50 Gourdes World Queen of Sugar Cane

Haiti's 1977 commemorative series was issued under the Duvalier government during a period when Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier was attempting to modernize the country's international image and attract foreign investment. The "Queen of Sugar Cane" title honored the winner of an agricultural beauty pageant tied to the sugar industry, once Haiti's dominant export crop before decades of decline gutted production.

By 1977, Haitian sugar was already in steep retreat — a detail that lends the subject an unintentional elegance as a document of something almost gone.