Journalists and political analysts spent much of 2019 trying to understand the organizational dynamics of Haiti’s protest movement — who was driving it, who was financing it, and whether it represented a genuine popular uprising or was being manipulated by political elites with their own agendas. The answers were complex and contested.
At one level, the movement was unmistakably organic. The anger over the PetroCaribe scandal was real, widely shared, and needed no external instigation. Hundreds of thousands of Haitians who participated in protests were motivated by genuine outrage over corruption and the daily hardships it had produced. The movement’s cultural products — its slogans, songs, and visual imagery — emerged from authentic creative processes within Haitian civil society.
But the movement also had organizational infrastructure that required coordination and resources. Political opposition figures, including former senators and unsuccessful presidential candidates, were active participants who stood to benefit from Moïse’s fall. Business figures who had grown frustrated with the government’s management of the economy provided various forms of support. Diaspora networks channeled money and media support from abroad.
Government officials and pro-Moïse commentators argued that the movement was fundamentally a conspiracy of political and economic elites who had manipulated popular anger for their own ends. Opposition figures retorted that trying to discredit the movement by focusing on who participated in it was a distraction from the legitimate demands it expressed. The debate about the movement’s character would continue long after the immediate crisis had passed.