So far it hasn't happened.
In this hamlet overlooking a pristine bay that Christopher Columbus once admired, Gary Boloney has no job and no money. But the rail-thin, 38-year-old says that after two failed attempts to flee by boat, the food crisis won't make him risk it again.
Elsina Joseph, lovingly cradling her granddaughter, is also staying put. She says she can't abandon her family.
In the early 1990s, political violence sent tens of thousands of Haitians toward Florida aboard rickety boats, forcing U.S. President Bill Clinton to send in troops to stabilize the country. Now the price of rice, beans, fruit and condensed milk has gone up 50 percent in the past year, while the cost of pasta has doubled.
But the U.S. Coast Guard says its cutters have interdicted 972 Haitian migrants over the past seven months, about the same number as a year earlier. That's a fraction of the 31,000 intercepted in 1992 after a military coup.
That said, analysts warn that unless Preval tackles the rising food costs, more Haitians will chance the dangerous trip by sea.
''It will probably rise markedly, unless the food subsidies can stabilize prices in Haiti,'' said Henry Carey, a professor at Georgia State University.
