1964 to 1966 · Haitianspan
Rome and Washington both come back, and the tobacco monopoly keeps paying
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On 22 May 1964 an American ambassador presented himself in Port-au-Prince for the first time in four years, and Lyndon Johnson told the new Haitian envoy in Washington that he looked forward to close cooperation. The economic pressure Kennedy had applied began to lift. The Inter-American Development Bank found money for waterworks and the United States Navy resumed shore leave. Foreign aid ran above five million dollars a year. Duvalier was separately taking in about ten million a year through accounts that appeared in no budget, fed by the Regie du Tabac, a tobacco monopoly grown to cover cement, flour, sugar, milk, cars, textiles, matches and much else, with the cash moving through a private bank. No government or lender ever challenged those accounts in public. In late 1965 Duvalier opened talks with the Vatican and named his price, which was a Haitian bench of bishops in place of the French one. Paul VI agreed in August 1966, lifted the excommunication and sent a nuncio back.
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