1960 · Haitianyear only
Duvalier's men wreck Bellegarde's library and scar a doctor for life
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Dantes Bellegarde was the senior historian of Haiti, a diplomat and a writer whose name stood for the old liberal elite of Port-au-Prince. Early in 1960 the door of his small house full of books was forced open and he found himself looking at a Sten gun. The men holding it were militiamen of the government, and he had no need to ask who had sent them. They went through his papers, pulled his books down, tore the telephone out of the wall, cuffed him, and walked out over the wreckage without saying anything. In the same season Doctor Elie Villard was beaten until his head was split and his nose broken, and he carried the scars until he died. Nobody ever told him the charge. Francois Duvalier had been president for two years and was consolidating. The purpose of the exercise was not to find anything out. It was to establish that no reputation in the country worked as a shield.
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