May 1st in Haiti: The celebration of agriculture in a country that barely produces and no longer lives from its labor

Between an agriculture paralyzed by insecurity and a job that no longer guarantees survival, May 1st, commemorated as Agriculture and Labor Day in Haiti, exposes the deep flaws of a system on its last legs.

While May 1st is supposed to celebrate two fundamental pillars of any society: labor and agriculture. In Haiti, these two symbols are now emptied of their meaning.

How can we talk about agriculture in a country where producing has become an act of bravery? Strategic areas like Kenscoff or the Artibonite, once essential to national supply, are now under the control of armed groups. Farmers there work in fear, when they can still work. And even when the land yields in other provinces, the fruit of their labor does not reach the markets. Roads are blocked, distribution circuits broken.

Meanwhile, the markets of the capital overflow with imported products. Those from the neighboring republic occupy an increasingly dominant place, without real control or protection policy for local production. The observation is brutal: what the country can no longer produce is replaced, without resistance, by what others produce in its place. National agriculture is retreating, suffocated both by insecurity and by the absence of vision.

On the labor front, the situation is hardly more encouraging. Unemployment has become the norm, especially among young people.

And for those who work, the reality is just as relentless: wages no longer allow one to live. Subcontracting workers, paid about 685 gourdes for an eight-hour day, are the most striking example. This income, already insufficient yesterday, has become derisory today.

Because at the same time, the cost of living keeps rising. Repeated increases in fuel prices, justified by global market turbulence and tensions in the Middle East, have an immediate effect on the daily lives of Haitians. Transport, food, basic necessities: everything goes up. Everything, except wages.

The country thus operates on a permanent contradiction: producing is almost impossible, working no longer guarantees dignity, and consuming becomes a luxury. An equation with several unknowns, without real political will to solve its terms.

So, what are we really celebrating this May 1st? An asphyxiated agriculture? A devalued labor? Or simply the illusion of a balance that no longer exists?

More than a celebration, this date should be a wake-up call. Because a country that can neither produce nor fairly reward labor is a country that moves a little further away from its own sovereignty every day.

Wideberlin Sénexant