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Prime Minister Ariel Henry says he believes that none of the more than 40 people detained in the killing of President Jovenel Moïse have the capacity to organize the complex plot.PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The mastermind behind the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse of Haiti is most likely still at large, the country’s caretaker leader says. He remains baffled by the motive, he says, and he doubts that the conspirators accused of plotting the killing had the ability to pull it off on their own.“I think there were a lot of people involved; there were people with access to a lot of money,” Prime Minister Ariel Henry said in an interview on Tuesday at his residence in the capital, Port-au-Prince. “The people they have accused up until now, I don’t see that they have the capacity, the web, to do it.”More than 40 people have been detained after Mr. Moïse was shot 12 times and his wife seriously injured on July 7 by a group of assailants who stormed into their bedroom. The police and the prosecutor’s office continue to issue warrants for new suspects on a near daily basis. Some of the detainees have been charged, but none have been brought to court.Few in Haiti believe the authorities have yet closed in on the people who organized and financed the complex plot. It appears to have been planned for months in Florida and Haiti and involved flying in two dozen Colombian ex-commandos to the country.Although the president had many enemies, Mr. Henry, who was appointed by Mr. Moïse shortly before his death, said he remained baffled by the crime’s ultimate motive.“Maybe I’m at risk, too, from the people who killed him,” Mr. Henry said. “Could they do it again? I don’t know.”The opposition had said that Mr. Moïse’s five-year term should have ended on Feb. 7, five years to the day since his predecessor, Michel Martelly, stepped down. But Mr. Moïse had clung to power, ruling by decree. He argued that an interim government had occupied the first year of his term. Protesters took to the streets of Haiti demanding his removal.But Mr. Moïse had said he would not seek another term in the general elections scheduled for Sept. 26 and had been expected to step down seven months before the killing.Claude Joseph, then the prime minister, took control of Haiti’s government immediately after the assassination, but pressure from foreign powers led to an agreement to let Mr. Henry, 71, take office on July 21.On Monday, Port-au-Prince’s chief prosecutor began issuing the first charges in the assassination investigation. The arrested suspects — who include Mr. Moïse’s security chiefs, the Colombian ex-commandos and Haitian businessmen — have been moved to a jail in preparation for trial. But despite some progress, the investigation has been mired from the start in irregularities and attempts at subversion.At least three judicial officials who compiled evidence and conducted initial interviews with key suspects are now in hiding after receiving numerous death threats.Mr. Henry said his main goal now was to hold free and fair elections to stabilize the country. He said he was in talks with political parties and civil leaders to appoint a new electoral board and draft a new Constitution that will be presented to voters for approval.He promised to improve Haiti’s dire security crisis before the vote; swaths of the capital remain in the control of the gangs. He also ruled out requesting troop assistance in preparation for the vote from allies, including the United States, saying that the task would be handed by the national police..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Mr. Henry said he would not run for office in the elections. Despite the challenges of guiding the country through a political and security crisis, he said, he continues to practice his main profession, as a neurosurgeon. He will perform his next surgery on Thursday.“My mission is to set an environment for elections with a large participation,” he said, adding that he hoped the vote would help to break Haiti’s chronic political instability. “If we can have one, two democratic transfers of power, Haiti will be fine.”But, raising a note of uncertainty, the caretaker prime minister said Haiti’s security and political challenges made the expected election date, Sept. 26, unlikely. He declined to provide a new time frame.His ambivalence on keeping the election date has been criticized by some Haitian politicians, who say the country needs a road map to a new government to avoid mass unrest in the aftermath of Mr. Moïse’s murder.“If they don’t hold the elections before 2022, this country will explode,” said Mathias Pierre, Mr. Moïse’s minister of elections, who had organized this year’s vote until the president’s death. “It’s a volcano burning inside.”Richard Miguel contributed reporting. More
Washington dismissed warnings that democracy was unraveling under President Jovenel Moïse, leaving a gaping leadership void after his assassination.As protesters hurled rocks outside Haiti’s national palace and set fires on the streets to demand President Jovenel Moïse’s resignation, President Trump invited him to Mar-a-Lago in 2019, posing cheerfully with him in one of the club’s ornate entryways.After members of Congress warned that Mr. Moïse’s “anti-democratic abuses” reminded them of the run-up to the dictatorship that terrorized Haiti in decades past, the Biden administration publicly threw its weight behind Mr. Moïse’s claim on power.And when American officials urged the Biden administration to change course, alarmed that Haiti’s democratic institutions were being stripped away, they say their pleas went unheeded — and sometimes never earned a response at all.Through Mr. Moïse’s time in office, the United States backed his increasingly autocratic rule, viewing it as the easiest way of maintaining stability in a troubled country that barely figured into the priorities of successive administrations in Washington, current and former officials say.Even as Haiti spiraled into violence and political upheaval, they say, few in the Trump administration took seriously Mr. Moïse’s repeated warnings that he faced plots against his life. And as warnings of his authoritarianism intensified, the Biden administration kept up its public support for Mr. Moïse’s claim to power, even after Haiti’s Parliament emptied out in the absence of elections and Mr. Moïse ruled by decree.President Donald Trump welcomed Mr. Moïse and other Caribbean leaders to his Mar-a-Lago resort in March 2019.