PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Raucous crowds danced in the streets of the Haitian capital Sunday as the city celebrated its first Carnival since last year’s devastating earthquake forced the cancellation of the annual festivities.

The parade filed past the ruined facades of downtown shops, and the normally busy boulevard outside the collapsed National Palace was turned into a pedestrian zone for three days of revelry. Organizers erected a plywood wall to separate the Carnival zone from the huge Champ de Mars plaza, now a camp for tens of thousands of homeless people.

Many spectators grumbled that the Carnival was much smaller than in the past. Others said the city had no business holding the celebration at all.

The January 2010 earthquake killed an estimated 300,000 people and left much of the capital in ruins.