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1831-00-00

1831-00-00: (Pétionville Established in the Hills Above Port-au-Prince, Named for the Revolutionary Leader Who Had Armed Bolívar and Distributed Land to the …

Haitian

1831-00-00: (Pétionville Established in the Hills Above Port-au-Prince, Named for the Revolutionary Leader Who Had Armed Bolívar and Distributed Land to the Peasants, a Tribute That Would Become Bitterly Ironic as the Suburb Evolved Into One of the Wealthiest Enclaves in the Country): In 1831, the suburb of Pétionville was established in the hills above Port-au-Prince, named in honor of Alexandre Pétion, the president who had distributed land to peasants, armed Bolívar’s revolution, and governed southern Haiti with a comparatively light hand until his death in 1818. The naming was an act of homage to a leader whose populist legacy was already receding from the lived experience of the poor. Over the next two centuries, Pétionville would evolve into one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Haiti, a hillside enclave of mansions, hotels, and restaurants that looked down, both geographically and economically, on the sprawling poverty of Port-au-Prince below. The irony was structural: the suburb named for the man who championed the rural poor became the citadel of the urban rich.