‘There is no hope’: crisis pushes Haiti to brink of collapse

The small hospital was down to a single day’s supply of oxygen and had to decide who would get it: the adults recovering from strokes and other ailments, or the newborns clinging to life in the neonatal ward.

Haiti’s political crisis had forced this awful dilemma — one drama of countless in a nation driven to the brink of collapse.

A struggle between President Jovenel Moïse and a surging opposition movement demanding his ouster has led to violent demonstrations and barricaded streets across the country, rendering roads impassable and creating a sprawling emergency.

Caught in the national paralysis, officials at Sainte Croix Hospital were forced to choose who might live and who might die. Fortunately, a truck carrying 40 fresh tanks of oxygen made it through at the last minute, giving the hospital a reprieve.

“It was scary, really scary,” said Archdeacon Abiade Lozama of the Episcopal Church of Haiti, which owns the hospital. “Every day, things become more difficult, day after day.”

Although the country has been trapped for years in cycles of political and economic dysfunction, many Haitians say the current crisis is worse than anything they have ever experienced. Lives that were already extremely difficult, here in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, have become even more so.

Weeks of unrest around Haiti, coupled with rampant corruption and economic malaise, have led to soaring prices, a disintegration of public services and a galloping sense of insecurity and lawlessness. At least 30 people have been killed in the demonstrations in the past few weeks, including 15 by police officers, according to the United Nations.

“There is no hope in this country,” said Stamène Molière, 27, an unemployed secretary in the southern coastal town of Les Cayes. “There’s no life anymore.”

Gas shortages are worsening by the day. Hospitals have cut services or closed entirely. Public transportation has ground to a halt. Businesses have shuttered. Most schools have been closed since early September, leaving millions of children idle. Widespread layoffs have compounded chronic poverty and hunger. Uncertainty hangs over everything.

Many Haitians with the means to flee have left or are planning to, while most who remain are simply trying to figure out where they are going to get their next meals.

Haiti was once a strategic ally for the United States, which often played a crucial role here. During the Cold War, US governments supported — albeit at times grudgingly — the authoritarian governments of François Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, because of their anti-communist stance.

In 1994, the Clinton administration sent troops to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power after his ouster as president, but 10 years later, intense pressure from the United States helped push Aristide out again.

Now, protesters are criticising the United States for continuing to stand by Moïse. The Trump administration has urged respect for the democratic process, but has said little about the unrest in Haiti.

“If you look at Haitian history, governments are overthrown when the United States turns on them,” said Jake Johnston, a research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The current crisis is a culmination of more than a year of violent protests, and the product, in part, of political acrimony that has seized the nation since Moïse, a businessman, took office in February 2017 following an electoral process that was marred by delays, allegations of voter fraud and an abysmal voter turnout.

Lafontaine St Fort, who says his leg was wounded by a police bullet during a demonstration, at his home in the La Savane neighborhood in Les Cayes, Haiti, Oct 12, 2019. “The reason why I went to the protest was to make a better life for myself, and make a better country,” said St Fort. (Meridith Kohut/The New York Times)

Outrage over allegations that the government misappropriated billions of dollars meant for social development projects provided the initial impetus for the protests. But opposition leaders have sought to harness the anger to force his ouster, calling for his resignation and the formation of a transitional government.

The protests intensified in early September, at times turning violent and bringing the capital, Port-au-Prince, and other cities and towns around the country to a standstill.

“We’re not living,” Destine Wisdeladens, 24, a motorcycle-taxi driver, said at a protest march in Port-au-Prince this month. “There is no security in the country. There’s no food. There’s no hospitals. There’s no school.”

Moïse has been defiant, saying in public comments last week that it would be “irresponsible” for him to resign. He has named a commission of politicians to explore solutions to the crisis.

The crisis is particularly stark in Les Cayes, the most populous city in southern Haiti, which has effectively been cut off from the capital by barricades on the main road.

The city endured a total blackout for nearly two months. The power company started to mete out electricity again earlier this month, though in tiny increments — a few hours on one day, a few more on another.

The city’s public hospital shut down recently when protesters, angry over the death of one of their comrades, smashed its windows and destroyed cars in its parking lot. After the attack, the staff fled, said Herard Marc Rocky, 37, the hospital’s head of logistics.

Even before the riot, the hospital was barely functioning. For three weeks, it had been without power after running out of fuel for its generators.

Lozama, 39, who oversees an Episcopal parish in Les Cayes, said demonstrators forbade him to hold services on two recent Sundays. “We couldn’t open the doors,” he said. “People would burn the church.”

Thieves have stolen the batteries from solar panels that provide electricity to the parish school. The keyboardist in the church music ensemble was recently wounded by a stray bullet. And protesters manning a barricade took food that Lozama was delivering by truck on behalf of an international charity.

“There’s no one you can call,” he lamented. “There’s no one in charge.”

People, he said, are desperate. “As they have nothing, they can destroy everything. They have nothing to lose.”

Venise Jules, 55, a cleaning woman at a grade school and the mother of Molière, the unemployed secretary, said her entire family had voted for Moïse.

“He said everything would change,” she recalled. “We would have food on our plates, we would have electricity 24/7, we would have jobs for our children and salaries would increase.”

Jules, three of her five children and a cousin live in a narrow house in La Savane made from mud and stone. The corrugated metal roof leaks when it rains. The bathroom is an outhouse with a hole in the ground. With no running water, the family has to fill buckets at a public tap several blocks away.

They cook over coal — when they have something to cook.

“I didn’t put anything on the fire today,” Jules said. It had been a full day since she had eaten anything.

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