Haiti's state is near-collapse: armed groups have overrun the
country, many government officials have fled after the 2021
assassination of President Moise and not a single elected leader
holds office, refugees desperately set out on boats to reach the US
and Latin America, and the economy reels from the after-effects of
disasters, both man-made and natural, that destroyed much of Haiti's
infrastructure and institutions. How did a nation founded on
liberation--a people that successfully revolted against their
colonizers and enslavers--come to such a precipice?
In Aid State,
Jake Johnston, a researcher and writer at the Center for Economic and
Policy Research in Washington, DC, reveals how long-standing US and
European capitalist goals ensnared and re-enslaved Haiti under the
guise of helping it. To the global West, Haiti has always been a
place where labor is cheap, politicians are compliant, and profits
are to be made. Over the course of nearly 100 years, the US has
sought to control Haiti and its people with occupying police,
military, and euphemistically-called peacekeeping forces, as well as
hand-picked leaders meant to quell uprisings and protect corporate
interests. Earthquakes and hurricanes only further devastated a state
already decimated by the aid industrial complex.
Based on years of
on-the-ground reporting in Haiti and interviews with politicians in
the US and Haiti, independent aid contractors, UN officials, and
Haitians who struggle for their lives, homes, and families, Aid
State is a conscience-searing book of witness.