July 1971 to March 1972 · Haitianspan
The first palace fight sends the president's sister to Paris
›Read the full entryClose
With Papa Doc gone, nobody regulated the flow of patronage and the fighting started within months. In late July 1971 Luckner Cambronne had a cousin of Max Dominique arrested for forging passports. Marie-Denise Duvalier, serving as her brother's private secretary, demanded the man's release and Cambronne's dismissal. Jean-Claude asked his mother and did as she said: Marie-Denise and her husband left for Paris, where Dominique resumed his ambassadorship. Her duties passed to Auguste Douyon, a school friend of the president known as Ti Pouche, who handled everything personal from banking to procuring women. Jean-Claude began going out with little escort or none, racing his cars at night on the Petionville and Delmas roads. Within a year of taking office he had an ulcer. The first year's books looked good: ninety thousand tourists, eight million dollars in aid, and a foreign press that had decided to be fair. In March 1972 Cambronne went to Washington with a shopping list for arms.
A code like HT-WIB-000044 is a bates number. It marks one page of our stamped scan of the book, so the same page can be found again by anyone working from the same copy. Open one to see every entry drawn from that page.