As Haiti sinks into anarchy, how much is U.S.’s fault? Critics point to U.S. policy

When a sitting Haitian president was assassinated in 1915, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sent in the Marines to protect American interests and secure stability. The military occupation, which lasted 19 years, marked the start of more than a century of close and controversial U.S. entanglement in the volatile internal affairs of Haiti.

Though the particulars of the alwaysfraught relationship between Haiti and the United States have since shifted time and again, one thing has not: Very little of real political import happens in Haiti without the involvement of the U.S. government.

U.S. policy in Haiti has been inconsistent at best, observers and insiders say, swinging from maintaining order at gunpoint to decades of propping up repressive, reviled leaders through political pressure and monetary and military aid. In more recent years, U.S. policy has focused on trying, and mostly failing, to secure a measure of democracy, political stability and economic development for the Caribbean country.

When things go wrong, as they often do in a poor nation long prone to political instability and shattered by a series of natural disasters in the past two decades, American administrations have shouldered the blame from Haitians and the outside world, accused at times of doing too much or, at others, not enough.

That persistent dynamic has come into stark relief once more as Haiti stands at a dangerous new boiling point following the 2021 assassination of unpopular, U.S.backed President Jovenel Moïse. The installation by the U.S. and its allies of an