Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
age of Napoleon, everyone was at war with someone, making these letters easy to come by.
The most notorious privateers were Frenchmen chased out of Santo Domingo or Cuba, sail-
ors who preyed on Spanish galleons. Such men—many burned with hatred for Spain—could
secure letters from a half dozen countries, but most sailed under the flag of Colombia, where
Simón Bolívar was in revolt.
Baratariaboomedin1808whentheAmericanCongressbannedtheimportationofAfrican
slaves. From then on, all slaves would be bred (terrible verb) domestically. This was done
partly to curb the nation's addiction to slavery and partly to protect America from foreign
ideologies, the notions of freedom and revolt that might, accidentally, in the way of cholera,
be imported from a state like Haiti. But there were many in the South who preferred African-
raised slaves for reasons that strike us as obscene: because they were more docile, stronger,
darker; because, uncorrupted by America, they worked harder.
It's not unlike what happened in America during Prohibition. Here was a group of crimin-
als—gangsters in one case, buccaneers in the other—who were disorganized, smalltime, in it
foraquickscore.Andherewasabusiness,legitimate andthrivingoneminute,then,withthe
stroke of a pen, turned over to crooks. Anyone who partook in the African slave trade was
nowanoutlaw.Inthisway,anaboveboardbusinessbecametheprovinceofpirates.Menwho
might have otherwise reformed or faded away—many of the gangsters of New York were on
their way out, too, before Prohibition—now had a big-time industry to run. Soon after the
law's passage, privateers began preying on slow, fat-bellied ships heading for Cuba. They at-
tacked, then carried the human cargo back to Bargainland. This meant serious money: sable
coats, silk eye patches, a diamond stud for each ear. The result was more pirates, more pirate
ships, more pirate guns, more pirate violence. It was a gang war like the gang war between
Al Capone and Bugs Moran. Who will control the North Side? Who will control Barataria?
It was hurting business. Planters and merchants were afraid to go to the bayous to make a
purchase. This was a moment that demanded a leader, a strongman who could bring order to
the pirate islands.
The origins of Jean Lafitte are difficult to pin down. Like a hero in a folk song, he seemed to
arise from nowhere, fully formed, with teeth and claws, his mind buzzing with ideas. Some
believed him the son of a sailor who stowed away to see the watery places when he was 15;
some believed him the son of a nobleman whose parents were rounded up in the terror of
the French Revolution; he went to the Caribbean because it was as far away as he could go.
Some said he was raised in the Pyrenees. Some said he was raised in a French town on the
Spanish border. According to William Davis, who wrote a book on the subject, Lafitte was
born in 1782 in a fishing village on the Atlantic. As a young man, he traveled with his older
brother, Pierre—they were as close as brothers get—to the colonies as part of the migration
of French who fled the Revolution. In one story, they alight in Santo Domingo, where they
