For decades, the mostly dirt-poor residents of the small island of Ile-a-Vache off Haiti’s south coast lived in anonymity, virtually ignored by the government and visited only by the most adventurous backpackers and yachters.
Then, in 2012, helicopters started dropping off big shots: Haitian President Michel Martelly, former US president Bill Clinton, ad agency models and photographers, tourism executives, and the likes of Madonna and Sean Penn.
Then last year came the surprise: The government claimed the 44.1km2 former pirate lair as “a public utility,” potentially stripping the isle’s 14,000 residents of their land to develop a tourist resort.
“The local population was never consulted. It was a terrible shock,” said Jerome Genest, a community leader and member of the Organization of Ile-a-Vache Farmers (KOPI), which is fighting the project along with several other groups.
The Haitian government is now promoting Ile-a-Vache as an ecotourism project, key to its efforts to put the impoverished nation back on the Caribbean tourism map.
Fifty years ago, before it was swept by political turmoil, an HIV/AIDS epidemic and the 2010 earthquake, Haiti was a popular destination for the likes of Mick Jagger and Graham Greene, as well as the Clintons, who honeymooned there.
In the interim it became a pariah for pleasure seekers, standing by enviously as the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Puerto Rico cornered the US$28 billion Caribbean tourism market.
Haitian tourism sector: Islanders resist plan
HAITI
For decades, the mostly dirt-poor residents of the small island of Ile-a-Vache off Haiti’s south coast lived in anonymity, virtually ignored by the government and visited only by the most adventurou
