Port-au-Prince
Founded 1749 to avoid coastal problems, leveled by earthquakes four times, Port-au-Prince flipped to gang control after 2021 — 90% under coalition rule, an alternative stable state that resists reversion like an algae-dominated lake.
Three million people remain in Port-au-Prince while armed gangs control 90% of the capital and collect "taxes" at gunpoint. This is not chaos — it is an alternative stable state. Like a lake that flips from clear water to algae-dominated and resists reverting, Port-au-Prince has crossed a threshold where gang governance is now the equilibrium, not the aberration.
The French founded the city in 1749 after rejecting their existing colonial capitals: Petit-Goave bred malaria, Leogane invited attack. They chose the bay for its defensible harbor, named it for the ship Prince, and laid out a grid pattern — a rational solution to irrational terrain. Port-au-Prince replaced Cap-Haitien as capital in 1770 and became seat of the world's first Black republic in 1804. But the rationality was illusion: earthquakes leveled the city in 1751, 1770, and 1842. The founders chose this site to avoid one set of problems and inherited another.
The January 2010 earthquake killed over 200,000 people and caused damage equivalent to 120% of Haiti's GDP. The Presidential Palace crumbled. The main port became unusable. International donors pledged billions, but only a fraction arrived and less than 10% reached infrastructure. The state never rebuilt — it improvised. When President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in July 2021, what remained of formal governance dissolved. Haiti has had no elected official since.
Gangs behave like hyenas at a weakened carcass — waiting for the host state to falter, then swarming the vacuum. The coalition Viv Ansanm ("Live Together") formed in February 2024 when rival factions G9 and G-Pep merged under Jimmy Cherizier, alias "Barbecue." Like army ants coordinating raids without central command, the coalition launches synchronized attacks on prisons, airports, and government buildings. By mid-2025, they controlled 90% of the metropolitan area. Residents pay passage fees at checkpoints. The coalition installs electricity in slums, distributes school supplies, resolves disputes. Over 5,600 were killed in 2024; 1.4 million have fled.
Haiti remains the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation, with GDP per capita around $2,400 and trade deficits exceeding 15% of GDP. The UN Security Council authorized a new multinational force in September 2025, but interventions have failed before. Port-au-Prince illustrates what ecologists call hysteresis: once a system tips past a threshold, it reorganizes around new actors and resists reverting to the previous state. The gangs are not disrupting order — they have become the order. Restoring state governance now requires more energy than sustaining gang rule, just as clearing an algae bloom requires more intervention than preventing one. Somalia, Libya, parts of Yemen — each demonstrates the same pattern. Once the flip occurs, there is no easy way back.