At least 70 people were killed in a gang attack in Haiti’s Artibonite region — the country’s agricultural heartland and primary food-producing area. Police initially reported 16 dead. Nearly 6,000 people were forced to flee their homes.
The gap between 70 and 16 is not a rounding error. It is a form of erasure. When authorities report a quarter of the actual death toll, the massacre becomes manageable — a ‘security incident’ rather than a catastrophe, a number that does not demand the kind of response that 70 dead and 6,000 displaced would require.
A Haitian human rights organization condemned what it called the ‘abandonment’ of the Artibonite by state authorities. The first troops from a UN-backed Gang Suppression Force arrived in Haiti the same week — too late for the 70, and too few to change the fundamental dynamics.
Haiti has been in a state of permanent crisis that has exhausted the world’s attention. Gangs control large portions of the country. The government functions in name only. International intervention has been promised, delayed, scaled back, and delayed again.
The Artibonite is not a peripheral region. It is where Haiti’s food comes from. When gangs massacre people in the breadbasket and 6,000 flee, the food supply for the entire country is affected. This is not just a security crisis — it is a hunger crisis in formation.
Seventy dead. Officially sixteen. The difference is not a mistake. It is a choice about what counts.
