration to the Dominican Republic.

Haiti - Creole, Literacy, and Education

Conflicting political interests have caused Haiti's national language policy to be inconsistent. Even governments that claimed to represent the masses hesitated to give Creole and French equal legal status. It was only in the late 1970s that the government approved the use of Creole in education. In the early 1980s, there was still some doubt about whether Creole would used in primary education.

For almost fifty years, Haitian linguists had debated the spelling rules for Creole. But in the late 1970s, the National Pedagogic Institute (Institut P�dagogique Nacional--IPN) developed an orthography that included elements of the two systems previously in use. The government gave semiofficial status to the new orthography as part of the education reform of 1978.

The most controversial aspect of the education reform was the introduction of Creole as the medium of instruction in primary schools. In many rural and urban schools, textbooks were in French, but classroom discussion of these books was in Creole. Nevertheless, French remained the official language of instruction, and a major goal of most students was to master written and spoken French.

The education reform program was intended to boost students' performance through instruction in their native language, but several groups opposed the use of Creole as the language of instruction. Bilingual families believed that the use of Creole in the schools was eroding their linguistic advantage in society, by reducing the importance of French. In general, the upper class believed that by offering instruction in Creole, the schools would increase poor people's access to education; however, many poor people also opposed the reform. The poor tended to view education more as a means of escaping poverty than as a means for learning, so many parents were most concerned about having their children learn French. Private schools often ignored the curriculum changes called for under the reform. Under pressure from the public, the government declared that students would begin using French when they entered the fifth grade. Students entering fifth grade found themselves unprepared for classroom use of French, however, because their textbooks in earlier grades had been entirely in Creole. The problem remained unresolved in the late 1980s.

In the 1960s, the government had established adult literacy programs in Creole, and the Roman Catholic Church had sponsored similar nationwide programs in the mid-1980s. According to Haiti's 1982 census, 37 percent of the population over ten years of age was literate; in rural areas, only 28 percent was literate. In rural areas, the literacy rate for women was almost as high as it was for men. The census failed to note, however, the degree of literacy, or the language in which people were literate.

Monolingual speakers had little access to literature in Creole. The major Creole publication, the monthly Bon Nouvel, published by a Roman Catholic group, had a circulation of 20,000 in 1980. A Protestant group published the New Testament in Creole in 1972. Numerous booklets about hygiene and agricultural practices appeared in increasing quantities in the 1970s and the 1980s. Nevertheless, Creole literature continued to be scarce in the late 1980s. In particular, information in Creole about politics and current events was in short supply. By the late 1980s, monolingual speakers regularly used Creole in letters and personal notes. Community leaders and development workers also used the language in recording the minutes of their meetings and in project reports.

Haiti - RELIGION

Roman Catholicism is the official religion of Haiti, but voodoo may be considered the country's national religion. The majority of Haitians believe in and practice at least some aspects of voodoo. Most voodooists believe that their religion can coexist with Catholicism. Most Protestants, however, strongly oppose voodoo. Voodoo

Misconceptions about voodoo have given Haiti a reputation for sorcery and zombies. Popular images of voodoo have ignored the religion's basis as a domestic cult of family spirits. Adherents of voodoo do not perceive themselves as members of a separate religion; they consider themselves Roman Catholics. In fact, the word for voodoo does not even exist in rural Haiti. The Creole word vodoun refers to a kind of dance and in some areas to a category of spirits. Roman Catholics who are active voodooists say that they "serve the spirits," but they do not consider that practice as something outside of Roman Catholicism. Haitians also distinguish between the service of family spirits and the practice of magic and sorcery.

The belief system of voodoo revolves around family spirits (often called loua or mist�) who are inherited through maternal and paternal lines. Loua protect their "children" from misfortune. In return, families must "feed" the loua through periodic rituals in which food, drink, and other gifts are offered to the spirits. There are two kinds of services for the loua. The first is held once a year; the second is conducted much less frequently, usually only once a generation. Many poor families, however, wait until they feel a need to restore their relationship with their spirits before they conduct a service. Services are usually held at a sanctuary on family land.

In voodoo, there are many loua. Although there is considerable variation among families and regions, there are generally two groups of loua, the rada and the petro. The rada spirits are mostly seen as "sweet" loua, while the petro are seen as "bitter" because they are more demanding of their "children." Rada spirits appear to be of African origin while petro spirits appear to be of Haitian origin.

Loua are usually anthropomorphic and have distinct identities. They can be good, evil, capricious, or demanding. Loua most commonly show their displeasure by making people sick, and so voodoo is used to diagnose and treat illnesses. Loua are not nature spirits, and they do not make crops grow or bring rain. The loua of one family have no claim over members of other families, and they cannot protect or harm them. Voodooists are therefore not interested in the loua of other families.

Loua appear to family members in dreams and, more dramatically, through trances. Many Haitians believe that loua are capable of temporarily taking over the bodies of their "children." Men and women enter trances during which they assume the traits of particular loua. People in a trance feel giddy and usually remember nothing after they return to a normal state of consciousness. Voodooists say that the spirit temporarily replaces the human personality. Possession trances occur usually during rituals such as services for loua or a vodoun dance in honor of the loua. When loua appear to entranced people, they may bring warnings or explanations for the causes of illnesses or misfortune. Loua often engage the crowd around them through flirtation, jokes, or accusations.

Ancestors (le m�) rank with the family loua as the most important spiritual entities in voodoo. Elaborate funeral and mourning rites reflect the important role of the dead. Ornate tombs throughout the countryside reveal how much attention Haiti gives to its dead. Voodooists believe the dead are capable of forcing their survivors to construct tombs and sell land. In these cases, the dead act like family loua, which "hold" family members to make them ill or bring other misfortune. The dead also appear in dreams to provide their survivors with advice or warnings.

Voodooists also believe there are loua that can be paid to bring good fortune or protection from evil. And, they believe that souls can be paid to attack enemies by making them ill.

Folk belief includes zombies and witchcraft. Zombies are either spirits or people whose souls have been partially withdrawn from their bodies. Some Haitians resort to bok�, who are specialists in sorcery and magic. Haiti has several secret societies whose members practice sorcery.

Voodoo specialists, male houngan and female manbo, mediate between humans and spirits through divination and trance. They diagnose illnesses and reveal the origins of other misfortune. They can also perform rituals to appease spirits or ancestors or to repel magic. Many voodoo specialists are accomplished herbalists who treat a variety of illnesses.

Voodoo lacks a fixed theology and an organized hierarchy, unlike Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Each specialist develops his or her own reputation for helping people.

Fran�ois Duvalier recruited voodoo specialists to serve as tonton makouts to help him control all aspects of Haitian life. Duvalier indicated that he retained power through sorcery, but because voodoo is essentially a family-based cult, Duvalier failed to politicize the religion to any great extent.

Before the Haitian Revolution, Roman Catholicism in particular and the church in general played minor roles in colonial life. Plantation owners feared that religious education for slaves could undermine their basis for control, and they expelled the education-oriented Jesuits in 1764. Roman Catholicism gained official status in several postindependence Haitian constitutions, but there was no official Roman Catholic presence in the country until the signing of a Concordat with the Vatican in 1860. (The Vatican had previously refused to recognize the Haitian government.) The Concordat provided for the appointment of an archbishop in Port-au-Prince, designated dioceses, and established an annual government subsidy for the church. An amendment to the Concordat in 1862 assigned the Roman Catholic Church an important role in secular education.

The small number of priests and members of religious orders initially ministered mainly to the urban elite. Until the midtwentieth century, the majority of priests were francophone Europeans, particularly Bretons, who were culturally distant from their rural parishioners. Roman Catholic clergy were generally hostile toward voodoo, and they led two major campaigns against the religion in 1896 and 1941. During these campaigns, the government outlawed voodoo services, and Catholics destroyed voodoo religious objects and persecuted practitioners. Roman Catholic clergy, however, have not been persistently militant in their opposition to voodoo, and they have had relatively little impact on the religious practices of the rural and the urban poor. The clergy have generally directed their energies more toward educating the urban population than toward eradicating voodoo. In the 1970s and the 1980s, the use of Creole and drum music became common in Roman Catholic services. Incorporating folk elements into the liturgy, however, did not mean that the Roman Catholic Church's attitude toward voodoo had changed.

Nationalists and others came to resent the Roman Catholic Church because of its European orientation and its alliance with the mulatto elite. Fran�ois Duvalier opposed the church more than any other Haitian president. He expelled the archbishop of Portau -Prince, the Jesuit order, and numerous priests between 1959 and 1961. In response to these moves, the Vatican excommunicated Duvalier. When relations with the church were restored in 1966, Duvalier prevailed. A Haitian archbishop was named for the first time, and the president gained the right to nominate bishops.

The mid-1980s marked a profound change in the church's stance on issues related to peasants and the urban poor. Reflecting this change was the statement by Pope John Paul II, during a visit to Haiti in 1983, that "Things must change here". Galvanized by the Vatican's concern, Roman Catholic clergy and lay workers called for improved human rights. Lay workers helped develop a peasant-community movement, especially at a center in the Plateau Central. The Roman Catholic radio station, Radio Soleil, played a key role in disseminating news about government actions during the 1985-86 crisis and encouraging opponents of the Duvalier government. The bishops, particularly in J�r�mie and Cap-Ha�tien, actively denounced Duvalierist repression and human-rights violations.

In the aftermath of Jean-Claude Duvalier's departure, the church took a less active role in Haiti's politics. The church hierarchy strongly supported the suppressed 1987 Constitution, which granted official status to Creole and guaranteed basic human rights, including the right to practice voodoo. The alliance with the lower classes left the Catholic Church with two unresolved problems in the late 1980s: its uneasy relationship with voodoo and its relationship to the more radical elements of the political movement that it had supported.

Haiti - Protestantism

Protestantism has existed in Haiti since the earliest days of the republic. By the mid-nineteenth century, there were small numbers of Protestant missions, principally Baptist, Methodist, and Episcopalian. Protestant churches, mostly from North America, have sent many foreign missions to Haiti. Almost half of Haiti's Protestants were Baptists; Pentecostals were the second largest group. Many other denominations also were present, including Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, and Presbyterians. Widespread Protestant proselytization began in the 1950s. Since the late 1950s, about 20 percent of the population has identified itself as Protestant. Protestantism has appealed mainly to the middle and the upper classes, and it played an important role in educational life.

Protestant churches focused their appeal on the lower classes long before the Roman Catholics did. Churches and clergy were found even in the smaller villages. Protestant clergy used Creole rather than French. Schools and clinics provided much-needed services. Protestant congregations encouraged baptisms and marriages and performed them free. For many Haitians, Protestantism represented an opposition to voodoo. When people converted to Protestantism, they usually did not reject voodoo, but they often came to view the folk religion as diabolical. Most Protestant denominations considered all loua, including family spirits, as demons. Some Haitians converted to Protestantism when they wanted to reject family spirits that they felt had failed to protect them. Others chose to become Protestants merely as a way to gain an alternative form of protection from misfortune.

Fran�ois Duvalier, in his struggle with the Roman Catholic Church, welcomed Protestant missionaries, especially from the United States. Dependent on the government for their presence in Haiti, and competing with each other as well as with the Roman Catholics, Protestant missions generally accepted the policies of the Duvalier regimes. Numerous Protestant leaders did, however, join with Roman Catholics in their public opposition to the government during the waning days of Jean-Claude Duvalier's power.

Haiti - EDUCATION

Haiti's postcolonial leaders promoted education, at least in principle. The 1805 constitution called for free and compulsory primary education. The early rulers, Henri (Henry) Christophe (1807-20) and Alexandre P�tion (1806-18), constructed schools; by 1820 there were nineteen primary schools and three secondary lyc�es. The Education Act of 1848 created rural primary schools with a more limited curriculum and established colleges of medicine and law. A comprehensive system was never developed, however, and the emerging elite who could afford the cost preferred to send their children to school in France. The signing of the Concordat with the Vatican in 1860 resulted in the arrival of clerical teachers, further emphasizing the influence of the Roman Catholic Church among the educated class. Roman Catholic schools essentially became nonsecular public schools, jointly funded by the Haitian government and the Vatican. The new teachers, mainly French clergy, promoted an attachment to France in their classrooms.

Clerical teachers concentrated on developing the urban elite, especially in the excellent new secondary schools. To their students, they emphasized the greatness of France, while they expounded on Haiti's backwardness and its lack of capacity for self-rule. Throughout the nineteenth century, only a few priests ventured to the rural areas to educate peasants. In both urban and rural settings, they followed a classical curriculum, which emphasized literature and rote learning. This curriculum remained unaltered until the 1980s, except during the United States occupation, when efforts were made to establish vocational schools. The elite resisted these efforts, and the government restored the old system in 1934.

Education in Haiti changed during the 1970s and the 1980s. Primary enrollments increased greatly, especially in urban areas. The Jean-Claude Duvalier regime initiated administrative and curriculum reforms. Nevertheless, as of 1982 about 65 percent of the population over ten years of age had received no education and only 8 percent was educated beyond the primary level.

Primary education was compulsory in the late 1980s, but scarce government funds and a limited number of schools resulted in low enrollments in many rural areas. The school year began in October and ended in July, with two-week vacations at Christmas and Easter. Regular primary education consisted of six grades, preceded by two years of kindergarten (enfantin), which was heavily attended and which counted statistically in primary enrollments. Primary education consisted of preparatory, elementary, and intermediate cycles, each of which lasted two years. Promotion between grades depended on final examinations and on class marks recorded in trimesters. At the end of the sixth year, students who had passed their final examinations received a graduation certificate (certificat d'�tudes primaires). After receiving the certificate, students could take examinations for entry into either secondary school or higher-primary school that led to an elementary certificate (brevet �l�mentaire) after three years. It was therefore possible for a student to take two years of kindergarten, six years of primary school, and three years of higher-primary studies for a total of eleven primary-school years. This primaryeducation system, however, was expected to change in the 1980s because of measures included in the 1978 Education Reform.

Primary-school enrollment was estimated at 642,000 in 1981, more than twice the official figure for 1970. According to the 1982 census, 40 percent of children in the six-year-old to eleven-year-old bracket were enrolled in school, compared with only 25 percent in 1971. Primary-school enrollment was 74 percent in metropolitan Port-au-Prince, but it was only 32 percent in rural areas. Most primary-school students were enrolled in private establishments in 1981, a reversal from the previous decade. An increase in the number of private primary schools accounted for the switch.

