1950 to 1951 · Haitianspan
A sound currency, a growing population and Boyer's tax system
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Paul Magloire's programme had three parts: peace between the classes and the colours, internal development, and good relations with Washington and Santo Domingo. His opponents from the Estime camp called the first part doublure and said he was a front for the elite. He inherited real advantages. The gourde was sound, the country was quiet, and after four years of social experiment people wanted a rest. Land reform, the great question elsewhere in the poor world, had been settled in Haiti a hundred and twenty five years earlier when Boyer's administration broke up the estates. The problem underneath was arithmetic. There was too little land and every year more people stood on it, and the hillsides were losing their trees and their soil. Bananas and cotton had failed as exports. Sugar and sisal rose and fell with world prices. Seventy percent of state revenue came from import duties, ten percent from income tax paid by a few thousand families, and the land itself went untaxed.
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