Why Haiti can’t get the new beginning it needs

Photo Courtesy of Kelly L

BY AMY WILENTZ

Generations-long American meddling isn’t making it easier for Haitians to build a functioning democracy

It’s been 36 years to the day since Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, scion of a 29-year dictatorship, fled Haiti in the wake of popular unrest and the loss of U.S. support. The promise of democracy that his flight seemed to augur for Haitians has not been realized.

The aftermath of Duvalierism has instead been a generations-long experiment in misrule, with mostly fraud-filled elections whose results have been fiddled with by outside observers, especially the United States.

Still, every five years since Duvalier left (except for glitches, coups and postponements), Feb. 7 has been inauguration day in Haiti, when a new president takes office and Haitians try to convince themselves to have hope for a better future.

This Feb. 7 should be another such inauguration day, the scheduled end of President Jovenel Moise’s official term and the beginning of something new. But Moise was assassinated in July, and there is no new beginning for Haiti.

Moise’s killing is far from solved. Among those who’ve been implicated in the conspiracy, one person stands out: the current prime minister, Ariel Henry, who was appointed by Moise but did not take office until days after the assassination, when he was elevated by the U.S. and other international actors into the prime minister’s seat. According to Haitian prosecutors and a New York Times report, Henry was in close and frequent contact with one of the chief suspects in the assassination, Joseph Felix Badio, who is now on the lam.

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Amy Wilentz is the author of The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier and Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti, among other books. She teaches in the literary journalism program at UC Irvine and was a 2020 Guggenheim fellow.

This article was originally published by the Los Angeles Times.  

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.