Haiti joined CARICOM in 1997 and was suspended after the February 2004 removal of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a sequence Smith uses to test what the grouping ever meant by admission. He first lays out the older ties: planters and refugees scattered from Saint-Domingue to Jamaica and Cuba after 1791, later waves of labour migration in both directions, and a long line of deposed Haitian presidents given asylum in Kingston. Against that history, accession looks hurried. Neither CARICOM nor the Preval government explained the arrangement to Haitians, Kreyol was never made a working language of a body whose largest member state speaks it, and economic asymmetry went unaddressed. Smith reads the 2004 suspension as consistent with a longer pattern of venerating Haiti for 1804 while holding it at arm's length. He calls for sustained engagement, and for Caribbean states to stop treating Haiti as an exception to the region.