Jon Lee Anderson — "A Land Held Hostage" (The New Yorker, 2023) Full citation: Jon Lee Anderson, "A Land Held Hostage," The New Yorker, July 24, 2023, pp. 42–53. https://w.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/24/a-land-held-hostage

Jon Lee Anderson — "A Land Held Hostage" (The New Yorker, 2023) Full citation: Jon Lee Anderson, "A Land Held Hostage," The New Yorker, July 24, 2023, pp. 42–53. https://w.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/24/a-land-held-hostage Type: Investigative journalism / dispatch (Letter from Port-au-Prince) Published: July 17–24, 2023 (issue date July 24, 2023) Period covered: Spring–Summer 2023, with historical context on the post-2021 gang crisis Summary Jon Lee Anderson's dispatch from Port-au-Prince — published in The New Yorker as a "Letter from Port-au-Prince" — documents Haiti's security collapse from the ground, centering on the epidemic of kidnapping and the autonomy of major gang coalitions in a country "overrun by gangs and neglected by rich allies." The piece opens with the story of Ralph Senecal, owner of a private ambulance company in Port-au-Prince, who was abducted while passing through Croix-des-Bouquets by members of the gang 400 Mawozo ("the 400 Simpletons" in Haitian Creole) and held with approximately thirty other hostages in extreme conditions.