Haiti, the hell from which there is no escape

Jaime Gil de Biedma exaggerated: "Of all the stories in History, the saddest is that of Spain, because it ends badly." Perhaps the poet didn't know Haiti, whose history began badly, continued worse, and continues to sink into endless horror. Haiti is hardly mentioned anymore: why continue describing the chaos and violence of each day?

Let's start with a trivial and seemingly positive matter: the Haitian national football team has qualified for this summer's World Cup. It's the second time. After the first time, in 1974 (three defeats and elimination), the dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as "Baby Doc," expelled all the players from the country. One of them had been tortured during the competition.

This year, whatever the result, there will hardly be any reprisals: all the players live abroad. The coach, the Frenchman Sebastien Migne, hasn't set foot in Haiti. "It's too dangerous," he says. The qualifying matches have been played on other Caribbean islands. And there isn't even a president who can punish the national team for its defeats.

Now let's go back to the beginning. Haiti shares a Caribbean island, Hispaniola, with the Dominican Republic. It was a slave colony under French rule until 1804, when, after years of war, General Jean-Jacques Dessalines (born in chains and under whippings) proclaimed independence and declared himself emperor. The national flag was copied from the French flag, but with the white stripe removed to symbolize the extermination of the slaveholders.

No one wanted to trade with the new "empire" of former Black slaves. In 1825, France demanded a brutal indemnity (proportionally, as if Spain were to pay 16 billion euros now) for the loss of its colony. And Haiti tried to meet the payment in order to gain access to international sugar markets. He achieved neither. He never recovered.

From the beginning of the 20th century, the United States imposed a neocolonial regime on Haiti. Subservience to Washington reached its peak with the brutal dictatorship of the Duvaliers, "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc," between 1957 and 1986. "Papa Doc" bothered to call elections, those of 1961: he won by 1,320,000 votes and none against.

Among other services rendered to the country, the Duvaliers reinstated Vodou as the unofficial religion. And, above all, they created the system of violent gangs that dominates Haiti today. The first gang was the "Tonton Macoute" (loose translation: "the boogeymen"), Duvalier police officers and spies who, now without a dictatorship and without jobs but with an arsenal of weapons and information, formed a mafia group of extreme cruelty. Now there are about twenty gangs.

Haiti's last president, Jovenel Moïse, was gunned down in his bedroom on July 7, 2021. Colombian mercenaries recruited by a US company, under the direction of Haitian exiles and with the consent of the CIA, committed a political assassination that remains unpunished. A "presidential junta" was created, whose mandate expired at the beginning of this month. The only (very relative) authority now rests with Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, a dry-cleaning businessman installed in 2024 by the United States.

Fils-Aimé, whose police don't even control the capital, Port-au-Prince, has hired the American mercenary company Vectus Global (formerly Blackwater, dissolved after committing massacres in Iraq) to combat gangs with explosive drones. Innocent people die in every Vectus attack. On September 20, the victims were eight children under the age of 10.

Could there be more horror? Yes, of course. Gang rapes and beheadings are commonplace. Groups of vigilantes roam the streets with machetes. There is hardly any economic activity, and food is scarce. In a country smaller than Catalonia, a population of 11 million is on the brink of famine.

During Joe Biden's presidency, more than 400,000 Haitians were able to find refuge in the United States with provisional humanitarian permits. Donald Trump has revoked those permits, and mass repatriations have begun. The Dominican Republic (which is building a wall to divide the island and "lock up" Haitians) is also expelling them from its territory. Haiti is a hell from which escape seems impossible.