Haiti on the Brink: Life has always been hard in Haiti, but a violent political standoff has brought the country to the verge of collapse.

• Author: Semple, Kirk

The small hospital in Leogane, Haiti, was down to a single day's supply of oxygen and had to decide who would get it: the adults recovering from strokes and other ailments, or the newborns clinging to life in the neonatal ward.

A political crisis had forced this awful dilemma--one drama amid countless others in a nation driven to the brink of collapse. Hospitals have cut services or closed entirely. Gas shortages are worsening by the day. Public transportation has ground to a halt. Businesses have shuttered. Most schools have been closed since early September, leaving millions of children idle. Widespread layoffs have compounded chronic poverty and hunger.

Haiti has long been the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. But many Haitians say the current crisis--a struggle between the country's president and an opposition movement demanding his ouster--is worse than anything they've ever experienced.

"There is no hope in this country," says Stamene Moliere, 27, an unemployed secretary in the southern coastal town of Les Cayes. "There's no life anymore."

Political unrest has left at least 30 people dead, including 15 killed by police officers, according to the United Nations. Many Haitians with the means to flee have left or are planning to. Most who remain are simply trying to figure out where to get their next meals.

A Turbulent History

Many of the country's problems stem from its turbulent past. Most Haitians are descended from enslaved Africans brought over by French colonizers. The enslaved people rebelled, overthrew the French colonial government, and in 1804, Haiti declared its independence.

But in exchange for France's lost "property"--its plantations and the people it had enslaved--Haiti was forced to pay an enormous "independence debt" worth about $23 billion in today's money. Haiti didn't finish paying off the debt until 1947, and that had crippling consequences. Amid years of instability, a long string of tyrants seized power.

The other factor that has long destabilized Haiti is a history of foreign intervention. The U.S. has invaded the country several times, most recently in 1994, when American troops reinstalled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who'd been democratically elected and then ousted in a military coup.

The current crisis is a culmination of more than a year of violent protests. Many Haitians are outraged over alleged corruption. The government of President Jovenal Moi'se is accused of diverting billions of dollars...