News Information

• NEWS_POSTED_BY: Haiti Place
• NEWS_POSTED_ON: May 24, 2015
• Views : 671
• Category : Haiti News
• Description : PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — May 12, 2015, 5:19 PM ET
  By DAVID McFADDEN Associated Press
  
  Photo: French President Francois Hollande speaks at a Cuba-France business forum in Havana, Cuba, Monday, May 11, 2015. Accompanied by a group of top French business people, Hollande has become the first French president to visit Cuba since it became an... View Full Caption The Associated Press
• Location : Port-au-Prince, Ouest, Haiti

Overview

• Francois Hollande on Tuesday became the first president of France to make a formal state visit to Haiti, where bountiful resources and brutal plantation slavery made it the European nation's most profitable colony before an independence uprising more than two centuries ago.
  
  For Haiti's government and business community, the visit is a welcome opportunity to encourage more investment and highlight progress made since a devastating 2010 earthquake obliterated much of Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas.
  
  But for some in impoverished Haiti, Hollande's presence is a reminder of the debilitating costs of the successful slave revolt that made Haiti the world's first black republic in 1804.
  
  Crippled by an international embargo enforced by French warships, Haiti agreed in 1825 to pay France an "independence debt" of 150 million gold francs to compensate colonists for lost land and slaves. Although the indemnity was later reduced to 90 million gold coins, the debt crippled the Caribbean nation, which did not finish paying it off to French and American banks until 1947.
  
  "We Haitians know that a big reason why we are suffering today is because we were forced to pay France for our freedom. If we were not punished for our independence long ago, we would have had a better time," water seller Jean-Marc Bouchet said on a dusty, unpaved street in Port-au-Prince.
  
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