Just yesterday, Nicholl filed an Observer Dispatch for The Guardian titled: Ghosts of tyrants past stalk proud Haiti as it slides towards the brink; A nation that suffered under the Duvalier dictators is collapsing as corruption and a failing economy take their toll

with highlighted quote ‘Most Haitians would now be willing to work in conditions only just short of slavery’ ~Didier Dominique, historian

[....] Haiti, on the western end of Hispaniola, has fallen to depths its people cannot fathom. Protests, continuing into this weekend, have seen roads across the country blocked with rocks, trees and burning tyres, while in the capital, Port-au-Prince, senators engaged in fist-fights on the floor of the senate. The president, Jovenel Moïse, was due to fly to the UN on Sunday, his authority draining away.

“It feels like something is going to break, and it needs to,” says Marie Pascal, an economist.

“This president has to go. The parliament has to go. There has to be something new,” says Lyonel Trouillot, a revered novelist.

“I can’t remember a situation this bad,” says Leslie Voltaire, an architect and former presidential candidate.

This view – that it has never been so bad – is repeated again and again across a country that has suffered, in living memory, the Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier dictatorships, a US invasion, and the 2010 earthquake that claimed up to 300,000 lives.

And the anger is worsened by wounded pride. This is the nation born in 1804 from a successful slave revolt. The walls of its cities show murals of the heroes Toussaint and Dessalines in Napoleonic bicorn hats. It’s a history Haitians believe the world ignores due to racism, preferring instead Donald Trump’s claim that Haiti is a “shithole” [....]

More photos of today's Senatorial gunfire by Reuters' photographer: