The Caribbean country of Haiti has been thrown into chaos. Political leaders are resigning and crime leaders are killed and burned as gangs rob civilians and governments around the world scramble to regain order. A Saranac Lake couple has provided the Enterprise with a window into what is going on there.

Sue Dyer and her husband Chuck Pagano spend winters in the Dominican Republic town of La Isabela, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Dajabon, the nearest border crossing with Haiti, which it shares the island of Hispaniola with.

Dyer said people have been reaching out to her through her daughter and son-in-law in Saranac Lake, asking about their safety. They’re concerned, she said, but fine. They’re in a “quiet corner” of the Dominican Republic on the Atlantic north coast, where not a lot happens.

She said the violence seems central in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, an eight-and-a-half-hour drive south from where they live.

“We, sort of like most people, put these blinders on, because we live in a nice part of the country of DR,” Dyer said.

But they have Haitian friends and know many Haitian people who work in their town.

Dyer said she is just giving her opinion on what she’s seen and heard in 20 years of living near Haiti part-time.

Thousands of people are fleeing Haiti to the Dominican Republic and the United States; an estimated 1.4 million people are on the verge of famine and 4 million more need food aid. The violence started in late February with Haiti’s powerful gangs calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry by forcing thousands of people from their homes, releasing 4,000 inmates from prisons and shutting down airports.

Dyer said some people call these groups “revolutionaries” and say they are bringing international attention to Haiti’s issues. She said they are violent and brutal.

Henry resigned, but the gangs continued. A Transitional Presidential Council is being formed until the country can hold elections to replace Henry.

Haiti currently has no president and no parliament. Its former president, Jovenel Moise, was assassinated in 2021 and was not replaced. Several Americans have been arrested for participating in or financing the assassination, along with a group of Colombians, but their motives for the assassination have never been determined.

Dyer interviewed three Haitian men in her town for the Enterprise, translating their answers into English. The men she interviewed did not want to be named, for fear of deportation or police retaliation.

One man who goes by the name “Chapo” — the equivalent of “Shorty” — is 39, a house laborer and a “sweet guy” with a wife and three kids in the Dominican. He told Dyer he came because “there wasn’t any government, there wasn’t any president, there wasn’t any work and there wasn’t any money.”

Also, in Haiti, schools and hospitals cost a lot of money, while they are often free in the Dominican.

Tony, a construction business owner, said he left Haiti because he felt like a burden to his family. The money he wires home doubles in value when it is spent in Haiti. He also uses a service that delivers food to safe areas outside the cities.

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Corruption and gangs

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The Dominican Republic has long been in a better position than Haiti.

Dyer said, unfortunately, through the corruption of politicians, philanthropic efforts are railroaded and aid is rerouted to the pockets of the ruling class. Politicians are regularly caught helping move drugs or embezzling money.

The ports are controlled by rich politicians, part of what she calls “the Haitian mafia” — a combination corrupt politicians and criminal organizations. When boats deliver aid to the island, the goods are stopped at these ports, bundled, repackaged and sold.

“The people in power make money on what was donated to them to give away,” Dyer said.

She didn’t want to say it, but from what she knows, the American Red Cross is one of “biggest offenders,” “dumping” supplies off, which end up feeding the political and gang system.

“If you give help, please don’t. It won’t get to us,” a Haitian man named Herbert living in the Dominican told Dyer. “Don’t you tell me what I need. You’re not helping me,” Herbert said. “Let me tell you what I need.”

What happens instead is Haitians set up “Haitian markets” in the Dominican Republic where they sell items and buy essentials to bring back and supply their families with the goods they can’t get at home because the government isn’t providing. With the recent chaos, these Haitian markets are closing. Dyer said there used to be a “lively” Haitian market every day in Dajabon.

“I think throwing money at it is just that,” Dyer said.

She said this ends up giving money to crooks, the same people causing all the problems.

“I don’t know. To say ‘Don’t do anything at the moment’ could be counter-productive,” she said. “In some cases, it’s getting through. But in most cases, it’s only lining the pockets of the wealthy crooks. But lining their pockets may not be such a bad idea if some of it filters down to the people that need it.”

But all of the Haitians Dyer spoke to said to not send money.

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Labor and deportations in DR

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“Haitians provide much of the cheap labor for the Dominican Republic, which has seemingly helped the Dominican Republic prosper,” Dyer wrote in a letter to the Enterprise.

Similar to how Mexican laborers travel to the U.S. illegally to work in agricultural fields, Haitians travel to the DR illegally to work in their industries — primarily dairy cattle, sugarcane, tobacco and tough construction jobs. Dyer said the average Haitian makes $50 USD a week in the Dominican Republic. She knows many of them in her town.

“They’re hard workers. They’re fun. They’re just really nice people,” she said.

The Dominican Republic has deported 150,000 people in recent months. But Dyer said most turn around and walk back across.

“(The Dominican Republic) could not survive, in my opinion, if they keep deporting them all,” Dyer said. “They need that cheap labor.”

