In the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Center disaster, as Americans watched the drama unfolding on the morning news, six hundred miles off the coast of Florida Haitians struggled to make their own sense of the tragedy, and relate it to their own experience.

Within hours after the attack, in a letter dated September 11, Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide extended his condolences to President Bush and sought to articulate the tragedy's impact not only on Americans, but on Haitians: "I join with the people to express my sympathy and outrage at today's tragic events to you, the United States Government, the American people and to all Haitians and Haitian-Americans touched by this senseless act." The connection his letter drew might seem a stretch to Americans, caught up in the media blitz of patriotism, but in fact Haitians have been profoundly affected by the "war on America."

As many as one million Haitians live in the United States, many of them in New York. Haitians and Haitian-Americans

had been, among other things, financial analysts, engineers, salespeople, clerks, secretaries, janitors, receptionists, restaurant workers and security guards in the Twin Towers. Haitian newspapers, published in Florida and in New York as well as Port-au-Prince, almost immediately sought to identify Haitians thought to be missing in the disaster (in some cases they published names that just sounded Haitian). "There may be dozens of Haitians" among those killed, said Haïti Progrès, a newspaper published in New York and in Port-au-Prince; the estimate was "perhaps one thousand" according to Haiti's Radio Metropole.

Andre Bonheur Jr. and Farah Jeudy, two of the many Haitian victims who lost their lives in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

As of September 24, the Haitian Consulate in New York could confirm only five Haitians missing in the wreckage. Nevertheless, on September 14 Radio Metropole reported that hundreds of Haitians in the phone-starved Caribbean nation (whose vast majority of citizens have no telephones, let alone access to international lines) were crowding urban telephone centers to wait for news of parents, close relations, and friends living in the United States.