School nutrition programs, which increased about 12 percent annually between 1976 and 1984, contributed to increased primaryschool enrollments. By 1986 about three out of four students received meals at school. The United States and Europe supported the meal programs through surplus commodities. Private development agencies also provided support. At the same time, a number of private agencies, mostly from the United States, sponsored students in primary schools, helping to pay for tuition, books, and uniforms. By 1985 at least 75,000 primary students received such support. One-third of these students, however, were in Port-au-Prince. Enrollments of rural children continued to be low.

Dropout rates for primary students were high. According to some estimates for the mid-1980s, more than half of Haiti's urban primary-school students dropped out before completing the sixyear primary cycle. In rural areas, the dropout rate was 80 percent. In addition, dropout and repetition rates in rural areas were so high that three of every five primary-school students were in either first or second grade.

There were more than 14,000 primary-school teachers in Haiti in the early 1980s; however, only about 40 percent of the public primary-school teachers and about 30 percent of those in private schools had a secondary-level or teacher training certificate. In 1979 public school teachers were earning US$100 a month--the same salary paid to teachers in 1905, when the profession was considered prestigious. Private school salaries were about 50 percent lower than those of public school teachers. The National Council of Government (Conseil National de Gouvernement--CNG), reacting to demonstrations by teachers, agreed to raise salaries in 1986. Private school teachers' salaries, however, remained low. Because of the low salaries, many teachers left the profession.

In the 1970s, the Haitian government, with support from the World Bank and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), began to reform its educational system, mostly at the primary level. In 1978 the government unified educational administration for the first time by putting rural schools under the authority of the Department of National Education. Before 1978 rural schools had been administered by the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources. The education reform also introduced a new structure for primary classes, established Creole as the language of instruction, and introduced new curricula and procedures for teacher certification. The new structure consisted of ten years of primary education in one four-year and two three-year cycles, followed by three years of secondary education. Promotion from first to second grade and from third to fourth grade was to be automatic in order to prevent large numbers of students from repeating grades and overloading the system at the lower grades. The new curriculum for first through fourth grades included three months of study skills and classes in reading, writing, mathematics, and environmental sciences.

Haiti - Secondary Education

General secondary education consisted of a three-year basic cycle and a four-year upper cycle that led to a baccalaureate (baccalaur�at) and possible university matriculation. The curriculum emphasized the classics and the arts to the detriment of the sciences. Despite these limitations, general secondary education was often of high quality. Secondary-school graduates usually qualified for admission to the University of Haiti or to institutions of higher learning abroad.

In 1981 there were 248 secondary-level schools in Haiti; 205 of them were private. Between 1974 and 1981, the number of private secondary schools almost tripled, while only two new public lyc�es were built. About 100,000 students attended these secondary schools, which employed 4,400 teachers. In addition to general secondary schools, several vocational and business schools existed, most of them in metropolitan Port-au-Prince.

Haiti - Higher Education

Haiti's most important institution of higher education in the 1980s was the University of Haiti. Its origins date to the 1820s, when colleges of medicine and law were established. In 1942 the various faculties merged into the University of Haiti. After a student strike in 1960, the Duvalier government brought the university under firm government control and renamed it the State University. The government restored the original name in 1986.

In 1981 there were 4,099 students at the University of Haiti, of whom 26 percent were enrolled in the Faculty of Law and Economics; 25 percent, in the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy; 17 percent, in the Faculty of Administration and Management; and 11 percent, in the Faculty of Science and Topography. Despite the important role played by agriculture in the Haitian economy, only 5 percent of the university's students were enrolled in the Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine. In 1981 the University of Haiti had 559 professors, compared with 207 in 1967. Most professors worked part time, were paid on an hourly basis, and had little time for contact with students. The University of Haiti also suffered severe shortages of books and other materials.

Two private post-secondary institutions were established in the 1980s--the Institut Universitaire Roi Christophe in CapHa�tien and the Institut International d'Etudes Universitaires in Port-au-Prince. Other private institutions of higher learning included a school of theology and law schools in Cap-Ha�tien, Gona�ves, Les Cayes, J�r�mie, and Fort Libert�. A business school, the Institut des Hautes Etudes Economiques et Commerciales, was established in Port-au-Prince in 1961. An engineering school, the Institut Sup�rieur Technique d'Ha�ti, was founded in Port-au-Prince in 1962. The Institut de Technique Electronique d'Ha�ti, also in Port-au-Prince, provided instruction in electrical engineering.

Haiti - HEALTH

In the mid-1980s, the Haitian government estimated that the average daily nutritional consumption level in the country was 1,901 calories per person, including 41.1 grams of protein. These figures represented 86 percent and 69 percent, respectively, of the World Health Organization's recommendations for adequate nutrition. In rural areas, the average person consumed about 1,300 calories, including 30 grams of protein per day. A national survey in 1978 showed that 77 percent of children in Haiti were malnourished. Anemia was also a common problem among children and women.

Infant and child health were poor. The infant mortality rate was 124 per 1,000 live births in 1983. A quarter of all registered deaths occurred among infants who were younger than one year old; half of all deaths occurred among children under five. Most of these deaths resulted from infectious diseases, especially diarrheal illnesses. Malnutrition and acute respiratory illness also presented serious problems for infants and children. For adults, malaria was among the more serious problems; some 85 percent of the population lived in malarial areas. Tuberculosis and parasitic infections continued to be serious health hazards, and typhoid fever was endemic. Poor sanitation contributed to poor health indicators. In 1984 less than 20 percent of the population had toilets or latrines. Only one-fourth of the rural population had access to potable water. Life expectancy at birth was forty-eight years in 1983, and the general mortality rate was 17 per 1,000 population.

In 1987 there were an estimated 1,500 people suffering from acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in Haiti. Most of the cases were reported in Port-au-Prince. The earliest reported case of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection was in 1978, and the earliest case of AIDS-related Karposi's sarcoma was in 1979. About two of every five AIDS patients in Haiti in 1987 were women. The exact number of people infected with HIV was unknown, but one sample of pregnant women in a poor neighborhood of the capital revealed that 8 percent tested positive for the virus. Most people infected with HIV appear to have contracted the virus through heterosexual intercourse. Transfusions of infected blood also were responsible for transmitting the virus to large numbers of people, especially women, who routinely received blood after childbirth. The Haitian Red Cross did not begin screening the blood supply in Port-au-Prince for HIV until 1986. Blood supplies outside the capital continued to be unscreened in the late 1980s. The use of contaminated needles accounted for 5 percent of the country's AIDS cases.

Homosexual activity has contributed to the spread of AIDS in Haiti. AIDS transmission was also related to female and male prostitution. At least 50 percent of the female prostitutes in the capital city's main prostitution center were believed to be infected with HIV.

Because of the prevalence of AIDS in the Haitian immigrant population, the United States Center for Disease Control classified Haitians as a high-risk group for the disease in 1982. It rescinded the classification in 1985, however. Early studies suggested that Haiti might have been the origin of the disease. By the late 1980s, most AIDS researchers in Haiti claimed that male homosexual tourists brought the disease to the country in the late 1970s.

Haiti - Health Services

Modern health services were inadequate in the late 1980s. In 1982 the country had 810 physicians, 83 dentists, 758 nurses, 1,564 auxiliary nurses, and 403 health agents. Haiti had about one doctor for every 6,600 people and one nurse for every 8,000 people. Health services were concentrated in the capital area. Thus, in the most poorly served area of the country, there was only one physician for every 21,000 people. In the mid-1980s, there were thirty-eight hospitals in the country, more than half of which were in the Port-au-Prince area. Nongovernmental organizations provided almost half of the health services in the country in the late 1980s.

Most Haitians continued to meet their health-care needs through traditional remedies. Herbal medicine was widely used, especially in rural areas, although environmental deterioration made some herbs more difficult to obtain. In addition to home remedies, herbal specialists (dokt� fey) provided massage and herbal remedies. Many voodoo specialists were also experts in herbal remedies. Traditional midwives assisted at most rural births. Many midwives received training in modern methods from the government. Traditional religion, used by many to diagnose and treat, has served well in some cases when modern medicine was not available.

Haiti - Welfare

In the 1980s, public assistance continued to be limited. The government provided pensions to some retired public officials and military officers, but it did not guarantee them to civil servants. A social-insurance system for employees of industrial, commercial, and agricultural firms provided pensions at age fifty-five, after twenty years of service, and compensation for total incapacity, after fifteen years of service. A system of work-injury benefits also covered private and public employees, providing partial or total disability compensation. These programs were administered by the Ministry of Social Affairs. In general, however, the dearth of social programs offered by the government forced most Haitians to rely mainly on their families and on the services provided by nongovernmental organizations. As has been true in so many other areas of life, Haitians have cultivated self-reliance in the face of hardship, scarcity, and the inadequacy of existing institutions.

Haiti - The Economy

HAITI'S LOW-INCOME, PEASANT-BASED economy faced serious economic and ecological obstacles to development in the late 1980s. The country's gross domestic product (GDP) in 1987 was approximately US$1.95 billion, or about US$330 per capita, ranking Haiti as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and as the twenty-seventh most impoverished nation in the world. The only low-income country--defined by the World Bank as a country with a per capita GDP in 1988 below US$425--in the Americas, Haiti fell even farther behind other low-income countries in Africa and Asia during the 1980s.

After Christopher Columbus's discovery of Hispaniola (La Isla Espa�ola) in 1492, Spanish mercantilists generally neglected the island and instead focused their endeavors on the more richly endowed areas of Mexico and Peru. In 1664 France successfully converted the western third of Hispaniola into an unofficial territory; over the next 140 years French colonialists transformed the colony of Saint-Domingue into a slave-based plantation economy known as the "pearl of the Antilles." By the late eighteenth century, SaintDomingue boasted thousands of profitable plantations: 800 produced sugar; 3,000, coffee; 800, cotton; and nearly 3,000, indigo. Haiti became France's most lucrative overseas possession. In his classic 1776 publication, The Wealth of Nations, economist Adam Smith declared Saint-Domingue "the most important of the sugar colonies of the West Indies."

The Haitian Revolution (1791-1803) devastated agricultural output. The leadership of the new nation faced the daunting task of reviving economic activity without relying on slavery. After the 1806 assassination of Haiti's first national leader, JeanJacques Dessalines, Haiti operated under a dual economy, with forced labor on large plantations in the north and small-scale farming in partitioned land in the south. The 1820 unification of the nation entailed the abandonment of plantation agriculture and the establishment of a peasant-based agricultural economy. Although policies of land redistribution and limited social and economic reform improved the lives of the former slaves, the policies also produced a severe and ultimately irreversible decline in agricultural production.

Successive Haitian presidents gave priority to selfenrichment and to the payment of a controversial debt with France, which left little capital for improving the standard of living. The rigid social stratification and the political disparity between mulattoes and blacks further widened the gap between the rich elite and the poor.

The nineteen-year United States occupation of Haiti (1915-34) brought unquestionable economic benefits. United States administrators controlled fiscal and monetary policy largely to the country's benefit. The United States military built major roads, introduced automatic telephones in Port-au-Prince, constructed bridges, dredged harbors, erected schools, established clinics, and undertook other previously neglected public works. The troops departed in 1934, but economic advisers remained in Haiti to manage the national treasury until 1941. The Haitian economy enjoyed some growth in the 1940s and the early 1950s, partly because of improvements in the country's infrastructure, but mostly because of improved prices for its exports.

Despite irregularities in the allocation of funds under the Fran�ois Duvalier regime, government revenues traditionally equaled, or surpassed, budget outlays, technically yielding balanced budgets. Jean-Claude Duvalier's unprecedented intervention in the economy in the 1980s, however, broke this tradition. The public sector under Duvalier established, or expanded, its ownership of an international fishing fleet, a flour mill, a cement company, a vegetable-oil processing plant, and two sugar factories. Duvalierist officials based these investment decisions primarily on the amount of personal profit that would accrue to themselves, to Duvalier, and to the rest of his coterie. They ignored the potential negative impact on the economy. Poorly managed, the state's newly acquired enterprises drained fiscal accounts, causing the overall public-sector deficit to reach 10.6 percent of GDP in fiscal year (FY) 1985, despite sharp reductions in spending on already meager social programs in accordance with an IMF stabilization program. In July 1986, the Ministry of Finance, under the CNG, revamped fiscal policies through tax reform, privatization, and revisions of the tariff code. Although the CNG greatly increased spending on health and education, the reform measures served to lower the government's deficit to 7 percent of GDP by FY 1987. General Avril's FY 1989 budget attempted further to curtail deficit spending, but that prospect remained unlikely without stable flows of economic assistance.

The misallocation of public revenues for private use and the low government allocations for economic and social development have contributed directly to Haiti's extreme poverty. After 1986, national budgets included a significantly larger portion for development efforts, but they continued to allocate the largest share--17 percent in FY 1987-88--to the armed forces and internal security forces. About 57 percent of FY 1988 expenditures were for wages and salaries; 26 percent, for goods and services; 10 percent, for interest payments; 4 percent, for extrabudgetary spending; and 3 percent, for transfers and subsidies. Compared with previous budgets in the 1980s, this budget included increased spending on wages and interest payments and decreased spending on goods and services, as well as an allocation for unspecified expenses. The FY 1989 budget continued these fiscal trends. The leading expenditure items in the FY 1989 budget were defense (16.4 percent), debt payments (15.8 percent), education (14.5 percent), health and social services (13.7 percent), and finance, public service, and commerce (12.4 percent). According to some reports, however, discrepancies existed between budget allocations and actual disbursements.

The structure of government revenues changed distinctly as a consequence of the tax and tariff revisions of 1986. Haiti's taxes and tariffs historically exacted revenues from directly productive activities--mainly agriculture--and from international trade. This revenue structure eventually created disincentives for the production of cash crops and other export products, while it stimulated the development of uncompetitive industries. Over time, Haiti's authorities created a public-finance pattern that, when combined with a highly regressive income tax, raised approximately 85 percent of its revenue from the rural population, but spent only about 20 percent on those same taxpayers.

A 10 percent value-added tax was introduced in 1983, but it was not until 1986 that tax and tariff reforms began to shift the source of revenues. New tax laws simplified the income-tax process, altered tax brackets, and strengthened tax-collection efforts. In the area of trade regulations, the new government phased out export taxes and replaced quantitative restrictions on all but five goods with ad valorem tariffs of a maximum of 40 percent, thus essentially lowering import protection and liberalizing trade. As a result of these policies, revenues derived from international trade dropped from 35 percent in FY 1984 to an estimated 22 percent in FY 1989; the revenue balance in both years was derived from internal taxes.

