Haiti was eliminated from the World Cup on Wednesday afternoon.
But you wouldn’t have known it if you were walking by Lakou Lakay — a Haitian restaurant in Tijuana’s Zona Norte. That’s where dozens of members of Haiti’s Mexican diaspora gathered to cheer on their team.
“We’re happy here,” said Evens Jean Lois. “Here in Tijuana, it’s almost like being in our home country.”
Jean Lois arrived in Tijuana in 2019, after facing discrimination in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. He’s one of more than 6,000 Haitian nationals now living in the Mexican border city.
Before Wednesday’s game kicked off, Jean Lois cooked some chicken in a makeshift charcoal grill on the street outside Lakou Lakay.
“The beauty of this World Cup is that it brought us closer together,” he said.
This was Haiti’s first World Cup since 1974. And the team put up a good fight — scoring two goals against Morocco, a team that made the semifinals in the 2022 World Cup.
Just being in the international tournament has given people in the Haitian diaspora a reason to celebrate — especially after the tragedies that have befallen their homeland in recent years. Since 2010, the country has endured a devastating earthquake, a massive hurricane and a presidential assassination.
The first wave of Haitian transplants arrived at Tijuana in 2016. In the decade since, they’ve built a thriving community that touches many aspects of Tijuana society.
Haitian children attend local schools, Haitian businesses line Tijuana’s commercial districts, and Haitian food contributes to the city’s culinary scene.
Vivianne Petite Frere owns Lakou Lakay. She’s also a community organizer who works with the Haitian Bridge Alliance — an immigrant advocacy nonprofit.
“I originally came thinking I’d go to the United States, but I found opportunity here in Tijuana,” Petite Frere said.
On Wednesday, her restaurant hosted dozens of Haitians, a few Tijuana neighbors, and even some curious soccer fans from San Diego during the game. She cooked traditional Haitian fare while a local DJ played Haitian hip-hop outside.
Petite Frere said the soccer tournament is an opportunity to show the world that Haiti is much more than the violence and chaos often portrayed in international media.
“The World Cup is a window to show a side of Haiti that others hide,” she said.
She’s proud that Haiti became the world’s first free Black republic in 1804, after the enslaved people of the Caribbean island defeated the army of French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
It’s a bit of history that was originally part of Haiti’s World Cup uniforms — a silhouette of men holding up the revolutionary flag. But the tournament’s organizers deemed it too political and told the team to remove the reference.
At Lakou Lakay, several fans wore the jersey with the revolutionary symbol.
Petite Frere welcomes the controversy, saying it may encourage people to read up on Haitian history. She argues that being punished for their independence is an unfortunate part of the Haitian experience.
Ultimately, the French government forced Haiti to compensate it for lost property, including people and land. In the early 1900s, debt payments to the French accounted for three-quarters of the small island nation’s budget. This made it essentially impossible for Haiti to invest in the welfare of its own people.
