Haiti has suffered political crises before, but never has its future seemed so bleak. But one of its native sons sees a solution to the chaos.
On Thursday, the Biden administration resumed deporting Haitians back to my war-torn nation. The Haitians being deported are not just those caught at the border. They’re Haitians deemed illegal — even if they’ve lived in the U.S. most of their lives. Others include those who have completed prison terms; they’ll end up swelling the ranks of the gangs on their return.
Haiti — deeply divided, extremely unequal, desperately poor — needs a redo, dare I say a revolution? But can fundamental change occur on the doorstep of the United States? Washington has always regarded Haiti as a trouble spot that needs calming rather than curing. According to the World Bank, Haiti remains the poorest country in the Latin American and Caribbean region and one of the poorest in the world. What keeps Haiti afloat is the nearly $4 billion in remittances sent home annually by Haitians working abroad.
Instead of a restart, the transition leaders will be pressured to return to the status quo. The international community is pushing for quick elections so it can wash its hands of Haiti. The UN favors a short, muscular intervention as a first step toward restoring order but none of Haiti’s friends seem eager to jump into the tar pit. First, a new government will have to find a way to get the gangs under control. Kenya was supposed to provide 1,000 policemen and lead a multinational force, but the plan hit a snag in the Kenyan courts. And the gangs’ recent show of coordinated firepower aimed at strategic targets may give other countries second thoughts. Direct intervention by the U.S. is out of the question in an election year, especially since previous interventions have not produced lasting results. For example, a U.N. “stabilization” mission led by Brazil lasted 13 years and left a legacy of sexual abuse, 9,000 cholera deaths and none of the desired stability. And of course, there was nothing done to tackle the vast inequalities that define Haitian society.
Disarming the gangs and pushing Haiti toward another voting exercise will not address the issues behind the violence. There is profound mistrust among Haiti’s various constituencies: the entrepreneurial elite, the political class, the urban masses and the rural poor. The last several elections have suffered the heavy hand of the “Core Group,” the countries most deeply involved in Haiti — including the U.S., France, Canada and Brazil. They arbitrarily barred candidates and chose first round winners who seemed particularly unsuited to govern. No wonder that fewer than 20 percent of eligible voters participated in the election that brought Jovenel Moïse to power in 2016. Moïse was assassinated in 2021, triggering events that led to the current situation.
Haiti needs to start over in its quest for democracy. The youthful population knows what it is not — they have access to the web, to television news, to blogs. WhatsApp crackles with spirited discussions in English, French and Kreyol. The challenge is creating a system that takes the mistrust into account — a Haitian version of America’s famed “checks and balances.”
This is vitally essential. My Haiti is vanishing. The most tangible examples were the complete collapse of our 100-year-old home in Bourdon, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, in the earthquake of 2010 which killed two cousins in their own home in the center of the city. Beyond my personal losses, the 300,000 killed in the earthquake included many important intellectuals and civil servants — further decimating the talent pool Haiti needs to recover.
The brutal images constantly on our screens today are a rebuke to the memories we hold in the far-flung Haitian diaspora. It’s been more than a half-century since I lived in Haiti, but the remembrances that come to me most easily revert to childhood. I remember the warm embrace of a Black, brown and tan universe, endless play in green ravines during the long days of childhood summers, spicy plates of fried pork and red beans and rice, fierce soccer games in the dirt and gruff teachers who pushed us toward intellectual curiosity. In my childhood innocence, I also failed to see the inequalities and the oppression that kept the majority poor and the dissenters silent.
