Cultivation in the Mountains of Haiti

During the past fifteen years, Marcel Garcon has emerged as a champion for the sustainability ethic in Gros-Morne, Haiti. Year after year he demonstrates his commitment to restoring ecological balance to the region which has been his life-long home. Whenever I travel with him he is greeted by a near-continuous stream of friends among the rural peasant population. All of them know him as a collaborator, as one who has inspired them to continue working this depleted land with the dream of restoring its productivity.

Marcel is an example of why the Quixote Center has been remarkably successful in organizing programs of collaborative development. Our projects in Nicaragua and Haiti are not designed in our Maryland office. They are the result of a deep partnership process, a series of exchanges and critiques that flow both north and south. To achieve that kind of relationship, the Quixote Center commits to long-term partnerships and consciously de-centralizes decision making. The results speak for themselves.

Marcel Garcon now heads a peasant movement that is 12,000 members strong. Those members are some of the most active and effective reforestation advocates, and plant most of the 60,000 trees produced at our Jean Marie Vincent Formation Center each year. During the past three years, the Movement has embarked on a series of new endeavors to restore the ecological balance in and around Gros-Morne. Community nurseries dispersed throughout the countryside now produce an additional 20,000 trees annually. The Movement is experimenting with collective farming of plots to produce high quality food for nearby families while providing a training ground for practical agricultural techniques.

In a country too often maligned or forgotten, Marcel Garcon and the Peasant Movement of Gros-Morne represent an effective alternative. We will continue to walk with them, and to present their success as a source of hope.