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesWhen Mr. Moïse was assassinated this month, it left a gaping leadership void that set off a scramble for power with the few elected officials remaining. The United States, which has held enormous sway in Haiti since invading the country more than 100 years ago, was suddenly urged to send in troops and help fix the mess.But in interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials, a common refrain emerged: Washington bore part of the blame, after brushing off or paying little attention to clear warnings that Haiti was lurching toward mayhem, and possibly making things worse by publicly supporting Mr. Moïse.“It was predictable that something would happen,” said Senator Patrick Leahy, of Vermont. “The message that we send by standing alongside these people is that we think they are legitimate representatives of the Haitian people. They’re not.”Critics say the American approach to Mr. Moïse followed a playbook the United States has used around the world for decades, often with major consequences for democracy and human rights: reflexively siding with or tolerating leaders accused of authoritarian rule because they advance American interests, or because officials fear instability in their absence.Mr. Moïse’s grip on power tightened notably under Mr. Trump, who spoke admiringly of a range of foreign autocrats. Mr. Trump was also bent on keeping Haitian migrants out of the United States (they “all have AIDS,” American officials recounted him saying). To the extent that Trump officials focused on Haitian politics at all, officials say, it was mainly to enlist the country in Mr. Trump’s campaign to oust his nemesis in the region: Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro.President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela in Caracas in 2018.Miraflores Palace, via ReutersThe Biden administration arrived in January consumed by the pandemic and a surge of migrants at the border with Mexico, leaving little bandwidth for the tumult convulsing Haiti, officials say. It publicly continued the Trump administration policy that Mr. Moïse was the legitimate leader, infuriating some members of Congress with a stance that one senior Biden official now calls a mistake.“Moïse is pursuing an increasingly authoritarian course of action,” Rep. Gregory Meeks, now the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a joint statement with two other Democrats in late December, warning of a repeat of the “anti-democratic abuses the Haitian people have endured” in the past.“We will not stand idly by while Haiti devolves into chaos,” they said.In a February letter to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, they and other lawmakers called on the United States to “unambiguously reject” the push by Mr. Moïse, who had already ruled by decree for a year, to stay in power. They urged the Biden administration to push for “a legitimate transitional government” to help Haitians determine their own future and emerge from “a cascade of economic, public health, and political crises.”But Mr. Biden’s top adviser on Latin America, Juan Gonzalez, said that at the time, the administration did not want to appear to be dictating how the turmoil should be resolved.Rep. Gregory Meeks during a hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs after testimony from Secretary of State Antony Blinken in March.Pool photo by Ken Cedeno“Tipping our finger on the scale in that way could send a country that was already in a very unstable situation into crisis,” Mr. Gonzalez said.Past American political and military interventions into Haiti have done little to solve the country’s problems, and have sometimes created or aggravated them. “The solution to Haiti’s problems are not in Washington; they are in Port-au-Prince,” Haiti’s capital, Mr. Gonzalez said, so the Biden administration called for elections to take place before Mr. Moïse left office.“The calculus we made was the best decision was to focus on elections to try to use that as a way to push for greater freedom,” he added.In reality, critics say, the Biden administration was already tipping the scales by publicly supporting Mr. Moïse’s contention that he had another year in office, enabling him to preside over the drafting of a new Constitution that could significantly enhance the president’s powers.Mr. Moïse was certainly not the first leader accused of autocracy to enjoy Washington’s backing; he was not even the first in Haiti. Two generations of brutal Haitian dictators from the Duvalier family were among a long list of strongmen around the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere who received resolute American support, particularly as allies against Communism.“He may be a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch,” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt supposedly said of one of them (though accounts vary about whether the president was referring to American-backed dictators in Nicaragua or in the Dominican Republic).Supporters of the former dictators held photos of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier during a court hearing in Port-au-Prince in 2013.Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated PressThe debate has continued in both Democratic and Republican administrations about how hard to push authoritarian allies for democratic reforms. Once the threat of Communist expansionism faded, American administrations worried more about instability creating crises for the United States, like a surge of migrants streaming toward its shores or the rise of violent extremism.Elliott Abrams, a foreign policy official in multiple Republican administrations and a special representative on Venezuela in the Trump administration, argued that Washington should support democracy when possible but sometimes has few alternatives to working with strongmen.“In Haiti, no one has developed a good formula for building a stable democracy, and the U.S. has been trying since the Marines landed there a hundred years ago,” he said.Early on in the Trump administration, Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former co-star on “The Apprentice” and new adviser to the president, began pressing Mr. Trump and his aides to engage with Haiti and support Mr. Moïse.Officials were wary. Haiti supported Venezuela at two meetings of the Organization of American States in 2017, turning Mr. Moïse into what one official called an enemy of the United States and scuttling her efforts to arrange a state visit by him..