The Bank of the Republic of Haiti (Banque de la R�publique d'Haiti--BRH) represented one of the few well-established, public-sector institutions dedicated to economic management. Founded in 1880 as the National Bank of Haiti, the BRH--a commercial bank--did not begin to act as a central bank until 1934, when it became known as the National Republic Bank of Haiti. Since the 1930s, the bank has performed the functions of a central bank, a commercial bank, and a development-finance institution; it also has been involved in other matters, such as the management of the Port-au-Prince wharf. As a central bank, the BRH also issued Haiti's national currency, the gourde.

On August 17, 1979, new banking laws gave the BRH its present name and empowered it with the monetary-management responsibilities associated with most central banks. The BRH subsequently became actively involved in controlling credit, setting interest rates, assessing reserve ratios, and restraining inflation. In the late 1980s, the BRH pursued generally conservative monetary policies, and it employed high cash-reserve ratios in commercial banks as the key policy tool to regulate the money supply. In an effort to increase the dynamism of the economy, the BRH sought to inject more credit into the private sector, particularly for long-term uses.

Since 1919 the Haitian currency has been pegged to the United States currency at the rate of five gourdes to the dollar. Since that same date, the United States dollar has served as legal tender on the island and has circulated freely. Remarkably, the value of Haiti's fixed exchange rate remained strong for decades; it fluctuated only with the movements of the currency of the United States, its main trading partner. Until the 1980s, no black market existed for gourdes, but unusually high inflation and large budget deficits eroded their value and brought premiums of up to 25 percent for black-market transactions in the early 1980s. The black market subsided considerably in the late 1980s, but the gourde's real rate of exchange remained above the 1980 level.

Haiti - LABOR

Haiti's 1989 labor force was estimated at 2.8 million people. The economically active population (those over age ten), however, represented more than half of the country's total 6.1 million population. Forty-two percent of the official work force was female, ranking the country's female participation as one of the highest among developing countries. In rural areas, however, the role of women in production and commerce was apparently much greater than these statistics indicated.

The distribution of the labor force by economic sector from 1950 to 1987 reflected a shift from agriculture to services, with some growth in industry. Despite these changes, agriculture continued to dominate economic activity in the 1980s, employing 66 percent of the labor force; it was followed by services, 24 percent, and industry, 10 percent. Based on these figures, Haiti continued to be the most agrarian, and the least industrial, society in the Western Hemisphere. The country's employment of only 50,000 salaried workers in 1988 was further evidence of the traditional character of the work force.

Statistics on employment and the methodologies used to gather such data varied widely; most unemployment figures were only estimates. In 1987 the United States Department of Labor estimated that Haiti's unemployment rate was 49 percent. Other estimates ranged from 30 to 70 percent. Official unemployment was severe in Port-au-Prince, but comparatively low in rural areas, reflecting urban migration trends, rapid population growth, and the low number of skilled and semi-skilled workers.

Haiti established a labor code in 1961, but revised it in March 1984 to bring legislation more in line with standards set by the International Labour Office (ILO). Conformity with ILO guidelines was a prerequisite for certification under the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI--see Appendix B) enacted by the United States Congress in 1983.

Haiti's most fundamental labor law, the minimum wage, was also the most controversial. Low wage rates attracted foreign assembly operations. In 1989 the average minimum wage stood at the equivalent of US$3 a day, with some small variations for different types of assembly work. The minimum wage in the late 1980s was below the 1970 level in real terms, but assembly manufacturers and government officials refused to increase wages because they needed to remain competitive with other Caribbean countries. Labor laws included an array of provisions protecting workers in the areas of overtime, holidays, night-shift work, and sick leave. The government, however, did not universally enforce many of these provisions. The greatest number of workers' complaints came from assembly plants where seasonal layoffs were common.

The organized-labor movement, generally suppressed under the Duvaliers, grew rapidly in the wake of the dynasty's collapse. Three major trade unions dominated organized-labor activity in the 1980s. The newest of these three was the Federation of Union Workers (F�deration des Ouvriers Syndiqu�s--FOS). Established in 1983 after negotiations over the CBI opened the way for public labor organization, the FOS by 1987 represented forty-four member unions, nineteen of which were registered with the government. Its combined membership in Port-au-Prince and Les Cayes totaled approximately 15,000. Politically moderate, the FOS was affiliated with the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in Brussels. The oldest union of influence, the Autonomous Federation of Haitian Workers/Federation of Latin American Workers (Centrale Autonome des Travailleurs Ha�tiens/Centrale Latino-Am�ricaine des Travailleurs--CATH/CLAT), was affiliated with the Latin American trade-union movement and shared its history of political activism. CATH/CLAT consisted of 150 unions, including 63 that were registered with the government. It professed a membership of 7,000. Haiti's third principal union, the CATH, had splintered from CATH/CLAT in 1980; it had managed to take with it forty-four member unions, all recognized by the state. CATH claimed a membership of 5,000. CATH and CATH/CLAT primarily represented assembly workers. The Ministry of Social Affairs registered only unions and not individual members; this practice allowed unions to exaggerate their membership, which probably amounted to fewer than 5,000 by 1987. By the end of the decade, trade unions had made only small organizational inroads among assembly workers; the role of union activity in that sector was the central point of debate in the organized-labor movement.

Haiti - AGRICULTURE

Agriculture continued to be the mainstay of the economy in the late 1980s; it employed approximately 66 percent of the labor force and accounted for about 35 percent of GDP and for 24 percent of exports in 1987. The role of agriculture in the economy has declined severely since the 1950s, when the sector employed 80 percent of the labor force, represented 50 percent of GDP, and contributed 90 percent of exports. Many factors have contributed to this decline. Some of the major ones included the continuing fragmentation of landholdings, low levels of agricultural technology, migration out of rural areas, insecure land tenure, a lack of capital investment, high commodity taxes, the low productivity of undernourished farmers, animal and plant diseases, and inadequate infrastructure. Neither the government nor the private sector invested much in rural ventures; in FY 1989 only 5 percent of the national budget went to the Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Rural Development (Minist�re de l'Agriculture, des Resources Naturelles et du D�veloppement Rural--MARNDR). As Haiti entered the 1990s, however, the main challenge to agriculture was not economic, but ecological. Extreme deforestation, soil erosion, droughts, flooding, and the ravages of other natural disasters had all led to a critical environmental situation.

After independence from France, Alexandre P�tion (and later Jean-Pierre Boyer) undertook Latin America's first, and perhaps most radical, land reform by subdividing plantations for the use of emancipated slaves. The reform measures were so extensive that by 1842 no plantation was its original size. By the mid-nineteenth century, therefore, Haiti's present-day land structure was largely in place. The basic structures of land tenure remained remarkably stable during the twentieth century, despite steadily increasing pressure for land, the fragmentation of land parcels, and a slight increase in the concentration of ownership.

For historical reasons, Haiti's patterns of land tenure were quite different from those of other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Most Haitians owned at least some of their land. Complex forms of tenancy also distinguished Haitian land tenure. Moreover, land owned by peasants often varied in the size and number of plots, the location and topography of the parcels, and other factors.

Scholars have debated issues related to land tenure and agriculture in Haiti because they considered census data unreliable. Other primary data available to them were geographically limited and frequently out of date. The three national censuses of 1950, 1971, and 1982 provided core information on land tenure, but other studies financed by the United States Agency for International Development (AID) supplemented and updated census data. The final tabulations of the 1982 census were still unavailable in late 1989.

The 1971 census revealed that there were 616,700 farms in Haiti, and that an average holding of 1.4 hectares consisted of several plots of less than 1 hectare. Haitians, however, most commonly measured their land by the common standard, a carreau, equal to about 3.3 hectares. The survey concluded that the largest farms made up only 3 percent of the total number of farms and that they comprised less than 20 percent of the total land. It also documented that 60 percent of farmers owned their land, although some lacked official title to it. Twentyeight percent of all farmers rented and sharecropped land. Only a small percentage of farms belonged to cooperatives. The 1950 census, by contrast, had found that 85 percent of farmers owned their land.

Studies in the 1980s indicated a trend toward increased fragmentation of peasant lands, an expanding role for sharecropping and renting, and a growing concentration of higherquality land, particularly in the irrigated plains. As a consequence of high rural population density and deteriorating soils, competition over land appeared to be intensifying. Haiti's land density, that is, the number of people per square kilometer of arable land, jumped from 296 in 1965 to 408 by the mid-1980s-- a density greater than that in India.

The three major forms of land tenancy in Haiti were ownership, renting (or subleasing), and sharecropping. Smallholders typically acquired their land through purchase, inheritance, or a claim of long-term use. Many farmers also rented land temporarily from the state, absentee landlords, local owners, or relatives. In turn, renters frequently subleased some of these lands, particularly parcels owned by the state. Renters generally enjoyed more rights to the land they worked than did sharecroppers. Unlike sharecroppers, however, renters had to pay for land in advance, typically for a period of one year. The prevalence of renting made the land market exceedingly dynamic; even small farmers rented land, depending on the amount of extra income they derived from raising cash crops. Sharecropping, also very common, was usually a shorter-term agreement, perhaps lasting only one growing season. Sharecropper and landowner partnerships were less exploitive than those in many other Latin American countries; in most agreements, farmers gave landowners half the goods they produced on the land.

Other land arrangements included managing land for absentee landlords, squatting, and wage labor. The practice of having an on-site overseer (j�ran) manage land for another owner, usually another peasant residing far away, was a variation of sharecropping. J�rans were generally paid in-kind for their custodial services. Overgrazing, or unregulated gardening, was the most common form of squatting, which took place on most kinds of lands, especially state-owned land. A small minority of peasants were landless; they worked as day laborers or leased subsistence plots. In addition, thousands of Haitians migrated seasonally to the Dominican Republic as braceros (temporary laborers) to cut sugarcane under wretched conditions.

Haiti - Land Use and Farming Technology

It is difficult to understand the complex variations in land tenancy without an appreciation of land use and peasant attitudes toward land. More mountainous than Switzerland, Haiti has a limited amount of cultivable land. According to soil surveys by the United States Department of Agriculture in the early 1980s, 11.3 percent of the land was highly suitable for crops, while 31.7 percent was suitable with some restrictions related to erosion, topography, or conservation. The surveys revealed that 2.3 percent was mediocre because of poor drainage, but was acceptable for rice cultivation, and 54.7 percent was appropriate only for tree crops or pastures because of severe erosion or steep slopes. According to estimates of land use in 1978, 42.2 percent of land was under constant or shifting cultivation, 19.2 percent was pasture land, and 38.6 percent was not cultivated.

The use of purchased inputs, such as fertilizers, pesticides, machinery, and irrigation, was rare; farmers in Haiti employed traditional agricultural practices more than did farmers in any other part of the Western Hemisphere. Although Haitian farmers used increased amounts of chemical fertilizers in the 1970s and the 1980s, their use of an average of only seven kilograms per hectare ranked Haiti ahead of Bolivia, only, among Western Hemisphere countries. Peasants applied mostly natural fertilizers, such as manure, mulch, and bat guano. Large landowners consumed most of the country's small amounts of chemical fertilizers, and they benefited from subsidized fertilizers imported from the Dominican Republic and mixed in Port-au-Prince. Five importers controlled the 400,000 kilograms of pesticides that entered the country each year; malariacarrying mosquitoes and rodents in the rice fields were the main targets of pesticide application. Most rural cultivators used small hand tools, such as hoes, machetes, digging sticks, and a local machete-like tool called the serpette. There was an average of one tractor per 1,700 hectares; most farmers considered such machinery inappropriate for use on tiny plots scattered along deeply graded hillsides. The insecurity of land tenure further discouraged the use of capital inputs.

The amount of irrigated crop land in the 1980s, estimated at between 70,000 and 110,00 hectares, was substantially less than the 140,000 hectares of colonial times. Of the nearly 130 irrigation systems in place, many lacked adequate maintenance, were clogged with silt, or provided irregular supplies to their 80,000 users. By the 1980s, the irrigation network had been extended as far as was possible.

The minimal amount of research on agriculture and the limited number of extension officers that MARNDR provided gave little assistance to already low levels of farming technology. Foreign organizations, such as the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture, carried out the most research. Foreign organizations also provided more technical assistance in agriculture than the government.

Peasant attitudes and limited access to credit also helped to explain the traditional nature of farming. Most observers blamed agricultural underdevelopment on peasants' individualistic nature, their proclivity toward superstition, and their unwillingness to innovate. Small farmers also lacked access to credit. Informal credit markets flourished, but credit was not always available at planting time. When credit was available, it was usually provided at usurious rates. The country's major public financial institutions provided loans to the agricultural sector, but this lending benefited less than 10 percent of all farmers. Major credit sources included the Agricultural Credit Bureau, agriculture credit societies, credit unions, cooperatives, and institutions created by nongovernmental organizations.

Haiti - Cash Crops

Despite its relative decline, coffee endured as the leading agricultural export during the 1980s. The French had introduced coffee to Haiti from Martinique in 1726, and soon coffee became an important colonial commodity. Coffee production peaked in 1790, and it declined steadily after independence. Production dropped precipitously during the 1960s. After a boom in prices and in the production of coffee in the late 1970s, output declined again from 42,900 tons in 1980 to 30,088 tons by 1987. Coffee trees covered an estimated 133,000 hectares in the 1980s, with an average annual yield of 35,900 tons. Haiti was a member of the International Coffee Organization (ICO), but found itself increasingly unable to fulfill its ICO export quota, which stood at 300,000 bags, of 60 kilograms each, in 1988. Most analysts believed that excessive taxation and the low prices afforded to peasant farmers had contributed to the decline in coffee production.

Coffee provides one of the best examples of the market orientation of Haiti's peasant economy. Most peasants grew coffee, usually alongside other crops. More than 1 million Haitians participated in the coffee industry as growers, marketers (known as Madame Sarahs), middlemen (sp�culateurs), or exporters. The peasants' widespread participation throughout the coffee industry demonstrated that they were not merely subsistence farmers, but that they were also actively engaged in the market economy. After harvest by peasants, female Madame Sarahs transported coffee to local and urban markets and sold the beans. Middlemen, in turn, sold coffee to members of the Coffee Exporters Association (Association des Exportateurs de Caf�--Asdec), which set prices and thereby passed on the traditionally high coffee-export taxes directly to producers. Because of its prominent role in agriculture and the inequitable nature of the trade, the coffee industry was the subject of numerous studies. The majority of these studies highlighted imperfect competition and the systematic enrichment of a small group of Port-au-Prince exporters.

