Formerly the most lucrative European colony in the Caribbean, Haiti has long been one of the most divided and impoverished countries in the world a fact made clear by the disastrous effects of the earthquake in January 2010, which triggered another US military operation. Damming the Flood analyzes the American and French role in the violent overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. The suppression of the remarkable popular mobilization known as Lavalas, or 'the flood', was perhaps the most successful act of imperial sabotage since the end of the Cold War. Updated with a new afterword that covers the international response to the earthquake, Damming the Flood is both an invaluable history of Haiti and a crucial account of America's twentyfirst-century imperialism.