For Haiti’s motorcycle taxi drivers — perhaps the most ubiquitous workers on Port-au-Prince streets — 2021 was a year of compounding hardship that tested their resilience to its limits. The fuel blockade imposed by the G9 alliance in October was particularly devastating for an occupation that depended entirely on gasoline, forcing thousands of drivers to park their bikes and lose their daily income for weeks.
Even before the blockade, drivers had faced a year of extraordinary difficulty. The political crisis following the assassination had heightened insecurity and reduced the number of people willing to travel. The August earthquake had diverted traffic patterns and damaged some routes. The COVID pandemic continued to affect demand for transport as people minimized their movements.
Drivers in zones near gang-controlled territory described the psychological challenge of navigating their routes while assessing security risks, negotiating gang checkpoints where criminal groups demanded payments to pass, and making split-second decisions about which routes were safe on which days. Several colleagues had been robbed, injured, or killed while working.
Yet most drivers kept going, because stopping meant no income and no income meant their families did not eat. The motorcycle taxi economy was not just their livelihood but a critical transportation infrastructure for a city with no functioning public transit system. Whatever happened politically and security-wise, people still needed to get places, and the moto-taxi drivers were often the only option available.