Sugar was another cash crop with a long history in Haiti. Columbus brought sugarcane to present-day Haiti on his second voyage to Hispaniola, and sugar rapidly became the colony's most important cash crop. After 1804, production never returned to preindependence levels, but sugar production and low-level exports continued. Unlike the system in other Caribbean countries, sugar in Haiti was a cash crop raised by peasants rather than by large-scale plantations. The sugar harvest dipped to under 4 million tons by the early 1970s, but it rebounded to nearly 6 million tons of cane by the middle of the decade with a sharp increase in the world price of the commodity. Lower world prices and structural problems combined to cause a drop in sugar output in the 1980s; by the end of the decade, sugarcane covered fewer than 114,000 hectares of the coastal plains, and it yielded fewer than 4.5 million tons annually.

Further expansion of the sugar industry faced serious deeprooted obstacles. For example, the production cost of Haitian sugar was three times more than the world price in the 1980s. Shifts in the world sugar market, caused mainly by the international substitution of corn-based fructose for sugarcane, exerted further pressure on Haitian producers. One result of this situation was the practice of importing sugar, which was then reexported to the United States under the Haitian sugar quota. Reductions in Haiti's quota during the 1980s, however, limited exchanges of this sort.

Total sugar exports dropped from 19,200 tons in 1980 to 6,500 tons in 1987. In 1981, 1982, and 1988 Haiti exported no sugar. Haiti's four sugar mills closed temporarily on several occasions during the decade. The oldest mill, the Haitian American Sugar Company (HASCO), was the only plant that maintained a large cane plantation. Realizing the dim future for sugar, outside development agencies proposed alternatives to sugar, such as soybeans, for Haiti's plains.

Cacao, sisal, essential oils, and cotton were other significant cash crops. Cacao trees covered an estimated 10,400 hectares in 1987, and they yielded 4,000 tons of cocoa a year. Mennonite missionaries played a growing role in the cocoa industry, mostly around southern departments, especially Grande'Anse. Sisal, exported as a twine since 1927, peaked in the 1950s, as the Korean War demanded much of the nation's 40,000-ton output. By the 1980s, however, Haiti exported an average of only 6,500 tons a year, mainly to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. The substitution of synthetic fibers for sisal reduced most large-scale growing of the plant, but many peasants continued to harvest the natural fiber for its use in hats, shoes, carpets, and handbags. The export of essential oils, derived from vetiver, lime, amyris, and bitter orange, peaked in 1976 at 395 tons. Exports leveled off at a little more than 200 tons during the 1980s, generating an average of US$5 million in foreign exchange. Cotton cultivation peaked in the 1930s, before Mexican boll weevil beetles ravaged the crop. Growers introduced a higher quality of cotton, in the 1960s, which was processed in local cotton gins and then exported to Europe. Cotton prices fell in the 1980s, however, and cotton plantings shrank from 12,400 hectares in 1979 to under 8,000 hectares by 1986. Exports ceased. Government policies in the 1980s emphasized diversification into nontraditional export crops that would benefit under the terms of the CBI; the poor performance of traditional cash crops enhanced the importance of these efforts for the Haitian economy.

Haiti - Food Crops

Food crops fared somewhat better than cash crops in the 1980s, as prices for cash crops dropped, and economic uncertainty increased. Nonetheless, real per capita food production declined, and the country continued to import millions of tons of grains. The trend toward increased production of food crops had negative ecological consequences as the planting and the harvesting of tuber staples accelerated soil erosion. Haiti's peasants were already underfed. It was therefore unlikely that farmers would grow tree crops in place of staples without appropriate incentives.

Peasants cultivated a variety of cereals for food and animal feeds, notably corn, sorghum, and rice. Corn, also referred to as maize, was the leading food crop; it was sown on more hectares-- 220,000 in 1987--than any other crop. Farmers in southern departments grew corn separately, but elsewhere they mixed it with other crops, mostly legumes. Total production averaged approximately 185,000 tons during the 1980s; yields increased in some areas. Drought-resistant sorghum often replaced corn during the second growing season as the leading crop, but total hectares planted and total production averaged only 156,250 and 125,000 tons, respectively. Rice became an increasingly common cereal, beginning in the 1960s, when increased irrigation of the Artibonite Valley aided larger-scale farming. Rice production, however, fluctuated considerably, and it remained dependent on government subsidies. An estimated 60,000 hectares of rice yielded an average of 123,000 tons, from 1980 to 1987.

Tubers were also cultivated as food. Sweet potatoes, one of the nation's largest crops, grew on an estimated 100,000 hectares, and they yielded 260,000 tons of produce a year in the 1980s. Manioc, or cassava, another major tuber, was mix-cropped on upwards of 60,000 hectares to produce between 150,000 and 260,000 tons a year, much of which was for direct consumption. The cultivation of yams, limited by the lack of deep moist soils, took up only 26,000 hectares. The tropical Pacific tuber taro, called malang� in Haiti, grew with other tubers on more than 27,000 hectares.

Haitians also cultivated dozens of other food crops. Red, black, and other kinds of beans were very popular; they provided the main source of protein in the diet of millions. As many as 129,000 hectares provided 67,000 tons of beans in 1987. Banana and plantain trees were also common and provided as much as 500,000 tons of produce, almost entirely for domestic consumption. Although the flimsy trees were vulnerable to hurricanes and to droughts, rapid replanting helped sustain the crop. Mangoes, another tree crop, were a daily source of food, and they provided some exports. Other food crops included citrus fruit, avocados, pineapples, watermelons, almonds, coconut, okra, peanuts, tomatoes, breadfruit, and mamey (tropical apricot). In addition, Haitians grew a wide variety of spices for food, medicine, and other purposes, including thyme, anise, marjoram, absinthe, oregano, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, garlic, and horseradish.

Haiti - Forestry

Nothing better symbolized the vicious cycle of poverty in Haiti than the process of deforestation. Haiti was once a lush tropical island, replete with pines and broad leaf trees; however, by 1988 only about 2 percent of the country had tree cover.

The most direct effect of deforestation was soil erosion. In turn, soil erosion lowered the productivity of the land, worsened droughts, and eventually led to desertification, all of which increased the pressure on the remaining land and trees. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that this cycle destroyed 6,000 hectares of arable land a year in the 1980s. Analysts calculated that, at the rate of deforestation prevailing in the late 1980s, the country's tree cover would be completely depleted by 2008.

Deforestation accelerated after Hurricane Hazel downed trees throughout the island in 1954. Beginning in about 1954, concessionaires stepped up their logging operations, in response to Port-au-Prince's intensified demand for charcoal, thus accelerating deforestation, which had already become a problem because of environmentally unsound agricultural practices, rapid population growth, and increased competition over scarce land.

Most of Haiti's governments paid only lip service to the imperative of reforestation. As was the case in other areas of Haitian life, the main impetus to act came from abroad. AID's Agroforestry Outreach Program, Proj� Pyebwa, was the country's major reforestation program in the 1980s. Peasants planted more than 25 million trees under Proj� Pyebwa, but as many as seven trees were cut for each new tree planted. Later efforts to save Haiti's trees--and thus its ecosystem--focused on intensifying reforestation programs, reducing waste in charcoal production, introducing more wood-efficient stoves, and importing wood under AID's Food for Peace program.

Haiti - Livestock and Fishing

Most peasants possessed a few farm animals, usually goats, pigs, chickens, and cattle. Few holdings, however, were large, and few peasants raised only livestock. Many farm animals, serving as a kind of savings account, were sold or were slaughtered to pay for marriages, medical emergencies, schooling, seeds for crops, or a voodoo ceremony.

From the perspective of rural peasants, perhaps the most important event to occur in Haiti during the 1980s was the slaughter of the nation's pig stock, which had become infected with the highly contagious African Swine Fever (ASF) in the late 1970s. Having spread from Spain to the Dominican Republic and then to Haiti via the Artibonite River, ASF infected approximately one-third of the nation's pigs from 1978 to 1982. Farmers slaughtered their infected animals. Fear of further infection persuaded peasants to slaughter another one-third in panic sales. A government eradication program virtually wiped out what remained of the 1.2-million pig population by 1982.

At the grassroots level, the government's eradication and repopulation programs became highly controversial. Farmers complained that they were not fairly compensated for--or not paid at all for--their slaughtered livestock and that the sentinel breed of pigs imported from the United States to replace the hardy creole pigs was inappropriate for the Haitian environment and economy. Nonetheless, repopulation of the nation's pigs with both sentinel and Jamaican creole pigs augmented the national stock from an official figure of zero in 1982 to about 500,000 by 1989. Many analysts noted, however, that ASF and the pig slaughter had further impoverished already struggling peasants. The disaster forced many children to quit school. Small farmers mortgaged their land; others cut down trees for cash income from charcoal. The loss of the creole pigs to ASF undoubtedly increased the hardships of the rural population, and it may well have fueled to some degree the popular revolt that forced JeanClaude Duvalier from power.

Goats were one of the most plentiful farm animals in Haiti. Like the creole pigs, they were well adapted to the rugged terrain and sparse vegetation. Approximately 54 percent of all farmers owned goats; the total had climbed from 400,000 in 1981 to more than 1 million by the late 1980s. Peasants owned the majority of the country's estimated 1 million head of cattle in 1987; about 48 percent of the farmers owned at least one head of cattle. Until 1985 the primary export market for beef cattle was the American baby food industry. Farmers raised sheep in some areas, but these animals were not particularly well adapted to the country's climate. Chickens, ducks, turkeys, and guinea hens were raised throughout Haiti under little supervision, although one medium-sized hatchery raised chickens for domestic consumption. After the swine-fever epidemic and the subsequent slaughter of pigs, chicken replaced pork as the most widely consumed meat in the Haitian diet.

About 11,000 Haitians fished the nation's 1,500-kilometer coastline on a full-time or part-time basis, netting an average annual catch of 5,000 tons. The country imported an additional 12,000 tons a year of fish products to satisfy domestic demand. The island's coastal waters suffered from low productivity, and few fisherman ventured far from shore. Nevertheless, Haiti managed to export about US$4 million worth of lobster, conch, and other shellfish in the 1980s. Some minor aquaculture also existed.

Haiti - INDUSTRY

Manufacturing was the most dynamic sector of the economy in the 1980s. Growth in this sector had averaged more than 10 percent a year during the 1970s; manufactures replaced agricultural commodities as the country's leading export goods during this decade. In 1988 manufacturing accounted for 17 percent of GDP and for 53 percent of exports; it employed about 6 percent of the labor force. In addition to the dynamic assembly subsector, which experienced 22 percent real annual growth in the 1970s, included small-scale local manufacturing enterprises and large-scale, state-owned organizations.

The manufacturing sector in the late 1980s comprised 500 enterprises, most of which were small or medium in size and family-owned. Their major products included processed foods, electrical equipment, textiles, and clothing. Small enterprises, employing up to 50 workers, represented 57 percent of all manufacturing firms, but they employed only 10 percent of the industrial labor force. Medium enterprises, with 51 to 300 workers, accounted for 35 percent of the sector's firms and employed 44 percent of the industrial labor force. Large enterprises, those with more than 300 employees, constituted only 8 percent of the companies, but they employed 43 percent of all manufacturing workers, mostly in large assembly factories in the industrial parks of Port-au-Prince.

The development of assembly manufacturing in Haiti was an outgrowth of the island's cheap labor, its proximity to the United States market, the increasing multinational nature of modern firms, and changes in the United States Tariff Code, which in 1962 began to exact duties only on the value-added of products assembled overseas. Assembly operations--typical examples included the sewing of garments, the stuffing of toys, or the stringing of baseballs--grew modestly in the depressed economic climate of the 1960s, but they accelerated rapidly in the early 1970s in response to new fiscal incentives enacted by the government. The warming of Haitian-United States relations after 1973 encouraged foreign investment. The number of assembly enterprises swelled from only 13 companies in 1966 to 67 by 1973 and then to 127 by 1978. When the subsector peaked in 1980, an estimated 200 assembly firms employed nearly 60,000 workers. Political instability, increased regional competition under the CBI, nascent union activity, and the failure of government institutions to attract further investment all contributed to a decline in assembly investment and employment after 1986. In 1989 approximately 150 assembly companies employed only 41,000 workers, more than three-quarters of them women. Assembly exports continued to expand, however, as a result of increased productivity on the part of assembly exporters.

Despite the low wages paid to workers, future growth in the assembly subsector was uncertain. Numerous constraints to growth included the highest utility costs in the Caribbean, excessive shipping and warehousing costs, underdeveloped infrastructure, a largely illiterate work force, scarce managerial personnel, foreign-exchange shortages, expensive or inferior-quality local inputs, political instability, and the personalized nature of business activity. Some United States officials predicted in the 1980s that Haiti would progress to become the "Taiwan of the Caribbean." The implementation of the CBI, however, appeared to hurt Haiti's position in assembly production, as other countries, such as the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Costa Rica, began to capitalize more effectively on the advantages of the initiative. In the mid-1980s, more than 40 percent of all assembly operations were owned by Haitians. The other operations were either owned by firms based in the United States or jointly owned by Haitian and United States interests. Asian investment in the country continued to grow.

Four industrial parks catered to the assembly industry; two were run by the government's National Industrial Park Company (Soci�t� Nationale des Parcs Industriels--Sonapi) and two by a private company. Most firms operated with short-term subcontracting arrangements under which Haitian factories filled requests of American companies that provided partial products, inputs, and machinery. Workers earned piece-work wages, with a guaranteed minimum wage of US$3 a day in 1989, and most made slightly more than that amount. These workers were among the best paid in Haiti, but most of them supported an average of four people on their wages.

The major products assembled in Haiti were garments, electronics, baseballs, games, sporting goods, toys, footwear, and leather products. The largest assembly activity in the late 1980s produced garments. The fastest-growing activity produced electronics; it included subcontracting work for the United States Department of Defense. One of the island's major baseball producers, MacGregor Sporting Goods, decided in 1988 to move its baseball-sewing operations to Mexico, however; and, as a result of the deteriorating political situation in Haiti, other assembly companies decided to fill their orders at the Free Zone of San Isidro, Dominican Republic.

