Cite Soleil

Cité Soleil (Haitian Creole: Site Solèy; English: Sun City) is an extremely impoverished and densely populated commune located in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area in Haiti. Cité Soleil originally developed as a shanty town and grew to an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 residents, the majority of whom live in extreme poverty. The area is generally regarded as one of the poorest and most dangerous areas of the Western Hemisphere and it is one of the biggest slums in the Northern Hemisphere. The area has virtually no sewers and has a poorly maintained open canal system that serves as its sewage system, few formal businesses but many local commercial activities and enterprises, sporadic but largely free electricity, a few hospitals, and two government schools, Lycee Nationale de Cite Soleil, and Ecole Nationale de Cite Soleil. For several years until 2007, the area was ruled by a number of gangs, each controlling their own sectors. But government control was reestablished after a series of operations in early 2007 by the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). with the participation of the local population.

The neighborhood is located at the western end of the runway of Toussaint Louverture International Airport and adjoins the grounds of the former Hasco Haitian American sugar complex. It began with the construction in 1958 of homes for 52 families. In the summer of 1966, a mysterious fire in the slum of La Saline displaced many of its residents. 1,197 homes were built there and it was named Cité Simone, after Haiti’s First Lady Simone Ovide Duvalier. In 1972, a major fire near the central market of Port-au-Prince displaced yet more people who ended up in the Boston section of Cité Simone. In 1983, the census recorded 82,191 people in Cité Simone.

Originally designed to house sugar workers, Cité Simone later housed manual laborers for a local Export Processing Zone (EPZ). Neoliberal reforms beginning in the early 1970s made this place a magnet for squatters from around the countryside looking for work in the newly constructed factories. This movement accelerated in the early 1980s with the destruction of the by American order in response to an African swine flu outbreak, followed by the rise of Finance Minister Leslie Delatour who took this post following the ouster of Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986. Delatour openly advocated the depopulation of much of the Haitian countryside and that these people work instead in cities, living in places such as the newly named Cité Soleil, though not for Hasco that Delatour shut down in 1987. This industrial sector was however damaged following the 1991 coup d’état that deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, causing a boycott of Haitian products that closed the EPZ. Cité Soleil continued to be plagued by extreme poverty and persistent unemployment, with high rates of illiteracy.

Half of the houses of Cité Soleil are made of cement with a metal roof, half are made completely of scavenged material. An estimated 60 to 70% of houses have no access to a latrine, particularly in the marshy Brooklyn area which includes Cité Carton.

Armed gangs roamed the streets and terrorized the neighborhood. Every few blocks was controlled by one of more than 30 armed factions. Though the gangs no longer rule, murder, rape, kidnapping, looting, and shootings are still common. The area has been called a “microcosm of all the ills in Haitian society: endemic unemployment, illiteracy, non-existent public services, unsanitary conditions, widespread crime and armed violence”.

After the devastating 2010 earthquake, it took nearly two weeks for relief aid to arrive in Cité-Soleil.