Haiti may well be the only country in the Americas with a last name. References to the land of the "black Jacobins" are almost always followed by the phrase "the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere". To that dubious distinction, on 12 January 2010 Haiti added another, when it was hit by the most devastating natural disaster in the Americas, a 7.0 Richter scale earthquake. More than 220,000 people lost their lives and much of its vibrant capital, Port-au-Prince, was reduced to rubble. Since 2004, the United Nations has been in Haiti through MINUSTAH, in an ambitious attempt to help Haiti raise itself by its bootstraps. This effort has now acquired additional urgency. Is Haiti a failed state? Does it deserve a Marshall-plan-like program? What will it take to address the Haitian predicament? In this book, some of the world's leading experts on Haiti examine the challenges faced by the first black republic, the tasks undertaken by the UN, and the new role of hemispheric players like Argentina, Brazil and Chile, as well as that of Canada, France and the United States.

Haiti is a failing state. The country is still unable to provide basic needs such as employment, food, housing, healthcare and education to a majority of its inhabitants in over two centuries after its revolution and Independence of 1804. Relatively incompetent, both the nation’s government and its opposition ignore moral politics, and instead, focus on corruption and fighting each other. Though free from French rule, the country remains tied to its slave past and violent history. It seems like a socioeconomic and urban consensus cannot be achieved in order to carry out sustainable solutions for the people. This book, From Revolution to Chaos in Haiti, 1804-2019: Urban Problems and Redevelopment Straregies, is an attempt to analyze this situation from a historical perspective. First, the Haitian Revolution of 1804 is displayed to show the violent and bloody struggles of outstanding leaders and warriors against colonial powers for the making of a great political and independent nation. Second, Haiti’s decline is analyzed starting from the assassination of its first leader, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, in 1806 to the country’s bottom rank in the global stratification during the 2010’s along with the impact of the catastrophic 2010 earthquake. The main factors noted within this decline are linguistic, agricultural, urban and (HIV, AIDS, TB) healthcare issues and undercapitalization along with ideological confusions (capitalism, neoliberalism, socialism, social democracy) and political instability.