Ouest Department

Ouest exists because Port-au-Prince exists, and Port-au-Prince exists because it's Haiti's best harbor between mountains and sea. One-third of Haiti's 11 million people—3.7 million—concentrate here, making Ouest not just the capital department but the nation's central nervous system. When a keystone species fails, ecosystems collapse. When a capital fails, nations follow.

Port-au-Prince became Haiti's capital in 1770, replacing Cap-Haïtien because southern merchants wanted power closer to their plantations. After independence in 1804, every coup, constitution, and crisis centered here. By the 20th century, rural-to-urban migration overwhelmed infrastructure: Cité Soleil, built in the 1960s as an industrial zone, became one of the Americas' largest slums—300,000 people in a seaside sprawl with no sewage system. The city's informal economy absorbed everyone the formal economy rejected, which was almost everyone.

On January 12, 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Léogâne, 25 kilometers west of Port-au-Prince, killing between 100,000 and 316,000 people. The government estimated 250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial buildings collapsed. The National Palace crumbled. The already-weak state lost what little infrastructure remained. Foreign NGOs arrived to fill the vacuum, but they treated symptoms, not causes. By 2020, after decades of political instability, gangs controlled Cité Soleil and neighboring slums. By 2024, they controlled the capital.

The Viv Ansanm coalition—an alliance of armed groups—controls 80% of metropolitan Port-au-Prince in 2025. Gangs extract tolls on roads, kidnap for ransom, massacre rivals, and operate as the de facto government in areas the state abandoned. The Pont Sondé massacre in October 2024 marked gangs' expansion into Artibonite Department, threatening Haiti's rice supply. Over 700,000 people are internally displaced, most fleeing gang-controlled zones in Port-au-Prince. The phase transition from state control to gang control happened gradually, then suddenly—like ice melting or a population crashing.

By 2026, Ouest faces biological collapse. Parasites can kill hosts, but smart parasites keep hosts alive to extract resources longer. Haiti's gangs crossed that threshold in 2024. When parasites consume a host's ability to metabolize nutrients—when armed groups control food, water, and roads—the system crashes. Ouest contains one-third of Haiti's population but produces almost no food. It depends on Artibonite's rice and imports through the port. Gangs now control both supply chains. The capital is eating itself.