Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

IN 1804 HAITI EMERGED FROM thirteen years of revolution
as the New World's second republic, having attained independence
from France. Sharply defined social distinctions in the
colonial system set the stage for Haiti's evolution as an independent
but deeply divided society—a majority of peasant freeholders,
formerly slaves, dominated by a small ruling class,
formerly free men of color. These social distinctions fostered
the creation of contrasting cultural and linguistic forms.
Peasant society emerged as largely self-regulating and defensive
in response to military rule in rural areas and the absence
of a voice in government. The exclusion of peasants from
national institutions created the opportunity for a flowering of
local cultural forms, including the Creole language and the
voodoo religion. A rich Haitian tradition of cultural innovation
has long coexisted with the French language and the Roman
Catholic Church favored by the urban elite.
As a post-colonial state in 1804, Haiti was ahead of its time
and was treated by the outside world as a pariah state. Consequently,
Haiti went its own distinctive way far more than other
countries in the region. Culturally, it continues to be marked
far more than other New World societies by African cultural
influences as well as its Franco-Haitian heritage, and by linguistic
and cultural isolation from its neighbors. Haiti's remarkable
cultural heritage includes a sophisticated repertoire of traditional
dance, music, religion, oral literature, and artistic
expression.
In the early nineteenth century, small yeoman farmers supplanted
the plantation system as the dominant mode of production.
Haitian agriculture shifted rapidly from large-scale
monocropping for export to a diverse mix of food and cash
crops produced on thousands of dispersed plots. Haiti's emergent
elite moved from plantation production into mercantile
pursuits based on agricultural exports and industrial imports.
The economically powerful also gained control of the apparatus
of state. Newly independent Haiti maintained a sizable
standing army inherited from the revolutionary period, and up
to the 1990s the Haitian army consistently exercised a powerful
political role.
With a total population of around 7.6 million, Haiti in 1998
was the most rural, the poorest, and the most densely popu-
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