Hundreds of Haitian women lined the road at the border with Dominican Republic, each one with a brightly coloured headscarf and a bulky package balanced on her head. Some seemed far too old to be carrying such loads, others were raw-boned girls barely into their teens, all waiting in a long queue to cross back into their country.
Wiry porters pushed red-rusted wheelbarrows with loads of soft drinks or yams so high they could barely peer over them. Younger men on motorized rickshaws revved impatiently, eager to deliver their loads and rush back for more before the border closed.
The people coming and going from the market in Dajabón were in a race against the clock to cart as much food and other merchandise back to the Haitian city of Ouanaminthe amid tight new border restrictions limiting them to just two market days a week.
“Every Haitian who enters here buys merchandise to take back home so that people have something to eat,” said Noudy Dolisca, 49, a Haitian money-changer who lives in Dajabón. “If they didn’t come here to buy, there would be nothing in Haiti.”
The cross-border trade with Haiti’s wealthier neighbour has long offered a commercial lifeline for families scratching a living in the country’s parched hinterland. Four million people in the country face “acute food insecurity” and close to a million are on the brink of famine, according to the UN’s world food programme director in Haiti, Jean-Martin Bauer.
And after two weeks of surging gang violence, which on Monday forced the resignation of prime minister Ariel Henry, the humanitarian crisis seems likely to grow more acute, especially if – as many fear – the Dominican government moves to seal the frontier.
“The people are preparing for difficult times,” said Lt Col Morlin Fabián, a Dominican air force officer in charge of local border security, as guards inspected cargo, barking orders at the waiting pedestrians to pass through a biometric ID registration booth.
“It is as if they are expecting a hurricane, so they’re buying up what they can.”
Haiti has been sinking steadily deeper into turmoil since the 2021 assassination of its president Jovenel Moïse by Colombian mercenaries. Heavily armed and politically connected gangs have steadily taken control of most of the capital Port-au-Prince, unleashing an explosion of killings, kidnappings and sexual violence.
But the situation took a dramatic turn for the worse this month, when the gangs joined forces, setting police stations on fire, storming ports and prisons and laying siege to the capital’s international airport.
At least 15,000 people have been displaced by the latest fighting, bringing the total number of internally displaced people in Haiti to more than 360,000, according to the UN – more than half of them children.
The US and other Caribbean nations have backed a plan in which a transitional council representing rival Haitian political factions will take over from Henry. But several key figures have refused to participate, while gang boss Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier – the apparent architect of the current unrest – has rejected any solution backed by the international community.
“It’s the Haitian people who are going to take destiny into their own hands. Haitian people will choose who will govern them,” he told reporters this week.
Although most of the fighting has been concentrated in Port-au-Prince, the impact of the unrest is felt across the country as gang-controlled roadblocks and port blockades have inflate prices on the food imports, which Haiti depends on for 50% of its food supply.
In the nation of 11.4 million people, one in four children suffer from chronic malnutrition or stunting, and more than 125,000 children are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition in 2024, according to Unicef.
Mumuza Muhindo Musubaho, Médecins Sans Frontières’ head of mission in Port-au-Prince, said medical supplies were running dangerously low due to blocked seaports and the siege of the capital’s international airport.
“Public and private hospitals are shutting down because they have been looted of everything,” he told the Observer by phone.
“We can see that there are more and more needs; our teams are exhausted, and their replacements cannot get through,” he said. “The demand is so high that we’re going to need more [medical] supplies but we are trapped here and nothing can get through.”
The precarity of the situation, has driven many to despair as they struggle to get enough food. Tensions rose as long queues formed on both sides of the border bridge and loud, animated arguments threatened to spill into violence.
Dajabón’s mayor Santiago Riverón argued that the stringent border security was necessary because escaped prisoners from the wrecked Haitian jails might attempt to enter the Dominican Republic.
“Our government is taking measures to try to prevent any of these people from entering our territory, and that is why you see that the border has been reinforced, the military is alert to any situation,” he told the Observer, as he surveyed the bridge which connects the two nations, surrounded by bodyguards.
But relations between the two countries, which share the island of Hispaniola, have never been easy, long marked by a dark history of racial discrimination by the Dominican Republic towards its poorer neighbour, which threw off French colonial rule in the early 19th century to become the world’s first black-led republic and independent Caribbean state.
For much of its length, the border is marked by the Massacre River, so called because it marks a bloody battle between Spanish and French colonizers in the 1700s – but the name also evokes the 1937 slaughter of Haitians and black Dominicans under the military dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo.
Now much of it is lined with high metal fences topped with razor wire in Dajabón, part of a planned 118-mile (190km) border wall.
In recent years, the Dominican Republic has expelled tens of thousands of Haitians and those of Haitian descent, and President Luis Abinader has categorically rejected the idea of allowing any refugees to cross into his country.
Yet a strong sense of historical pride lingers for many Haitians, even as they blame their country’s chronic instability on politicians and elites who have cynically employed criminal gangs to pursue power.
“The problem of Haiti is not only a problem of food, or a problem of nutrition, but it’s also a problem of unity,” Charles Hérode told the Observer as he waited in line at a biometric registration point on the border. “Once we are all united and we know that we are all brothers and sisters, we will build a country like everyone else.”
Weighed down under a heavy load on her head, Carmelle Eloi Housse expressed her exasperation.
“There are political problems in Haiti, but we cannot understand why Haitian politicians cannot get together to manage the country the way they should,” she said.
