
Giving "The Devil" His Due
Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, the founder of a barbaric Haitian paramilitary group, vanished from Port-au-Prince and resurfaced as a real estate agent in Queens.
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Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, the founder of a barbaric Haitian paramilitary group, vanished from Port-au-Prince and resurfaced as a real estate agent in Queens.
David Grann The Atlantic Jun 2001 1h Permalink
For a time, NGOs thought they’d eradicated the disease. But now it’s back.
Rose George Mosaic Jul 2015 15min Permalink
A nation strips 210,000 of citizenship and sets the stage for mass deportations.
Rachel Nolan Harper's May 2015 30min Permalink
The difficulty of catching a “cocaine trafficker with his hands on the country’s levers of power.”
Kyle Swenson New Times Broward-Palm Beach May 2015 20min Permalink
An early excerpt in honor of this week's publication of An Untamed State (Grove Atlantic), Gay's debut novel.
"Most of the city was asleep or laying low. I ran down a dark, unfamiliar street, my bare feet slapping against the pavement. I ran to find my way back to my happily ever after. It was dark and hot and still. I ran over shards of broken glass, felt my skin come neatly apart. I bled. My feet were slickly wet. I did not stop running. The Commander told me to run until I could not run anymore so that is what I did. My thighs burned. It felt strange to be able to move so freely, to breathe fresher air. I wanted someone to find me. I wanted to stop. I kept running. When I passed people standing in their doorways or ambling down the street, I stiffened, knew they could not be trusted, so still, I ran. I saw a cross rising into the sky, reaching up. A church would be a safe place. I hoped."
Roxane Gay Barcelona Review May 2011 15min Permalink
In a Haitian tent city, a referee prepares for a soccer game.
"Almost unconsciously, I began gathering various items from the tent: my official registration card, a couple of Fox whistles, two pairs of black socks, a black undershirt, an armband, two flags, my kangaroo-leather turf shoes, and then three different jerseys that I had so painstakingly preserved. I stuffed all of this into an Agency sack, which I normally used for collecting my ration of nourimil cereal."
Deji Olukotun Guernica Aug 2011 15min Permalink
Separating truth from lore in Haiti: “The dossier was, at bottom, a murder story, the judge said—but it was a murder story with the great oddity that the victim did not die.”
Mischa Berlinski Men's Journal Sep 2009 Permalink
The story of Thor Holm Hansen—”Norwegian country singer, a former Outlaws motorcycle chieftain, and an ‘ambassador at large’ to a rebel Haitian government”—who claims to be back in Florida to locate his missing daughter.
Terrence McCoy New Times Broward-Palm Beach Feb 2013 20min Permalink
The U.N.’s role in creating an epidemic in Haiti.
Jonathan M. Katz Foreign Policy Jan 2013 35min Permalink
But despite all that has been promised, almost nothing has been built back in Haiti, better or otherwise. Within Port-au-Prince, some 3 million people languish in permanent misery, subject to myriad experiments at "fixing" a nation that, to those who are attempting it, stubbornly refuses to be fixed. Mountains of rubble remain in the streets, hundreds of thousands of people continue to live in weather-beaten tents, and cholera, a disease that hadn't been seen in Haiti for 60 years, has swept over the land, infecting more than a quarter million people.
Janet Reitman Rolling Stone Aug 2011 50min Permalink
Early novel samples from one of my most influential college teachers.
"[T]o drive along any of the national highways meant you had indeed acquired value, but that your value had absolutely nothing to do with your worth as a unique individual."
Rone Shavers Milk Magazine Jan 2006 Permalink
On Haiti and why apocalypse, by definition, must include revelation.
Junot Díaz Boston Review May 2011 15min Permalink
On the utter brutality of life in the tent cities, one year after the earthquake.
Mac McClelland Mother Jones Jan 2011 25min Permalink
On the post-quake presidential election in Haiti.
Amy Wilentz New Yorker Sep 2010 20min Permalink
On the day of the earthquake, two men went into Haiti’s Soccer Federation headquarters. Only one came out.
Wright Thompson ESPN May 2010 20min Permalink