There was once a city cradled between the mountains and the sea. The sun rose to the sounds of street vendors, children walking to school, and the slow crescendo of the morning pulsing like a heartbeat. The city had a regal name and a history that befit it. It altered the destiny of many and reshaped the geopolitical order of its region.
As we witness its downfall, we wonder about its legacy. What if the Prince had never rebelled? Would his death come at a different cost, would he have perished quietly, unnoticed?
Today, we mourn the fall of the Prince. We remember who he was to us and what he meant. We offer our gratitude for the life he gave us. We evoke memories of school drop-offs, Carnival on the Champ de Mars, and the endless after-work traffic, which became the unlikely theater for quotidian Haitian elegance as Diplomats’ SUVs idled beside brightly painted tap-taps adorned with portraits of celebrities, bible verses, or Creole proverbs. Men in pressed suits walked shoulder to shoulder with street vendors balancing baskets filled with fresh oranges, mangos, papaya, or sachets of water dripping with condensation on their heads. The heat shimmered off the pavement, and yet the city moved with rhythm; improvised, dignified, and distinctly its own. In those moments, where wealth and struggle shared the same stretch of road, the Prince revealed the quiet grace of his people.
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Port-au-Prince was born of colonial ambition. Founded in 1749 by the Marquis de Larnage, Charles Burnier, it was named after the ship Le Prince, which first docked in the colony of Saint-Domingue. In 1770, Port-au-Prince replaced Cap-Haïtien as the colonial capital.
The Prince bore witness to the greatest slave revolution the world has ever known. He saw the Spanish and French empires fall to their knees before Black revolutionaries. On January 1, 1804, Port-au-Prince became the capital of Haiti, the first free Black Republic in the Americas.
From that moment on, the Prince embraced his name and his purpose. The city bloomed. The Académie d’Haïti opened in 1823. Le Moniteur Haïtien, the nation’s first official newspaper, was launched in 1845. The Haitian Navy was formed in 1860; the national bank opened in 1881. The National Palace, a symbol of sovereignty, was designed by architect Georges H. Beaussan, a native son of the city.
But our Prince was young and, perhaps, naïve. Like in all great courts, power without wisdom led to disaster. Haiti became a stage for political assassinations, instability, and foreign intervention. The United States, citing national interest, found its justification in this turmoil.
In 1915, 330 US Marines landed at the Prince’s feet. Under the guise of creating stability, they rewrote Haiti’s constitution, disbanded its army, and transferred its gold reserves to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. A theft veiled in legality is remembered as a betrayal. That occupation lasted nearly two decades and left a lasting scar.
Still, the Prince rose. A wharf was constructed, opening the road to global trade. In 1929, the Bowen airfield opened. A movie house followed. After the Marines left, the city entered a new chapter. The National Library of Haiti opened in 1940. The Centre d’Art in 1944. The Institut Français in 1945. The Port Administration in 1956. And in 1965, the international airport—now named Toussaint Louverture International Airport welcomed the world.
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Word of the Black Prince went around the world. Celebrities and dignitaries traveled across oceans not to visit palaces but to feel the city’s soul in Pacot, at the Hotel Olofsson, along the Bicentenaire, and down past Léogâne, at beaches alive with possibility.
The Prince had a big heart. He welcomed everyone: poets, painters, vendors, students, and professionals. He embraced art and the joy of carnival rhythms, radios on every corner, and roasted corn on sidewalks. He made room for dreamers, for children who left home in the countryside chasing opportunity, for foreigners and friends alike.
After World War II, the Prince opened his arms once more to those fleeing war, torture, and displacement. They were folded into the city’s rhythm, enriching its economy, cuisine, and soul.
But as the city grew, so did the divide. Villas crowned the hills of Pétion-Ville, while below, Carrefour, Martissant, and La Saline strained under inequality. There, the city pulsed loudest in protest, music, and prayer. Frustration grew. Hope cracked.
The Prince aged too quickly, too violently.