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“I believed that a state visit between Mr. Trump and Mr. Moïse would have been a strong show of support for Haiti from the U.S. during a time of civil unrest,” Ms. Newman said, adding in a separate statement: “Jovenel was a dear friend and he was committed to being a change agent for his beloved Haiti.”Mr. Moïse just after being sworn in as president of Haiti in February 2017.Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated PressThe episode underscored the degree to which some top Trump officials viewed Haiti as just a piece of its strategy toward Venezuela. And in the eyes of some lawmakers, Mr. Trump was not going to feel empathy for Haiti’s problems.“We are all aware of his perception of the nation — in that he spoke about ‘s-hole’ countries,” said Rep. Yvette Clarke of New York, a co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus.By 2019, nationwide protests grew violent in Haiti as demonstrators demanding Mr. Moïse’s ouster clashed with the police, burned cars and marched on the national palace. Gang activity became increasingly brazen, and kidnappings spiked to an average of four a week.Mr. Trump and his aides showed few public signs of concern. In early 2019, Mr. Trump hosted Mr. Moïse at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of a meeting with Caribbean leaders who had lined up against Mr. Maduro of Venezuela.By the next year, Mr. Moïse’s anti-democratic practices grew serious enough to command the attention of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who publicly warned Mr. Moïse against delaying parliamentary elections.A Haitian police officer aimed his weapon at protesters who were calling for the resignation of President Moïse in Port-au-Prince in 2019.Rebecca Blackwell/Associated PressBut beyond a few statements, the Trump administration did little to force the issue, officials said.“No one did anything to address the underlying weaknesses, institutionally and democratically,” over the past several years, said Peter Mulrean, who served as the American ambassador to Haiti from 2015 to 2017. “And so we shouldn’t really be surprised that the lid blew off again.”After Mr. Biden’s election, lawmakers and officials in Washington took up the issue with new urgency. Mr. Moïse, who came to office after a vote marred by low turnout and allegations of fraud, had been ruling by decree for a year because the terms of nearly all members of Parliament had expired and elections to replace them were never held.Mr. Moïse won a five-year term in 2016, but did not take office until 2017 amid the allegations of fraud, so he argued that he should stay until 2022. Democracy advocates in Haiti and abroad cried foul, but on Feb. 5, the Biden administration weighed in, supporting Mr. Moïses’s claim to power for another year. And it was not alone: International bodies like the Organization of American States took the same position.Port-au-Prince at dusk last week.Federico Rios for The New York TimesMr. Blinken later criticized Mr. Moïse’s rule by decree and called for “genuinely free and fair elections this year.” But the Biden administration never withdrew its public position upholding Mr. Moïse’s claim to remain in office, a decision that Rep. Andy Levin, a co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus, blamed for helping him retain his grip on the country and continue its anti-democratic slide.“It’s a tragedy that he was able to stay there,” Mr. Levin said.The Biden administration has rebuffed calls by Haitian officials to send troops to help stabilize the country and prevent even more upheaval. A group of American officials recently visited to meet with various factions now vying for power and urge them “to come together, in a broad political dialogue,” Mr. Gonzalez said.The Americans had planned to visit the port to assess its security needs, but decided against it after learning that gangs were occupying the area, blocking the delivery of fuel.“How can we have elections in Haiti when gang members control 60 percent of the territory?” said Pierre Esperance, executive director of the Haitian National Human Rights Defense Network. “It will be gangs that organize the elections.”David Kirkpatrick contributed reporting. More
Washington desestimó las advertencias de que la democracia se desmoronaba durante el mandato de Jovenel Moïse, lo que ha dejado un vacío de liderazgo después de su asesinato.Mientras los manifestantes lanzaban piedras afuera del palacio nacional de Haití y encendían hogueras en las calles para exigir la renuncia del presidente Jovenel Moïse, el presidente de Estados Unidos Donald Trump lo invitó a Mar-a-Lago en 2019, para luego posar sonriente junto a él en una de las entradas decoradas del club.Después de que miembros del Congreso advirtieron que los “abusos contrarios a la democracia” de Moïse les recordaban el periodo previo a la dictadura que aterrorizó a Haití en décadas pasadas, el gobierno de Biden respaldó en público el reclamo del poder de Moïse.Y, cuando los funcionarios estadounidenses instaron al gobierno de Biden a cambiar de rumbo, alarmados por el hecho de que las instituciones democráticas de Haití estaban desapareciendo, según dicen, sus súplicas no fueron escuchadas y en ocasiones no obtuvieron respuesta alguna.Durante el mandato de Moïse, Estados Unidos apoyó su gobierno, cada vez más autócrata, por considerarlo la manera más sencilla de mantener la estabilidad en un país con problemas que apenas figuraba en las prioridades de los sucesivos gobiernos de Washington, según funcionarios actuales y de gobiernos anteriores.Incluso cuando Haití entró en una espiral de violencia y agitación política, dicen, pocos en el gobierno de Trump tomaron en serio las repetidas advertencias de Moïse de que había complots para acabar con su vida. Y mientras se intensificaban las advertencias sobre su autoritarismo, el gobierno de Biden mantuvo su apoyo público al reclamo de poder de Moïse, incluso después de que el Parlamento de Haití quedó vacío por falta de elecciones y Moïse gobernó por decreto.El presidente Donald Trump recibió a Moïse y otros líderes caribeños en Mar-a-Lago en marzo de 2019.Tom Brenner para The New York TimesEl asesinato de Moïse este mes dejó un enorme vacío de liderazgo que desencadenó una lucha por el poder entre los pocos funcionarios electos que quedaban. Estados Unidos, que ha tenido una enorme influencia en Haití desde que invadió el país hace más de cien años, de repente, se vio instado a enviar a su ejército y a ayudar a arreglar el desorden.Sin embargo, en entrevistas con más de una decena de funcionarios actuales y anteriores un comentario se repitió con frecuencia: Washington tiene parte de la culpa, después de haber ignorado o prestado poca atención a las claras advertencias de que Haití se tambaleaba hacia el caos y de que tal vez haya empeorado las cosas al apoyar de manera abierta a Moïse.