August to September 1963 · Haitianspan
A severed head is packed in ice, flown to the palace and questioned
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The Barbot rising had come from men raised inside the regime and had frightened Duvalier more than anything before or after it. What followed came from outside and did less damage. General Cantave trained two hundred and ten men in the Dominican Republic and sent them across in a series of small raids through August and September 1963, against Fort Liberte, Ouanaminthe, Mont Organise and Terrier Rouge. Most were betrayed in advance and none carried enough ammunition to hold any ground. The last attempt was a frontal attack on the barracks at Ouanaminthe on 22 September. Captain Blucher Philogenes was killed in it, and on the president's own instructions his head was cut off, packed in a bucket of ice and flown to the National Palace, where Duvalier put questions to the spirit of the dead man with an oungan beside him. He then cleared a strip three miles deep along the Dominican border, burning huts and driving off livestock, and ordered anyone found inside it shot.
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