Amy Wilentz is the author of Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter from Haiti.
32 min listen
This week: composer James MacMillan reads his diary on the beautiful music of football (01:11); Sebastian Morello tells us about the deep connection between hunting and Christianity (07:17); Amy Wilentz explains how Vodou fuels Haiti’s gang culture (16:14); The Spectator’s literary editor Sam Leith reviews The Virago Book of Friendship (22:38); and – from the arts pages – The Spectator’s theatre
For a politician known for his ability to shock, Donald Trump managed to outdo himself with his baseless claim during last year’s presidential debate that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing, butchering and eating household pets. Regardless of this racist lie – new Haitian immigrants to Ohio do not eat people’s pets and are
Haiti seems to be on the verge of complete collapse. In the past few days, the country’s gangs – which already controlled 80 per cent of the capital city of Port-au-Prince – have waged a serious assault against the government while the de facto prime minister Ariel Henry is in Kenya. On Saturday there was a mass prison break, with around 5,000
There was a time when Haiti was at the centre of the New World. It was one of the richest islands on the globe, producing cane sugar for the sweet tooth of Europe. It cultivated coffee, cotton and rice, and it produced rum. The Pearl of the Antilles, the island stood at the gateway to
In Haiti you have to be careful which founding father you admire. The average Haitian will think first of Toussaint Louverture when talking about their island’s revolt against France in the late 18th century, and about the original idea of a full-fledged Black republic: Toussaint the stable, the intense, the military genius, courageous, careful. But
