Travel: Rebuilding Paradise

After Hugo With the high season fast approaching, the battered Caribbean rushes to be ready

What happens to a land beloved for its beauty when the beauty is ripped away? The northeastern islands of the Caribbean, ringed by sugary beaches, plush with unlikely flowers, inspiring rummy tropical dreams, have become the American paradise. Even the license plates say so. Two months ago, when Hurricane Hugo mowed across the islands from Guadeloupe to Puerto Rico, it turned a landscape that was achingly lovely into one that was painfully bleak. In the case of St. Croix, where a large bomb could scarcely have done more damage, the looting and disorder that followed were as terrifying as the wicked...

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