MARIBAROUX, Haiti, Mar 11 (IPS) – Fifty-five-year-old Pierre Antoine Jean, a peasant from the town of Ferrier near this region of eastern Haiti, has a large family to care for: his two marriages have produced 16 children.

But the rice fields from which he makes a living are dry.

As a result, times are harder than usual.’ ‘We’re at the mercy of the sun and rain,’’ says Antoine, presumably meaning the limited amount of the latter.

There is no source of farm credit. Government officials do not frequent this part of Haiti. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which play an increasingly important role in helping to ameliorate the situation of Haitian peasants, have not extended their reach either.

And peasants face discrimination when they make the trek into the city. ‘’We are considered not good enough to go and work in the city, where we peasants have often been humiliated,’’ says Antoine. ‘’But what can we do, we have to continue earning a living somehow.’’

Located 340 kilometres north of the Haitian capital, Port-au- Prince, along the frontier with Dominican Republic, Maribaroux is rice-growing country. But it has been losing its rice fields for the past 10 years. Now, like fellow rice cultivators, Antoine’s fields no longer spring to life.

Peasants are forced to take out loans at usurious interest rates — sometimes as high as 85 percent — to finance activities, though often the hoped-for harvest never materialises.

Thousands of peasants like Antoine cross the frontier each year, between June and September, looking for work in the paddy fields of Manzanillo and Monte-Cristi. People living along the border say at the peak of the season as many as 300 people make the crossing daily.

These peasants live in Haiti but work and eat every day on the other side of the frontier. They work not on sugar cane plantations but in the rice fields.

In northwest of the Dominican Republic demand has changed the nature of the economy. With the development of the tourist potential in the region of Puerto Plata, Dominican agricultural labour has become scarce – and expensive.

Dominican farmers prefer Hatian to Dominican workers. The latter demand 200 pesos, a sum equivalent to three times more than the wage paid to illegal Haitians, but which is five times more than the daily minimum wage in Haiti.

Crossing over into the Dominican Republic also has its risks. Dominican farmers and soldiers often rob sometimes kill illegal Haitian immigrant workers, according to reports from the region. Sources told IPS sometimes the labourers are not paid by their employers.

Crossing is easy. There are no frontier guards. Soldiers, who used to rustle peasants’ cattle during the period of the military dictatorship (1991-94) are no longer a threat. Yet cattle rustling still goes on along both sides of the frontier where armed Haitian and Dominican civilians are active.

Peasants report several cases of Dominican soldiers shooting Haitian farm labourers. Even Dominican planters confuse them with cattle rustlers.

‘’Last January numerous persons were killed along the frontier by Dominican soldiers and their bodies used for food for the dogs,’’ said Jean Delaneau, president of the Maribaroux Federation of Planters.

‘’For example, 25 Haitian farm workers perished in an accident near Libertad, a town in northern Dominica, yet the Haitian government took no action, not even an enquiry.’’

This is a miserable place.

Carol Calixte, an agronomist with the Ministry of Agriculture working in the North East of Haiti, a region covering some 805 sq kms, reports that ‘’the fall in the price of coffee on the international market has induced the peasants to destroy their coffee trees and replace them with food crops, just to assure their own survival, thereby aggravating still further problems linked to the environment.’’

Several studies on land ownership reveal that 0.32 hectares is available per inhabitant in this regon. Lands belonging to the government, but completely abandoned since 1984, cover a total of 15,000 hectares.

Since almost a quarter of a century these lands have in turn been exploited by North American companies for the production of sisal and, more recently, for raising livestock.

Some 2,500 hectares of these lands are now occupied by the Association of Small North East Planters. ‘’We are working on 2,580 hectares of the public domain, but with no titles to the property,’’ noted Jacques Antoine Wasembeck, president of this planters association, which has more than 2,000 members.

‘’We are producing the same traditional food as we have always done. The tools the peasants use still symbolise the period of slavery.’’

In the face of all this, the peasants of Maribaroux displayed a positive air during the visit of President Rene’ Preval to their region last Saturday. Lining up along the bank of the Diasa River, they enthusiastically waved shovels and machetes high in the air like banners. It was the first time in Maribaroux’s history a Chief of State was visiting the region.

Preval, whom some peasants do not hesitate to call the ‘’President of the Savannah’’ because of frequent his trips to the rural zones, had come to enquire first hand about the situation in this region, as part of the moves he is making to relaunch rice production throughout the country.

The work of rehabilitating a small irrigation system will enable these peasant farmers between now and May to work on an area of 600 hectares, equivalent to 1/10 of the total land covered by the Maribaroux Plain. (END/IPS/IMC/TT/fn/96)

Origin: Amsterdam/HAITI-AGRICULTURE/ ----

[c] 1996, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS) All rights reserved

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