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Article: Country profile: Haiti.
- Article from:
- New Internationalist
- Article date:
- September 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 New Internationalist Magazine. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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FROM the heights of Petionville, the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince looks beautiful, especially in the early evening light. Haiti's wealthy few-mostly light-skinned and US-educated-live up in the cool mountain suburb, with French bistros and designer shops at hand. The view over the horseshoe bay is spectacular. But what is conveniently hidden from view below is the sheer squalor of one of the world's biggest shantytowns, Cite Soleil, home to some 400,000 people and built on swampland near the sea. This jumble of rickety shacks and foul-smelling open drains contains its own neighbourhoods with ironic names like Brooklyn and Tokyo.
Haiti's social extremes are ...