Léogâne

Léogâne, city and port on the Gulf of Gonâve, southwestern Haiti, lying approximately 20 miles (32 km) west of Port-au-Prince on the north shore of the country’s southern peninsula. A former French colonial town, Léogâne has long been the centre of a predominantly agricultural region. The city was near the epicentre of the Haiti earthquake of 2010; nearly all of the buildings in Léogâne were destroyed or heavily damaged, and thousands of people were killed.

Léogâne was built on the site of the town of Yaguana, the birthplace of Taino leader Anacaona (c. 1474–c. 1503). Anacaona ruled the province of Xaragua, the last independent holdout during the Spanish conquest of Hispaniola, until her execution by the Spanish. After Spain’s cession of Haiti to France in the Treaty of Rijswijk (1697), the French built up Léogâne, which served as an administrative centre of the colony of Saint-Domingue. It was destroyed in 1770 by an earthquake and was rebuilt. In 1803, however, during the fight for Haitian independence, rebel leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines ordered it burned to keep it from falling into French hands.

The traditional mainstays of Léogâne’s economy have been its offshore fishery and the growing of sugarcane, fruit, and other crops on the surrounding plains. The city’s economy, along with its housing and infrastructure, suffered catastrophic damage in the 2010 earthquake. In the latest census to record Léogâne’s population (1982), the number of people in the city proper was 5,782; it was estimated in 2010 that that figure had more than doubled. At the time of the 2010 earthquake, the population estimate given for the city and its surrounding area was about 134,000.