President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s election in 1990 had been seen as an encouraging harbinger of a new relatively more peaceful and democratic era in Haitian politics. Aristide was a liberation theologian and orphanage proprietor who had spent years preaching about the wellbeing of the poor, sick, and hungry.

After the country had survived multiple decades ruled by the Duvaliers père and fils (a pair of murderous grifters who financed their upscale dictator-chic lifestyles by trafficking in the body parts of dead Haitians), the frugal curate Aristide was a welcome relief.

The peace did not last. Aristide was overthrown in a military coup d’etat the next year, and the country collapsed into disarray. The new military government swiftly introduced the usual program of arrests, tortures, and mysterious disappearances, with all opposition subject to terror and suppression. Faced with violence and economic collapse, hundreds of refugees began to flee the country in tiny boats, bound for US shores.