Haiti: A Nation Trapped in Centuries of Misrule
In February 2021, the UN Security Council held a video conference on Haiti and criticized the Haitian government. In recent years, Haiti’s political factions have repeatedly engaged in destructive power struggles, with abuse of power and corruption running rampant, bringing state governance close to collapse. Over the past nearly 30 years, the international community has poured massive resources into Haiti, committing more than 8 billion US dollars in total, yet with little to show for it.
Haiti is an island nation in the northern Caribbean Sea, covering a total area of 27,800 square kilometers. Though an island country, it does not occupy the whole island; it controls just over 30 percent of Hispaniola, while the remaining 70 percent belongs to the Dominican Republic. Within this small territory live 12 million Haitians, and the country’s total GDP stands at less than 8.5 billion US dollars. Haiti’s per capita GDP is roughly 800 US dollars, a figure low even by African standards.
Because Haiti lies in the Caribbean, close to the United States, many people refer to it as America’s backyard. To me, this label is an enormous insult — not to Haiti, but to the United States. The United States, the world’s leading power, deserves a backyard with scenic charm such as the Bahamas or Cuba. Haiti, a nation rotten to its core, hardly qualifies for that title.
Like other Latin American countries, Haiti’s history is one of colonial exploitation. Over time, Spain and France alternately ruled the land. Haiti’s climate was ideal for coffee plantations, and colonial powers shipped huge numbers of enslaved Africans here to work the estates. The colonisers subjected enslaved people to unspeakable cruelty, until their suffering became unbearable.
Large-scale slave uprisings erupted in Haiti starting in the late 18th century. In 1804, Haiti formally gained independence and established the Empire of Haiti, the world’s first Black republic. Tragically, Haiti reached its peak the moment it was founded. More than two hundred years after independence, its only notable achievement remains that early independence.
Few nations have seen so few competent leaders across two centuries. Haitian society was governed by a tiny elite that ruled over the vast poor majority, a cycle repeating endlessly. Between 1804 and 1915, the average lifespan of any Haitian administration was less than two years.
In 1915, the United States occupied Haiti amid the chaos of World War I. American overseers pushed the Haitian parliament to adopt a new constitution, largely a lightly modified copy of the US Constitution. Even the presidential palace was built to mirror the White House.
Two countries deserve close examination: Haiti and Liberia. Both adopted political systems nearly identical to that of the United States, and each bears the grim distinction of being the most troubled state in Latin America and Africa respectively.
The US occupation lasted until 1934. Before withdrawing, the Americans left behind President Sténio Vincent. During this period, the Dominican Republic massacred more than 20,000 Haitian migrants. With US mediation, the Dominican Republic eventually paid 750,000 US dollars in compensation. That worked out to just over 30 US dollars per victim. After President Vincent skimmed funds, each bereaved family received merely 2 US dollars.
After the American withdrawal, Haiti saw successive governments rise and fall. In 1956, a pro-US military government was overthrown. In 1952, under US supervision, Haiti held its first genuinely transparent presidential election. This vote ushered in nearly 30 years of political stability from 1957 to 1986. For ordinary Haitians, however, this stable era was no blessing. The man elected president in 1957 was François Duvalier.
Born in 1907 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, François Duvalier grew up in a Black middle-class household. A diligent student, he studied medicine in Haiti and later in the United States, then worked in public health after returning home. As a doctor, he earned a strong reputation. Those who met him described him as gentle and conscientious, treating rich and poor patients alike.
In 1948, Duvalier became Haiti’s Minister of Public Health. In office, he delivered real benefits for Haiti’s poor, earning the affectionate nickname “Papa Doc” from ordinary citizens. In his younger years, Duvalier was genuinely revered by Haitians as a caring father figure.
In 1956, Duvalier ran for president. His positive public image won him broad popular support. His campaign promised a clean government and equal treatment for the poor.
He kept half of that promise: he never built an honest administration, yet he did impose equality on the poor — though not the equality they had hoped for.
In 1957, François Duvalier won the presidential election by a wide margin, securing power through the ballot box with backing from the United States. For decades, historians have debated what drove this shift: no one fully understands why this compassionate, science-minded doctor reversed course so dramatically after taking office. This pattern was not unique to Duvalier.
Duvalier’s election was not welcomed by everyone. Port-au-Prince’s bourgeoisie opposed his rise, and the city’s business community launched a general commercial strike after he took office. Duvalier ordered his secret police into action: shop owners either opened their doors voluntarily, or agents forced them open.
He assumed power at a pivotal moment: the Cuban Revolution was in full swing, and leftist movements were sweeping across Latin America. To defend its sphere of influence, the United States supported right-wing capitalist factions. Caught between the two Cold War blocs, Duvalier took an unexpected path: building a regime fused with religious authority.
