Earthquake damage in Les Cayes in August (left); tossing bags of rice to hungry earthquake victims in August (right). Richard Pierrin/Getty Images (left); Reginald Louissaint Jr/AFP via Getty Images (right)

Can Haiti Hang On?

A series of overlapping crises have brought this long-suffering country to the edge of collapse

January 31, 2022

By Patricia Smith

Alejandro Cegarra/Bloomberg via Getty Images

President Jovenel Moïse, who was killed by assassins in July

For the desperately poor island nation of Haiti, it’s been one catastrophe after another.

In July, assassins killed the country’s president, creating a power vacuum amid an already failing government. In August, a powerful earthquake struck Haiti, leaving more than 2,000 people dead and thousands more injured. Then a tropical storm hit days later, flooding the country and slowing rescue efforts.

Now, with Haiti still reeling from those disasters, violent gangs that control about half the capital, Port-au-Prince, have seized the country’s ports and are blocking critical shipments of fuel. That has left hospitals on the verge of shutting down because they can’t run their generators. Cellphone towers have lost power, leaving vast swaths of the country isolated. And every day, an acute food shortage grows worse. Of Haiti’s 11 million people, 4.4 million need food assistance, according to the United Nations.

The situation has the people of Haiti feeling that their country is in a downward spiral.

“I hope for a better Haiti, but I know it won’t get better,” says Rousleau Desrosiers, watching his newborn breathe with the help of machines at a hospital whose generator is just days from running out of fuel. “Haiti only goes backward. The only gear we have is reverse.”

The overlapping crises of the past six months come after decades of poverty, natural disasters, and political instability. Since the devastating 2010 earthquake, about 1.8 million Haitians have fled the country in search of better lives elsewhere, many of them heading for the U.S. (see “Destination: The United States,” below).

A Turbulent Past

Haiti’s problems stem largely from its past. Most Haitians are descended from enslaved Africans brought over by French colonizers. The enslaved people rebelled, overthrowing the French colonial government, and in 1804, Haiti declared its independence.

But in exchange for France’s lost “property”—its plantations and the people it had enslaved—Haiti was forced to pay an enormous “independence debt” worth about $23 billion in today’s money. Haiti didn’t finish paying off the debt until 1947, and that had crippling consequences. Amid years of instability, a long string of tyrants seized power.

The other factor that has long destabilized Haiti is a history of foreign intervention (see Key Dates, below). The U.S. has invaded the country several times, most recently in 1994, when American troops reinstalled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who’d been democratically elected and then was in a military coup.

The current crisis, with a total breakdown in law and order, has taken the country to a new low.

“Everybody’s saying it’s the worst they can remember, and there have been lots of bad times before this,” says Brian Concannon, executive director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, which is based in Boston. “People go out to the grocery store and they’re not sure if they’re going to come back or not.”

After decades of international intervention in Haiti—and a feeling among many Haitians that that’s made things worse—there’s an ambivalence in the international community about whether and how to step in.

“A lot of people want to encourage a Haitian solution to a Haitian problem,” says Georges Fauriol, a Haiti expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. “The problem with that is that weeks and months go by with nothing happening.”

For now, the country has an interim government being led by a prime minister who was appointed shortly before the president’s assassination, which some investigators believe was carried out by drug cartels. But mostly the gangs are in charge.

Haiti At a Glance

PER CAPITA GDP

$2,800

(U.S.: $62,530)

LIFE EXPECTANCY

65.6 years

(U.S.: 80.4 years)

LITERACY RATE

61.7%

(U.S.: 99%)

^{Source: The World Factbook (C.I.A.)}

Lawlessness on the Streets

Richard Pierrin/Getty Images

Salvaging belongings from a flooded home in Les Cayes in August

On the streets of the capital, gangs control the slums surrounding the seaports. They have access to guns, motorcycles, and most important, fuel—three key things the police lack.

In many countries, a fuel shortage would disrupt transportation. In Haiti, where the electrical grid is unreliable, all the institutions and services that keep the country running—banks, hospitals, cell towers—get their power from generators, explains Maarten Boute, chief executive of Digicel Haiti, the country’s largest cellphone provider.

Without fuel, “everything just shuts down,” Boute says, adding that one in four Digicel cellular towers are out, without fuel to operate.

The fuel shortage is already affecting the most vulnerable Haitians. A week before he stood in a hospital watching his newborn son struggle to breathe, Rousleau Desrosiers ran out of the gas he needed to operate his motorcycle taxi. Within days, he and his pregnant wife had run out of food. Then his wife delivered their son a month early. The baby needed specialized care that the birth hospital didn’t offer.

Is a ‘Haitian solution to a Haitian problem’ possible?

Desrosiers shuttled his newborn to five hospitals before reaching one in Port-au-Prince that took him in: St. Damien Pediatric Hospital, Haiti’s main pediatric care facility.

“I’m worried,” Desrosiers says of his son, whose tiny nostrils are filled with oxygen tubes. A heat lamp warms his tiny body. “He isn’t breathing properly.”

Without more fuel for the hospital generators, the machines keeping the child alive will stop running, and the entire hospital will have to shut down.

