While I was in college in 1987, I spent weeks in Haiti and wrote a 120 page honors thesis on why copious US and NGO economic assistance had no impact on Haiti while it had a major impact on the Dominican Republic. It became a World Bank white paper. I fell in love with the country and its people. Over the next decades, I helped support several college students and build a factory there. It was like throwing money into the wind. The students left for the US and the factory failed when the managers pocketed over half the investment capital.

France and the United States’ venal actions certainly helped lay the groundwork for the mizè. But the rapaciousness of the elite and the resulting cultural collapse was a far bigger source of the problem. International aid in the second half of the 20th century far exceeded the French “reparations,” but most of the donated money went right into the pockets of Haiti’s leaders and the wealthy. Almost none of it went to helping the 99.9 percent of average Haitians who were and remain some of the most destitute people on the planet.

The gigantic losses over hundreds of years, the unabating corruption, the recent earthquake and hurricanes and the lawlessness those factors caused long ago turned Haiti into the definition of a failed state. I don’t see Haiti ever becoming a functioning country short of UN protectorate status for decades with copious assistance in rebuilding the country. And even with that approach, it will be a monumental task.