Vodou, the most influential faith in Haiti, originated in West Africa. It blends ancestor worship, spirit veneration and animism. It is the source of zombie folklore, and once included brutal practices such as ritual human sacrifice, marking it as extremely primitive and once labelled a cult.
Duvalier elevated Vodou to Haiti’s official state religion. With extremely high illiteracy rates across Haiti, Vodou had deep roots among rural and poor communities. Duvalier cast himself as high priest, claiming Haiti’s four founding forefathers possessed him, granting him absolute rule over the nation.
This self-deification alone would have been alarming enough, but Duvalier, acting in his capacity as president, presided over multiple brutal live sacrifices, setting a shocking low for the modern world.
He also co-opted Christianity. He declared himself the saviour chosen by Jesus. A widely circulated poster showed Jesus placing a hand on Duvalier’s shoulder with the caption: “I have chosen him.”
Duvalier’s archaic practices sparked fierce pushback from Haitian intellectuals and the bourgeoisie. Many protested that even authoritarian rule should not rely on such primitive folk religion. Many educated Haitians fled the country, and underground opposition grew.
Faced with dissent, most Haitian presidents would deploy the military for crackdowns. Duvalier chose differently: he suppressed the army itself. He believed Haiti’s chronic political instability stemmed from its military.
If the regular army was sidelined, who would crush his opponents? Duvalier built a new paramilitary force designed for repression, a Haitian version of political police known as the Tonton Macoute, accountable only to him. Thugs and Vodou practitioners filled its ranks.
At its peak, the organisation boasted tens of thousands of members, twice the size of the national army. Uniformed and well-armed, its members could execute anyone they disliked on Duvalier’s orders. They dumped political enemies in vats of sulphuric acid. Over the Duvalier dynasty’s rule, this militia killed at least 30,000 people.
Maintaining the force was cheap. Duvalier often paid them no salaries; instead, they were permitted to rob civilians for income.
Duvalier also limited Haiti’s external communications. He took office in 1957, during the global post-war economic boom. While most nations saw rapid growth in the 1950s and 1960s, Haiti, already destitute, became one of the few places left untouched by prosperity under his rule.
Haiti’s economic foundation was already fragile; its first thermal power station was only built during World War II. The informal economy neared total collapse. Yet Duvalier still sought wealth.
First came mandatory levies. Duvalier announced plans to build a new city named after himself, forcing merchants across Haiti to pay contributions. Tonton Macoute agents collected payments door to door. Refusal meant arrest or murder. The project stretched across the full length of Duvalier’s rule for more than twenty years. No ground was ever broken; not even a map existed.
In Orwell’s 1984, the proles endlessly debate lottery numbers. In Haiti, Duvalier manipulated lotteries outright. Haitians desperate for hope eagerly bought tickets, yet all grand prizes were preassigned to Duvalier’s relatives and allies. There was never any suspense.
Even with these coercive tactics, Haiti’s poor had little left to extract. To squeeze the last remaining value from his people, Duvalier signed an agreement with the Dominican Republic in 1967, promising to supply 20,000 Haitian labourers annually to cut sugarcane. In return, the Dominican Republic paid 59 US dollars per worker. All of that money flowed straight into Duvalier’s pockets — effectively reviving slave labour in the second half of the 20th century.
Through relentless plunder, the Duvalier family amassed more than 500 million US dollars by the end of François’s rule.
The regime’s brutal corruption became so extreme that even the United States grew uneasy. After John F. Kennedy took office, he considered removing Duvalier, fearing Haiti’s collapse would create an opening for communist forces. The two men became bitter enemies. After Kennedy’s assassination, Duvalier claimed publicly that his occult rituals had killed Kennedy — an empty boast for domestic propaganda.
Due to Duvalier’s outrageous graft, the United States and other international donors suspended aid. Haiti relied almost entirely on foreign grants for its state finances and foreign currency reserves. When US aid stopped, Duvalier threatened: restore funding, or Haiti would align with the Soviet Union. The threat spooked Washington into resuming aid. In reality, Duvalier had no genuine intention to defect to the Soviet bloc; the regime would have been toppled instantly if it tried.
In 1970, François Duvalier suffered a severe heart attack. Fearing death was near, he set in motion his succession plan: pass the presidency to his 19-year-old son, Jean-Claude Duvalier. To clear the way, he amended the constitution, lowering the minimum presidential age requirement from 40 to 18. The Duvalier dynasty entered its second phase.
In February 1971, François held an election for Jean-Claude. The younger Duvalier stood as the sole candidate, yet Haitian voters boycotted the polls. To manufacture victory, loyalists used trucks to shuttle repeat voters between polling stations. Despite this blatant fraud, the outcome was fixed. The United States backed the result, eager to keep Jean-Claude as a pro-Western leader.
