In the late afternoon sun, women in rags squat beside fires along the airport road. Through the thick haze, cattle and goats wander among naked children playing ghost-like in an open field. Women carry huge loads balanced on their heads as barefoot men, sisyphian figures bent double at the waist, pull huge carts piled with goods. Overloaded Tap-taps, the multi-colored pick-ups used as taxis, honk and jockey for space. A photographer next to me shakes his head. "Wow," he says. "What movie set is this from?"

Once Haiti was the richest colony in the world, a teeming fertile land known as the "Pearl of the Antilles." Over a thousand plantations supplied Europe with vast quantities of sugar, indigo, cotton, rum, and coffee. The value of these products accounted for a massive portion of France�s commerce, keeping 20,000 Frenchmen employed full-time in the slave trade, as the half-million Africans already on the island were routinely worked to death.

In 1791 the slaves rose up against their French masters in a bloody revolt; in 1804 Haiti became the second independent republic in the hemisphere. Independence brought ostracism, as the world�s nations, heavily dependent on slave-based economies, feared Haiti�s example. Finally in 1825, desperate for international trade and recognition, Haiti signed disastrous reparation agreements with France that marked the beginning of a history of economic enslavement: by the end of the 19^th century, 80 percent of Haiti�s revenue was consumed by dept payments.

U.S. Marines occupied the island during World War I. By the time the Americans left in 1934, Haiti owed the U.S. $40 million and the Haitian National Treasury and Banque Nationale were owned by a New York bank.

After the Marines pulled out, Haiti entered a brief period of democracy, punctuated by coups, until 1957 when Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier took power in a rigged election. Within a few years he had executed and exiled all of his political opponents, assassinated potentially mutinous Army officers, ex-communicated the archbishop of Port-au-Prince and declared himself "President-for-life".

Preoccupied (some would say obsessed) with fighting communism, the United States gave Duvalier full support and tens of millions of dollars in military aid. Haiti has a history of strife with its island neighbor, the Dominican Republic, but there has been no war in recent times. Few line up to invade the poorest country in the hemisphere. Most foreign aid was stolen by the government or put to use terrorizing the Haitian people.