The government is not functioning at all and barbarians have taken over.
The New York Post reports that it's come to this:
Haiti’s most notorious gang leader, known as "Barbecue," may be the most powerful man in the nation as the prime minister remains unable to return home.
On Sunday, the US announced that troops had evacuated Americans from the US Embassy and additional forces were brought in to secure the diplomatic compound in Port-au-Prince.
Jimmy Chérizier, leader of the notorious "G9 and Family" gang, is in command of the bulk of the gunmen stirring anarchy in the capital — and he vowed to fight until embattled Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigns.
"I am ready to make an alliance with the devil, ready to sleep in the same bed as the devil," Chérizier told his supporters last week as his fighters destroyed police stations and other government facilities.
It's part of a trend of nations in our hemisphere falling into extreme states of chaos from newly empowered gangs, all of them made rich from shipping illegal migrants into the U.S. and made muscular with new manpower from major prison breaks preceding the armed takeover attacks.
We've seen it in northern Mexico, we've seen it in Ecuador.
In Venezuela and Nicaragua something comparable is happening, except that the worst has already happened: The gangsters are the government, not challengers to the government. But the chaos is also there and these government gangs are growing rich off shipping illegal migrants to the states and emptying their prisons, too.
Now it's going full blown 'horrible' in Haiti, which has been a major transshipment point of illegal migrants into the states (and closely aligned with Nicaragua's game described here) and now has seen at least two major prison breaks in the runup to this disaster.
Videos have been circulating on Twitter and other places demonstrating that Haitian gangs are eating people as cannibals. One video, since deleted, showed someone swiftly macheting a leg off at the knee in a burning tire fire in a street like a piece of meat. Another video (also deleted) showed some savage chewing on someone's finger and then ripping a chunk off some burning corpse's leg in the street, encircled by burning tires, and then chowing down again. I saw these videos and they were both repulsive.
According to the Hindustan Times, the cannibalism did happen in Haiti's Artibonite Valley near its Dominican border, but the video is two years old.
Related:
Haiti: 2024-03-11 US sends in Marines to evacuate embassy personnel from Haiti amid bloody uprising as stench of decaying corpses drive people from their homes and violence threatens to engulf the Dominican Republic
Haiti: 2024-03-11 Haiti: Gang violence spreads as Caribbean leaders race to stem situation
Haiti: 2024-03-11 Jimmy's BBQ Guys. Who started riots under the nose of the United States
Haiti: 2024-03-11 US sends in Marines to evacuate embassy personnel from Haiti amid bloody uprising as stench of decaying corpses drive people from their homes and violence threatens to engulf the Dominican Republic
Haiti: 2024-03-11 Haiti: Gang violence spreads as Caribbean leaders race to stem situation
Haiti: 2024-03-11 Jimmy's BBQ Guys. Who started riots under the nose of the United States
