Trujillo funds killer teams and an invasion column against Estime

Rafael Trujillo held that the Dominican Republic could never be safe unless it controlled the whole island, and he interfered in Port-au-Prince repeatedly. His secret police chief, Anselmo Paulino, had a Haitian wife and had served as minister in Haiti. When Trujillo proposed sending him back in 1946, Estime refused, and the refusal became a personal grievance. By 1949 Trujillo was broadcasting attacks over La Voz Dominicana, accusing Estime of crimes and of keeping a mistress and four children in Paris, and Port-au-Prince radio answered in the same register. More than insults crossed the border. A 1950 investigation confirmed that Trujillo supplied money and weapons for what became known as the Dupuy-Roland plot. Teams were to enter Port-au-Prince, kill Colonel Magloire, the police chief Major Prosper and the president, set the city alight, and meet an invasion column that Astrel Roland, a former Garde colonel living in Ciudad Trujillo, would lead across the Cul-de-Sac from Jimani. On 26 December 1949 the Dominican ambassador in Port-au-Prince gave the whole plan to Estime's foreign minister.

French rule in North Africa ended in two places within a single year. In Morocco the nationalist protest was led by Sultan Sidi Muhammad, and fighting in the Spanish-held part of the territory added pressure the French could not absorb. They withdrew in 1956. Tunisia arrived at the same point in the same year. Its Neo-Destour party had spent the early 1950s pulling itself apart in a quarrel between Bourguiba, who wanted terms, and Ben Yusuf, who wanted more than terms. The French tried force against the protest and inducements to the politicians. Bourguiba's side won the internal fight and took the country to full independence. Richard Reid argues that these movements had advantages their neighbours to the south lacked. Islam supplied a long tradition of political argument. The territories had borders and identities centuries deep. A rising pan-Arabism connected them to the Middle East and to a world larger than the continent. Nationalists below the Sahara had to assemble all three of those things while they organised.

On 29 June 1950 the United States played England at Belo Horizonte in the World Cup. England had some of the best players in the world and the American side were part timers. The only goal of the match was a diving header by Joe Gaetjens, born in Port-au-Prince, who had moved to New York in 1947 and who turned out for the Americans under a rule admitting men who had declared an intention to become citizens. It is still the most famous upset the tournament has produced. Gaetjens went home to Haiti afterwards and ran a dry cleaning business. In July 1964 the Tonton Macoutes took him away and he was never seen again. His brothers had joined an exile movement against Francois Duvalier. No charge was laid and no body was recovered. The man who scored the goal Americans still talk about was killed by the secret police of the country he was born in.

Mrs. N. farmed with her husband on about four acres near Brown's Town in Jamaica and had five children, four of them still at home. She decided the local market paid too little and began travelling to Kingston. Each journey took planning. She borrowed or saved capital, guessed at demand, bought eggs, avocados, soursop, pumpkins and fowls in her own district, loaded them on a donkey and met a truck on the road on Sunday afternoon. Her daughter walked the donkey home and took charge of the baby. The truck cost twelve shillings out and six back. The market opened at midnight and charged a gate fee and a handcart fee of one shilling sixpence each. More than a pound sterling went on transport and fees before she made a single sale, and about three pounds more had gone on the produce itself. She chose light goods with a high unit price because fares rose with bulk. Her capital was often borrowed from market butchers at a shilling per pound for three days. Losses on a few successive trips could end her business.