Haitians in the Boston area are cheering the resignation of Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who was appointed to office by President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021 shortly before Moïse was assassinated. But few Haitians interviewed by GBH News believe Henry's resignation will end the organized violence that has besieged the country.
The U.S. State Department is warning against travel to Haiti as an unprecedented alliance between warring gangs has led to coordinated attacks on police and government institutions. Even here in Massachusetts, more than 1,500 miles away, Haitians fear the gangs and lament the human rights crisis in the country they left behind.
One would be hard pressed to find a person of Haitian descent in the Boston area who does not have family on the island, which partly explains the fear that is ricocheting through local communities. At the popular Highland Creole Cuisine in Somerville, “no comment” were the most common words of the day when people were asked about the spiraling crisis.
“We're out of the country, we know nothing about it,” said one man at the restaurant, who, like many others, declined to give a name.
Another man in his 60s, who volunteered his first name as Charles, said he traveled to Haiti twice a year even in the worst of times, but not anymore. “Because it's not secure,” he said. "I don't even feel safe here," he added.
An estimated 25,000 Haitians live in the Boston area, concentrated mainly in Mattapan, Dorchester, Hyde Park, Somerville, Brockton, Everett, Randolph and Cambridge.
At Wismic’s, a Haitian-run combination barbershop and money transfer store in the Central Square area of Cambridge, Creole-speaking patrons stood in line at lunchtime to send money to relatives on the island. The man who owns of the shop — whose first name is Wismic, but he declined to give his last name for security reasons — said dozens of people have been rushing in trying to wire money to their families desperately in need of food, clothing and medicine, even though, he said, many know that in the unfolding chaos, the cash may never make it to their relatives.
“The thing about Haiti, they have a lot of corruption,” said Wismic. “People complain when they sent money. In Haiti, $100 when they change the money under the Haitian currency, they don’t give them the money the way they’re supposed to give it to them.”
And Wismic said the gangs have made a bad situation worse. Until recently he says he owned and operated a second barbershop in Port-au-Prince but shuttered it five months ago after one of his employees was shot by gang members. He said the constant threat of kidnappings of his employees has also made it impossible to run a business in what he called his “beloved country.”
“And when they kidnap one of them, then they’re going to call me and ask me for money, and I’m not going to pay the money for that,” he said. “So it’s better for me to close.”
A few miles away in East Somerville, over the din of a television and a phone ringing off the hook, Rosedalie Gabriel, the co-owner of Sister's Caribbean Restaurant, says she’s fearful for her relatives back home.
“I just call my family to ask how they are, but nobody's safe. No one,” she said. “Some people they don't have food. We send them money, but nobody can get the money.”
“I'm calling them terrorists,” she said of the organized gangs that are tearing the nation apart. “I never seen that in my life.”
Gabriel and other Haitians are calling on President Joe Biden and the international community to do more to end the anarchy that is consuming Haiti. That urgency was echoed Tuesday by U.S. Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Yvette Clark of New York, and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida, co-chairs of the U.S. House of Representatives' Haiti Caucus.
The lawmakers described Henry’s decision to resign as “a much-needed and long-overdue step toward the just future that the Haitian people deserve” but said the U.S. and the international community must now “move with urgency to save lives, support a Haitian-led democratic transition, and provide the security, humanitarian, and economic assistance that the island needs.”
U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, in a statement from his office, emphasized the urgency of restoring civil society.
“We cannot afford to stand idly by as Haiti teeters on the brink of civil war; our government and international partners must continue to provide the support the people of Haiti need,” the statement read. “Critically, the Biden administration’s response should be informed and driven by the insight of the Haitian people and the Haitian diaspora in the United States.”
The island also risks a health and medical crisis of catastrophic proportions, said Dr. Wilfrid Cadet, chief medical advisor at Health Equity International based in Newton, which runs a major hospital in southern Haiti.
Cadet says the widespread disorder caused by armed gangs has led to a shortage of medical supplies, oxygen, food for the patients and fuel to run the electricity generators at the hospital. Travel over land is limited and suppliers are being robbed on the roads in and out of the capital.
“Our staff is not able to travel,” Cadet told GBH News. “We have a mobile staff. Some of them are from the local community and some of them live in Port-au-Prince. So, sometimes they cannot return to the hospital. And of course the threat is almost everywhere in a sense. So it really impacts not only our operations, but the mental well-being of our staff and patients.”
Many Haitians and international aid groups in Boston say they anticipate that more desperate Haitians will try to make their way to the United States as the gangs’ stranglehold grows tighter.
Dr. Geralde Gabeau, founder and executive director of the Immigrant Families Services Institute, a multi-services center for Haitian immigrants, says the gangs have wrought unprecedented violence on the nation and a mass exodus is possible.
“This is the first time that we have this level of lawlessness in this country,” she said. “So if you go back to history, every single time we have a major event like this, there is always a group, you know, that is taking the lead.”
Gabeau also said that the events in Haiti are unfolding as support for migrants is waning among the American people in general, and as there is no room left at migrant shelters across Massachusetts.
But she says the current problems in Haiti are systemic and historically linked to U.S. foreign policy that has undermined the country’s institutions for decades.
“We need to talk about the U.S. involvement in Haiti,” Gabeau said. “Everyone wants to stay in their own country. But again, so often they are forced to leave.”
Gabeau urged Americans “to learn about the history, to go and check the facts and understand exactly what happened in Haiti and to understand that when people are here, they’re not here because they choose to be here. They are here because they were forced to be here. And that the least we can do is to welcome them with dignity, to welcome them so that they can start a new life here.”