Doctors and nurses have run out of fuel for their cars, and the few taxis on the streets have become too expensive, so the hospital is using ambulances to bring staff members to work and buying mattresses so they can sleep on the floor. To save fuel, staff members shut off the lights as often as possible.

“It’s chaos for Haiti,” says Jacqueline Gautier, the hospital’s chief executive.

‘It’s a Real Nightmare’

With fuel so scarce, residents in some towns surround vehicles as they drive through and insist on off gas from the tanks before letting them continue. In northern Haiti, a crowd attacked a fuel truck and forced the driver to transfer part of his haul into large drums.

The crisis has crippled everyone’s ability to work and live. Gas stations have been boarded up for weeks. When owners show up at the stations, riots often break out among residents, who are convinced the stations are fuel.

The current lawless environment has prompted a surge in kidnappings by gangs. There are also accusations that members of the Haitian government have been involved. In early October, Pastor Jean Ferrer Michel had parked outside of his church when armed, masked men jumped out of a justice ministry vehicle and bundled him away, according to his daughter, Farah Michel. He was later handed over to a gang and was released only after his family paid multiple ransoms.

Farah Michel says her family is under threat and plans to leave Haiti soon.

“You can’t raise a kid in this atmosphere, you can’t give birth, go to a job, raise a family,” she says. “It’s a real nightmare. You’re not sleeping, but you’re in a nightmare.”

With reporting by Natalie Kitroeff and Maria Abi-Habib of The New York Times.

Destination: The United States

Thousands of Haitians amassed at the U.S. border in September, desperate for new lives in America

The images were shocking: nearly 15,000 Haitian migrants, including many children, camped under a bridge, sleeping amid a sea of trash, roasting in the heat. This was the scene in Del Rio, Texas, in September, when a surge of Haitian migrants crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, desperate for a chance to stay in the U.S.

The situation was emblematic of the chaos at the border during most of the past year. In 2021, a record 1.7 million migrants from all over the world were caught trying to enter the U.S. illegally—mainly spurred by economic devastation caused by the Covid pandemic. It was the highest number of illegal crossings since at least 1960, when the government began tracking them.

The Biden administration has promised a more humane approach to the immigration crisis, but it’s been sharply criticized for using many of the same methods as the Trump administration, including forcing migrants to wait in Mexico before applying for asylum.

The crush of Haitians at the U.S. border in September was the of months-long journeys over land from Brazil and Chile, where many of them had been living since they fled Haiti in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in 2010.

“What you’re seeing is an onward migration of a population that’s already been on the move for a decade,” says Michelle Mittelstadt of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

A record number of migrants were caught entering the U.S. in 2021.

Initially, Haitians were welcomed in Brazil and Chile, where jobs were plentiful. But as the pandemic devastated those nations’ economies, the Haitians lost their jobs and faced rising hostility.

Desperate for better lives, many began walking north, heading toward the U.S. They had to cross the Darien Gap, a lawless stretch of jungle separating Colombia in South America from Panama in Central America, long considered impenetrable. Many made the journey wearing flip-flops and carrying babies. How many died along the way is unknown.

This willingness of so many migrants to endure incredible danger in hopes of a better life shows how hard stopping migration flows can be, experts say.

“The U.S. and other countries in the region need to recognize what is happening as a regional problem,” Mittelstadt says. “Regional solutions are required.”

HAITI Key Dates

1804: Independence

Haiti gains freedom from France after an army of formerly enslaved people, led by Toussaint Louverture, defeats French troops.

1915: U.S. Intervention

After seven Haitian leaders are assassinated or overthrown in four years, the U.S. invades to maintain order. The U.S. remains until 1934 and keeps financial control until 1947.

1957: Duvalier Dictatorship

François “Papa Doc” Duvalier is elected a year after seizing power in a coup. He eventually establishes a brutal dictatorship. After his death in 1971, he’s replaced by his son, who becomes known as “Baby Doc.” Duvalier is forced into exile after an uprising in 1986.

1990: President Aristide

Bettmann/Getty Images

Jean-Bertrand Aristide (right) wins the presidency in Haiti’s first free and fair election. A year later, he’s overthrown by the military. In 1994, U.S. troops arrive to restore democracy and return Aristide to power. In 2004, he’s again forced to flee amid a rebellion.

2010: Earthquake

About 250,000 people are killed when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hits the capital, Port-au-Prince, and its surrounding region.

Today: More Turmoil

President Jovenel Moïse is assassinated in July 2021, creating a power vacuum. A month later, an earthquake kills more than 2,000 Haitians and injures many more. In the months that follow, gang violence rises sharply, threatening all aspects of life in Haiti.

Continue the Learning Journey

Using both the information in the article and your own research, pick four additional dates that have been important to Haiti’s history and expand the key dates offered into a longer timeline. Feel free to add additional information to the existing entries as well.

Using the details about Rousleau Desrosiers and those in the Upfront article about life in Haiti more generally, write a “Day in the Life” from Desrosiers’s perspective. Use what you have learned about life in Haiti from the article to make some educated guesses about what other aspects of Desrosiers’s life might be like.

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