In February 1971, 19-year-old Jean-Claude Duvalier became the youngest elected head of state in modern history. François died in April of the same year. Jean-Claude spent 3 million US dollars building an ornate mausoleum for his father. After 14 years in power, the elder dictator died.
When Jean-Claude first took office, he had no governing experience. Real power rested with his mother, Simone Duvalier. This matriarchal setup sparked bitter internal family conflict. His sister and later his wife joined the power struggle; three women fought for influence for years. The infighting lasted until 1981, ending with Simone’s defeat.
Simone lost influence as Jean-Claude matured. Over his first decade in office, he reshuffled his cabinet 22 times and purged his mother’s faction completely.
To signal reform, Jean-Claude launched limited domestic changes. After years of oppression under Papa Doc, Haiti was devastated. Jean-Claude promised an economic revolution to secure more US aid. With modest political liberalisation, foreign investment slowly arrived, and GDP growth briefly hit 5 percent per year. He developed light industry, ending Haiti’s long run of negative economic growth.
Under his rule, Haiti’s national football team even qualified for the 1974 World Cup, beating Mexico in the qualifiers. Haitians briefly dared to hope their nation, after centuries of suffering, might finally recover. It was merely a temporary reprieve.
Jean-Claude’s economic reforms and foreign funding did little to improve ordinary people’s lives. He kept his father’s entire repressive apparatus, including the notorious Tonton Macoute. Starting in 1979, confident in his grip on power, Jean-Claude resumed mass arrests of opponents, rolling back the limited political freedoms.
By the 1980s, shifting politics drove foreign capital out. The fledgling industries collapsed. Worse, decades of deforestation pushed Haitian agriculture to breaking point. No government had built irrigation infrastructure, so farmers cleared more trees to expand cropland. Deforestation worsened soil erosion, forcing further land clearing, creating a vicious cycle that collapsed farming by the mid-1980s.
On the same island, the Dominican Republic pursued strict environmental protection. Heavy fines punished illegal logging. The two nations on Hispaniola represented stark opposites.
Collapsing agriculture and industry did not trouble Jean-Claude. With political enemies suppressed, he ignored mass hardship.
Jean-Claude’s lavish 1980 wedding cost more than 7 million US dollars; fireworks alone cost 100,000 US dollars, making it one of the world’s most expensive weddings that year. That same year, the International Monetary Fund provided 22 million US dollars in aid to cash-strapped Haiti. Jean-Claude took 20 million US dollars for himself, leaving only 2 million for public use.
Beyond his father’s old methods of theft, Jean-Claude created new revenue streams — including blood trafficking. The state collected Haitians’ blood to sell to hospitals in the United States. This trade generated huge profits, and also fuelled a catastrophic HIV/AIDS epidemic across Haiti.
The AIDS crisis devastated the population, yet the state paid almost no attention. According to UN statistics, Haiti spent just 3.44 US dollars per person on healthcare in 1985, trivial compared with blood-trade profits. Per capita education spending stood at only 3.7 US dollars. The illiteracy rate hit 75 percent; 87 percent of infants suffered malnutrition, infant mortality reached 18 percent, and average life expectancy was 47 years. Combined health and education spending made up less than 2 percent of the national budget.
State funds instead poured into security forces, police, secret services and prisons — the only sectors thriving under Jean-Claude’s rule. In 1985, the ratio of secondary school teachers to military personnel was heavily skewed toward the military; there were 35 prisons for every secondary school.
By the end of Jean-Claude’s rule, the Duvalier family fortune grew to 900 million US dollars, accounting for roughly 90 percent of Haiti’s total national wealth. In a country where average per capita income stood at 90 US dollars, more than 200 households earned over one million US dollars annually, and three thousand earned above 90,000 US dollars. This wealthy elite ruled alongside the Duvalier family.
Protected by his large paramilitary force, Jean-Claude believed his regime was unshakable. Tokugawa Ieyasu once said the secret of governance was keeping peasants barely alive: neither prosperous, nor pushed to utter ruin. The ancient Japanese ruler understood this balance.
The Duvaliers did not. Violence can suppress people for a time, but when survival becomes impossible, threats of death lose their power. When the people no longer fear death, what terror can be wielded against them?
By the 1980s, anger between the Duvalier regime and Haitian society reached boiling point. Opposition parties remained banned, yet resistance emerged. Liberation Theology spread widely across Haiti.
Liberation Theology emerged in Latin America in the 1960s, a Catholic current blending religious teaching with limited Marxist ideas. The Catholic Church was the only large civic organisation permitted to operate. Priests across Latin America witnessed mass suffering and led grassroots resistance; they could be described as Christians who embraced revolutionary thought. Pope Francis himself was deeply involved in Liberation Theology in his younger years, and once received a cross marked with hammer and sickle in Latin America.
