1931, August – 1933, August 7: (The Désoccupation: Haitianization, Colonel Little’s Flagpole, the 1932 Constitution, and the Executive Agreement That Ended t…

1931, August – 1933, August 7: (The Désoccupation: Haitianization, Colonel Little’s Flagpole, the 1932 Constitution, and the Executive Agreement That Ended the Occupation): The first step toward désoccupation was complete Haitianization in August 1931 of the Travaux Publics, Service de Santé, and the broken-backed Service Technique. For the first time since 1918, Haiti could enact its own laws without submission to the American legation, and the Banque could again pay government mandats without the visa of LaRue. Colonel Little, back in Haiti as the popular and tactful brigade commander, not only put a final end to martial law but personally ordered that the tall flagpole at the casernes, from which the Stars and Stripes still flew, be shortened until it was lower than the palace flagpole and the Haitian flag. The essential final steps that remained were negotiation of a treaty to replace the odious predecessor of 1915 and the drafting of a new constitution to supersede that of 1918 with its smell of 1915. The constitution came easier than the treaty: while presented as liberal and de-Americanized, the 1932 draft perpetuated Borno’s 1927 amendments and further concentrated power in the Palais — ironically, with cosmetic changes in language it even retained the once-controversial section permitting blan to acquire and own land, though few had done so anyway. There was a great row in which, on a tide of nationalism, the assembly rejected a treaty that had been signed by Dana Munro and Foreign Minister Albert Blanchet. The way out was to renegotiate the essentials — Haitianization of the Garde, standdown of the Marines, and future fiscal controls — in terms least offensive to national pride and to set out the result not as a treaty subject to the caprice of press and politicians but as an executive agreement between the two presidents. Norman Armour, the new American minister, was able to get through such an agreement, signed on August 7, 1933, which in effect ended the occupation. Meanwhile the désoccupation had become one long wrangle in which it seemed increasingly advantageous to the Haitians to provoke continuous controversy because they knew they could make the exercise of American treaty rights profitless and bothersome — a process that caused a disillusioned Munro to write Washington in June 1931 that he could not see that it was any part of their duty toward Haiti to assist the government in power by lending themselves as a target for abuse.