21 April 1971 · Haitian
Everyone agrees the boy will fall and nobody can arrange it
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When Francois Duvalier died his son was nineteen, and the Haitian elite, dark-skinned and light alike, began talking politics again after years in which the habit had been beaten out of them. Almost everyone agreed Jean-Claude would be removed. The question was when. The only earlier Haitian ruler who publicly named an heir was Henry Christophe, and Christophe's son was bayoneted and left on a dunghill within a day of his father's death. The men appointed to guide the boy each worked alone, because Papa Doc had spent fourteen years making sure nobody below him coordinated with anybody else. Anyone who had shown doubt about the succession was already gone. General Constant failed to salute Jean-Claude in November and lost the chief of staff's post to Claude Raymond. Clovis Desinor questioned handing the revolution to a teenager and lost the finance ministry. The regime was too weak to govern and too well arranged to overthrow. It lasted fifteen more years.
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