Life in Haiti slowed to a standstill last month when national protests began, once again, in the face of a rising cost of living and a national currency in free fall. Outside of Haiti, media coverage of the crisis has focused primarily on violence, looting and corruption.

Interviews with foreign volunteers, tourists and missionaries highlight that they are trapped or stranded, and that in some cases they have been evacuated by helicopters as if from a war zone. The U.S. Department of State has urged citizens not to travel to Haiti “due to crime and civil unrest.” The Core Group --representatives from the U.N., European Union, Organization of American States and six countries including the U.S. — issued a statement deploring violence and property damage and stressing that “change must come through the ballot box.”

We are doctors who divide our time between Boston and rural Haiti, where we work in HIV clinics staffed by Haitian physicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers and community health workers, supported by Partners In Health and its sister organization, Zanmi Lasante. We have witnessed the impacts of the worsening economic state in Haiti over the past few years, and we were in Haiti during the most recent protests and during those in the fall of 2018. We believe that the prevailing characterizations of the deteriorating situation in Haiti by the American media and government are inadequately informed by history and that a broader view reframing of the crisis is essential.

Vendors wait for clients at an open-air market in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Feb. 18, 2019, when businesses and government offices slowly reopened across Haiti after more than a week of demonstrations. (Dieu Nalio Chery/AP)

Although some of the demonstrations have turned violent, most have been peaceful. The demonstrators are calling for the resignation of Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse, arguing that he has failed to deliver on promises to improve the country’s economic conditions. At the center of the anti-government movement are accusations of mismanagement and the theft of $2 billion from PetroCaribe, a discount oil program operated by Venezuela and intended to generate savings to fund socioeconomic development. However, it is clear that the PetroCaribe corruption is just one of many factors that have led to the economic despair voiced by the thousands of Haitians who have taken to the streets or desperately sought refuge outside of Haiti.

The impoverishment of Haiti has not been accidental. It cannot be explained only by the recent actions of corrupt Haitian government officials, and it cannot be understood without examining historical events. Since Haiti won its independence from France in 1804 -- the only nation founded as the result of a slave revolution — a series of policies by foreign entities have stifled development and precipitated economic catastrophe.

In 1825, France, in exchange for recognizing Haiti’s sovereignty, extorted today’s equivalent of $21.7 billion from Haiti, paid over a period of 122 years, as compensation for lost property — the bodies of the Haitians themselves. Haiti's subsequent crippling debt prompted the U.S. to invade Haiti in 1915 and occupy the country for 19 years. The U.S. expropriated the holdings of Haiti’s treasury, designated 40 percent of Haiti’s national output towards debt repayment, enforced a system of forced labor, and murdered thousands of Haitians who resisted the occupying forces.