Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Port-au-Prince is the capital and commercial center of Haiti, a nation whose rates of poverty, infant mortality, and life expectancy rank it as the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. Hundreds of thousands of people inhabit the city's sprawling slum areas, where sanitation, electricity, clean water, and access to health care are largely absent. Despite its struggles in the modern era, Port-au-Prince once represented an epicenter of revolutionary optimism, and monuments to this period of the city’s history still exist throughout the capital. The city was devastated in 2010 by a massive earthquake. Much of the city was destroyed by the disaster, which killed hundreds of thousands of Haitians.

Landscape

Port-au-Prince is located in the southwestern part of Haiti, on a sheltered bay of the Gulf of Gonâve, which opens out onto the Caribbean Sea. The city's eighteenth-century French colonial founders hoped to take strategic advantage of the inlet, which provided an ideal setting for a trading port. It also made the city somewhat less vulnerable to the hurricanes that frequently batter the Haitian coast.

Port-au-Prince stretches from the coastline to the surrounding rugged mountains and onto the plains north of the city. The oldest parts of the city, along its waterfront, contain many commercial interests, as well as makeshift housing. The squalor of the waterfront stands in sharp contrast to the wealth on display in the villas built on the hills behind Port-au-Prince.

Small villages that once ringed the capital have largely been absorbed into its urban sprawl. Port-au-Prince has drawn increasing numbers of Haitians desperate to leave rural areas devastated by various natural disasters, such as droughts, hurricanes, and earthquakes, to which the country is prone. An increase of deforestation and soil erosion throughout the Haitian interior has accelerated migration to Port-au-Prince in recent years.

Port-au-Prince's climate is tropical, with average monthly temperatures ranging from 17.4 degrees Celsius (63.3 degrees Fahrenheit) in January to 26.2 degrees Celsius (79.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in August. The winter season tends to be quite dry, while May is generally the wettest month of the year. Hurricane season runs from June through November.

People

The population of the Port-au-Prince metro area was about 2.915 million in 2022, according to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Most of the capital's residents are descendants of West African–born slaves forced to work the sugar plantations, which were overseen by French colonists in the eighteenth century.

The colonial imprint upon contemporary Haitian culture is reflected in the Creole language—a blend of French, English, and Spanish—spoken by most residents of Port-au-Prince. French, the country's other official language and the language in which most official government business is conducted, is spoken by only a small portion of Port-au-Prince's population, primarily those of elite socioeconomic and political status.

Wealth and power have historically been concentrated in the hands of the tiny percentage of Haiti's population that is of French or mixed European and African descent. Society is sharply divided between this affluent, educated minority and the vast majority of people. In Cité Soleil, Port-au-Prince's most infamous slum, located on the capital's marshy northern outskirts, hundreds of thousands of residents live in cardboard houses and tin huts alongside open sewers.

Because Port-au-Prince lacks effective waste management and sanitation systems, water- and mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue, cholera, and malaria have plagued residents. As of 2015, only about one-third of the island's urban dwellers had access to improved sanitation facilities.

The West African roots of most of the city's population are expressed in the complex spirituality embraced by many capital inhabitants. More than half identify as Roman Catholic, and a small percentage interweave this faith with beliefs and rituals of the traditional West African religious practices known as Vodoun. This melding traces its origins to the eighteenth century, when French colonists forcibly baptized thousands of sugar plantation slaves and forbade the practice of Vodoun. However, the ban merely drove the practice underground. Other faiths practiced in Haiti include Protestant Christianity, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, Baha'i, Rastafarianism, Scientology, and Islam.

Economy

Port-au-Prince, as Haiti's principal seaport, has an economy heavily based on the export of cocoa. Other exports include oils, mangoes, and coffee, as well as clothing and manufactured items. Labor-intensive light industry accounts for about 20.3 percent of Haiti's gross domestic product (GDP), according to a 2017 CIA estimate. Many products are turned out by foreign-owned companies, eager to do business in a city with an abundance of cheap, unregulated labor and generous tax incentives put into place to attract outside investment. For instance, a preferential trade deal with the United States spurred foreign investment in textile factories.

The country's modest industrial sector also includes sugar refineries, flour mills, and factories for the manufacture of textiles, cement, and parts assembly. Port-au-Prince features at least one significant industrial park. Large numbers of the capital's residents remain unemployed or underemployed. Many people struggle to support themselves by peddling various wares and services on the streets.

