Throughout the political unrest that has long gripped Haiti, one of the few islands of relative calm was the Hotel Oloffson, an ornate gingerbread mansion that hosted generations of tourists, journalists, celebrities, foreign-aid workers and diplomats.

The gang-affiliated arsonists who burned the hillside Port-au-Prince landmark to the ground earlier this month destroyed more than a unique hostelry. They set the torch to a place where, for better or worse, Haitian culture and political life converged with world travelers, artists and globalists seeking to make sense of a nation nearly opaque to outsiders.

The complete collapse of Haiti’s government — no elections in years and its president assassinated in 2021 — and the disappearance of civil society institutions in the face of increasin

See Full Page