Istwa Nou

Newspapers were raided and bombed through the spring of 1958. Georges Petit went to prison for what his paper printed, and so did Jacques Alexis. On 30 April a hut at Mahotieres near Carrefour blew up, and the government named it a bomb factory belonging to its two chief rivals. On 2 May the legislature voted Duvalier a state of siege, a curfew and censorship of the press. Louis Dejoie, who had run against him the year before, took refuge in the Mexican embassy and settled in Oriente province in Cuba, where he began recruiting among the 120,000 Haitians living there. The Jumelle brothers went into the hills. By midsummer, informers abroad were telling Port-au-Prince that an expedition was fitting out in Florida. On the night of 28 July the Molly C, a fifty five foot fishing boat out of Marathon Island, lay off Deluge north of Montrouis with three cashiered Haitian officers and five Americans hired at two thousand dollars each, three of them former deputy sheriffs. A peasant had already reported the boat.