Werewolves in the Clubs

by Amy Wilentz | Nov 18, 2012

Many stories about Haiti don’t find a wider audience because they are so…. Haitian; hard to understand, dependent on a complicated base of knowledge about the place, somewhat impenetrable, really.

I recall that when I was working at Time magazine in New York, in the mid-1980s, we would get long “cables” from our valiant, tireless, far-flung Haiti correspondent, Bernard Diederich, who wrote the book Papa Doc and the Tonton Macoutes. Diederich’s cables would come clattering in over our machines, chk-chk-chking down the old-fashioned paper tracks, page after page.

A Small Comparison

by Amy Wilentz | Nov 3, 2012

The damage wrought by Hurricane Sandy has provided a clear lens through which to examine comparative media coverage of disaster.

Before the storm hurled itself across the East Coast, it had traveled through Haiti, where it killed at least 50 people and left thousands more homeless — this in a country still reeling from the devastation of the 2010 earthquake that killed perhaps 300,000 and left around 1.5 million homeless. If you read and watched the U.S. media, you would probably not know that Sandy had ever touched down in Haiti —  I looked hard for a story covering the Haitian casualties, and didn’t find one, although there was a lot of chatter on the Internet about Haiti and the storm.

National Palace and Hurricane Sandy

by Amy Wilentz | Oct 29, 2012

Here’s what remains of Haiti’s National Palace, which crumbled and broke into thirds and lurched toward the ground in the 2010 earthquake and now is finally being demolished with the help of JP/HRO, Sean Penn’s Haiti relief and reconstruction group. Work should be completed by the end of November. Interesting to note that the central frame of the shell of the Palace, sans grandiose domes and columns, greatly resembles the structure of a little Haitian kay, or village house. (not sure how to credit this photo!)

Rich Alleged Kidnapper, Rich Hostages

by Amy Wilentz | Oct 24, 2012

This is by far my favorite Haitian story ever to make the headlines since I began covering Haiti years ago. In my forthcoming book, Farewell, Fred Voodoo,  I speculate about why kidnapping stopped for many weeks after the earthquake. I posit that many kidnappers had been killed; that habits — so important to kidnap planning — had been disrupted; that kidnappers were too busy saving their nearest and dearest to rush out and take the Ns and Ds of others. Once rubble was somewhat cleared and you could manage to get a getaway car away, the kidnappings began again.