November to December 1985 · Haitianspan
A tanker sails away unpaid and the country works out what that means
›Read the full entryClose
Gonaives rose again at the end of November 1985, after riot troops shot three schoolchildren dead. The crowds carried signs reading down with misery and long live the army. Leopards restored an uneasy order, and the president ordered Radio Soleil off the air, which changed little, since the news travelled by mouth. In December Michele Duvalier chartered a Concorde and flew to Paris with friends to do her Christmas shopping, spending 1.7 million dollars on furs and jewellery. The treasury was then unable to pay for a tanker of petroleum lying at Port-au-Prince. The captain weighed anchor and left with the cargo, and as the taptaps stopped and the generators died Haitians worked out that the family had drained the country in the literal sense as well as the other one. Archbishop Ligonde, the first lady's uncle, used his Christmas sermon to say yes to liberty and justice and no to lies and servitude. In January the houngan Max Beauvoir told the president, who had finally consulted the spirits, that they had wanted him gone for nearly a year.
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.