Istwa Nou

Frederic Marcelin had suggested the centenary be marked by pardoning every Haitian exile. On 1 January 1904, while the ceremonies at Gonaives were still going on, soldiers surrounded a house in Port-au-Prince where about thirty men were meeting and shot General Maxi Momplaisir with his son and his coachman. General Maxime Jacques broke a leg getting away, reached asylum, and gave himself up when the authorities seized his wife; he was shot in bed. The American consul reported that defence lawyers at the trials could not be heard over drumming and that every accused man was condemned. Then came the apparatus: curfews at Jeremie and Jacmel, permits to leave the capital, copies of all telegraph traffic delivered to the palace, letters opened at the post office, and in 1905 three thousand dollars paid to a New York detective agency to watch Haitian exiles abroad. The same president backed two capable ministers and tried to revive rural schooling, in a country with roughly 654,000 children of school age and 30,000 enrolled anywhere. In 1905 he revoked the charter of the national bank, which he called the rogue bank, and carried on with no bank at all.