“Era predecible que ocurriera algo”, aseveró el senador de Vermont Patrick Leahy. “El mensaje que enviamos al apoyar a estas personas es que creemos que son representantes legítimos del pueblo haitiano. No lo son”.Los críticos afirman que la estrategia que Estados Unidos aplicó con Moïse se basó en un manual que este país ha usado en todo el mundo desde hace décadas, a menudo con serias consecuencias para la democracia y los derechos humanos: aliarse o tolerar por reflejo a líderes acusados de gobernar de manera dictatorial porque promueven los intereses estadounidenses o porque los funcionarios temen la inestabilidad en su ausencia.El control de Moïse sobre el poder se fortaleció de manera importante durante el mandato de Trump, quien profesó su admiración por varios autócratas extranjeros. Trump también se empeñó en mantener a los migrantes haitianos fuera de Estados Unidos (funcionarios estadounidenses recordaron haberlo escuchado decir que “todos tienen SIDA”). Según fuentes oficiales, si los funcionarios de Trump se centraron en la política haitiana, fue principalmente para reclutar al país en la campaña de Trump para derrocar a su némesis en la región: el líder de Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.El presidente Nicolás Maduro de Venezuela en Caracas en 2018Palacio de Miraflores, vía ReutersLos funcionarios agregan que el gobierno de Biden llegó a la Casa Blanca en enero consumido por la pandemia y una oleada de migrantes en la frontera con México, lo que dejó poco espacio de maniobra para el tumulto que convulsiona a Haití. El nuevo gobierno dio continuidad a la política del gobierno de Trump, según la cual Moïse era el líder legítimo, postura que enfureció a algunos miembros del Congreso y que un alto funcionario de Biden ahora califica de error.“Moïse está siguiendo un curso de acción cada vez más autoritario”, dijo el representante Gregory Meeks, quien preside la Comisión de Asuntos Exteriores de la Cámara de Representantes, en una declaración conjunta con otros dos demócratas a finales de diciembre en la que advirtió de una repetición de los “abusos antidemocráticos que el pueblo haitiano ha soportado” en el pasado.“No vamos a quedarnos de brazos cruzados mientras Haití se sumerge en el caos”, dijeron.En una carta enviada en febrero al Secretario de Estado Antony J. Blinken, ellos y otros legisladores pidieron a Estados Unidos que “rechazara sin ambigüedades” el intento de Moïse, que ya había gobernado por decreto durante un año, de mantenerse en el poder. Instaron al gobierno de Biden a impulsar “un gobierno de transición legítimo” para ayudar a los haitianos a determinar su propio futuro y salir de “un torrente de crisis económica, de salud pública y política”.No obstante, el principal asesor de Biden para América Latina, Juan González, declaró que en ese momento el gobierno no quería dar la impresión de que quería imponer cómo debía resolverse la crisis.El congresista Gregory Meeks durante una audiencia del Comité de Asuntos Exteriores de la Cámara de Representantes después de la comparecencia del secretario de Estado Antony Blinken en marzo.Foto de consorcio por Ken Cedeno“Hacer que la balanza se inclinara de esa manera podría llevar a un país que ya estaba en una situación muy inestable a la crisis”, afirmó González.Las anteriores intervenciones políticas y militares de Estados Unidos en Haití hicieron poco por resolver los problemas del país y en ocasiones los generaron o agravaron. “La solución a los problemas de Haití no está en Washington, sino en Puerto Príncipe”, la capital de Haití, dijo González, por lo que el gobierno de Biden pidió que se celebraran elecciones antes de que Moïse dejara el cargo.“El cálculo que hicimos fue que la mejor decisión era centrarse en las elecciones para tratar de utilizarlas como una forma de impulsar una mayor libertad”, añadió.A decir de los críticos, la realidad es que el gobierno de Biden ya había inclinado la balanza al apoyar de manera pública el argumento de Moïse de que le quedaba un año más en el cargo, lo que le permitiría presidir la redacción de una nueva Constitución que podría aumentar de manera significativa las facultades del presidente.Moïse no es el primer gobernante acusado de ser un autócrata que cuenta con el apoyo de Washington; ni siquiera es el primero en Haití. Dos generaciones de brutales dictadores haitianos de la familia Duvalier forman parte de una larga lista de autócratas de todo el Caribe, América Latina, el Medio Oriente y otros lugares que recibieron el apoyo decidido de Estados Unidos, en particular como aliados contra el comunismo.“Puede que sea un desgraciado, pero ese desgraciado está con nosotros”, se dice que declaró el presidente Franklin Delano Roosevelt sobre uno de ellos (aunque las versiones varían sobre si el presidente se refería a los dictadores apoyados por Estados Unidos en Nicaragua o en la República Dominicana).Los partidarios de los exdictadores sostienen fotos de Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier y Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier durante una audiencia judicial en Puerto Príncipe en 2013.Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated PressEl debate sobre cómo presionar a los aliados autócratas para que realicen reformas democráticas ha continuado durante gobiernos demócratas y republicanos. Después de que la amenaza del expansionismo comunista se desvaneció, los gobiernos estadounidenses se preocuparon más por la inestabilidad que creaba crisis para Estados Unidos, como la oleada de migrantes que llegaban a sus costas o el aumento del extremismo violento.Elliott Abrams, funcionario de relaciones exteriores en varios gobiernos republicanos y representante especial en Venezuela durante el gobierno de Trump, argumentó que Washington debe apoyar la democracia cuando sea posible, pero a veces tiene pocas alternativas cuando se trata de autócratas.