For DJs and Dancers, a Sanctuary Now Rings with Despair
Port-au-Prince, Haiti — The bass no longer thumps from the colossal speakers that once lined the walls of Club International. The strobe lights are dead, covered in a thick layer of dust and neglect. In the place where the vibrant elite of Port-au-Prince once swayed to the rhythms of konpa and zouk, the only sounds now are the wails of hungry infants, the hushed prayers of desperate mothers, and the endless murmur of a city under siege. What was once the crown jewel of the Haitian capital’s nightlife has been violently repurposed into a sprawling, makeshift camp for hundreds of families who were forced to flee the relentless terror of armed gangs. But now, the owner of this hallowed ground wants them gone, setting the stage for a heart-wrenching conflict between survival, property rights, and the unraveling of a nation’s social fabric.
This cavernous building, strategically located on the busy Delmas road, has become a symbol of Haiti’s freefall. For decades, it was a place of escape, a glittering palace where politics, music, and high society collided in a haze of joyful noise. Today, it represents a different kind of collision—a stark confrontation between the remnants of a once-stable middle class and the millions of “internally displaced persons” (IDPs) who have nowhere else to turn. As the sun rises over the capital, the main dance floor, built to hold hundreds of revelers, is now a sea of makeshift cardboard partitions and hanging sheets, each section demarcating a family’s fragile claim to a few square feet of concrete. The air, once filled with expensive perfume and the promise of romance, is now thick with the acrid smell of smoke from cooking fires, unwashed bodies, and the raw sewage that trickles toward the gutters.
The transformation of this iconic venue is a microcosm of the broader catastrophe that has befallen Port-au-Prince. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the number of Haitians forced to abandon their homes due to gang violence has skyrocketed past 580,000—a figure that has doubled in just the last year. These are not just numbers; they are the faces of a displaced generation. Among those seeking refuge within the walls of the club are teachers, seamstresses, mechanics, and students—people who, just a few months ago, were living ordinary lives. They were driven out by the “Baz” (gangs) who have consolidated control over vast swaths of the capital, engaging in a terrifying campaign of massacres, arson, and sexual violence. For these people, the abandoned club was not just a roof over their heads; it was their only option for survival, a desperate ark in a flood of chaos.
Yet, for the club’s owner, the sight of his legacy being repurposed as a shelter is a source of profound distress. Having invested decades in building the business, the owner—who has asked for anonymity due to fears of retaliation from both gangs and the displaced—has watched the structure deteriorate. He argues that the building is structurally unsafe, lacking adequate sanitation and fire exits to handle the current population density. He is not merely concerned about his lost revenue; he is worried about a humanitarian tragedy within his own property lines. He wants to evict the families, not out of cruelty, but out of a desperate belief that the building is a ticking time bomb. But with nowhere official to relocate the families, his request to have the police clear the premises has put him at loggerheads with the very people he sees as both victims and trespassers.
Inside, however, the sentiment is one of deep-seated anxiety and defiance. For the men and women huddled in the shadows of the DJ booth, the owner’s legal threats are abstract compared to the immediate threat of the guns outside. “If he kicks us out, we are dead,” says Marie Lucie Jean, a 34-year-old mother of three who has been living in the club for four months. She points to the scratches on her arm from a machete attack that drove her from her home in the nearby neighborhood of Croix-des-Bouquets. “I know he is angry, but where is his heart? Does he want to see us die on the street?” This sentiment echoes throughout the building. The displaced residents have organized a makeshift committee to negotiate with the owner, offering to help with cleaning and maintenance in exchange for a temporary reprieve. But their pleas are complicated by the fact that their very presence is accelerating the degradation of the property. The wiring is overloaded, the plumbing is failing, and the iconic mirrored walls are being torn down to use as reflective sheets for solar cooking.
The standoff at Club International highlights the absurd and tragic choices facing Haiti’s economic stakeholders. On one side, there is the reality of an unprecedented security crisis that has turned the capital into a warzone, with armed groups controlling access to essential resources like fuel and food. On the other, there is a shrinking economy where property rights and investments are increasingly meaningless if they cannot be protected by the state. In the past, the owner might have called upon the national police for swift enforcement. But today, the Haitian National Police (HNP) are severely understaffed, under-resourced, and largely confined to defensive positions, unable to engage in complex eviction operations that would likely spark a violent riot. This power vacuum has created a perverse legal limbo, where the only law is the law of the street, and the only negotiator is survival itself.
International aid agencies, stretched thin and running out of funding, watch this clash with a sense of helpless urgency. They warn that forcibly removing the families from the club without a comprehensive plan would be a humanitarian disaster, sparking a new wave of displacement and potentially pushing desperate people into even more dangerous settings. “We understand the owner’s frustration,” says a local coordinator for a major humanitarian NGO, speaking on condition of anonymity. “But you cannot evict 800 people just because you want your dance floor back. We need a collective solution—rental subsidies, repurposing of public buildings, and a massive increase in security to allow people to return to their homes.” However, with the political transition still in flux and the international community largely reluctant to commit troops to a country with such a volatile history, the prospect of a coordinated response seems like a distant dream.
The tragedy of Club International is that both the owner and the refugees are right. The owner is right that his property is not designed for such an influx of people, and the lack of adequate humanitarian assistance inside the venue is creating unsanitary conditions that could lead to a disease outbreak. The families are right that they have nowhere else to go, and to send them back to their neighborhoods would be akin to a death sentence. In the end, this is not a simple story of a greedy landlord versus the homeless; it is a story of a country where the past and the present have collided with devastating force.
The music at Club International has stopped, but the echoes of its former life remain in the high ceilings and the ornate staircase that leads to nowhere. As night falls, the venue transforms again. The darkness is no longer a prelude to electric lights and rhythm, but a blanket of fear. Families lie close together, listening to the distant crackle of gunfire that has become the lullaby of Port-au-Prince. The owner, from his secured home across town, likely looks at his financial losses and sees a lifetime of work evaporating. The residents look at the same walls and see the difference between a precarious life and certain death. Until the state can reassert its authority, or the international community steps in with a robust humanitarian and security response, this iconic building will remain a monument to a crisis that has turned celebrations into survival and owners into strangers in their own past. The standoff is not just about property; it is about the very definition of home in a country that is rapidly losing all its safe spaces.
