Matthew J. Smith has written extensively on Haitian political and social history. He is Professor of History and Director of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, University College London.
This commentary first appeared in the Jamaica Gleaner’s Sunday July 11 edition.
A watchful world looks with appropriate distress at the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and wonder where does Haiti go from here. The collective view is that the killing is an expected outcome of an incomprehensible violence on the streets of Port-au-Prince that was at least indirectly a creation of his government. It was always going to end with more extreme bloodshed and the trail would eventually flow upward. That has been the obvious assumption to make of the news reports that hit our media for the past year. Rapes, kidnappings, murders, flight and G9 gunmen (a confederation of nine gangs) marching like a carnival procession through Port-au-Prince’s bursting slums with high power rifles gleaming in the sunlight were all part of the current Haitian scene.
But no one could really have imagined the 53 year-old president, an unknown in the zero-sum game of Haitian politics just six years ago, would be claimed among the victims.
With all crises in Haiti the temptation is to find precedence. The republic’s history has been so often wounded that it seems logical to examine the scar tissue for traces of critical failure. But history can only take us so far. There was a time when a Head of State under the catastrophic public disfavor as Jovenel Moïse had only two available options: take up exile in Kingston or face the possibility of the storming of the National Palace and assassination. Some like Sylvan Salnave in 1870 chose to fight it out and was murdered. Lysius Salomon who had already spent a lot of his adult life in exile in Kingston and vowed never to return, chose to burn down Port-au-Prince a decade later to save his own skin. Most took the safer option.
There was a later age when the president after siphoning funds to foreign bank accounts looked to the United States for either salvation or sanctuary. In between these eras was the infamous public slaughter of President Vilbrun Guillaume-Sam on a burning July morning in 1915.
None of these episodes has parallel with what occurred on July 7. There is no military in Haiti to organize a coup, sergeant’s revolt or midnight raid. The gangs in the street have greater weaponry than the men in government issued uniforms. The National Palace has not been rebuilt since the 2010 earthquake which is why President Moïse was living in his private residence in Pelerin 5. The international players might be a familiar cast—the OAS, the US, even CARICOM—but also important are the less visible international narcotics, arms and criminal interests who have been deeply involved in Haitian politics over the past few decades. President Moïse’s assassins were mostly professional foreign killers hired by parties either internal or external to the drama in the country.
If we want to find a trail for this we need only look to the present century when in the struggle for power persistent inequalities of colour, class, corruption, and region morphed with newer ones of turf war and the ugly abuses of economic elites. Narco-trafficking has become highly problematic since the 1990s and state actors have been known to be beholden to members of this new economic class. “The state is trapped,” Moïse himself admitted not long after taking office. The depth of the crisis that has climaxed with his death was particularly apparent for years and shows how he could not escape the trap. Earthquake assistance from overseas turned out to be another heartbreaking racket that raised the economic and political stakes among powerbrokers. Sympathy fast turned to bafflement among Haiti’s neighbours who cherish the kinship with its astonishing revolutionary history and are astonished by the “revolutions” that followed. In the Caribbean especially, the Haitian struggle becomes seen as one long saga of disintegration. At key moments of crisis it is unavoidable to ignore Haiti because Haitians for more than two centuries have come by boat and plane to nearby shores. And just as common has been the revolting treatment of them by their Caribbean relatives a reaction that like the crisis in Haiti today is more acute.
The past is meant to give us perspective from which we may thoughtfully consider what is in front of us and imagine possibilities. With Haiti, the constancy of exploitation and abuse from within and without has always complicated this exercise. Some plead for foreign intervention but recoil when it comes. There has been more than a century of evidence that foreign control of Haiti has not made sustainable democratic institutions. The last protracted UN occupation was meant to safeguard the country from the exact situation that occurred this week. There is equally a tendency to underestimate how far Haitian power interests will go in ensuring their base is retained. This was part of the reason why Jean-Bertrand Aristide disbanded the Haitian army in 1994 only to come to rely on auxiliary street forces later. Members of the richest families have profited greatly from the abuse of the majority. We can only speculate as to whether members of Haiti’s power elite were complicit in the murder of the president. Whoever was behind the assassination and solicited a mostly foreign mercenary squad to do the deed has introduced a terrifying new element into Haitian politics that bypasses ancient horrors.
History is now a blurred lens when assessing the events of the past week. We must deal instead with the present and measure it against the available options. The scramble for internal control of the country is just beginning and will fix the attention of foreign interests but the real focus should be on attending to the people of Haiti who have been violated for so long. The brutally desperate needs of Haiti’s majority for the most basic of resources is amplified by the unyielding pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic which is certainly worse on the ground than reports indicate. The political impasse of a low functioning state, easily corruptible divisions and leaders, and systemic failures was not new but definitely far more unbearable over the past year. The daily fears of Haitians adds a more considerable problem that will likely grow worse depending on what unfolds over the next few weeks.
We look at what has happened and ask for prayers that this moment might produce an opportunity to realize a new and better Haiti. Hope is easy currency too quickly spent in moments of crisis. What is needed is a longer investment in the outcomes. For Haiti the road ahead is going to be rougher yet. Those of us who can recall the death of Maurice Bishop in Grenada in 1983, until this week the last head of government assassinated in the Caribbean, remember the shock and the consequences of it for the region. We could not look away then and certainly cannot do so now. Haiti’s future, like its history, will be consequential beyond Haiti.