“En Haití, nadie ha desarrollado una buena fórmula para construir una democracia estable y Estados Unidos lo ha intentado desde que los marines desembarcaron allí hace cien años”, aseveró.Al principio del mandato de Trump, Omarosa Manigault Newman, ex coprotagonista de “El Aprendiz” y luego asesora del presidente, comenzó a presionar a Trump y a sus asesores para que se comprometieran con Haití y apoyaran a Moïse.Funcionarios del gobierno se mostraron cautelosos. Haití apoyó a Venezuela en dos reuniones de la Organización de Estados Americanos en 2017, lo cual convirtió a Moïse en lo que un funcionario calificó de enemigo de Estados Unidos y echó por tierra sus esfuerzos para organizar una visita de Estado a Estados Unidos.“Creía que una visita de Estado entre Trump y Moïse habría sido una muestra contundente del apoyo de Estados Unidos a Haití en un momento de agitación civil”, dijo Newman, quien agregó en otra declaración: “Jovenel era un buen amigo y estaba comprometido a ser un agente del cambio para su amado Haití”.Moïse poco después de tomar posesión como presidente en febrero de 2017.Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated PressEl episodio subrayó hasta qué punto algunos altos funcionarios de Trump consideraban a Haití como una pieza más de su estrategia hacia Venezuela. Y a los ojos de algunos legisladores, Trump no iba a sentir empatía por los problemas de Haití.“Todos somos conscientes de su percepción de la nación, cuando hizo referencia a los países de mierda”, comentó la representante republicana de Nueva York Yvette Clarke, quien copreside el caucus de Haití de la Cámara de Representantes.Para 2019, las protestas en todo Haití se volvieron violentas cuando los manifestantes que exigían la destitución de Moïse se enfrentaron a la policía, quemaron automóviles y marcharon hacia el palacio nacional. La actividad de las pandillas se volvió cada vez más descarada y los secuestros se dispararon a un promedio de cuatro a la semana.Trump y sus asesores mostraron escasos signos públicos de preocupación. A principios de 2019, Trump recibió a Moïse en su club Mar-a-Lago en Palm Beach, Florida, como parte de una reunión con los líderes del Caribe que se habían alineado contra el presidente de Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.Al año siguiente, las prácticas antidemocráticas de Moïse se agravaron lo suficiente como para llamar la atención del Secretario de Estado Mike Pompeo, quien advirtió en una declaración que Moïse no debía retrasar las elecciones parlamentarias.Un oficial de policía haitiano dirige su arma hacia los manifestantes que pedían la renuncia del presidente Moïse en Puerto Príncipe en 2019.Rebecca Blackwell/Associated PressSin embargo, salvo algunas declaraciones, el gobierno de Trump hizo poco para impulsar la cuestión, dijeron los funcionarios.“Nadie hizo nada para abordar las debilidades subyacentes, institucionales y democráticas” en los últimos años, afirmó Peter Mulrean, quien se desempeñó como embajador estadounidense en Haití entre 2015 y 2017. “Y, por lo tanto, no deberíamos sorprendernos realmente de que la situación se haya desbordado de nuevo”.Después de que Biden resultó electo, los legisladores y funcionarios en Washington retomaron el tema con nueva urgencia. Moïse, quien llegó al cargo tras una votación empañada por la escasa participación y las acusaciones de fraude, llevaba un año gobernando por decreto debido a que el mandato de casi todos los miembros del Parlamento había expirado y nunca se celebraron elecciones para sustituirlos.Moïse ganó un mandato de cinco años en 2016, pero no tomó posesión sino hasta 2017 en medio de acusaciones de fraude, por lo que argumentó que debía permanecer en el cargo hasta 2022. Los defensores de la democracia en Haití y en el extranjero manifestaron su descontento, pero el 5 de febrero, el gobierno de Biden se pronunció y apoyó el reclamo de Moïse de permanecer un año más en el poder. Y no fue el único: organismos internacionales como la Organización de Estados Americanos adoptaron la misma postura.Puerto Príncipe al atardecer esta semanaFederico Rios para The New York TimesPosteriormente, Blinken criticó que Moïse gobernara por decreto y convocó a que hubiera “elecciones de verdad libres y justas este año”. No obstante, el gobierno de Biden nunca se retractó de su postura pública de apoyar el reclamo de Moïse de permanecer en el cargo, una decisión que según el representante Andy Levin, quien copreside el Caucus de Haití de la Cámara de Representantes, ayudó a que el presidente haitiano mantuviera su control sobre el país y a que continuara su declive antidemocrático.“Es una tragedia que haya podido permanecer allí”, dijo Levin.El gobierno de Biden ha rechazado los llamados de las autoridades haitianas para que envíe al ejército a ayudar a estabilizar el país y así evitar más disturbios. Hace poco, un grupo de funcionarios estadounidenses visitó el país para reunirse con las distintas facciones que se disputan el poder e instarlas a “unirse en un amplio diálogo político”, comentó González.Los estadounidenses habían planeado visitar el puerto para evaluar sus necesidades de seguridad, pero decidieron no hacerlo tras enterarse de que las pandillas se habían apoderado de la zona y bloqueaban la entrega de combustible.“¿Cómo podemos celebrar elecciones en Haití cuando los miembros de las pandillas controlan el 60 por ciento del territorio?”, preguntó Pierre Esperance, director ejecutivo de la Red Nacional de Defensa de los Derechos Humanos de Haití. “Serán las pandillas las que organicen las elecciones”.David Kirkpatrick colaboró con este reportaje. More
Not since the former slave Toussaint L’Ouverture successfully revolted against the island’s colonial masters has Haiti’s politics inspired anyone’s admiration. Toussaint’s quixotic adventure predictably ended badly for himself and perhaps even worse for his nation, whose political independence he single-handedly crafted. The French duly liberated the slaves several decades after Toussaint’s revolution but replaced the chattel slavery with economic slavery that would last for nearly two centuries and has left indelible traces today.
Last week, chaos returned in the most absolute form to a nation in a perpetual state of chaos. A hit squad assassinated President Jovenel Moise in the middle of the night. Days later, the media are left wondering about the “continuing mystery over who was behind the attack on Mr. Moïse’s residence.”
