Focussing on the bateyes, shantytowns built on the edges of the sugar cane plantations in the Dominican Republic, Haïti chérie offers a portrait of the cane-cutters, obliged to live there in appalling conditions. Most of these workers are Haitian immigrants who have fled the violence and poverty of their native country for a new life, one that several humanitarian organisations have, however, denounced as a form of modern slavery. With no legal working papers, or social welfare system, they live cooped up in ghettoes with no running water or electricity. Working fourteen-hour days in the fields for pitiful wages, which are paid by cheques they can only use in the company’s shantytown stores. Jean-Baptiste and Magdaleine are married, and work in one of these plantations, but when their baby dies of hunger they start thinking seriously of returning home, despite the fact that the militia there murdered their respective families.