“We have a bunch of gangsters, thugs, punks, thieves, and drug smugglers running the country.” These words were spoken to me 36 years ago by Richard Morse, owner of the Hotel Oloffson, as we looked down from a balcony at Port-au-Prince, the fetid capital of Haiti.

The Oloffson, built in the 19th century as a presidential residence, came to the world’s attention in Graham Greene’s 1965 novel, The Comedians. It then attracted celebrities such as Mick Jagger, Jackie Onassis, and Elizabeth Taylor who, like me, were drawn by curiosity — a desire to see Haiti’s sinister mix of tyranny, poverty, voodoo, violence, and general dysfunction a short flight into the Caribbean from Miami.