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In the immediate aftermath, Al Jazeera reported the “shock and revulsion to the assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moise” by world leaders. Colombia’s notably urged “the Organization of American States [OAS] to send an urgent mission to Haiti to ‘protect the democratic order.’”
Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:
Democratic order:
Arbitrarily imposed military and economic control by any powerful nation or group of nations that claims to believe in the principles of democracy without the inconvenience of having to practice them
Contextual Note
The author of the message urging the OAS intervention was none other than Colombian President Ivan Duque Marquez, who deplored “a cowardly and barbaric act against the entire Haitian people” and expressed his “solidarity with the sister nation and the family of a great friend of Colombia.”
Almost simultaneously with Duque’s impassioned call for democratic order in Haiti, the BBC reported on condemnation of Colombia by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for “‘excessive and disproportionate’ use of force in response to this year’s anti-government protests, in which dozens died.” Since April, Colombia has been riddled by daily protests calling for Duque’s impeachment. The New York Times explained: “The fuse for the protests was a tax overhaul proposed in late April by Mr. Duque, a conservative, which many Colombians felt would have made it even harder to get by in an economy squeezed by the pandemic.” Duque has been consistently supported by the US, which sees him as the key to undermining the current government of Venezuela.
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Covering the events in Haiti, CNN reporter John Berman asked the White House spokesperson, Jen Psaki, an extraordinary question that clearly reveals how both the political class and the media see everything that lies beyond the borders of the US. “What is the United States willing to do,” he asked, “to keep that island stable?”
The first thing a quibbler might notice is that Haiti is not an island. Instead, it occupies just over one-third of the surface of the island of Hispaniola. The Dominican Republic occupies the other two-thirds. A more obvious problem lies in Berman’s uncritical supposition that the US has the capacity to guarantee another nation’s stability. Worse, Berman’s suggestion that it is a question of keeping the nation “stable” reveals his ignorance of the growing instability that surrounded the personality of Moise and his style of governance.
Moise’s combination of action (consolidating his personal power, removing judges from the supreme) and inaction (allowing parliamentary rule to expire while insisting on his right to remain in office for another year) produced conditions that led to severe unrest. In such circumstances of grave democratic disorder, no one should be surprised that the assassination of a contested leader might take place.
Psaki, apparently at a loss for words, called it a “tragic tragedy.” Her pleonastic epithet is revealing. In the language of Washington, DC, the death of any politician who is not an enemy of the US is by definition a tragedy. But the death of one who had been cooperating with the US and depends on its aid — however corrupt and unpopular that leader may be among the people — merits the dual qualification of “tragic tragedy.”
Colombia’s Duque, the White House, the OAS and American media appear to agree that any government supported by the US — no matter how fundamentally chaotic or despotic its mode of governance — can be thought of as an example of “democratic order.” The US supported Moise’s controversial election back in 2016, an election in which only 18% of the electorate voted.
The United States also supports Duque’s contested leadership in Colombia and Jair Bolsonaro’s in Brazil, where today a clear majority wants to see him impeached. At the time of the 2018 presidential election, the US knew that Bolsonaro’s chances of victory depended on a fabricated accusation of corruption (since annulled by the courts) against former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva by a group of politicians who were truly and visibly corrupt. US support of assaults on popular democracy in Bolivia and Ecuador reflects the same trend.
Most Haitians understood that, according to the terms of the constitution, Moise’s term expired at the beginning of 2021. Tamanisha John, writing for The Conversation, explains that in March, “the U.S. State Department announced that it supported Moïse’s decision to remain in office until 2022, to give the crisis-stricken country time to ‘elect their leaders and restore Haiti’s democratic institutions.’”
In all fairness, given Haiti’s permanently dysfunctional history, the case could be made that Moise was doing his damnedest to reform a dysfunctional system and pushing for a long-term solution. That was the official view Haiti’s ambassador in Washington formulated in February. But the reality of the situation in Haiti has long been evident. As Maria Abi-Habib points out in The New York Times, “Haiti is less a failed state than what an analyst called an ‘aid state’ — eking out an existence by relying on billions of dollars from the international community. Foreign governments have been unwilling to turn off the spigots, afraid to let Haiti fail.”
The US, of course, has been foremost among them. But besides providing aid that goes into the pockets of politicians, it notoriously used its brutal, if not sadistic, sanctions against Venezuela to deprive Haiti of that nation’s generous offer to provide oil on favorable conditions. The US sanctions policy magnified the crisis not just in Venezuela, but also in Haiti and elsewhere in the Caribbean.
Historical Note
CNN’s John Berman clearly has a weak understanding of Haiti’s geography. But when he assumes the US can simply step in to restore stability, there is a precedent in this sometimes forgotten historical fact: “Following the assassination of the Haitian President in July of 1915, President Woodrow Wilson sent the United States Marines into Haiti to restore order and maintain political and economic stability in the Caribbean.”
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For its readers, The New York Times sums up Haiti’s history in three chapters: “Haiti’s troubled history goes deep, lying in its roots as a former slave colony of France that gained its independence in 1804 after defeating Napoleon’s forces, and later suffered more than two decades of a brutal dictatorship, which ended in 1986.” Then it mentions the 2010 earthquake, an occasion for a display of charity by the Clinton Foundation.
For The Times, Haiti disappeared from history between the 1820s and “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s reign of terror, largely supported by the US, that began in 1957. What events has The Times forgotten between 1804 and 1986? France’s second abolition of slavery followed Napoleon’s restoration of the institution first abolished by the French Revolution in 1794. But France’s definitive abolition in 1838 saddled the nation with a monumental debt in the guise of reimbursing slaveowners. The repayment of that debt, finally acquitted in 1947, crippled Haiti’s economic development. The Times also forgets another significant event: the US occupation of Haiti that resulted in decades of forced labor, an effective modern version of slavery.
