Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti

A dramatic inside account of how capitalism and politics drove the disastrous collapse of Haiti, from the 2010 earthquake to the nation’s chaos today.

Haiti is a nation near-collapse: criminal gangs have overrun the country, nearly all government officials have fled after the 2021 assassination of President Moise, refugees desperately set out on boats to reach the United States and Latin America, and the economy reels from the cascading after-effects of natural disasters that destroyed much of Haiti’s infrastructure.

How did this happen? How did a nation founded on liberation—a people that revolted against their colonizers and enslavers—come to such ruin?

In Aid State, journalist and Haiti expert Jake Johnston reveals how longstanding United States and European capitalist goals ensnared and re-enslaved Haiti under the guise of helping it. To the global West, Haiti is and always has been “open for business”: a place where labor is cheap, politicians are compliant, and profits are to be made. Over the course of nearly 100 years, the United States has sought to control Haiti and its people with occupying police, military, and euphemistically peacekeeping forces, as well as hand-picked leaders, meant to quell uprisings and protect corporate interests. Earthquakes and hurricanes only further devastated a nation left helpless by the aid industrial complex.

Based on years of on-the-ground reporting in Haiti and interviews with politicians in America and Haiti, independent aid contractors, United Nations officials, and Haitians who struggle for their lives, homes, and families, Jake Johnston’s Aid State is a compelling, conscience-searing book of witness.