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1941-05-15

1941-05-15: (Élie Lescot Inaugurated as President, a Light-Skinned Mulatto Who Declared War on Germany, Supported American Wartime Agriculture, and Launched …

Haitian

1941-05-15: (Élie Lescot Inaugurated as President, a Light-Skinned Mulatto Who Declared War on Germany, Supported American Wartime Agriculture, and Launched a Campaign Against Vodou That Alienated the Black Masses): On May 15, 1941, Élie Lescot was inaugurated as president after Vincent resigned. Born on December 3, 1883, into a light-skinned mulatto family in Saint-Louis du Nord, Lescot had served as Haitian ambassador to both the Dominican Republic and the United States. An admirer of Roosevelt and his Good Neighbor Policy, Lescot declared war on Germany immediately after Pearl Harbor. Haiti played no military role in World War II beyond supplying the United States with raw materials and providing a base for the Coast Guard. Lescot’s government supported the Société Haïtienne-Américaine pour le Développement Agricole, an American agricultural program that expropriated Haitian peasant land for the production of rubber and sisal, causing food shortages that decreased his popularity among the rural poor. A devout Roman Catholic, Lescot attempted to suppress Vodou, further alienating the Black masses whose spiritual traditions the Catholic Church had been persecuting since the 1860 concordat. His sons enriched themselves from property confiscated from Germans during the war. Dominican dictator Trujillo’s revelation of massive bribes he had paid Lescot completed the destruction of his presidency.