Political instability has had a particularly devastating impact on the capital's tourism industry, which all but dried up in the aftermath of global travel advisories warning potential visitors of serious personal safety risks and was further devastated when a severe earthquake hit the city in 2010. The government in Port-au-Prince relies on international donors, chiefly the United States, to supply more than one-fifth of its budgetary needs. In 2005, the government paid off its debt to the World Bank and in 2006, the economy grew by almost 2 percent, thanks to a program of economic reforms developed with International Monetary Fund assistance. However, the 2010 earthquake severely affected economic gains made by Haiti in prior years. Haiti's foreign debt was canceled following the earthquake, but the country's recovery efforts in the years that followed necessitated the borrowing of additional funds. By the end of 2017, the external public debt had reached US$2.6 billion.

Landmarks

Many of Port-au-Prince's landmarks were severely damaged during the 2010 earthquake. The triple-domed National Palace, which housed government offices, was largely destroyed, and the remainder of the building was demolished in 2012. Other notable landmarks destroyed during the earthquake include the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de l'Assomption, a Catholic church noted for its colonial-era architectural style, and the Episcopal Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, which was celebrated for its imposing murals depicting Christian subject matter in a distinctly Haitian style.

Despite this destruction, some of Port-au-Prince's landmarks survived. Among the most iconic of these is Le Marron Inconnu ("the Statue of the Unknown Slave"), which pays homage to the slaves turned rebel army who ultimately defeated their French colonial masters and founded Haiti. The figure depicted in the sculpture is blowing into a conch shell, a symbolic harbinger of the revolution to come.

History

Port-au-Prince, originally called L'Hôpital, was founded by in 1749 by France, which made the city the capital of its Saint-Domingue colony in 1770. Slaves transported from West Africa to work the sugar and coffee plantations made Saint-Domingue one of the world's richest colonies by the end of the eighteenth century. These slaves staged many uprisings that ended in failure, until Jean-Jacques Dessalines expelled the French in 1803 and proclaimed the colony's independence the following year.

The triumphant emergence of Port-au-Prince as the capital of the world's first black republic, however, quickly led to violence and turmoil as one despot after another sought power. For most of its history, Port-au-Prince has suffered extreme poverty, political repression, and corrupt leadership. The 1986 overthrow of the thirty-year Duvalier family dictatorship and the adoption of a new constitution the following year raised hopes that a functioning democracy would finally take root in the capital, but violence and instability persisted.

In 1991, after winning a free and fair presidential election, Jean-Bertrand Aristide took office. Within a year, Aristide was forced into exile by elements of the Haitian military. In 1994, Aristide was restored to power by a United States–led multinational force. A period of turmoil followed in which Aristide’s opponents and supporters grappled for control.

By the time Aristide, under siege from rebel forces, went into exile in South Africa in 2004, Port-au-Prince's tourism industry was in tatters, its government in bankruptcy, and its infrastructure in a state of decay. Demoralized police forces and a corrupt judiciary only deepened the social and political chaos on the capital's streets.

In 2006, a peaceful presidential election generated new optimism in Port-au-Prince. However, the new government was unable to stem a huge surge in crime that began when armed gangs sought to fill the power vacuum left by Aristide's departure two years before. Efforts by thousands of United Nations peacekeeping troops to wrest control of Port-au-Prince's slums from the gangs that controlled them resulted largely in driving those gangs into more rural areas, whose residents became the newest victims of gang violence.

Seeking to escape crushing poverty, more than 2 million Haitians sought refuge, many illegally, in the United States. Unknown numbers lost their lives attempting to make the journey in overcrowded vessels ill-suited to travel hundreds of miles over open seas. Seeking to escape the chaos, many educated, young, professional Haitians left their country during the early twenty-first century. International officials expressed alarm over the impact of such a large-scale exodus on Port-au-Prince's prospects for a decent future.

In January 2010, a severe earthquake devastated much of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas, destroying the bulk of the city's infrastructure and displacing hundreds of thousands of residents. Estimates of the number of Haitians killed during the earthquake vary, ranging from about 90,000 to more than 300,000. Numerous foreign governments and organizations sent workers and supplies to Haiti to aid in the rescue effort and the subsequent attempt to rebuild. Although significant progress was made during the following years, a series of natural disasters, such as 2016's devastating Hurricane Matthew, and a shortage of supplies and funds have made recovery a painfully slow process.

Mid-2018 saw rioting in Port-au-Prince, precipitated by the Haitian government's decision to raise gasoline prices. Protesters also objected to rising inflation and government corruption, and looting and vandalism accompanied the impromptu road blocks.

Bibliography

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