Ever the optimist, Toussaint L’Ouverture famously proclaimed: “In overthrowing me you have cut down in Saint Domingue only the trunk of the tree of liberty; it will spring up again from the roots, for they are numerous and they are deep.” Were he in a position to look back from today’s vantage point, he would probably end up agreeing with Mexico’s 19th-century dictator, Porfirio Diaz: “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.”
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
Other countries have faced similar challenges, often with poor results, from protracted limbo to, in the worst cases, civil war.PARIS — Battered by gang violence and corruption, its Parliament near vacant, its judiciary in tatters, its Constitution subject to dispute, its poverty crushing and its history a chronicle of unrest, Haiti was in bad shape even before its president was assassinated and rival factions laid claim to power.Now, it’s in meltdown.“Haitian democracy has been slipping away for a long time and with each round it’s been getting worse,” said Peter Mulrean, a former United States ambassador to Haiti. “There is not much left to save.”Claude Joseph, the interim prime minister, and eight of the 10 remaining members of Parliament in the entire country of 11 million people have both said they have a legitimate right to assume power and fill Haiti’s vacuum of authority.Mr. Joseph, as the incumbent, has tepid backing from a Biden administration desperate not to be sucked into a quagmire. The vestigial Senate, having been elected, has some legal imprimatur, but is dogged by accusations of corruption and self-dealing.When power is disputed, institutional strength and the rule of law become paramount. Haiti has little or none. It finds itself in a desperate void. As the battle for power escalates, there is scarcely a Haitian democratic institution standing that can adjudicate the dispute stemming from the assassination of the president, Jovenel Moïse, in his home on Wednesday.After the last United States election result was contested, a mob incited by former President Trump stormed the capitol on Jan. 6, but American legal checks and balances held in the end. Further violence was averted, but only just.Haiti’s interim prime minister, Claude Joseph, claims to be in charge of the country. Haiti’s senate says he is not.Joseph Odelyn/Associated PressAbsent strong institutions, some powerful international investment in stability is critical. Afghanistan is scarcely more stable than Haiti. Neither state can make a claim to have a monopoly on the use of organized violence within its own borders, a classic definition of a government’s authority.Yet Afghanistan overcame a similar crisis last year. After the 2020 election, both the incumbent, Ashraf Ghani, and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, claimed victory. Mr. Abdullah initially denounced the election result as a “coup.” A violent clash seemed possible. But the United States, through intense diplomacy, was able to mediate a compromise.“The United States had troops in the country,” said Barnett Rubin, a former State Department official with deep knowledge of Afghanistan. “It had advisers. It was invested. It was tacitly on Mr. Ghani’s side.”The United States had an overriding national interest in resolving the conflict and opening the way for peace talks with the Taliban — even if those efforts seem fleeting now that the United States is withdrawing its troops and the Taliban advances across the country.In Haiti, there is no clear rule of law nor any indication that the United States is eager to intervene militarily and force a resolution. If it has any national interest, it lies in preventing upheaval so close to its shores and avoiding another mass Haitian migrant exodus like the one that followed the 1991 coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.The potential for the crisis in Haiti to worsen is evident. Mr. Joseph immediately declared “a state of siege,” a form of martial law, but his right to do so was unclear. In many ways rampant gang violence had already reduced Haiti to a condition resembling a country under siege.The Senate, or what’s left of it, wants Joseph Lambert, its president, to become provisional president and Mr. Joseph replaced as provisional prime minister by Ariel Henry. Before his death, Mr. Moïse had named Mr. Henry, a neurosurgeon, to the prime minister’s position, but he had not yet been sworn in.The Haitian senate has said that the senate president, Joseph Lambert, center, should be Haiti’s president.Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe path to breaking a standoff is murky. Under Mr. Moïse, Parliament was eviscerated. The terms of two thirds of the nation’s senators had expired, as did those of every member of the lower house, with no elections to replace them.Critics accused Mr. Moïse of presiding over the collapse deliberately, to further consolidate power. When he was assassinated, the nation was suddenly rudderless.Countries can function, to varying degrees, with nobody in power, or power disputed. In the postwar years, Italy and Belgium have managed with no government for long periods, but they had solid democratic institutions.Lebanon, in dire financial straits, has limped along for many years with two military forces — the national army and the Hezbollah militia — and a sectarian power-sharing system that looks to a millennial generation like a license for the political elite to loot with impunity while the country suffers. Still, it has avoided spiraling back into civil war.In the Ivory Coast, though, violence ultimately settled dueling claims to power after two people declared victory in the 2010 presidential election. The incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo, refused to step down despite the fact that international electoral observers had recognized his rival, Alassane Ouattara, as the winner. Several thousand people were killed in a brief civil war before the French army helped pro-Ouattara forces oust Mr. Gbagbo.In Venezuela, also deep in economic misery, Nicolás Maduro, the nation’s authoritarian leader, has clung to power through more than two years of turmoil despite the rival claims of Juan Guaidó, an opposition leader who has been backed by dozens of foreign governments, including the United States, as the rightful president.President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela has clung to power despite the rival claims of Juan Guaidó, who was backed by the United States. Miraflores Palace, via ReutersAmerican sanctions have cut off much of the Maduro government’s revenue. The result has been mass migration of precisely the kind the Biden administration wants to avoid in the case of Haiti.Democracies take root slowly and painfully, and Haiti, since becoming the first independent state of Latin American and the Caribbean in 1804, has suffered turmoil almost without respite. Crippled by debt imposed by France, occupied by the United States for almost two decades in the early 20th century, undermined by corruption and coups, hit in 2010 by an earthquake and over the past year by the coronavirus pandemic, the country is at its most vulnerable and combustible.But the Biden administration, at the very moment when the president has been pulling the country back from its forever wars, is wary of any deep Haitian involvement, especially of a request from Haitian officials to deploy American troops. Haitian leaders tend to look to Washington for backing and approval to reinforce their political credentials.For the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, the path of least resistance may well be to seek to resolve the power conflict by urging Haiti to move forward with elections planned for September. The Biden administration has already done just that, as if voting was some panacea.But in an article in Just Society, Mr. Mulrean, who was the American ambassador to Haiti between 2015 and 2017, wrote that holding the elections would be “a mistake.”