Istwa Nou

Michele Bennett met Jean-Claude Duvalier at College Bird in 1962. Her father Ernest was a mulatre merchant whose dealings had earned him a prison term under Francois Duvalier, and he sent her abroad to school, where she married a son of Alix Pasquet, one of the officers who tried to overthrow Duvalier in 1958. She had two children with him, worked as a secretary in the New York garment district, and returned to Haiti in 1978 separated. The president fell hard. When his mother had macoutes drive the young woman to the airport to put her on a plane, Michele reached him on a private line, the order was cancelled, and he told Simone Duvalier what he thought of it. Officers who tried to limit her access to him were dismissed. They married on 27 May 1980 in the cathedral, the earlier marriage set aside by Archbishop Ligonde, who was her uncle. Two thousand invitations, imported champagne, three florists flown in from Miami, five million dollars. In the poor quarters people watched on government television sets and asked why he could not have married one of them.