Oloffson in Ashes, Haiti Mourning Memory, and I, in Revolt!
By La Rédaction · Port-au-Prince
· 4 min read · Updated 24 April 2026
Translated from French — AI-assisted and reviewed by the editorial team. The French version is authoritative. Read the original · About our translation policy
To Samy Janvier, Roberson Alphonse, Jen Aelle Yenna,
To Doctors Sabine Lamour, Michele Oriol, Sauveur Pierre Etienne, Thomas Lalime and Roromme Chantal!
Lunise dit Chouloute,
Tiake,
Herve St Preux,
Jacques Yvon,
Daniel,
Ceph,
Jean Yves,
Geraldy,
Tanounouch,
Fito,
Fòfòy,
Ti Carme, older sister of Rolls Lainé, who passed away last week! To Yvelino Cantave in the name of those early adult years, To you too, despite myself! To Ricardo Germain, Mayelle Montilus, hopes of tomorrow! Oloffson! To describe what the Oloffson Hotel represented in Haiti is to attempt to translate the soul of a country into architecture, music, and sighs. It was much more than a hotel. It was a part of our collective consciousness, a living memory, a sacred space of cultural survival. It was, at once, our tropical Eiffel Tower, our Waldorf Astoria with flavors of ginger and rum, but above all, our sentinel, our agora, our temple of creation and protest. When I called Daniel, he didn't mince words: Yves, listen, "The Oloffson Hotel has been burned down." At first, I thought it was an image, a metaphor perhaps, like those in nightmares. But no. Damn. They really burned it down. And it's not just a building that collapsed, but an entire part of our memory, an artery of our imagination, a scar on our history. This place, this beating heart of Port-au-Prince, was nestled at the crossroads of seven streets: Saint Gérard, Christophe, Chili, Capois, Cadet Jérémie, Titus, and that other one, modest, erased, near Collège Tertulien Leclerc. This quadrilateral of memory condensed all that was best in us: rebellious intelligence, free art, bohemian spirit, tenderness in struggle. The Oloffson was a crossroads of cultures, a place of passage for lucid and untamed souls. Graham Greene found inspiration for The Comedians there, and Dany Laferrière sometimes lingered with his nervous nonchalance. But it was also a sanctuary of musical resistance. It was there that RAM, the mythical band, played its enchanting tunes, Ibo Lele, Mayanman, this ritual, electric, rooted music, which can even be heard in a Denzel Washington film, The Manchurian Candidate. This speaks to the universal echo of a place that some would have wanted to reduce to a mere dilapidated postcard. But what few people know, or pretend to forget, is that Bill Clinton himself spent his honeymoon there. Yes, the same Clinton who, years later, would advocate an economic policy in Haiti that would contribute to killing our local rice in favor of importing subsidized rice. Irony of fate or premeditation of a revisited colonial project? Perhaps it was there, in the softness of a Haitian sheet, that the idea germinated to crush our food sovereignty, to make our peasants bend, to transform us into passive clients. So what remains?
A pile of ashes.
Ashes that stick to the throat. Ashes they want us to swallow as we swallow oblivion. I protest.
I am in revolt.
I am on fire. Because we are not burned with impunity. Because the Oloffson, even consumed, survives in every step we take in the wounded city. It is in the song of the vendors, in the lament of the drum, in the tired but proud gazes of old wandering poets. It is in our refusal to forget. And I say this:
They burned Oloffson as one burns a symbol, as one sabotages a source, as one assassinates an inconvenient memory. They want nothing to remain of what we once were, no dreams, no songs, no desires for a possible elsewhere. But we will not let it happen. Stand up, my friends.
Stand up, my sisters and brothers. We must rebuild not the hotel, but what it embodied:
Untamed beauty.
Free speech.
Living music.
Lucid thought.
The refusal to disappear. Let them burn our walls, our archives, our books, our hotels… Let them assassinate our Presidents, let them know that our souls are flammable with hope. While the Oloffson still smokes, while its ashes fall upon our shoulders, let us raise our heads and walk.
