Miragoâne

One kilometer from Haiti's busiest secondhand clothing port, nine species of fish exist nowhere else on Earth. Lake Miragoâne—just 12 kilometers long, 25 square kilometers of isolated freshwater—hosts the most remarkable adaptive radiation in the Caribbean. Scientists compare these Lake Miragoâne endemic fish to the famous cichlids of Africa's Rift Valley: a textbook case of speciation compressed into a single lake. The species are all Limia livebearers, relatives of the guppy; the most recent was discovered in 2020 by three Caribbean students from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti working together in the region's poorest country. Mozambique tilapia—listed among the world's 100 worst invasive species—was introduced in 1951 and now competes with and preys upon these natives. The lake gave the town its Taíno name, Miraguano, and the town gave Haiti one of its independence signatories.

The English founded Miragoâne in the 17th century as a pirate rest stop along Saint-Domingue's southern coast. The sheltered bay and freshwater lake made it a natural provisioning point. By 1820, the settlement counted 300 residents; by 1861, 2,000. The colonial-era town produced Étienne Gérin, brigadier general in the Revolutionary Army, who helped liberate Nippes from French control in January 1803 and signed the Haitian Declaration of Independence at Gonaïves the following year. During the civil war after Dessalines's 1806 assassination, the Miragoâne bridge marked the boundary between rival republics—a geographic dividing line that prefigured the department's eventual separation.

Then came the aluminum men. Reynolds Metals Company began extracting bauxite from the Plateau de Rochelois in 1956. Over 26 years, the company shipped 13.3 million tons of ore to Corpus Christi, Texas—nearly a fifth of all Reynolds bauxite—while employing fewer than 900 Haitians at 70 cents a day. When deposits ran thin in 1982, Reynolds departed. What remained was infrastructure: a deep-water port that replaced the civilian facility in 2010 and now handles a different commodity entirely.

Pepe transformed the economy. Secondhand clothing from American thrift stores—sorted in Miami warehouses, compressed into bales, shipped across the Caribbean—arrives at Miragoâne's docks nearly every day. The city is 'blanketed, literally, by a downy coat of secondhand clothing,' one observer noted. Merchants buy bales by the ton, sort them in street markets, and disperse inexpensive brands across Haiti. Pepe destroyed the local tailoring industry while creating thousands of trading jobs—the same competitive displacement that threatens the lake's endemic fish.

Nippes Department was carved from Grand'Anse in 2003, making Miragoâne a departmental capital. The city of approximately 65,000 remains relatively stable while Port-au-Prince collapses into 90% gang control. That stability carries a controversial cost: the local prosecutor has killed at least 83 alleged gang members since 2022. Miragoâne is a refugium—a zone where populations survive while the surrounding ecosystem fails. The nine Limia species evolved here because the lake was isolated. The pepe trade thrives here because the port still functions. Isolation created both. Isolation protects both. For now.