She said deportations are ramped up every time there’s an incident, like what is going on currently. White trucks drive around and sweep up every Haitian they can find. They are jailed or left in the truck overnight before being driven to the border and dropped back off in Haiti. The Dominican National Police tend to arrest only men, and take bribes of $200 USD — a month’s pay — to release people they arrest, Dyer said. They don’t get paid much, either. But the Immigration Police arrest men, women and children and don’t tend to take bribes, she said.

She said these arrests and deportations tend to happen in Dominican cities rather than where they live in the rural areas. Work spreads fast in their town when the deportation trucks arrive, giving people time to go into hiding, so the police don’t bother often.

Dyer said the Dominican Republic is building a 100-mile wall on its mountainous 243-mile-long natural border, but it is “porous,” unfinished and ineffective.

“And the really strange thing that’s always bothered me, guess who is building the wall? The Haitians,” Dyer said. “Because nobody else wants that rough rugged job of building a wall.”

The Dominican president has put 10,000 soldiers on the border. The Haitians tell her they feel they are not wanted. Chapo said he’s accepted in the countryside, but in the cities, there is a lot of resentment for Haitians.

They are comfortable in their lives in the Dominican Republic and feel the country will suffer greatly if it sends their labor across the border.

With the recent violence in Haiti, Dyer said those who have passports, visas and the reported $10,000 USD per seat for a helicopter can fly from from Port-au-Prince to Dominican Republic airports where they can get to America. Dyer said Haitians have an idea of America as a great place where people make dollars instead of pennies.

“They don’t realize what it costs to live (in the U.S.),” she said.

And those trying to sail to America without the proper documentation are being sent back to Haiti by the Biden administration, where gangs currently control ports of entry.

“The gangs have taken over (Haiti), and their power is guns,” Herbert said.

Herbert, 38, is highly educated, an electrician and a local Haitian leader in the Dominican, Dyer said. His family lives outside Port-au-Prince. He cannot return, because he could lose his visa.

He said the Haitian government is not allowed to buy guns. Meanwhile, gangs are heavily armed, primarily with guns purchased in the United States and smuggled onto the island. This means gangs move without fear of being stopped.

Herbert told Dyer said gangs “tax” businesses — similar to the mafia practice of protection — and make money on kidnapping ransoms.

But many people like the gangs. Herbert said gang members rob trucks of food or drink and give away the stolen goods. This keeps their public perception positive.

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History

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Dyer said the causes of the current conditions in Haiti have been building for centuries.

“These people have been going through this forever,” Dyer said.

The island’s indigenous Taino people were nearly entirely killed by disease when European settlers arrived — mostly Spanish and French. The island became a French colony in the 1600s and 1700s.

Haiti was the richest country in Caribbean at one point. France made it a very wealthy island, producing a lot of goods and money — but all the labor was on the back of hundreds of thousands of enslaved people from Africa.

“One day they stood up and said, ‘No, I’m not doing this for these people anymore,'” Dyer said.

The Haitian Revolt against French colonizers was violent. She said the outcome did not result in a strong central government. There were several “fiefdoms.” The numerous internal fights for power, wars with neighboring Dominican Republic and influence from internal and external sources have kept the country in a perpetual state of political unrest ever since.

The U.S. occupied the country from 1915 to 1934, but was not welcomed and resulted in more violent uprisings. Strings of coups, violent regimes and ever-growing corruption have never let Haiti have a stable government, she said.

“It is a really sad, beautiful place,” Dyer said.

The Dominican Republic has its own issues, Dyer said, but the U.S. set up a democracy there before it departed.

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Solutions

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Dyer said she does what she can. She gives out medical supplies when she can and people she knows come to her for their families. She said she has enough aspirin for many people — but only some people, not the hundreds who need it.

She isn’t really sure what would make for a stable Haitian government.

“Boy, I don’t know. I think you’d have to be god-like to be able to solve the problem now,” she said.

She isn’t optimistic about the United Nations’ stabilization effort in Haiti.

“They intervene all they want and it doesn’t seem to help,” she said. “We support, prop up, governments all over the world and then we go, ‘Oops, that was a mistake. Let’s get out of here.’ And leave them in the lurch.”

She said what Haiti needs is not another corrupt situation. There’s been one after another. It needs someone or something uncorruptable.

Herbert told her he believes international organizations like CARICOM and the U.S. Canadian embassies are “worthless.”

Tony said the popular Haitian politician Guy Philippe is a good temporary solution, but they need “a new Haiti,” one where the higher class is not in bed with gangs. Herbert agreed. He said Philippe is a “temporary solution.”

“A vote is needed,” Herbert said. “Only a vote can give us power.”

Herbert said most Haitians want to vote, but there is a practice in the very poor areas of selling votes to wealthy people, who trade money or motorcycles to vote with someone’s ID card.

“Haitians must get together and find a way to pull their country up,” he said.

He said the practice of leaving the island for education in trades and returning with the skills of a doctor, engineer or contractor should not just be for the elite. He described a “brain-drain” in Haiti of wealthy people leaving for education and not returning.

“The elite people of Haiti do not have family in Haiti,” Herbert said.

This also means they do not suffer from the corruption they produce.

Herbert believes military intervention — likely the U.S. or Canada — is needed to end the gang violence, whether they like it or not.

Dyer asked Herbert if he thinks the U.S. should have a say in who should be their president.

“No,” he told her. “We the people.”