Istwa Nou

Duvalier arrived with an empty treasury and decided that the United States would fill it. He found sympathetic listeners in Washington who could still describe him as a Caribbean democrat. He hired the consultants Klein and Saks for a 338,000 dollar survey of Haitian finances with no intention whatever of acting on it. By the end of 1961 he had taken 24.4 million dollars in outright grants, 7.2 million in technical assistance and 4 million in food, a four year total of 40.4 million, equal to two fifths of everything the United States had given Haiti in the previous quarter century. In 1960 American aid covered thirty percent of the Haitian budget, the third highest level anywhere in the world. Dedicating a coffee wharf built with American money in June 1960, Duvalier warned that Haiti had to choose between the two poles of attraction in the world, while his information minister suggested 150 million might settle it. At Punta del Este in 1962 the foreign minister gave a pro-Castro speech, then told Dean Rusk in the lobby that a poor country votes where its needs lie. Haiti voted with the Americans.