For most of the 20th century, religion was often targeted by revolutionaries. Compared with the Duvalier dictatorship, however, Liberation Theology represented progress.
In November 1985, student protests erupted in the coastal city of Gonaïves, marking the first wave of mass unrest. Jean-Claude responded with his usual tactics: ordering troops to open fire and hunt down protesters. He saw it as just another failed uprising. But state violence only expanded the movement.
By January 1986, protests spread nationwide. The once-feared Tonton Macoute were overwhelmed by crowds of angry citizens. Protesters carried signs showing an empty coffin reading: “This is your fate, Jean-Claude Duvalier.”
Even after killing more than a thousand demonstrators in late 1985, the regime could not crush the rebellion. At the end of January 1986, Jean-Claude declared martial law and ordered harsh military suppression. But many soldiers, long repressed by the regime, defected. A general nationwide strike began on February 3.
The United States feared Cuba and the Soviet Union would exploit the chaos. On February 7, 1986, Jean-Claude Duvalier and his wife fled Haiti aboard a US military transport plane, carrying more than 100 million US dollars in cash. After 29 years, the Duvalier dynasty collapsed.
On the day Jean-Claude fled, crowds stormed François Duvalier’s grand mausoleum, intending to desecrate his remains. They opened the tomb only to find it empty; the dictator’s body had been moved in advance.
Jean-Claude lived lavishly in exile across Europe. International pressure eventually forced Swiss banks to freeze his assets. In 1990, his wife divorced him and took nearly all his remaining wealth. Penniless, Jean-Claude relied on handouts from former loyalists.
Unable to sustain life in Europe, he repeatedly sought permission to return to Haiti. On January 16, 2011, Jean-Claude Duvalier arrived back in Port-au-Prince. Though Haitian authorities had long vowed to prosecute him, officials released him after a short interrogation. He died of heart disease in 2014 at age 63.
The fall of the Duvalier regime did not fix Haiti. Presidents came and went in quick succession, with military juntas and strongmen alternating in power. After Jean-Claude’s ouster, Haiti cycled through more than twenty presidents, never achieving lasting stability.
On January 12, 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, delivering another devastating blow to the already shattered nation. Buildings were poorly constructed, and countless structures including the presidential palace collapsed. State authority crumbled completely. The president survived as he was travelling outside the capital, but nearly all cabinet members could not be reached after the disaster. The police force largely abandoned duty.
The quake destroyed prisons, freeing more than 4,500 inmates. Escaped convicts raided police stations for weapons and robbed survivors. The government ceased functioning, leaving relief entirely to international aid groups.
Rescue teams from across the globe rushed to Haiti. Yet no staff controlled the airport or customs; relief aircraft struggled to land. Armed gangs looted survivors and UN aid convoys, requiring UN peacekeepers to escort supply vehicles.
Only four days after the earthquake did police return to duty in Port-au-Prince. Severe manpower shortages led police to authorise lethal force against looters. The only functioning hospital was run by Médecins Sans Frontières. Designed for hundreds of patients, it faced hundreds of thousands of injured people. Médecins Sans Frontières described working under crushing pressure. The Haitian government acted as a passive bystander amid catastrophe.
Despite massive global relief efforts, the earthquake killed more than 300,000 people.
More than a decade has passed since the earthquake. Hurricanes and floods continue to batter the land. Crippling poverty leaves Haiti unable to produce enough food, and hunger remains chronic. With no grain to eat, poor people dry mud into mud cakes. Nutritionally worthless, these cakes temporarily quiet hunger pangs.
The 21st century has seen global food production far exceed humanity’s total needs, yet thousands in Haiti still eat dirt. Less than 1,000 kilometres away in the United States, per capita healthcare spending exceeds 10,000 US dollars, while Haitians struggle to access even single tablets of medicine.
In many former colonies, backwardness stems from imperial interference. To be fair, US involvement in Haiti was not entirely destructive. Haiti was often too poor to be profitably exploited. Still, the United States repeatedly stepped in to manage crises including the earthquake. Years of American intervention failed to stabilise Haiti, which repeatedly slipped back toward tyranny similar to the Duvalier era.
Today, Haiti’s state is largely dysfunctional. The government’s primary activity is embezzling international aid and fighting partisan power struggles. Ruins left by the earthquake remain uncleared, and few public buildings have been rebuilt. Presidents arrest opposition lawmakers, while police focus on suppressing political rivals and ignore rampant violent crime.
Seventy-six named armed criminal gangs now operate across Haiti, preying on the impoverished population. The state has largely handed over core governance tasks to the United Nations and international organisations.
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