Many Haitians were eager to find jobs in the assembly sector, but some criticized the effects of the industry on workers and on the economy. For example, unions complained that new employees earned only 60 percent of the minimum wage for their first few months and that short-term contracts and seasonal demand led to job instability and the annual dismissal of as many as 5,000 workers with no compensation. Some economists noted that, although assembly operations provided badly needed urban jobs, these operations industries forged few linkages with the rest of the economy. A few local plants utilized domestically produced glue, thread, sisal, and textiles, but the overwhelming share of producers opted for imported inputs, which were generally cheaper, of better quality, and more plentiful. Finally, others disapproved of the generous tax holidays and the duty-free imports that both domestic and foreign manufacturers enjoyed.

Haiti - Domestic Manufacturing

Attempts at import-substitution manufacturing gave most local factories generous import protection from the 1970s to the mid-1980s, thereby insulating them from foreign competition. Industries of this kind produced paper, matches, cardboard, footwear, leather, food products, beverages, rubber, plastics, metals, building materials, textiles, cigarettes, soap, beer, and other basic goods. Most local factories were small or medium in size. Some very small producers demonstrated incredible ingenuity in transforming virtual junk into usable goods, but the limited domestic market and the weak purchasing power of most Haitians severely limited economies of scale, forcing most enterprises to function inefficiently and below capacity. A handful of local manufacturers, who produced rum, paints, essential oils, leather, and handicrafts, were able to expand their businesses through exports. Haitian rum was of exceptional quality, as were the country's handicrafts. Nongovernmental organizations were particularly active in marketing handicrafts in the United States and Europe.

In 1986 the CNG enacted broad import-liberalization policies and abolished long-standing import protection, forcing local producers to compete internationally. As a consequence, domestic manufacturing, already hampered by competition with lower-priced goods smuggled into Haiti from the Dominican Republic, experienced a painful transition in the late 1980s. Many manufacturers closed their doors.

The other major manufacturing subsector was large-scale production by state-owned enterprises of items such as vegetable oils, sugar, flour, and cement. From 1980 to 1985, the government either built, or bought, a majority share in five of the country's largest manufacturing companies. As the losses of these inefficient parastatals mounted, reaching more than 4 percent of GDP from 1982 to 1985, international lenders increasingly pressured the government to divest its interests in these ventures, a process that began after 1986.

Haiti - Construction

After a meager annual growth rate of 1.8 percent a year in the 1960s, construction boomed in the 1970s, expanding nearly 14 percent a year, faster than any other sector except assembly manufacturing. From the 1970s onward, the construction industry had concentrated on infrastructure developments, industrial structures related to the assembly subsector, and extravagant residential housing in Port-au-Prince and its exclusive suburb, P�tionville. The growing demand for construction caused cement output to increase from 150,000 tons a year in 1975 to 220,000 tons a year by 1985. Growth was positive, but uneven, in the 1980s, mainly as a result of political and economic turmoil. The construction industry generally failed to benefit Haiti's poor, who continued to build their own dwellings with a mixture of raw materials, mostly wood and palm thatch in rural areas and corrugated metal, cardboard, or wood in urban shantytowns.

Haiti - Mining

Endowed with few commercially valuable natural resources, Haiti maintained only a small mining sector in the late 1980s; mining accounted for less than 1 percent of GDP, and it employed less than 1 percent of the labor force. The country's only bauxite mine, the Mirago�ne mine in the southern peninsula, produced an average of 500,000 tons of bauxite a year in the early 1980s; however, in 1982 the declining metal content of the ore, high production costs, and the oversupplied international bauxite market forced the mine to close. Bauxite had at one time been the country's second leading export. Copper also was mined, beginning in the 1960s, but production of the ore was sporadic.

Haiti contained relatively small amounts of gold, silver, antimony, tin, lignite, sulphur, coal, nickel, gypsum, limestone, manganese, marble, iron, tungsten, salt, clay, and various building stones. Mining activity in the late 1980s focused on raw materials for the construction industry. The government announced the discovery of new gold deposits in the northern peninsula in 1985, but long-standing plans for gold production proceeded slowly. With funding from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the government planned to perform its first comprehensive geological survey in the late 1980s.

Haiti - Energy

Haiti had limited energy resources in the late 1980s. The country had no petroleum resources, little hydroelectricity potential, and rapidly diminishing supplies of wood fuels. Wood accounted for 75 percent of the nation's energy consumption. Petroleum accounted for 15 percent; bagasse (sugarcane residue), for 5 percent; and hydroelectric power, for 5 percent. Energy consumption was paltry, even for a low-income country. Haiti's per capita energy use in 1985 was equivalent to that in Bangladesh and about seventeen times less than that of neighboring Jamaica. Having virtually no access to electricity, Haiti's poor depended on the felling of trees for the production of charcoal. Similarly, many rural and provincial small businesses used wood as a fuel in powering their operations.

Beginning in the late 1940s, various international oil companies had unsuccessfully explored for oil in Haiti's Artibonite Basin and Cul-de-Sac Basin. The prospects for drilling deeper wells or attempting even higher-risk offshore exploration were not promising. Oil imports, mainly from the Netherlands Antilles and Trinidad and Tobago, amounted to about 15 percent of total imports.

Electricity consumption increased sixfold between 1970 and 1987, but only 10 percent of the population had access to electricity by 1986. About 45 percent of the residents of Portau -Prince had access to electricity--a reflection of the concentration of national economic efforts and resources in the capital--while a mere 3 percent of those outside the capital enjoyed similar access.

Installed electricity capacity in the late 1980s was estimated at 147 megawatts (MW), and it was expected to increase to 190 MW by the late 1990s. The National Electricity Company (Electricit� d'Haiti--EdH), created in 1971 to control the newly built P�ligre hydroelectric plant, operated the nation's power system in the late 1980s. As was true of other enterprises throughout the economy, the president was the nominal head of EdH. The company administered the 47-MW P�ligre hydroelectric plant, the 22-MW Guayamouc hydroelectric plant, a series of smaller hydroelectric plants, two large thermo-electric operations (42-MW Varreux and 38-MW Carrefour), small generators, and the distribution system. The national system, however, was highly disjointed; no power links extended from the capital to provincial cities. Supplies of imported petroleum used in thermal plants fluctuated because of foreign-exchange shortages, and dryseason water shortfalls hampered production at hydroelectric dams. EdH's generation was unreliable. Under these conditions, rationing of electricity was common in the 1980s, and most larger businesses maintained back-up generators. EdH, which had suffered financial problems in the 1970s, charged the highest electricity rates in the Caribbean in the 1980s. Many people illegally tapped into power lines, and by the late 1980s, as many as one in four urban residents reportedly engaged in this practice. International development agencies had explored alternative sources of energy, such as wind power, solar power, methanol production from sorghum, and power generation from organic waste, but none appeared to be immediately feasible.

Haiti - SERVICES

Banking and financial services expanded by almost 10 percent a year during the 1970s, in the wake of the growth of assembly manufacturing, construction, and tourism. By the 1980s, however, the country's financial institutions suffered from negative growth as a result of political instability and the consequently insecure investment climate. In the late 1980s, banking and related services accounted for 10 percent of GDP, and they employed about 4 percent of the labor force.

Nine commercial banks--five Haitian and four foreign-- constituted the heart of the financial system. In 1989 the five local banks were the Haitian Popular Bank (Banque Populaire Ha�tienne), Union Bank of Haiti (Banque de l'Union d'Haiti), Industrial and Commercial Bank of Haiti (Banque Industrielle et Commerciale d'Haiti), Commercial Bank of Haiti (Banque Commerciale d'Haiti), and the Haitian General Banking Society (Soci�t� G�n�rale Ha�tienne de Banque--Sogebank). Sogebank expanded its holdings in 1986 to encompass the two branches of the Royal Bank of Canada, previously the oldest and largest foreign-owned bank in Haiti. Of the four foreign-owned banks, two were based in the United States (Citibank and the Bank of Boston), one in Canada (the Bank of Nova Scotia), and one in France (Banque Nationale de Paris). Haiti considered the United States dollar legal tender, but the government prohibited foreign banks from maintaining foreign-currency accounts. Seventy-five percent of all commercial credit went to manufacturing and commerce; only 3 percent went to agriculture. Excessive collateral requirements, high interest rates, and a proclivity toward short-term financing diminished the role of commercial banks in stimulating output, especially among small producers.

Five development-finance institutions--both public and private--helped to offset deficiencies in commercial-bank financing. The main lenders for agriculture were the Agricultural Credit Bank (Bureau de Cr�dit Agricole--BCA) and the National Agricultural and Industrial Development Bank (Banque Nationale de D�veloppement Agricole et Industriel--BNDAI). BCA provided shortterm credit to nearly 20,000 small-scale farmers for the purchase of inputs and tools. Established in 1951, BNDAI lent to all categories of farmers, but it provided mostly short-term financing to larger, more capital-intensive producers, particularly those cultivating irrigated rice. BNDAI also lent to industrial enterprises, generally on a long-term basis. Private and public funds helped to set up the Industrial Development Fund (Fonds de D�veloppement Industriel--FDI) and the Haitian Financial Development Society (Soci�t� Financi�re Ha�tienne de D�veloppement--Sofihdes) in the 1980s. FDI, founded in 1981 to aid firms with ownership that was at least 51-percent Haitian, offered no direct lending to industry, but it assisted existing companies or new ventures in acquiring credit, supplied guarantees on new loans, and provided technical assistance. Sofihdes, established in 1983 with funds from the CBI, AID, and the Haitian private sector, supplied credit with extended repayment schedules to manufacturing firms and agribusinesses ineligible for commercial bank loans. A fifth development-finance institution was the Mortgage Bank (Banque de Cr�dit Immobilier-- BCI). Established in 1986 with 98 percent private capital, the BCI provided loans of up to US$100,000 for the housing industry, and it offered technical assistance and special loans for some low-income workers.

Other financial institutions included insurance companies, credit unions, finance institutions for the informal sector, and an extensive underground credit system. Several dozen companies wrote insurance policies in Haiti in the 1980s, but only a few were locally owned. Credit unions, established in the 1940s, mobilized savings primarily for agricultural cooperatives. The Haitian Development Foundation and the Haitian Fund for Assistance to Women were instrumental in the late 1980s in lending to small businesses that could not obtain commercial bank credit. There was no Haitian stock exchange.

A new international airport in 1965 and improved relations with the United States helped Haiti's tourism industry to flourish in the 1970s. Tourist arrivals (139,000 by air and 163,000 by sea) peaked in 1980, and net expenditures on tourism (US$44 million) reached their highest level in 1981 before a series of events made Haiti unpopular among tourists. One of these events was publicity surrounding Haiti as a possible origin of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and the high number of AIDS cases among Haitians. The former allegation proved false, but the portrait lingered, along with television images of political violence, dire poverty, "boat people," and general instability.

For the tourists who ventured to the "land of mountains," Haiti held a number of attractions: exotic culture, exquisite French cuisine, distinctive and colorful art and handicrafts, castles, hotels, and a resort setting virtually free of street crime. Its warm climate, friendly people, and low prices were further attractions. In the late 1980s, North Americans, especially people from the United States, continued to account for more than three-quarters of all visitors. Large numbers of Haitian emigr�s also visited the country after the fall of JeanClaude Duvalier. The declining number of tourists in general forced many hotels to close, however, and the total number of rooms registered in the industry dropped from 3,000 in 1981 to 1,500 in 1987. In contrast, the number of hotel rooms in the neighboring Dominican Republic quadrupled over the same time period. Haiti's tourist industry tended to be an enclave economic activity, distinguished by all-inclusive, self-contained beach resorts and brief cruise ship dockings in Cap Ha�tien or Port-au- Prince. Prospects for reviving tourism dimmed in the late 1980s, when the Haitian government closed its tourist-promotion office in New York City.

Haiti - FOREIGN TRADE

Throughout Haiti's history, foreign trade has played a major economic role. Trade provided crucial foreign exchange for Haiti, but the structure of trade and government policies resulted in falling incomes and poorly distributed wealth. In the mid-1980s, about twenty families dominated the importation of basic consumer items. Traditionally, government import-licensing schemes and tariff policies supported import monopolies, a major cause of prevailing high consumer prices. This same structure also permitted the plentiful importation of luxury items at relatively low tariffs. A small group of businessmen also controlled exports, particularly coffee, and its members generally favored commerce over more productive investment. The effects of major trade reforms enacted in 1986 remained to be seen in the late 1980s.

Officially, imports in 1987 reached US$307.7 million, the second lowest level of the decade (after the 1986 level of US$303.2 million). An export level of only US$198.4 million in 1987 created a trade deficit of US$110 million. Not reflected in these data, however, were sizable amounts of contraband. The structure of the country's imports changed little during the 1980s. Foodstuffs continued to account for the greatest share (19 percent) of imports in 1987, followed by machinery and transport equipment (17 percent), manufacturing (16 percent), petroleum (13 percent), chemicals (10 percent), edible oils (10 percent), and other categories (15 percent). The United States was the leading exporter to Haiti, supplying 64 percent of all goods and services in 1987.

In July 1986, the National Council of Government (Conseil National de Gouvernement--CNG) swiftly introduced importliberalization policies that eliminated all quantitative restrictions on import items, with the exception of seven (later amended to five) basic consumer goods. Ad valorem tariffs replaced import quotas; this reform also lowered other tariffs significantly. At the same time, authorities began a complete revision of the Tariff Code that resulted in markedly lower overall protection by the end of 1986. In addition, the government revoked the tariff subsidies enjoyed by state-owned enterprises. Additional trade reform streamlined complex importlicensing schemes, which often favored traditional merchants. The government also attempted to expedite customs procedures, something the private sector had long advocated. Import policies, however, conspicuously lacked a serious and comprehensive policy to halt widespread smuggling.

Exports generally increased during the 1980s, but political instability started to weaken export performance toward the end of the decade. The structure of exports changed dramatically as the result of the long decline in agriculture, the termination of bauxite mining, and the implementation of the CBI. In 1987 manufacturing contributed 53 percent of total exports, followed by coffee (18 percent), handicrafts (14 percent), essential oils (2 percent), cocoa (2 percent), and other goods (11 percent). Agriculture, which accounted for 52 percent of exports in 1980, contributed only 24 percent by 1987; exports of traditional commodities, such as sugar, sisal, and meat, either declined to insignificant levels or ceased altogether. Haiti exported goods mostly to the United States, the destination of 84 percent of the country's overseas sales in 1987. France and Italy, the main purchasers of Haiti's coffee, accounted for 3 percent and 4 percent, respectively, of 1987 exports. The balance of exports went to the Dominican Republic (2 percent) and other West European and Latin American countries (7 percent).

