With Haiti in the grips of gang violence, 'extremely generous' US diaspora lends a hand

Marie-Carmel Cave can still taste the sweet oranges, mangoes and soursop of her beloved Haiti.

The 72-year-old Haitian-American holds fast to memories of fruits picked ripe from the tree, of dancing konpa with boyfriends and going to the movies with her parents. She remembers, she said, because her dreams of returning to the country of her youth – and reclaiming her father’s “big land” – are gone now.

Haiti has suffered more than its share of political turmoil, but the island nation's capital city is spiraling into chaos unlike anything she has seen.

“We had a good life,” she said by phone this week from her home in Miramar, Florida. “My father had big land. Nobody can say they have things in Haiti anymore because the gangs have taken over everything.

"This is the first time in my life I see Haiti declining this way," she said, "going all the way down to the grave.”

Over the weekend, Haiti's Prime Minister Ariel Henry agreed to resign after heavily armed gangs made brazen attacks on police and military installations in the capital city of Port-au-Prince and the U.S. military airlifted non-essential personnel from the American embassy.

To learn more:Haiti spinning out of control on every metric from gangs to kidnappings, migration to murder

Henry's tenure leading the country was only meant to be temporary. He assumed the position with U.S. backing in the wake of the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. But Henry repeatedly postponed elections, saying restoring security to Haiti has been a higher priority.

"For us Haitians, we have seen so many of these forced resignations and turmoil, but this with the gangs having so much power, this is something new," said Michel DeGraff, a Haitian professor of Linguistics at MIT and director of the MIT-Haiti Initiative. "It’s harrowing. At the same time, we also understand the larger context."

To DeGraff, 60, the gang violence didn't erupt out of nowhere. He sees centuries of Haitian struggle for self-determination; puppeteering in the island nation's politics by more powerful countries; and a tidal wave of weapons smuggled there from the U.S. He sees threadbare, desperate men.

"If you look at the photos of the gangs, what do you see? You see gang members wearing flip-flops and shorts, who look skinny," he said. "They are carrying weapons that seem heavier than they are. Where did they get those weapons and ammunition?"

DeGraff traveled to Haiti last year. He wants to return this year, reasoning that the worst of the gang violence is concentrated in capital, not the countryside.

The U.S. State Department has maintained a "level four: do not travel" warning for Haiti saying in an additional alert Sunday that the current situation "is unpredictable and dangerous."

DeGraff, Cave and other Haitians and Haitian-Americans in the diaspora can do little but work to help their families, their friends and their country from afar, and hold fast to memories and hope.

'No peace for any Haitian'

Roughly 1.1 million people in the United States were either born in or trace their ancestry to Haiti, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

Violence, political strife and poverty have driven many more Haitians out in the past year: Some 138,000 Haitians have sought protection in the U.S. in the 12 months through January via the Biden administration's humanitarian parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.

"The Haitian diaspora is really the lifeline of the country right now," said Nicole Phillips, legal director for the Haitian Bridge Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates for Black migrants.

Jean David Julien, a former finance consultant, was among those who qualified for humanitarian parole. The 28-year-old left Haiti in November with plans to pursue a master's degree in New York.

But the upheaval in his home country has complicated his plans even in his adopted one.

He needs a copy of his bachelor’s degree to continue his education, but gangs have overrun his alma mater, the Episcopal University of Haiti, so he can't access his records.

And he worries about his mother, who lives near the Haitian capital. She is afraid to leave her neighborhood, for fear of the gangs that block the roads in and out of her area.

“It’s a jail,” Julien said. “It’s not a life.”

In the meantime, he is trying to help others. Julien volunteers with a nonprofit in New York's Hudson Valley, Konbit Neg Lakay. The name means “Together for a Stronger Community” in Haitian Creole and it's run by his uncle, Renold Julien. The elder Julien expects Haitians living in the U.S. will try to renew their temporary protected status or apply for asylum, and he hopes U.S. officials will weigh the severity of what's happening in Haiti.

“The Haitians coming here are human, too,” said Renold Julien, who still has three brothers in Port-au-Prince. “Just because they are Black and Haitian doesn’t mean the (U.S.) government should close their eyes and pretend they don’t know they are here.”

The Hudson Valley, north of New York City, is home to a large concentration of Haitian immigrants.

Berthilde Dufrene is no stranger to helping her country from afar. She founded the Hudson Valley chapter of the Haitian American Nurses Association after flooding devastated her families’ hometown in Gonaïves, in Haiti’s north, in 2008.

She led a drive to supply rubber boots then and is working to send supplies and medical aid now. But it's been difficult to get supplies into the country in the current crisis, she said.

“There is no peace for any Haitian, whether they are living in Haiti or in the diaspora,” she said.

An 'extremely generous' diaspora lends a hand

For now, Haitians are watching the devastation in their homeland on their screens.

Flights into the capital city were cancelled after gangs attacked Touissant Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince to prevent Henry, the prime minister, from returning. A Monday night mission to rescue 10 trapped Americans relied on a helicopter to ferry them over the border to the Dominican Republic, which shares the Caribbean Island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

Haitians in the United States wire money to their families to keep them economically afloat and try to make plans to help get loved ones off the island.

Remittances to Haiti have ballooned over a decade to $22.4 billion in 2022 from $11.8 billion in 2012, according to the latest World Bank data. Remittances now account for more than a fifth of the country's GDP.

"Remittances are what is saving the country," Phillips said. "The diaspora of the U.S. has been extremely generous for decades."

DeGraff, too, sends money home.

"We all do," he said. "It’s our country. It’s our family, our friends, our colleagues – that is a given."

In South Florida, Cave and her sisters can't stop listening to Haitian radio and watching videos of the unfolding violence, said her son, 45-year-old Jean-Camille Dubuisson II.

Mother and son were on the phone together, sharing memories of summers spent on the island and their worries about the future.

"They’re glued to the radio and YouTube," Dubuisson said. "They are watching everything – all day and all night. And they are sad. They always had thoughts of dying back in their country."

Dubuisson coaches basketball at a South Florida high school and says he is proudly Haitian American. Asked what defines his culture, he answered with one word: "Resilience."

Cave chimed in: "I take the best from Haitian culture. I take the best from American culture. That is what my son always says."

DeGraff wants more for Haiti than the temporary quelling of gang violence.

"What we are struggling for is what we have been struggling for since 1791 and 1804," he said, referring to the revolution and independence of Haiti, the first nation founded by formerly enslaved people.

"To be sovereign," he said. "To resist the white supremacist world order. That is what we have been fighting for all along. What we see in Haiti today is a reflection of that struggle."

Kim Hjelmgaard contributed to this story.