Tea at Trianon: A New Chapter in the Haitian Nightmare

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, March 14, 2024

A New Chapter in the Haitian Nightmare

From Theodore Dalrymple at The City Journal:

Anyone who has been to Haiti does not forget the experience. It is a beautiful, fascinating, tragic, and horrible place. The American writer, Herbert Gold, who lived there for part of his life, wrote a marvelous memoir, calling Haiti “the best nightmare on earth.” Haiti is the only country I have been to where starveling children have tried to snatch food from my plate, insinuating their stick-thin wrists through the grille that supposedly protected the restaurant’s customers.

And that was in the good old days, before the armed gangs took over Port-au-Prince, as they have now done. The city was always a deteriorating mess, with noisome slums and blackening garbage rotting uncollected (except by the vultures) in the middle of the streets. You thought it couldn’t get worse, but if Haitian history proves one thing, it is that things can always get worse and probably will. It is as if the Haitians were determined to show Gerard Manley Hopkins was right when he wrote, “No worst, there is none.”

Astonishing though it may seem, I remember the days when it was perfectly safe to change money in the streets of Port-au-Prince with open air money-changers. They gave you wads of notes in front of passersby, but you were not in danger of robbery. Back then, I went through the Cité Soleil, probably the worst slum in the Western hemisphere, without feeling endangered (a journey brilliantly captured by the Haitian writer, Gary Victor). Now it would be suicidal to undertake such a trip. Thanks to the takeover of the city by competing gangs, people do not go outside except under the direst necessity. It is said that 15,000 people have fled their homes in the last week.

It isn’t only Port-au-Prince that is affected. One of the most clearly demarcated borders in the world, that between the Dominican Republic and Haiti (green on one side and brown on the other), is under siege from fleeing Haitians numbering (so it is estimated) 200,000. There is no love lost between the two nations, and reports have surfaced of fleeing Haitians getting beaten back with cruelty and ferocity by the Dominican forces. This will raise the specter of the massacre in 1937, when the Dominican army, under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, killed some 15,000–30,000 Haitians living near the border on the Dominican side of the Dejabón River, known to Haitians as the Rivière du Massacre. With so much going on to distract the world’s attention, another massacre might be under preparation. (Read more.)