Trade policy in the late 1980s strongly favored export promotion within the framework of the CBI, the expansion of assembly manufacturing, and the maintenance of the country's export competitiveness. In an effort to generate more exports, the Duvalier government solicited increased foreign investment through revisions in the foreign investment code during 1985. With funding from AID, the private sector in February 1987 established an export-promotion office to spearhead new investment and to recoup the momentum of exports that had been lost to political upheaval. Other economic reforms, such as budget cuts that helped to maintain the value of the gourde, maintenance of low minimum wages, and trade liberalization, were intended to stimulate investment and exports. The duty-free entry of additional Haitian goods into the United States under the CBI favored the overall growth in exports. In a bid to revitalize traditional exports, the government in 1986 also eliminated longstanding export taxes on coffee, cocoa, sisal, and other items. Haiti had applied for membership in the free-trade association, the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom), in the early 1970s, but it had not been accepted as of 1989.

Haiti - Government and Politics

WHEN IT SECURED ITS INDEPENDENCE from France, Haiti moved to the forefront of political history. The Haitian Revolution took place at the same period as the American and the French revolutions, and Haiti was one of the first nations to abolish slavery. In some ways, however, Haiti's political development lagged behind that of other nations. Its government functioned like a protostate compared with the more modern systems that evolved in other states. Authoritarianism, typical among archaic states based on monarchy and despotism, characterized Haiti's political history. Haitian governments historically had lacked well-developed institutions, elaborate bureaucracies, and an ability to do more than maintain power and extract wealth from a large peasant base. Haiti's rural areas, where the majority of the population lives, traditionally has benefited least from government expenditures, and they have suffered for the past 500 years from virtually uninterrupted military domination.

In the late 1980s, the Haitian political system was in a profound state of crisis, which became acute during the waning months of 1985 as swelling popular unrest led to the fall of the Jean-Claude Duvalier government on February 7, 1986. After Duvalier's fall, a series of short-lived governments ruled the country.

In retrospect, the post-Duvalier period may be viewed as a transition to consolidation of longer-term control over the Haitian state by one (or more) of several competing political factions. In mid-1989, however, the political situation continued to be in a state of flux; many claimants to power competed with each other, while Haiti's public institutions languished. Even Haiti's armed forces, the country's most powerful institution, suffered from factionalism, corruption, and a general breakdown in the chain of command. Pressure to overhaul the political system mounted. To a significant degree, the political crisis of the transitional period pitted regressive Duvalierist elements, who advocated complete or partial restoration of the ancien r�gime, against popular aspirations for change.

The spectacle of five successive governments between February 1986 and September 1988 reflected the nation's political instability. This period witnessed the election of a constituent assembly, the popular ratification of a new constitution, repeated massacres of citizens exercising their political rights- -such as the right to vote in free elections--and battles between army factions. The succession of governments included the decaying, hereditary dynasty of the Duvaliers; the military-civilian National Council of Government (Conseil National de Gouvernement--CNG) led by Lieutenant General Henri Namphy, that underwent several changes in membership, leading to a reduction in the size of, and the civilian representation in, the government; a four-month civilian government headed by President Leslie F. Manigat, who rose to power because the armed forces rigged the election; another government headed by Namphy as military dictator, originating after a coup against Manigat; and the replacement of Namphy by Lieutenant General Prosper Avril in yet another military coup. Threats from army factions and opposition from the old Duvalierist right wing continued to plague the Avril government.

This apparent instability, however, tended to mask underlying political continuities. Before the fall of the Duvaliers, the last crisis of succession in Haiti had taken place in 1956-57, when President Paul Magloire attempted to extend his constitutional term of office. During the period following Magloire's overthrow, five governments rose and fell within the nine-month period prior to the accession of Fran�ois Duvalier to the presidency. There were also battles between competing army factions during this period. From a longer perspective, the postDuvalier period resembled the nineteenth century in Haiti, when transitory governments held power between relatively long periods of stability.

Although Fran�ois Duvalier came to power through elections in 1957, he lost all credibility because of a fraudulent re-election in 1961, a rigged referendum in 1964 that confirmed him as Haiti's president for life, and the severe and unrelenting repression he dealt out, primarily through the Volunteers for National Security (Volontaires de la S�curit� Nationale--VSN), or tonton makouts (bogeymen). Duvalier ("Papa Doc") extended his illegitimate rule beyond his death by naming his son JeanClaude ("Baby Doc") as his successor.

Jean-Claude Duvalier came to power in 1971, under the informal regency of his mother, Simone Ovide Duvalier, and a small inner circle of Duvalierists. As Jean-Claude matured and began to assert his power independently of his mother and her advisers, some minor reforms in Haitian life took place. By the late 1970s, Jean-Claude had restored some freedom of the press and had allowed the formation of fledgling opposition political parties as well as the organization of a human rights league. This brief period of liberalization, however, ended with the arrest and the expulsion of a number of union leaders, journalists, party activists, and human-rights advocates in November 1980. Representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and leaders of peasant organizations also suffered arrest and intimidation. These arrests heralded a period of heightened government repression that lasted throughout the balance of Duvalier's tenure.

Duvalier's 1980 marriage to Mich�le Bennett resulted in Simone Duvalier's exile and created new factional alliances within the ruling group. The Duvalier-Bennett clique amassed wealth at an unprecedented rate during the remainder of JeanClaude 's presidency for life. The concomitant sharp deterioration in the already dismal quality of life of most Haitians prompted Pope John Paul II to declare in a speech in Haiti in 1983 that "things must change here." His call for social and political justice signaled a new era of church activism in Haiti.

The 1983 promulgation of a new constitution--Haiti's twentieth since 1801--and the February 1984 legislative elections, heavily weighted in favor of Duvalierist candidates, did little or nothing to legitimize Duvalier's rule. These efforts were met by antigovernment riots in Gona�ves in 1984 and 1985. In response, "Baby Doc" attempted to manipulate further the "liberalized" system he had established. Constitutional amendments, approved in 1985 by a fraudulent referendum (a traditional Duvalierist legalism), created the post of prime minister, confirmed the presidency for life as a permanent institution, guaranteed the president the right to name his successor, and provided for severe restrictions on the registration of political parties. Duvalierists organized into the National Progressive Party (Parti National Progressiste--PNP) in anticipation of future manipulated elections. New outbreaks of popular unrest shattered Duvalier's plans, however, and he was eventually forced into exile in February 1986.

The popular revolt, known in Creole as operation d�choukaj (operation uprooting), sought to destroy the foundations of Duvalierism. Its strikes and mass demonstrations reflected the Duvalier regime's general loss of support. In response, the CNG annulled the Duvalierist constitution and held elections for a constituent assembly in October 1986. This assembly produced a new constitution in 1987. Haitians overwhelmingly ratified the document by popular vote on March 29, 1987. At that point, a number of observers seemed optimistic about Haiti's potential transition to democracy. This optimism proved short-lived, however.

The Constitution mandated the formation of an independent electoral council. The Provisional Electoral Council (Conseil Electoral Provisoire--CEP), established in early 1987, initially fulfilled this requirement. Relations between the CEP and the CNG, however, weakened, and by June they had degenerated into open conflict over proposed electoral guidelines. The CNG disbanded the CEP, proposed its own electoral council, and abolished an important opposition trade union. This attempt by the military-dominated CNG to control the electoral process met with strong popular opposition. Strikes and civil unrest eventually forced the CNG to reinstate the independent electoral council, which set presidential elections for November 29, 1987, but postponed local elections.

The presidential campaign was a volatile affair. Two presidential candidates were assassinated, and controversy gripped the CEP with regard to the application of Article 291 of the Constitution, which banned participation by Duvalierist candidates. The campaign officially opened in October, with thirty-five presidential candidates registered. The CEP eventually recognized twenty-three of these candidates and disbarred twelve as Duvalierists. In apparent retaliation, Duvalierist provocateurs are reported to have burned CEP headquarters. By election day, about 2.2 million voters--73 percent of the voting-age population--had registered. Voter turnout on the morning of November 29 was reported to be heavy. Balloting was suspended, however, by midmorning because armed paramilitary groups, linked to old tonton makout leaders who were reportedly protected by certain army officers, massacred an estimated 34 voters at the polls.

After the 1987 electoral debacle, the CNG announced the formation of a new electoral council, controlled by the government, and scheduled new elections for January 17, 1988. Four leading presidential candidates withdrew from the race in protest over the military's attempts to control the electoral process. The balloting went ahead as scheduled, however, amid a low voter turnout and allegations of fraud. The CNG's electoral council declared Leslie F. Manigat, of the small Coalition of Progressive National Democrats (Rassemblement des D�mocrates Nationaux Progressistes--RDNP) the winner. Manigat took office on February 7. Namphy and the army deposed Manigat on June 20, following a dispute over army appointments. Manigat made the mistake of trying to assert constitutional control over the armed forces rather than serving as a figurehead. In response, Namphy and the army deposed Manigat on June 20 of that same year, and Haiti returned to direct military government for the first time since 1956. Namphy formally rescinded the 1987 Constitution in July 1988.

Human-rights abuses increased during Namphy's tenure as the army did little to discourage the violent backlash of Duvalierist groups. These abuses climaxed on Sunday, September 11, when a group of former tonton makouts entered the Church of Saint John Bosco in Port-au-Prince (pastored by a prominent opposition priest), murdered a number of worshipers, and set the church on fire. On September 17, noncommissioned officers of the Presidential Guard (Garde Pr�sidentielle) ousted Namphy and replaced him with Lieutenant General Prosper Avril. Avril proceeded to purge the army command and the government cabinet in an attempt to solidify his position. In October, Avril arrested fifteen soldiers and noncommissioned officers who had helped to bring him to power.

In early 1989, instability intensified as labor unions and other groups staged demonstrations throughout the country. In an attempt to achieve some sort of stability, Avril convened a National Forum on February 7, with strong participation from centrist politicians, to explore the possibility of re-establishing an electoral calendar. In a further conciliatory move, the government excluded key Duvalierists from the forum. Avril also partially restored the 1987 Constitution on March 13. In line with the Constitution, the government announced the formation of a new independent electoral commission, the Permanent Electoral Council (Conseil Electoral Permanent--CEP). The CEP members took office in April.

From April 2 to 8, factional struggles in the military evolved into two attempted coups supported by old-line Duvalierists, former tonton makout leaders, and high-level army officers implicated in drug trafficking. Key elements of the Presidential palace guard, however, remained loyal to Avril, who survived the coup attempts and emerged with a strengthened hand. In an attempt to head off future challenges, Avril abolished the rebel army units and began to disperse their troops into scattered provincial outposts. Avril managed to retain power, but the events of April 1989 had left the armed forces divided. The domestic situation continued to be extremely unstable, and the future political course of the nation was unpredictable.

Haiti - THE CONSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK

Haitian heads of state have often drafted and abolished the nation's constitutions at will, treating the documents as their own personal charters. However, when the 1987 Constitution replaced the Duvalierist 1983 constitution, the popular referendum that ratified the Constitution was free and fair; it demonstrated widespread support for the new document. Nevertheless, the interim governments have not taken the provisions of the Constitution seriously. Through a simple presidential decree, Namphy suspended the document in 1988, and Avril only partially reinstated it in 1989.

The 1987 Constitution is a modern, progressive, democratic document. It guarantees a series of basic rights to the citizenry. It declares the intent to establish democracy in Haiti, and it includes ideological pluralism, electoral competition, and the separation of powers. Several provisions seek to reshape the system and the political tradition bequeathed to the nation by the Duvaliers. In particular, the Constitution reduces the president's constitutional powers, decentralizes governmental authority, and establishes elected councils for local government. Police and army functions are disaggregated. The Constitution also establishes an independent judiciary and subordinates military personnel to civilian courts in all cases that involve civilians. Under the Constitution, individuals are barred from public office for ten years if they have served as "architects" of the Duvalierist dictatorship, enriched themselves from public funds, inflicted torture on political prisoners, or committed political assassinations. The Constitution abolishes the death penalty and focuses on the protection of civil rights through detailed restrictions on the arrest and the detainment of citizens. It calls for the establishment of a career civil service based on merit and for job security, and it recognizes both Creole and French as official languages.

The Constitution establishes three major branches of government--legislative, executive, and judicial--and notes that these branches are essential to a civil state and that they must be independent of each other. Legislative powers are vested in two chambers, the House of Deputies and the Senate. Deputies and senators are elected by direct suffrage. Deputies represent municipalities (or communes), and senators represent geographic departments.

In the executive branch, the president of the republic serves as head of state. A prime minister, chosen by the president from the majority party in the legislature, heads the government. Other components of the executive branch include cabinet ministers and secretaries of state.

The judiciary consists of the Court of Cassation (supreme court), courts of appeal, and other smaller courts. The president appoints judges on the basis of lists submitted by various elected bodies, including the Senate and departmental and municipal assemblies.

The Constitution also provides for several special institutions and autonomous governmental offices that include the CEP, the Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes, the Conciliation Commission (a body responsible for settling disputes between executive and legislative branches and between the two houses of the legislature), the Office of Citizen Protection (an ombudsman organization established to protect citizens against abuse by the government), the State University of Haiti, the Haitian Academy (responsible for standardizing the Creole language), and the National Institute of Agrarian Reform.

The Constitution contains a number of provisions intended to guide the country during transitions between elected governments. These provisions include the creation of an electoral council with sufficient autonomy to hold local and national elections, free of outside interference. The Constitution calls for the replacement of the provisional council by a permanent electoral council following a transition to civilian government.

When General Avril reinstated the Constitution in March 1989, he created an electoral council according to the constitutional formula, but he also temporarily suspended thirty-eight articles. Under the partially restored Constitution, the president of the military government could exercise power until a presidential election was organized. Legislative powers were similarly suspended pending elections. The suspended constitutional elements included Article 42-1, Article 42-2, and Article 42-3, which require the trial of military personnel in civilian courts for charges of high treason or of conflicts and abuses involving civilians. Other suspended articles refer to the constitutional separation of powers among the executive, the legislative, and the judicial branches of government and the military. These suspensions immunized military personnel against legal charges stemming from the constitutional protection of citizen rights. They also allowed the military to carry out activities that the Constitution reserved for the executive or the legislative branches.

Haiti - THE GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM

The formally reinstated 1987 Constitution did not accurately reflect the government of Haiti in 1989, however. The only constitutional reform that the Avril government had actually implemented was the new CEP. The reinstatement of the Constitution was essentially a mere gesture and not a restoration of the political process initiated by the 1986-87 constituent assembly. Under the partially restored Constitution, the Haitian president, drawn from the military, actually controlled all executive, legislative, and military functions. In the absence of a legislature, the president ruled by decree. This form of transitional military government also usurped judicial functions.

