When a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince in 2010, it sent the concrete
floors of buildings toppling down upon one another, crushing people beneath. It sent mothers
and fathers digging for their children, sent tens of thousands of people abruptly into early
graves. Their bodies were buried by the thousands at Titanyen. But a place with space for the
dead is a place with space for the living, and in post-earthquake Haiti, space was in short
supply. Only slightly larger than Vermont, Haiti is home to roughly 15 times as many people.
Some 1.5 million of them—one out of every six Haitians—were displaced by the earthquake,
and many were left homeless.
International non-governmental organizations (NGOs) began eyeing the vast stretch of vacant
land east of Titanyen as a place to house them, and with the help of the United States Navy
and the United Nations, they erected hundreds of small, temporary structures to house 7,500
people at a spot called Corail-Cesselesse. Haiti’s president used eminent domain to declare
the land public, which Haitians took to mean free. Within days, people began flocking to the
area around Corail, building shacks out of tarps and wood. Soon thousands of people were
migrating north to this once-empty landscape, lying down bricks that would become the
foundations of their future homes.Haiti’s earthquake shattered several cities, but it also
birthed another. Called Canaan, after the biblical holy land, a place defined by death has
come alive.