“It is tempting to think that new elections will clarify the situation and restore stability, but experience teaches us the opposite,” he wrote. “What Haiti needs is to take stock of what is broken and fix it.”A broad coalition of opposition parties and civil society is calling for just that. Voting, they note, solves nothing if the institutions that secure democracy have ceased to function. More
For years, the United States has adopted a wary tolerance of Haiti, batting aside the horror of kidnappings, murders and gang warfare. The more convenient strategy generally seemed to be backing whichever government was in power and supplying endless amounts of foreign aid.Donald Trump supported President Jovenel Moïse mainly because Mr. Moïse supported a campaign to oust President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. And in February, the Biden administration accepted Mr. Moïse’s tenuous argument that he still had another year to serve despite opposition calls for his departure and large street protests. Mr. Moïse, though initially elected to a five-year term due to end in 2021, did not take office until 2017, thus his claim to an extra year as president.There had appeared to be a tacit understanding during Mr. Moïse’s rule: Haiti is turbulent and difficult, a bomb waiting to explode in the hands of anyone who attempts to defuse it. After all, why should Mr. Biden take on the unrewarding task of “fixing” Haiti when there was already an elected president in office who could bear the brunt of criticism about the deteriorating political situation there?But the assassination of Mr. Moïse on Wednesday will now force a reluctant administration to focus more carefully on the next steps it wants to take concerning Haiti. There are no simple options.The killing has destroyed the Biden administration’s hopes (however far-fetched) for a peaceful transfer of power with elections presided over by Mr. Moïse. But that’s not to say that Haiti’s future is entirely up to the United States nor should it be. When the United States has stepped in, Haitians have ended up worse off. When President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was killed by an angry crowd in 1915, U.S. Navy ships lay on the Haitian coast waiting to quell unrest to keep Haiti stable for American business interests there. In the wake of the killing, U.S. Marines occupied Haiti and remained there for 19 years.U.S. interventions didn’t stop there. In 1986, the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier (and his father before him) fell to a combination of popular unrest in Haiti and political maneuvering by Washington. The country managed to hold its first free and fair elections in 1990, in which Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former liberation-theology priest, was elected. Three years after Mr. Aristide was removed in a coup, the Clinton administration reinstated him.Haiti was never able to shake off the foreign yoke, except, one might argue, during the darkest days of the Duvalier regime. Over the years it has been at the mercy of the United States, of course, and of the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the Organization of American States and the United Nations, which deployed a peacekeeping force there from 2004 until 2017. Yet Haiti has ended up just as poor and unstable as ever, if not more so. And the country never truly recovered from a devastating earthquake in 2010.Drug cartels and their Haitian connections have also played a damaging role. Observers say that much of the violence in recent years has stemmed from turf wars between street gangs operating in a largely lawless environment.The presidential mandate of Mr. Moïse itself was iffy, to say the least. Only 21 percent of the electorate voted in that election. Nevertheless, it was easier for the United States and other parties to tolerate Mr. Moïse and wait for the next elections, no matter how flawed they were likely to be, than to deal with a void created by his assassination.President Biden has called Mr. Moïse’s killing “very worrisome.” But Haiti was very worrisome even before the killing. Now the United States is confronted by an even murkier situation there: no leader, no legislature, a justice system in disarray, a nonfunctioning and dispirited police and army, and gangs roaming the streets. It’s not clear what will emerge from the vacuum at the top — perhaps a new strongman or, less likely, an interim government.Despite that precariousness, the United States has still called for elections before the end of the year. But it’s hard to imagine how elections can proceed in an atmosphere of security and freedom, leading to a truly democratically elected president and legislature. As it stands, two men are claiming the role of prime minister, accentuating the sense of instability.Haiti’s problems cannot be solved by U.S. intervention. The United States no longer has the standing, the stomach or even the desire to impose its vision on Haiti. The best option right now for the United States is to wait and watch and listen not just to the usual suspects but to a broad new generation of Haitian democrats who can responsibly begin to move toward a more workable Haitian polity.Haiti still needs the cooperation of international friends who pay attention to the character and the goals of those to whom they extend financial and political support, rather than choosing a convenient candidate in a quickie election, with the catastrophic results for the country that we’ve seen in the past.A majority of Haitians want to build back their institutions and return to a normal life: schools, clinics and businesses opening again, a plan to deal with the Covid-19 crisis, produce markets functioning and safe streets free from the threat of armed gangs. This is the best of all possible outcomes for Haiti — but sadly, it’s improbable, at least in the near future.Amy Wilentz (@amywilentz) is the author of “The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier” and “Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti,” among other books. She is a Guggenheim fellow and teaches in the Literary Journalism Program at the University of California, Irvine.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More
