HAITI

 

 

 

Flag description: two equal horizontal bands of blue (top) and red with a centered white rectangle bearing the coat of arms, which contains a palm tree flanked by flags and two cannons above the motto "L'Union Fait la Force" ("Unity creates strength")

 

NAME:                 Haiti; official name: Republic of Haiti; Republique d'Haiti; Repiblik d' Ayiti  (Country named in 19th century for Ayiti ("mountainous place" in Taino Arawak language); when Spanish arrived in 1524, they named the entire island la Española (Hispaniola); the French knew the entire island, especially the western 1/3 of it, as Saint Domingue (> Spanish for Santo Domingo).

POPULATION:            8,800,000 (2007)

ETHNIC GROUPS:      Mestizo (69%); white (17%); black (9%); Indian (5%)

CAPITAL:                     Port-au-Prince (1,200,000)

LANGUAGES:             French (50%) and Créole/Créyol (99%) are both official languages.

RELIGION:                  Roman Catholicism (80%); Protestant (16%); Vodou (50%)

LIFE EXPECTANCY  57

LITERACY:                  52%

GOVERNMENT:          Democratic republic

            President:           René Préval

            Constitution       1987

POLITICAL PARTIES AND POWER GROUPS: 30

MILITARY:                  No military forces since 2007

ECONOMY:                 Bauxite, copper, calcium carbonate, gold, marble, hydropower; manufactures, coffee, oils, cocoa, mangoes

POVERTY:                   Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (57% live in abject poverty)

MONEY:                       Gourde (HTG) (41 = $1.0 US; 2007)

GEOGRAPHY:             Surrounded on three sides by Caribbean; tropical climate, but semi-arid in mountains due to deforestation; Haiti is very mountainous.

 

HISTORY:

 

            Pre-Colonial    Taíno-Arawak people called their land Bohio and/or Quisqueya

            1492                La Española island discovered by Columbus

            1492-1664       Colonial rule by Spain.

            1493                Capitol of Santo Domingo founded.

            1492-1517       99% of the Taíno people died by 1517.

            1664                France claimed western 1/3 of the island, but it was not officially a French colony until 1697.

            1697                Spain ceded western 1/3 of island to France in the Treaty of Ryswick at the conclusion of the Nine Years War (France vs. Spain, England, Holy Roman Empire, and United Provinces of Holland and Belgium); France named the western 1/3 of the Island of Hispaniola  Saint Domingue.

            1697-1804       France created richest colony Latin America with a plantation slave society: 32,000 white Europeans; 28,000 gens de couleur (mulattoes); 500,000 African slaves (50% natives of Africa); some maroons living free in mountains.

            1734-1803       Toussaint Louverture, black national independence hero.

            1791                Toussaint Louverture led anti-slavery revolution as favoring Spanish monarchy

            1794                Toussaint Louverture switched to French Revolutionary army because the French revolutionaries had outlawed slavery

            1801                Toussaint Louverture achieved relative stability, harmony, and peace

            1802                Napoléon sent French invasion army to destroy Toussaint's black rule and to reestablish white plantation owners; Toussaint captured (died in 1803 in French prison)

            1802-1803       Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Henri Christophe, and Alexandre Pétion continued black revolution, defeating French army

            1804                January 1: Haiti declared its independence from France

            1804 – 1806    Dessalines: ruler and then emperor (assassinated 1804)

            1805-1820       Henri Christophe built his palace of Sans Souci and the giant fortress of the Citadelle la Ferrière with 20,000 (virtually) slave laborers.

            1806 – 1820    Haiti divided into northern kingdom (Henri Christophe; king) and southern republic (Pétion; president; “Papa Bon-Coeur”).

            1820                President Jean-Pierre Boyer united Haiti under one government;

            1822 – 1844    Haiti reunited with Santo Domingo as one nation when, in 1822, Boyer’s Haitian army invaded Santo Domingo (the Spanish 2/3 of Hispaniola) and he abolished slavery; (La República Dominicana separated from Haiti in 1844 along racial, cultural, and linguistics lines).

            1825                Pres. Boyer gets international recognition from France by signing a treaty according to which Haiti would pay reparations to France’s former slave owners for the loss of their slaves; these reparations last, intermittently, until the 1940’s, and they turn Haiti into a debtor nation, in effect, the world’s first Third World country.

            1915 – 1934    U.S.A. invaded and occupied Haiti as a colony

            1957 - 1971     Dr. François Duvalier (Papa Doc) was dictator; ruled with army and Tonton Macoutes (brutal militia)

            1971 – 1986    Jean-Claude Duvalier (son of Papa Doc) was dictator (president for life)

            1990 – 1991    Jean-Bertrand Aristide elected and then overthrown by army

            1991 – 1994    Military dictatorship

            1994 - 1996     U.S.A. army invasion restores Aristide as president

            1996 - 2000     René Préval president

            2001 – 2004    President Jean-Bertrand Aristide

            2004                Military coup (with help from U.S.A.) overthrew Aristide.

            2006-2011       René Préval elected president

            2010                (January 12) Major earthquake (7.0) with numerous aftershocks devastate Haiti. For some early photos of the destruction in Port-au-Prince, click on the following image:

 

 



            2010                (April 13) Michelle Obama and Jill Biden get a tour of Port-au-Prince by Haitian President René Préval.