1946, December – 1948, December 29: (Haiti’s Christmas List: The Financial Mission to Foggy Bottom, Ambassador Charles’s Bitter Words, Hibbert’s Flare-Up, an…

1946, December – 1948, December 29: (Haiti’s Christmas List: The Financial Mission to Foggy Bottom, Ambassador Charles’s Bitter Words, Hibbert’s Flare-Up, and the $4 Million for the Artibonite): In the days of Frédéric Marcelin they would have gone to Paris, but France of 1946 was impoverished and dreary, so in December a Haitian financial mission pled its case in Foggy Bottom, where the State Department had just moved. The Christmas list was simple enough: a moratorium on or forgiveness of the 1938 Ex-Im loan, U.S. credits for an assortment of projects, and a moratorium on bond amortization — that they were seeking all this at a time when Haiti’s financial position was stronger than in many years was not thought a fair or relevant rejoinder by the State Department or the unsympathetic money men of the Ex-Im Bank. After the mission returned empty-handed, Haitian Ambassador Joseph D. Charles bitterly told an American newsman that every time the United States had tried to help, they had increased Haiti’s poverty and confusion instead of lessening it. In this recriminatory spirit, Lucien Hibbert — whom Estimé had appointed rector of the university — came to Washington for another try in September 1947, asking the Ex-Im Bank for $20 million and being immediately told that any such money must be conditioned on a well-justified project. Hibbert flared back that such an approach was impossible for the Haitian government, and at the end of the unproductive mission burst out that the Bank was slamming the door in Haiti’s face, and flounced home. All was not lost: Norman Armour, old Haitian hand now risen to the high places of the State Department, set out to smooth feelings and find ways to help. The upshot, resulting from less stormy and better-focused negotiations, was a better Christmas gift — on December 29, 1948, the Ex-Im Bank gave Haiti $4 million on easy terms for a project with a long future: the development of the Artibonite Valley as a source of power and agriculture.