Avril's military government administered the country through a cabinet that included thirteen ministerial portfolios as of mid-1989. The most powerful of these posts was the Ministry of Interior and National Defense, which combined administrative responsibilities over the nation's armed forces and the police. As of mid-1989, no legislative body existed in Haiti.

A number of military and civil jurisdictions existed throughout Haiti. The jurisdictional system resulted in preferential treatment for the government of Port-au-Prince over the rest of the country. Most institutions were concentrated in the capital city. Moreover, the military either ran or dominated the most elaborate institutions.At the level of departments (d�partements) and rural communal sections, a military office served as the sole government representative. Thus, both the largest and the smallest subdivisions were exclusively military jurisdictions.

Furthermore, the structure of jurisdictions and the distribution of government institutions were generally asymmetrical. The military subdivisions of departments (i.e., districts, subdistricts, and guard posts) did not correspond to civil jurisdictions such as counties (arrondissements) or municipalities. Units identified as police functioned only in Port-au-Prince. The technical ministries, such as agriculture or public health, generally did not maintain offices at the level of municipalities or rural communal sections. At the municipality level, the most widely diffused national civil institution was the tax office. In any case, most people in Haiti lived in rural sections, where the civil functions of government were virtually nonexistent.

Under transitional military government, the judiciary did not function as the Constitution directed. Moreover, the formal structure of the judiciary was in a state of flux. The Haitian judiciary had usually had a marginal relationship to society, and it had generally failed to protect the rights of citizens. The masses of the citizenry were largely excluded from the duly constituted system of courts and due process. Under the dictatorial rule of Fran�ois Duvalier, the court system was virtually suspended.

Haiti derived the formal aspects of its legal system from Roman law, the Napoleonic Code, and the French system of civil law. The highest court, the Court of Cassation, consisted of a president, a vice president, and ten judges. It functioned in two chambers, with five judges in each but it would function as a whole when it heard appeals and pleas of the unconstitutionality of laws and decrees. Judges of the Court of Cassation had to be at least thirty years old, had to have practiced law for at least ten years, and had to have held the position of judge or public attorney for at least seven years.

Below the Court of Cassation were four courts of appeal, located in Port-au-Prince, Les Cayes, Gona�ves, and Cap-Ha�tien. The court at Port-au-Prince had a president and five judges, whereas the others had a president and four judges. These courts heard both civil and criminal cases, including all appeals from courts of first instance and criminal appeals from justice of the peace courts when a serious matter was involved. To be appointed to these courts, judges had to have been either judges of courts of first instance for three years or military advocates for at least ten years.

Courts of first instance were either civil tribunals or criminal tribunals. Both were located in major cities. Each court had one judge and various other officers. These courts heard many first-instance civil cases and all criminal cases other than police matters. Judges in these courts were required to have practiced law for at least two years.

The justice of the peace courts were located in each of the country's 126 municipalities and in other places. Each court had at least one judge and other officials. According to the law, a justice of the peace was required to have a law degree, to be at least twenty-five years old, to be in full enjoyment of civil and political rights, and to have completed a probationary period of at least one year. These courts heard all cases involving limited amounts of money, including first-instance cases. They also handled landlord and tenant cases. Their jurisdiction in criminal matters extended only to cases where the penalty did not exceed six months in jail.

In addition, there were special courts that dealt with administrative contracts, property rights, juveniles, and labor conflicts.

The president of Haiti appointed all judges. Those in the Court of Cassation and the courts of appeal served ten years; the others served seven years.

Haiti - The Functions of the State

Most Haitians viewed government functionaries as beneficiaries of patronage and the spoils system rather than as public servants. The state traditionally supported and maintained the established political order and extracted wealth from the population. Citizens therefore expected little or nothing from government. Rather, they saw the state as an entity that confiscated, taxed, prohibited, or imprisoned.

The Haitian government also traditionally served as a source of jobs. Political favoritism and bribery characterized the system. One common Creole expression holds that "Jijman se kob" (court rulings are money). Political scientists have used terms such as kleptocracy, predatory state, government-by- franchise, and autocolonization in their descriptions of the Haitian system of taxation, patronage, corruption, public monopolies, and private monopolies protected by the state.

The state had developed a relatively elaborate apparatus for taxation, but it provided only limited public services. Most Haitians relied on foreign-assistance agencies and on nongovernmental institutions for services provided by most other governments. For example, education was the most elaborate public-service sector, but the majority of children still attended nongovernmental schools. The state's abdication of its role as service provider created a situation in which foreign-assistance agencies served as a kind of shadow government.

Government institutions in Port-au-Prince provided at least the facade of public services through the Ministry of Public Health and Population; the Ministry of Agriculture, Natural "Resources, and Rural Development; the Ministry of National Education, Youth, and Sports; and other ministries. These ministries had no representatives in most rural areas, however, and they provided relatively few services even in Port-au-Prince. Government budgets for public services generally accounted for salaries, but they provided little or no budget support for program implementation.

Aside from the army, Haiti's key state institution had traditionally been the customs house, the primary source of tax revenues. The state also extracted wealth through its control over certain essential services and through public and private monopoly ownership of key commodity-based enterprises. This system contributed to the country's political instability because it politicized important sectors of the country's economy.

Haiti - Urban Dominance, Rural Stagnation

A sharp administrative division existed between rural and urban jurisdictions. The capital city dominated the urban sector. National political institutions and decisions focused on Port-au-Prince, and they were far removed from the lives of most Haitians. References to the "Republic of Port-au-Prince" reflected this reality. The political system affected all Haitians, but changes in government generally had little direct impact on the lives of rural Haitians.

Data from 1984 suggested that the government spent about 65 percent of its revenues in Port-au-Prince, a city with roughly 20 percent of the nation's population. In effect, taxes levied in rural areas paid the salaries of a privileged group of city dwellers.

Foreign assistance also tended to exacerbate rural-urban differences. About 40 percent of all public foreign aid benefited Port-au-Prince.

In rural Haiti, the army was the government. The official role of the armed forces was national defense, but most members of the military carried out police functions. Perhaps the most influential presence was that of the denim-uniformed corps of 562 rural section chiefs (chefs de section) and their assistants. People commonly referred to the section chief and his corps of assistants as leta (the state), although the section chiefs constituted more on auxiliary corps and were not members of the regular army.

The rural section chiefs were usually recruited from a small class of landed peasant families known as gro neg (big man) or gran abitan (large peasant). These families generally had other economic interests in addition to farming, including grain speculation, moneylending, and various forms of commerce. Appointments of section chiefs were usually based on political ties, factional alliances, and bribes. In many cases the positions were inherited.

The role of section chief involved much more than conventional police functions. As the sole government representative in rural areas, the section chief levied taxes and fines, mediated disputes, and served as a civil registry. These responsibilities placed the section chief in a powerful political and economic position. He was well situated to collect bribes; rural police refused to provide services to citizens who did not make special payments to them. The virtual absence of competing power brokers buttressed the section chiefs' positions. The 1987 Constitution set up rural government councils in an attempt to curb abuses by section chiefs and to mediate the interests of rural citizens in the political process. These councils, however, were also subject to graft and corruption.

Centralized authority in the presidency contrasted with the decentralized exercise of authority by local government officials. Port-au-Prince provided no policy direction for local governments, and it did little to monitor them. Few funds were made available to local governments for expenses other than salaries. Certain local officials, such as section chiefs, exercised absolute power within their local jurisdictions. They did not depend on salaries for their income; in a sense, they purchased from the state the privilege of collecting revenues by virtue of their authority and their power to grant favors.

Haiti - POLITICAL DYNAMICS

The Haitian political system has historically displayed certain enduring features. The post-Duvalier transition, for example, was similar in some ways to previous crises of succession. Power Maintenance

According to the Duvaliers, Haiti was a republic, wherein power passed smoothly from father to son in 1971. In reality, however, the country resembled a monarchy. This "dynastic republicanism" was merely a new variant of the traditional Haitian system of competition among personalist factions. The dynastic republicanism began when Fran�ois Duvalier simply extended his term in office beyond its prescribed six years. As Duvalier was well aware, there was ample precedent in Haitian history for this move. Duvalier's immediate predecessors all tried to extend their prescribed terms in office. After extending his term, Duvalier declared himself president. Nine of Duvalier's predecessors had designated themselves chiefs-of-state for life. Duvalier then established the hereditary presidency. Haitian monarchs Henri (Henry) Christophe (1807-20) and Faustin Soulouque (1847-59) had attempted to establish hereditary succession more than a century earlier. In short, the primary goal of most Haitian leaders has been to maintain themselves in power for as long as possible.

The Haitian army has traditionally played the role of political arbiter. The precedent for this role can be traced to eighteenth-century colonial Saint-Domingue. The early leaders of Haiti established strong military rule during the revolutionary period (1791-1804). The leading general of the revolution, Fran�ois-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, declared himself the French governor-for-life in the preindependence constitution of 1801. The French Revolution also affected events in Haiti. At the time that Haiti achieved independence, France was ruled by Napol�on Bonaparte, a preeminent military figure who eventually declared himself emperor. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the first Haitian head of state, was also a victorious general who declared himself emperor. From 1804 to 1913, almost all Haitian heads of state were military officers. Military occupation by the United States (1915-34) served to reinforce the central role of military power in society.

The army clearly exercised its power, as the supreme arbiter of political destinies, during the political succession of Fran�ois Duvalier in 1957. At that point, however, history took a different turn. By 1962, Duvalier had effectively undermined the authority of the regular army by legitimizing the tonton makouts as a paramilitary counterforce, the VSN. The VSN, devoted to maintaining power and repressing political opposition, was considerably larger than the army; it consisted primarily of rural dwellers.

Duvalier's ability to maintain power can be attributed largely to his neutralization of the military as an independent political force. The idea of a paramilitary counterforce also had historical precedent. Soulouque made effective use of the zinglins, precursors to the tonton makouts. During his presidential campaign, Fran�ois Duvalier organized a private paramilitary group known as cagoulards (hooded men).

For years the VSN has had a strong base of support in rural Haiti; from the same segments of the population that filled the ranks of the irregular military forces known as cacos and piquets during the pre-occupation era. Duvalier's decision to legitimize the VSN was clever, partly because it co-opted disenfranchised groups into the established political system at relatively little cost to the regime. Militia members were volunteers who were even willing to pay fees to local VSN commanders for permission to join the force. Volunteers were familiar with the VSN's opportunities for personal gain through corruption. To raise money, local VSN commanders periodically disbanded their units and recruited new members who would pay to join the force.

Forces that countered military power were set up within the military itself at certain points in Haiti's history. President St�nio Vincent (1930-41) first created a presidential guard in the 1930s, and he had heavy weapons brought into the presidential palace. This guard helped Vincent maintain power for eleven years; it played a key role in the political fates of all of Vincent's successors. The Leopards Corps, created by Jean-Claude Duvalier in the 1970s, represented yet another variant of a specialized army corps assigned the responsibilities of maintaining presidential power and discouraging coups d'�tat.

More recently, Avril's core of support also lay clearly within the Presidential Guard. As of mid-1989, Avril had not fully consolidated his power base, and contenders vied for his position as military chief of state. Avril was also forced to contend with army and nonmilitary groups linked to the tonton makouts. The tonton makouts, although abolished in 1986, were never effectively disbanded. They continued to play a leading role in the politics of the army, and they, together with the Duvalierists, appeared to represent the central obstacle to Avril's consolidation of power. Ironically, these were the same people to whom he owed personal and political debts.

Haiti - The President

The focus of Haitian politics has always been the presidency. Weakly developed separation of powers has reflected this situation. Legislative bodies and elections, which have existed for centuries, have generally only assisted the chief of state in obtaining whatever he wished.

Haitian writers have often described the country's obsession with the presidency in pathological terms. As a young writer, long before he became president, Fran�ois Duvalier identified the historical "mania for the presidency" as the disease of "presidentitis." Earlier generations of Haitian intellectuals had also bemoaned the destructive social effects of the presidency-for-life. This obsession continued to be an important political issue throughout the twentieth century.

As a result of the life-and-death power he wielded over the citizenry, the president has historically acquired a godlike quality. Presidents rarely represented a coalition of interest groups that joined forces through Western-style debate, compromise over party platforms, and competition at the polls. Rather, the president usually headed a faction that seized control of the state by any means possible, with the support of the army. In the process, the president became the personal embodiment of the state. Fran�ois Duvalier wrote it in lights on the public square, proclaiming "I am the Haitian flag. He who is my enemy is the enemy of the fatherland." State and nation merged in the person of the president. In Haitian politics, there was no real distinction between state and government. Presidents could therefore claim with some justification that they were the state.Political parties and candidates also focused on the presidency. A plethora of individuals competed for the presidency; no true political parties existed. The emphasis on the presidency has hampered constitutional reforms designed to establish a sharing of power, free elections, and local representation. The emphasis also conflicted with the wave of popular expectations unleashed by the fall of Duvalier in 1986. Heightened expectations for change clashed with the regressive politics of old-line Duvalierists and tonton makouts. This clash contributed to the protracted post-Duvalier crisis of succession.

Haiti - Perceptions of Democracy

The presidency depended on the nonparticipation of average citizens in the political process, except when they had personal ties to a power holder. Presidential contenders often rhetorically invoked the masses in their transitions to power; still, the common citizen played an insignificant role in the day-to-day politics of the country. This situation fueled popular cynicism regarding elections.

Participation in the political arena, however, has traditionally involvedgreat personal risk. The threat of arrest, injury, and death was very real for those who challenged the prevailing government. The fact that political detainees were not entitled to due process of law further magnified this risk.

After the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier, everyone spoke of democracy. Some Creole observers have described the post-Duvalier period as diyari demokratik (democratic diarrhea) or bambosh demokrasi (revelry of democracy). Average Haitians expected that life would somehow dramatically improve with the departure of the Duvaliers and that there would be democracy; however, for most Haitians, democracy was only an abstract concept. Haitians had never experienced true democracy, and communities had never had a voice in the political process.

The political role models for most Haitians emerged during the Duvalier era. For many people, post-Duvalier notions of democracy meant only a change in the factions and the personalities of the people in power. For others, democracy meant their finally being able to take their turn at the spoils system. Some people believed that democracy meant an opportunity to do what one pleased--liberty without responsibility (an attitude noted and reproved in Toussaint Louverture's remark, "I have never considered that liberty is synonymous with license"). Many people felt that a democracy should provide everyone with jobs, food, and material goods. In any case, the constitutional referendum in March 1987 and the November 29 elections of that same year clearly demonstrated overwhelming support for genuine change that would lead to a better quality of life.

