January/February 2011 Issue

Inside Haiti’s Tent Cities

Scenes from the post-earthquake reconstruction.

    Jonathan Torgovnik/Getty Reportage


Read a related article, or check out the Mother Jones special report on Haiti.

Nearly a year after the Haiti earthquake, one million people live in camps terrorized by rape gangs. At least Sean Penn’s camp has lights, a rare bid for safety when even a walk to the bathroom can be dangerous at night. One “model” tent camp is treeless desert, boiling in the heat. Billions in US aid have gone undelivered, corporations are building sweatshop relocation centers, and crime is commonplace. What happened to Haiti’s reconstruction? MoJo human rights reporter Mac McClelland went to Port-au-Prince to find out. The photos in this essay illustrate what she saw; click here to read her related dispatches from Haiti.

tent city at night

In Haiti, makeshift camps like this one are terrorized by gangs of rapists.
 

The 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti struck on Tuesday, January 12, 2010, near the capital, causing extensive damage and many deaths.
 

The main market in one of the 1,300 tent cities that pock Port-au-Prince.
 

Brunache Senexant takes an improvised bath in a Haitian tent city.
 

Makeshift encampments like this one are home to 1.2 million people in Haiti.
 

This tent camp in Haiti, run by Sean Penn’s charity, has drainage ditches and lights, a rare bid for safety.
 

Daniel, who is trying to launch a Haitian relief group from his plastic hovel, with his fiancée and 10-year-old daughter Melissa.
 

Makeshift tent walls include tarps provided by USAID.
 

Haiti’s National Cathedral in Port-au-Prince was destroyed by the 2010 earthquake.
 

In Haiti, a makeshift church service in a tent camp.
 

Many children in the tent cities lost their parents in the quake.
 
A child living in a massive camp in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

A child living in a massive camp in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
 

Rapists in the tent cities have been known to go after girls younger than the one pictured here.
 

In Port au Prince, 55,000 displaced Haitians live on the grounds of what was once the Club de Petionville golf course.

 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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