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National Flag of Haiti
The national flag of Haiti consists of two equal horizontal bands of blue and red.

Located in the Caribbean, Haiti is situated in the western one-third of the island of Hispaniola, between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, west of the Dominican Republic.

Haiti is the western part of Hispaniola, an island in the Caribbean. The other two-third of the island is the Dominican Republic. Haiti is considered to be the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

It is about 50 miles from the eastern shores of Cuba and approximately 800 miles from Florida. The population is estimated to be about six and a half million people and the overwhelming majority live in dire poverty.

What was once called "the pearl of the Antilles"-the richest and most fertile colony in the Americans-has become a near-wasteland

Facts at a Glance

Area: 27,800 sq km (17,300 sq mi)
Population: 6,730,000
Capital city: Port-au-Prince (pop 750,000)
People: African descent (95%), mixed African and European descent
Language: Creole (90%), French (official)
Religion: Roman Catholic (80%), Protestant (16%); voodoo is also widespread
Government: Republic
GDP per head: US$1000
Major industries: Food processing, light manufacturing, tourism

History

The original inhabitants of Hispaniola were Arawak Indians, a peaceful agricultural people. Their first encounter with Europeans occurred in 1492, when Columbus dropped anchor off the northwestern tip of the island. Within a hundred years, the Spanish had conquered Hispaniola, wiping out most of the indigenous population in the process. As a result, the Spanish imported slaves from Africa to work the island's plantations. In 1697 Spain ceded the western third of Hispaniola to France - a move it regretted after France made a fortune extracting coffee, sugar and indigo out of the area over the next century.

Inspired by the revolutionary ideals of their French masters, the half million slaves in the western portion of Hispaniola fomented their own rebellion in 1791. After slaughtering French settlers they turned on the mulatto elites, and civil war raged for several years. The former slaves prevailed under the leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture, but when they tried to break away from France in 1801 Napoleon responded by sending 34,000 troops. A French attempt to reintroduce slavery the following year caused Haitians to rise up and drive the colonizers off the island. The Republic of Haiti was proclaimed in 1804.

A failed dictatorship was followed by a civil war that divided the country north and south. Henry Christophe proclaimed himself king in the north, where he corralled an army of slaves to build a palace and a fort. He proved so unpopular that, when threatened with another slave revolt in 1820, he shot himself through the heart with a golden bullet.

The rest of the 19th century saw a succession of tyrants and the gradual deterioration of the environment. The US intervened in 1915 and made some infrastructural improvements, but it proved no more popular than other foreign guests. After a Haitian uprising and growing disapproval at home, the US left the country in 1934. In 1957, François `Papa Doc' Duvalier became the first leader to manage to hold on to power - and hold on he did, mainly through the dreaded Tonton Macoutes, a quasi-military police force that brutally suppressed dissent and killed tens of thousands of Haitians.

Haitians again rose up against their oppressors, and in 1986 Duvalier's son and successor, `Baby Doc,' went into exile. After a series of coups, Jean Bertrand Aristide, a black Roman Catholic priest, was elected president in 1990, only to be ousted in another coup the following year. It took the help of the American military to restore Aristide to power in 1994. René Preval won the presidential contest two years later in an election overseen by an international UN peacekeeping force. As parliament and the ministries blame each other for holding up hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, the country awaits the aftermath of the withdrawal of UN forces.

Culture

There are deep and bitter divisions of race and class between blacks (about 95% of the population) and mulattos (about 5%). While blacks have always had an overwhelming majority, mulattos have had advantages within education, government and the military. Language, like the country itself, is an internecine battleground. Nearly all blacks speak Creole, but French, spoken mainly by the mulatto elite, is the official language and as such it's required for access to higher education, most well paying jobs and high level government positions. Movements are afoot to make Creole the official language, though only 15% of the population can read or write in any language.

Haiti is the home of voudon (voodoo), an animistic African religion that's been melded with Catholicism and grafted onto the local culture. Rituals involve dancing and drumming, spirit possessions and the occasional zombie. At ceremonies, a worshipper is chosen to be `mounted' by a spirit, called an Iwa, which then speaks through the person to deliver advice, commands and predictions. The `voodoo beat' typical of ceremonial drumming has spawned its own style of popular music.

The national dance is the méringue (a cousin of the Dominican version), though you can also see people doing the juba or the crabienne. Haitian music has been influenced by Cuban forms and American jazz. One of the most popular styles is the compas, though zouk, reggae and soca have significant followings.

The country has many celebrated painters, chief among them Hector Hippolyte, Lafortune Félix and Prefete Duffaut. Though often described as `naive,' Haitian painting has a rich visual and thematic vocabulary, often rendered in vibrant colors and sensual, organic forms. The country has also been the subject of novels by well-known foreign writers, notably Zora Neale Hurston's Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica, and Graham Greene's The Comedians, a send up of the early Duvalier years. Haitian writers include Jean Price Mars and René Depestre.

Places of Interest

Port au Prince

Gingerbread trim and a view of the harbor are about all Port-au-Prince has in common with other Caribbean capitals. It's a backward city, but it's no backwater. Port-au-Prince is crammed with people soldiering on amidst rundown buildings, open sewers and the haphazard lurching and zooming of countless vehicles. Much of the activity is centered on the Marché de Fer (the Ironmarket), a 19th century iron and tin mix of Paris train shed and Indian minarets. It's chaos inside, packed with stalls, vendors and piles of fruit, baskets, soap, religious totems and toys. It's hot, noisy and likely to overwhelm the faint of heart.

Good places to seek post-shopping repose are the Cathédrale de Port-au-Prince, where the decor owes as much to Africa as to Rome, and the Cathédrale de la Ste Trinité, where you can gaze up at murals by some of the country's most famous artists. The Musée d'Art Haïtien du College St Pierre has an excellent collection of paintings. The Musée National is more of a national curio cabinet, featuring King Christophe's suicide pistol and a rusty anchor reputed to have been salvaged from Columbus' Santa Maria. There are areas of the capital travelers should avoid, chiefly the shantytowns on the northern edge of the city.

In the hills to the southeast of the city is Pétionville, as close as the country gets to typical Caribbean resort culture. Galleries sell Haitian art, and restaurants serve some of the best French cuisine in the country. The Jane Barbancourt Distillery in Boutiller, a few miles east of Port-au-Prince, makes nearly two dozen varieties of rum, including flavors like coffee, coconut and hibiscus. You can taste samples and buy bottles at bargain prices.

Jacmel

This old coffee port was once the jewel of the southern coast, decorated in French colonial architecture and fringed with black-sand beaches. Duvalier cut off its trade in the 1950s and sent the town into a decades long decline. Though it's a little shabby, it's much calmer than Port-au-Prince and the 19th century buildings are better preserved. Many now house galleries and shops. Jacmel has a bustling market, open on Saturdays. Nearby is the Bassin Bleu, a series of tiered waterfalls and pools. You can hike the 12km (7mi) trail or rent a horse in Jacmel.

Cap Haïtien

Located on the northern coast, the country's second largest city and former capital was once called the `Paris of the Antilles.' Its glory has faded, having been destroyed and rebuilt four times, only to be cut off and left to rot by Duvalier in the 1950s. Some interesting colonial architecture still remains and there are good shops. A few kilometers south of town are two monumental reminders of the reign of the self-proclaimed King Christophe. Sans Souci Palais was to have been Christophe's new capitol building. An earthquake in 1842 brought the roof down; scavengers have since made off with its fixtures and marble floors. The Citadelle squats atop a 900m (3000ft) mountain, a massive fortress that took 20,000 slaves over 10 years to build. The views are superb.