25 Nov 2025 Your Passion for Preservation: Ayiti’s First Soup Joumou
Here, HBI’s Passion for Preservation series shares your preservation story with our readers. “Ayiti’s First Soup Joumou” was submitted by Dumas Lafontant of Boston.
This preservation pertains to improving historical legacy in fine arts. Basically, I commissioned a painting that depicts the founders of Ayiti (Haiti) having their First Soup Joumou on January 1, 1804. According to Ayitian (Haitian) story tellers, on the first day of the celebration of the Independence of Haiti, Soup Joumou, a dish that Haitians say represent freedom, was served at the official ceremony, a s well as in homes throughout the country. UNESCO declared Soup Joumou a world heritage in 2021. The decision was made by the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee in December 2021, adding it to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.