30 April to 15 May 1963 · Haitianspan
Duvalier tells the OAS that he is the personification of Haiti
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The commission of the Organisation of American States reached Port-au-Prince on 30 April 1963 and found the city packed with a hundred and fifty thousand peasants brought in for the occasion, with drums going and vaksin sounding. Duvalier sat without moving or blinking for a quarter of an hour while a militiaman with a cocked weapon stood behind each ambassador. He then spoke to them in Creole and went on answering their French in Creole. A man capable of embodying an ideal appears once in forty years, he told them, and he was the personification of Haiti, no bullet capable of frightening him had been manufactured, he took orders from no foreigner, he was continuing the work of Toussaint Louverture and Dessalines. Then he walked them onto a balcony to look at the crowd. Washington had orders ready to land marines if his term ended on 15 May in the massacre his ministers were promising. On 15 May the roadblocks vanished, the radio played Choucoune, and the president held a calm press conference among fresh roses.
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