Istwa Nou

The new government inherited an empty treasury, dead tourism, coffee production down by more than two fifths and American aid programmes closed. Before October was out the supporters of Dejoie called a general strike, and it broke in their hands. Heavy men in dark glasses with pistols under their jackets persuaded shopkeepers to stay open. Where persuasion failed, cutting tools opened the steel shutters and police invited passers-by to help themselves under a law permitting the redistribution of goods to needy persons. Nobody tried the business strike on Duvalier again. Inside two months the penitentiary and Fort Dimanche held at least a hundred political prisoners, with as many people again in hiding or inside embassies. Clement Barbot ran this. In January 1958 his men kidnapped, beat and sexually assaulted the feminist editor Yvonne Hakim-Rimpel. Kebreau, who had installed the president, missed the signals. Twenty of his key officers were posted to remote garrisons, and on 12 March 1958 he heard Fort National fire thirteen guns for someone else and drove straight to the Dominican embassy.