1950 to 1953 · Haitianspan
Peligre, three hundred miles of road and a forty million dollar plan
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Paul Magloire signed a Point Four agreement with the United States in July 1950 covering soil conservation, cattle, irrigation, drainage and sanitation. He took over the Artibonite scheme that Estime had begun and borrowed fourteen million dollars from the Export Import Bank, adding six million of Haiti's own, to build a dam at Peligre two hundred and twenty five feet high. Finished, it would irrigate eighty thousand acres and eventually deliver forty thousand kilowatts. He planned three hundred miles of road, including blacktop from Port-au-Prince to Cap-Haitien, and seven million dollars of new wharves at the Cap. All of it went into a five year plan costed at forty million dollars. Foreign capital was courted and some of it came, with Reynolds Metals opening bauxite mines at Miragoane in 1953. Magloire also broke the unions. He shut the Parti Socialiste Populaire in 1951 for striking against American firms, closed Fignole's MOP with it, and silenced both their papers.
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