Ex-slaves’ subsistence farming on abandoned plantations built post-independence rural Haitian culture

Evidence

In and around the ruins of old plantations, men and women cultivated small plots of land, growing crops for their families and to sell at the markets. They raised chickens, pigs, and cows, often grazing them in abandoned cane fields. Although they were drawing on traditions developed within slavery, when masters had depended on what slaves produced in garden plots, in the new order they had greater access to land and greater freedom to grow their crops, raise their livestock, and market what they produced. The contrast with slavery was quite clear, and as a result of the better conditions, the number of children seems to have increased among the workers on many plantations. A new culture was being born, one that would shape rural Haiti in the wake of independence. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 808

Categorization

• SEED: An article on how food-sovereignty farming patterns set by ex-slaves determined the long-run shape of Haitian rural life and clashed with state plantation-revival plans.
• CANDY: Ex-slaves abandoned commercial sugar to grow their own food, reversing the plantation economy.