This is a call to resistance.
To memory that refuses exile.
To the country that will rise again through culture, through struggle, through love. Oloffson is dead. Long live rebellious Haiti. Yves Lafortune
6/7/25
To Doctors Sabine Lamour, Michele Oriol, Sauveur Pierre Etienne, Thomas Lalime and Roromme Chantal!
Lunise dit Chouloute,
Tiake,
Herve St Preux,
Jacques Yvon,
Daniel,
Ceph,
Jean Yves,
Geraldy,
Tanounouch,
Fito,
Fòfòy,
Ti Carme, older sister of Rolls Lainé, who passed away last week! To Yvelino Cantave in the name of those early adult years, To you too, despite myself! To Ricardo Germain, Mayelle Montilus, hopes of tomorrow! Oloffson! To describe what the Oloffson Hotel represented in Haiti is to attempt to translate the soul of a country into architecture, music, and sighs. It was much more than a hotel. It was a part of our collective consciousness, a living memory, a sacred space of cultural survival. It was, at once, our tropical Eiffel Tower, our Waldorf Astoria with flavors of ginger and rum, but above all, our sentinel, our agora, our temple of creation and protest. When I called Daniel, he didn't mince words: Yves, listen, "The Oloffson Hotel has been burned down." At first, I thought it was an image, a metaphor perhaps, like those in nightmares. But no. Damn. They really burned it down. And it's not just a building that collapsed, but an entire part of our memory, an artery of our imagination, a scar on our history. This place, this beating heart of Port-au-Prince, was nestled at the crossroads of seven streets: Saint Gérard, Christophe, Chili, Capois, Cadet Jérémie, Titus, and that other one, modest, erased, near Collège Tertulien Leclerc. This quadrilateral of memory condensed all that was best in us: rebellious intelligence, free art, bohemian spirit, tenderness in struggle. The Oloffson was a crossroads of cultures, a place of passage for lucid and untamed souls. Graham Greene found inspiration for The Comedians there, and Dany Laferrière sometimes lingered with his nervous nonchalance. But it was also a sanctuary of musical resistance. It was there that RAM, the mythical band, played its enchanting tunes, Ibo Lele, Mayanman, this ritual, electric, rooted music, which can even be heard in a Denzel Washington film, The Manchurian Candidate. This speaks to the universal echo of a place that some would have wanted to reduce to a mere dilapidated postcard. But what few people know, or pretend to forget, is that Bill Clinton himself spent his honeymoon there. Yes, the same Clinton who, years later, would advocate an economic policy in Haiti that would contribute to killing our local rice in favor of importing subsidized rice. Irony of fate or premeditation of a revisited colonial project? Perhaps it was there, in the softness of a Haitian sheet, that the idea germinated to crush our food sovereignty, to make our peasants bend, to transform us into passive clients. So what remains?
A pile of ashes.
Ashes that stick to the throat. Ashes they want us to swallow as we swallow oblivion. I protest.
I am in revolt.
I am on fire. Because we are not burned with impunity. Because the Oloffson, even consumed, survives in every step we take in the wounded city. It is in the song of the vendors, in the lament of the drum, in the tired but proud gazes of old wandering poets. It is in our refusal to forget. And I say this:
They burned Oloffson as one burns a symbol, as one sabotages a source, as one assassinates an inconvenient memory. They want nothing to remain of what we once were, no dreams, no songs, no desires for a possible elsewhere. But we will not let it happen. Stand up, my friends.
Stand up, my sisters and brothers. We must rebuild not the hotel, but what it embodied:
Untamed beauty.
Free speech.
Living music.
Lucid thought.
The refusal to disappear. Let them burn our walls, our archives, our books, our hotels… Let them assassinate our Presidents, let them know that our souls are flammable with hope. While the Oloffson still smokes, while its ashes fall upon our shoulders, let us raise our heads and walk.
This is a call to resistance.
To memory that refuses exile.
To the country that will rise again through culture, through struggle, through love. Oloffson is dead. Long live rebellious Haiti. Yves Lafortune
6/7/25
