After the Cuban revolution the Caribbean became a theatre of superpower rivalry, and Haiti, forty miles from Cuba and astride the Windward Passage, recovered a strategic value it had lost. Gerlus follows what that meant for relations between Washington and Port-au-Prince from about 1960 to the middle of the 1980s.

Successive American administrations, judging containment more urgent than the conduct of their allies, treated the Duvaliers as a bulwark and set aside what they knew about repression. The Duvaliers understood the bargain and worked it. The father invoked a communist threat largely of his own manufacture to draw military and financial support; the son priced his cooperation openly, warning of Cuban designs in order to extract weapons and aid.

The dependence this created cut both ways. By the Reagan years Haiti's reliance on American assistance gave Washington the leverage to obtain an interdiction agreement aimed at Haitians leaving by boat.