1957 to 1971 · Haitianspan
Peligre finally makes power and the capital swells toward a million
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By 1971 money had started to move again. The finance minister and the head of the bank knew that foreign donors would not reopen the taps while tax receipts kept vanishing into the unaudited tobacco monopoly, and their attempts at reform ran straight into Luckner Cambronne, Simone Duvalier and the whole militia structure that the monopoly had been feeding. There was more to work with than before. The new jet airport brought tourists back, including a new kind sold package deals by New York agents. Twelve hundred dollars bought two days in Haiti, a lawyer, a hotel and a divorce decree to hand to a spouse who had not been consulted. Haitians abroad sent home about 14 million dollars in 1971 alone, and the country ran its first balance of payments surplus in years. The generators at Peligre, begun under Magloire, came on line in July and the chronic blackouts ended. Foreign investors put up factories on the edge of the capital for the cheap labour, some 7,000 jobs by midyear. Port-au-Prince had held 200,000 people in 1957 and was approaching a million.
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