He bore wounds that never fully healed: betrayal by those meant to lead, poverty passed like inheritance, hopes written on ballots only to be erased by fraud. The 1980s and ’90s brought new pain; factories closed, prices soared, and trust eroded.
Then, the Earth moved.
On January 12, 2010, the Prince fell to his knees. The cathedral collapsed. The National Palace split like a broken heart. Homes, schools, and hospitals all lost in seconds. Over 220,000 lives extinguished. And with them, more pieces of the Prince.
The world that once admired him rushed to help. Aid was promised; billions were pledged, but only part of it arrived, much of it mismanaged. His children were left to rebuild under the gaze of broken promises. The Prince’s power weakened. His independence was bartered in contracts and foreign terms.
Still, somehow, he stood again.
Carnival returned. Schools reopened. Roads to the mountains and sea saw traffic again. Under the Martelly regime, life seemed for a moment to be getting better. The ports of the Prince were again reopened. “Haiti is open for business” was the theme of this era. A $2 billion loan arrived from Venezuela through the PetroCaribe Act between 2008 and 2016, an acknowledgment of Haiti’s past role in Venezuela’s own independence.
But in hindsight, it was not enough.
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The Prince had no real chance. The betrayal came not just from abroad, but from within. Promised reconstruction vanished into corruption. Projects stalled. Funds disappeared, more misery followed.
On the night of July 7, 2021, the Prince lost one of his final leaders. President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in his own home. The nation awoke in stunned silence. By April 2024, the stage welcomed a newly formed transitional council of nine, entrusted with guiding the Prince out of this dire climate. But once again, nothing — each passing of this rotating presidency brought a continuation of the years of political instability, and empty promises, more accelerated now. It was like watching the past 20 years of Haitian politics in fast-forward: the change of power every time there is a new head of state, but always with the same lack of vision or plan for unity. It feels like they were grasping at the remnants of the Prince, forgetting the rest of the country. The people watched as politics devolved into theatrics.
And in that void, gangs rose.
Without state power, they claimed the city street by street. A network of armed groups ironically calling themselves Viv Ansanm (Live Together) aimed at what was left.
My dear prince, they have plotted to end you, to destroy any remnant of you. They have burned, killed, and destroyed, severing your last lifeline.
The city that once woke to the scent of roasting coffee and school bells now wakes to fear. To blood in the streets, to the echoes of gunfire. To children missing another year of school, in a world that does not wait. To the screams of mothers in the night.
Outside the crumbling palace, the people had grown tired of waiting, being forgotten, and dying silently.
Endurance is not immortality.
There comes a time when even the strongest grow weary. When the bones of a city, its roads, institutions, and spirit, can no longer carry the weight of abandonment. And so, the Prince, our beloved Prince, began to fade.
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There was no decree to mark his death. No trumpet, no headline. Just silence, schools shuttered, hospitals converted to battlegrounds, churches transformed into shelters. Gangs ruled where statues once stood. Terror replaced joy.
The Prince did not die from a single blow. He died from a thousand cuts: neglect, greed, impunity, and a chronic failure to protect what mattered most.
Today, Toussaint Louverture International Airport, the city’s gateway to the world, sits in eerie quiet, shuttered by violence intermittently since March 2024.
The Prince died watching the world turn its back on his children, without being able to offer them a return home. He could not receive them. He leaves behind mothers still healing from wounds of childbirth in hospitals facing deportation from the Dominican Republic. Migrants stripped of Temporary Protective Status (TPS) in the United States, citizens banned from travel, and children lost at sea or detained in foreign lands that were never meant to be theirs, punished for wanting something better.
My Prince, you leave behind a scattered nation of children. You leave behind sons and daughters stretched across continents, fighting and grasping for the echo of your essence, your aura, your sanctity. Around the world, your children are gathering. They sing and dance to the sounds of home, claiming your name and standing tall in their heritage. They are marching, protesting, and pleading for justice for you and all that was done to you.
They are what’s left.
They are what rises.
Dòmi an pè, chè Prince. Ou te limyè nou. Nou pap janm bliye’w
