History
The island of what was known by the Spanish as Hispaniola was inhabited for thousands of years by indigenous peoples. The first European settlement in the southwest area was the town of Salvatierra de la Sabana, founded by the Spanish explorer Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar in 1504. This settlement was abandoned in 1540.
The area was uninhabited until the French colonial administration founded the town of Aux Cayes ("On the cayes"), so named due to its proximity to Île à Vache. The town was destroyed twice by hurricanes in 1781 and 1788.
On 24 December 1818, Simón Bolívar came to Les Cayes in search of support for his movement against the Spanish colonial government in South America.
In the wake of the 12 January 2010 quake, the Cuban military set up a field hospital in the region.
Read more about this topic: Les Cayes
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“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)