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Haiti News Media > Haiti News > Hinche - Haiti Cities Hinche, Haiti Cities Hinche is a city in central Haiti, near the border with the Dominican Republic.
It has a population of about 50,000. It is the capital of Centre department.
Hinche is the capital of Centre department. It is the hometown of Charlemagne PĂ©ralte, the Haitian nationalist rebel leader who resisted the United States occupation of HaĂŻti (1915-1934).
The city of Hinche (Spanish: Hincha) has at different times belonged to either the Dominican Republic or Haiti. The border treaty agreements of 1929 and revisions to the treaty in 1936 left it permanently in Haitian territory.
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The majority of the population are of African descent with a small minority being French/African. Because of the constant changes of ownership that went back many decades ago, and the proximity to the Dominican border, there is a very small yet rather visible Dominican and Dominican-descended population. About 5% of Hinche's residents also speak Spanish. The school system retains French as the main language. The official religion is Roman Catholicism, but the constitution allows the free choice of religion. There are also many non Catholic Christian churches in the city and the surrouding communities. Groups, like the Haiti Endowment Fund (HEF) of Southern California send medical missionaries several times a year to provide medicines and basic healthcare. HEF has also helped build community churches. Some of the people practice also vodou.
The cuisine is Créole, French, or a mixture of both. Créole cuisine is like other Caribbean cuisines, but more peppery. Specialties include griot (deep-fried pieces of pork), lambi (conch, considered an aphrodisiac), tassot (jerked beef) and rice with djon-djon (tiny, dark mushrooms). As elsewhere in the Caribbean, lobster is well-known here. A wide range of microclimates produces a large assortment of fruits and vegetables. Vegetarians will have a difficult time here, because pig fat is often used in food preparation, so even beans are to be avoided.
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The people enjoy a strong, sweet coffee -- Rebo is one brand, considered by some to be the best. Also popular is the excellent Barbancourt rum.
Interesting cuisine-related features of Hinche, include a market and the “Foyer d’Accueil”, an unmarked guesthouse above a school that is behind a blue and white church on the eastside of the main square.
Hinche can be accessed by road or plane. Hinche has a dirt runway that will allow a small Cessna and single engine planes to land. Usually, these flights are chartered from Port-au-Prince. East of Hinche, Bassin Zim is a 20 m waterfall in a lush setting, a 30-minute drive from town. In the city you’ll also find the Cathedrale de Sacre Coeur.
Route National 3, the 128-km semi-dirt road northeast from Port-au-Prince to Hinche requires a four-wheel drive and takes at least five hours (much longer by public transport). It starts by crossing the Cul-de-Sac plain via Croix-des-Bouquets. Here, a newly improved road branches off southeast through a parched, barren region, skirting Lake Saumâtre before reaching the Dominican border at Malpasse. There are regular flights from Port-au-Prince to Hinche. The RN3 heads north out of Mirebalais on to the Central Plateau, where the military crackdown was especially harsh after the 1991 coup because peasant movements had been pressing for change here for years. After skirting the Peligre Hydroelectric Dam, now silted up and almost useless, the road passes Thomonde and reaches this city.
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