1934 · Haitianyear only
The marines take a payroll worth a tenth of the budget with them
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Comparison with 1804 was unavoidable and it did not hold. The Haiti of 1804 was ruined and shunned. The Haiti of 1934 was solvent, built up and treated politely by its neighbours, and it had defeated nobody, since the occupiers went home undefeated. Power this time sat with the light skinned elite. Several questions were left standing. The national bank was owned in New York, which no nationalist could tolerate indefinitely. The Garde had a Black commandant, mostly light skinned officers and overwhelmingly Black rank and file, plus a new presidential guard whose commander told Calixte that requests to the president should come through him first. The departing occupation took away a payroll of seven hundred thousand dollars, a tenth of the national budget, and the country's only brewery shut down and spent the next forty years making ice. In November Rafael Trujillo arrived on a state visit with officers carrying submachine guns and offered Vincent the use of his navy.
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