Promenades dans les campagnes d'Haiti

Candelon Rigaud

Candelon Rigaud's Promenades dans les campagnes d'Haiti, published in 1928, is an invaluable survey of the Cul de Sac plain and its varied communities, plantations, and inhabitants. Rigaud, who directed the book toward foreign audiences, presumably to attract foreign investment in agricultural and agro-industrial enterprise in the region, provides an excellent overview of the Cul de Sac plain's agricultural potential, as well as marking the impact of the Haitian American Sugar Company (HASCO). As one of the areas of Haiti formerly occupied by sugar plantations in the colonial period, the plain's colonial plantations have, for the most part, been parceled out or worked through sharecropping arrangements, like the demwatye system. 

However, as noted by various scholars,  the plain witnessed an attempt by the Haitian state and various landholders to redevelop the long-gone sugar industry in the second half of the 19th century. As part of a return to the land, some planters decided to invest in sugar mills, new transportation (the PCS railway system was built, in part, to transport cane and other goods from the plain to Port-au-Prince) and crops, such as tobacco. Perhaps due to the region's proximity to the national capital, and the tendency among various Haitian governments to grant estates and farm land to generals and soldiers, the Cul de Sac plain appears to have presented greater resistance to the growth of an independent peasantry than other parts of Haiti, but 3/4 of the plain was uncultivated in the early 1900s. According to various foreign accounts, such as Richard Hill's journey through the region in the 1830s, or Aubin's 1910 account, Haitian sharecroppers and rural workers sometimes formed their own labor cooperatives or used cooperative labor practices like the konbit to harvest cane and other crops for landowners and themselves.

Rigaud's text outlines this tentative attempts at capitalist plantations on various habitations, including Chateaublond, which was owned by Jacques Roumain's grandfather, Tancrède Auguste. But even before attempts to revive sugar production in the late 19th century, sugarcane was continuously cultivated for several distilleries. Rigaud methodically takes the reader on a journey throughout the entire plain, describing the history of each former plantation, its inhabitants, the owners, and production. It becomes increasingly clear that due to a combination of Haitian state interest, private capital, and limited foreign investment (mainly German, for the PCS railway), the Cul de Sac witnessed a burgeoning but small-scale revival of sugar, although not enough to significantly shape the export economy. The US Occupation, and with it, HASCO, however, accelerated the process by overtaking small-scale sugar producers and even entering the spirits market through its own distillery. Auguste's Chateaublond, which possessed one of theg significant usines in the area, for example, was forced to terminate production once HASCO and its monopoly (plus ties to US capital) took over. 

Promenades breaks down the process through which HASCO purchased and leased land that previously belonged to various Haitians in the Cul de Sac plain, introduced scientific cultivation, improved irrigation and, in most cases, ceased using the demwatye system to produce an adequate amount of cane for its vast mill near Port-au-Prince. It would appear there was even a degree of internal migration within Haiti, with workers coming to labor on lands owned or leased by HASCO from as far away as Jacmel. Interestingly, most laborers were contracted through recruiters, and many Haitian landowners were forced into the position of supplying cane for HASCO, becoming akin to the colonos of the Caribbean sugar industry as in places like Cuba. The Haitian national bourgeoisie were coerced into a comprador class, piggybacking on US capitalist companies. 

As for the "peasants" and shifting social relations within the plain, transformations already noted by Aubin in the early 1900s appear amplified by the 1920s. HASCO, through leasing land and direct ownership, controlled over 6000 carreaux in land, most of it not worked through the local sharecropping system. Internal stratification within the peasantry intensified, in the Cul de Sac as well as the Leogane plain, as elucidated in Richman's Migration and Vodou. HASCO and US sisal companies increased the number of wage laborers in the plain, yet Rigaud concludes his text by calling attention to efforts to eradicate the demwatye system. The caco wars, opposition to the US Occupation, and other fears of the impact of dispossession and emigration on the Haitian peasant illustrate the degree of uncertainty which characterized the time. Furthermore, the HASCO strikes in 1919 and thereafter, mark a shift where rural workers, the so-called rural proletariat, appear in the annals of the Haitian labor movement. 

Unfortunately, Rigaud, due to his class position and vested interest in further development of the plain, seems to endorse HASCO and its alleged beneficial impact on the Cul de Sac, but his firsthand account remains indispensable for any future project exploring the history of the company. It's impact on the region was tremendous, and surely was a culmination of a process of earlier attempts at capitalist agriculture in Haiti, as outlined by historian Michel Hector for the period 1860-1915. Perhaps, as suggested by Richman, shifts in the nature of Vodou, its hierarchic elements, and the rise of elaborate ceremonies, reflects this growing inequality and insecurity of the time. Future posts shall examine in more detail these elements, particularly in tracking the evolution of the Cul de Sac plain after the 1920s.