Haiti - The Mass Media

The mass media in Haiti expanded remarkably between 1957 and 1989; radio led the way. The transistor radio brought news and information to previously isolated rural areas. Since the 1950s, Protestant missionaries have proselytized through their own radio stations. Radio Soleil, a Roman Catholic station, and other radio stations contributed to the fall of Duvalier in 1986.

Approximately two dozen radio stations were broadcasting in Haiti in the late 1980s; slightly more than half of them were in the Port-au-Prince area. There were a similar number of newspapers and other periodicals, including four daily papers with an estimated combined circulation of 25,000, four monthlies, and a dozen or so weeklies. The number of publications varied over time. Some publications were produced irregularly. During the post-Duvalier period, a relatively large number of publications appeared, but many of them published only a few issues before folding.

Two television stations, one private and one public, were broadcasting in the late 1980s. There was also a cable television network. Many wealthy families owned satellite dishes that picked up television signals from abroad. Television played a growing role among the Haitian media, but its influence continued to be greatest among higher-income residents of Port-au-Prince. In general, increased freedom of expression and an absence of formal government censorship or control characterized the post-Duvalier period.

Spoken and written Creole became commonplace in radio, television, and publications, as well as in community organizations and development projects. The production of materials written in Creole expanded exponentially in the late 1980s and increased the participation of the majority of the population in Haitian politics. Creole also became increasingly important in advertising.

Haiti - INTEREST GROUPS

During the post-Duvalier period, other developments in the media, party organization, labor unions, and professional associations took place. Understanding these changes is essential to understanding Haiti's political environment. The Tonton Makout Network

The Duvalier dynasty held power longer than any other regime in Haitian history. The duration of the dynasty enabled the thorough entrenchment of Duvalierist institutions and the development of a patronage system. One of the more important of these institutions was the VSN. After the VSN's dissolution, former tonton makout leaders remained at large, and some were politically active throughout the post-Duvalier period. The old makout networks also continued to function within the army. As of 1989, they were the main obstacle to free, fair, and popular elections in Haiti, and thet were the most significant threat to domestic security.

Through the VSN, the Duvalier regime had politicized rural Haiti. The VSN had expanded the president's influence to remote areas, and it had incorporated rural Haiti into a political system once limited almost exclusively to Port-au-Prince. The VSN had assured political control of the hinterlands, but it had given peasants no new voice in the political process. It had created a rural awareness of Port-au-Prince and events there, however, a consciousness of the national political system, and new political aspirations. The VSN had engendered a generalized disrespect for political institutions, and it had heightened expectations of profit from the political system.

During presidential campaigns, political parties organized under the banner of specific personalities. Political parties have existed in name for a long time, but they have not exerted any independent influence on the political system. Rather, parties have served as campaign vehicles for individual politicians.

In the 1870s and the 1880s, the emergence of the Liberal Party (Parti Liberal--PL) and the National Party (Parti National- -PN) reflected the polarization between black and mulatto elites. In the wake of the United States occupation (1915-34), nationalist parties organized around the issue of resistance to foreign occupation. These parties included the Patriotic Union (L'Union Patriotique) and the Nationalist Union (L'Union Nationaliste). During the presidential campaign of 1946, there were many candidates and parties, including the Popular Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste Populaire--PSP), the Unified Democrat Party (Parti D�mocrate Unifi�--PDU), the Worker Peasant Movement (Mouvement Ouvrier Paysan--MOP), the Popular Democratic Party of Haitian Youth (Parti D�mocratique Populaire de la Jeunesse Ha�tienne--PDPJH), the Communist Party of Haiti (Parti Communiste d'Ha�ti--PCH), and a federation of groups known as the Haitian Revolutionary Front (Front R�volutionnaire Ha�tien, FRH).

The presidential campaign of 1956-57 included candidates who ran under the banners of the National Agricultural Industrial Party (Parti Agricole et Industriel National--PAIN) led by Louis D�joie, the MOP led by Daniel Fignol�, the PN led by Clement Jumelle, and the National Unity Party (Parti Unit� Nationale-- PUN) of Fran�ois Duvalier. During the Duvalier years, the three non-Duvalierist parties continued to function in exile in the United States mainland and Puerto Rico.

Both Duvalier governments banned or severely restricted opposition political parties. Consequently, about a dozen opposition parties operated in exile, including Leslie Manigat's RDNP based in Caracas, the Unified Haitian Communist Party (Parti Unifi� des Communistes Ha�tiens--PUCH) based in France, the National Progressive Revolutionary Haitian Party (Parti National Progressiste R�volutionnaire Ha�tien--Panpra) headed by Serge Gilles and based in France, and the Democratic Revolutionary Party of Haiti (Parti R�volutionnaire D�mocratique d'Ha�ti) based in the Dominican Republic and subsequently known in Haiti as the Democratic Movement for the Liberation of Haiti (Mouvement D�mocratique pour la Lib�ration d'Ha�ti--MODELH), headed by Fran�ois Latortue.

During the presidential campaign of 1987, more than 100 candidates announced their candidacy. As of August 1987, twentyone political parties had registered. None of these parties, however, developed a nationwide organization. At the time of the sabotaged elections of November 19, 1987, the race was expected to be won by one of four candidates: Sylvio C. Claude, standard bearer of the Christian Democrat Party of Haiti (Parti D�mocrate Chr�tien d'Ha�ti--PDCH); Marc Bazin of the Movement for the Installation of Democracy in Haiti (Mouvement pour l'Instauration de la D�mocratie en Ha�ti--MIDH); Louis Dejoie II, son of the 1957 presidential candidate, representing PAIN; and G�rard Gourgue of the National Cooperation Front (Front National de Concertation--FNC).

The Gourgue candidacy under the FNC appeared to have considerable support in urban and rural areas. The FNC was a loose federation of parties, community groups, and trade unions based on an organization called the Group of 57. The party included the National Committee of the Congress of Democratic Movements (Comit� National du Congr�s des Mouvements D�mocratiques--Conacom), the Patriotic Unity Bloc (Bloc Unit� Patriotique--BIP), and Panpra, which had re-established itself in Haiti with the return of Serge Gilles. Bazin and Dejoie also returned from exile to organize their presidential campaigns. Claude's PDCH and the Social Christian Party of Haiti (Parti Social Chr�tien d'Ha�ti--PSCH) led by Gr�goire Eugene were the only two political parties organized in Haiti that sought to operate openly during the Jean-Claude Duvalier years. The remaining parties had either formed during the post-Duvalier period or had returned from exile to join the campaign.

Haiti - The Upper and the Middle Classes

The system of public and private monopolies, including parastatals and import-substitution industries, developed under the Duvaliers. These industries generated great wealth for a handful of powerful families in Port-au-Prince, which resulted in politicized economic decision making. This elite sector saw itself threatened by the fall of the Duvalier regime. Under interim rule, volatile competition arose among certain business interests and military factions. Key members of the business community backed Duvalierist presidential candidates who were likely to protect the lucrative business privileges established under the old regime.

Intermediary classes (those between the wealthy elite and the impoverished masses) grew significantly during the Duvalier era. Fran�ois Duvalier's political strategy of appealing to the black middle class created a new constituency for political patronage, government employment, and the rapid accumulation of wealth through the political system. The growth of the black middle class was closely linked to the Duvalier era, and it contributed to the tremendous growth of Port-au-Prince after the 1950s.

The long-standing tendencies toward the centralization of wealth and of power in Port-au-Prince greatly increased during the Duvalier era. The income gap between upper and lower income groups widened, and rural areas suffered accordingly. Growing rural-to-urban migration, primarily to Port-au-Prince, and emigration, especially to the United States, also had an impact on the political environment and on aspirations for change. The Duvalier era saw an unprecedented level of emigration to North America along with smaller waves of emigration to other Caribbean countries, Latin America, Europe, and Africa. Emigration had an important impact on Haitian politics. Emigr�s maintained numerous fragmented political parties in exile. Emigration also caused huge sums of foreign currency to enter into the economy through remittances. It raised Haitians' consciousness of the outside world, and it led to easier upward social mobility for members of the new intermediary classes by alleviating competition for scarce jobs.

Haiti - Interest Groups

The Duvaliers suppressed labor unions. A number of loosely organized unions and federations emerged after the fall of JeanClaude , but labor generally lacked institutional development. Unions exercised little clout in industry. Their importance as pressure groups, however, grew during the post-Duvalier period. Professional and trade associations played an active political role in the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier and during the period that followed. The most active associations represented teachers, students, agronomists, physicians, journalists, lawyers, and engineers. The Association of Industries of Haiti (Association des Industries d'Ha�ti), representing businesspeople involved in the assembly industry, exercised a great deal of influence over government economic policy. The two Port-au-Prince chambers of commerce--the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Haiti (Chambre de Commerce et de l'Industrie d'Ha�ti) and the Haitian-American Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Chambre de Commerce et del'Industrie Ha�tianoAm�ricaine --Hamcham)--were less active after 1986 than they had been under Jean-Claude Duvalier. The Association of Coffee Exporters (Association des Exportateurs de Caf�--Asdec) had long exerted influence in politics and the economy.

Approximately ten human rights organizations functioned in Haiti in 1989. Although most formed after the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier, one had been in existence since the late 1970s. Most of these organizations maintained their headquarters in Port-au-Prnce. A number of them had links to Haitians who lived abroad or who had been exiled during the Duvalier era. Some individuals working in human rights harbored broader political ambitions, and they sought to influence presidential politics.

Haiti - FOREIGN RELATIONS

Throughout its history, Haiti's relative isolation has constrained its foreign relations. Haiti achieved some prominence as a result of its successful revolution, but the governments of slaveholding countries either ignored or decried the country during the first half of the nineteenth century. In the United States, the question of recognizing Haiti provoked sharp debate between abolitionists, who favored recognition, and slaveholders, who vehemently opposed such an action. The advent of the Civil War, however, allowed President Abraham Lincoln to recognize Haiti without controversy. Haiti became a focus of interest for the great powers in the early twentieth century mainly because of the country's strategic location. Competition among the United States, Germany, France, and Britain resulted in the breaching of Haiti's sovereignty and the nineteen-year occupation by United States forces. Subsequent isolation stemmed from Haiti's cultural and linguistic uniqueness, its economic underdevelopment, and from international condemnation of the repressive Duvalier regimes.

Haiti has maintained a long-standing relationship with the United States. Haitians have perceived economic ties to the United States as vital. The United States was Haiti's primary trading partner for both exports and imports, its most important source of foreign assistance, and the primary target of Haitian emigration. A large number of private voluntary agencies from the United States functioned in Haiti. The assembly industry of Port-au-Prince was closely tied to the United States economy. In short, the economic and the political influence of the United States in Haiti was more powerful than the influence of any other country.

Still, contemporary American diplomatic interest in Haiti has been minimal. Washington's interest in Haiti arose chiefly because of the country's proximity to the Panama Canal and Central America. Haiti also controls the Windward Passage, a narrow body of water that could be easily closed, disrupting maritime traffic. In the nineteenth century, the United States considered establishing a naval base in Haiti. At about the time of World War I, the United States occupied Haiti along with a number of other countries in the Caribbean and Central America. Since the 1960s, Washington has viewed Haiti as an anticommunist bulwark, partly because of the country's proximity to Cuba. Fran�ois Duvalier, exploiting United States' hostility toward the Cuban regime of Fidel Castro Ruz and United States fears of communist expansion in the Caribbean, deterred the United States government from exerting excessive pressure against his own dictatorship.

In the 1980s, the United States expressed a special interest in curbing illegal Haitian immigration. Washington also attempted to curtail shipments of illegal drugs to and from Haiti.

From the 1970s until 1987, United States assistance to Haiti grew. After the violently disrupted elections of November 1987, however, United States president Ronald Reagan suspended all aid to Haiti. In August 1989, President George Bush restored US$10 million in food aid because the Avril government had made progress toward holding free elections and had agreed to cooperate in efforts to control international drug trafficking.

The Dominican Republic was the second most important country to Haiti because the two nations shared a border, but the two countries were ambivalent toward each other. Haiti supplied cheap labor to the Dominican Republic, mostly to help harvest sugarcane. Under the Duvaliers, this arrangement involved an annual intergovernmental exchange of funds for the supply of cane cutters.

For generations Haitians had informally crossed the Dominican Republic's border in search of work. An estimated 250,000 people of Haitian parentage lived in the Dominican Republic. This perceived "blackening" of the Dominican population motivated dictator Rafael Le�nidas Trujillo Molina to carry out a notorious massacre of Haitians in 1937. The border has been an issue of contention in other respects as well. The Haitian economy has proved to be a desirable market for Dominican products, effectively undercutting Haitian production of certain commodities and reducing the domestic market for some Haitian goods. Also, exiled Haitian politicians have readily sought refuge in the Dominican Republic and have gained allies there in efforts to bring down Haitian governments.

Ties with other Caribbean nations were limited. Historically, Britain and France strove to limit contacts between their dependencies and Haiti, in order to discourage independence movements. Haiti's cultural and linguistic distinctiveness also prevented close relations in the Caribbean. As of mid-1989, Haiti did not belong to the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom), and it had not been included in the Lom� Convention, although there had been some discussion with Caricom officials on both points. Haiti also maintained few productive relationships in Latin America.

Other countries important to Haiti included the primary donor countries for foreign assistance, especially France, Canada, and the Federal Republic of Germany. Haiti maintained special cultural ties to France, even though the two countries were not major trading partners. Haiti also enjoyed a supportive relationship with the Canadian province of Quebec, one of the few linguistically compatible entities in the Western Hemisphere; most Haitian �migr�s in Canada lived in Quebec, and the majority of administrators of Canadian aid projects came from Quebec. Haiti's memberships in international and multilateral organizations included the United Nations and its associated organizations, the Organization of American States, the InterAmerican Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

In many ways, Haitians were proud of their history, particularly the accomplishments of such revolutionary figures as Dessalines and Toussaint. However, the nation has suffered both from its uniqueness and from its similarity to other less developed nations. Largely isolated in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti nonetheless has experienced political instability, repression, and impoverishment equal to, or exceeding that of, other Latin American states. As the 1990s approached, Haiti still could not count itself among the democratic nations of the hemisphere, despite the sincere desire of its people for some form of representative government.

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