1950, October 8–10: (The Election of Magloire: Papa Legba Gets Three Votes, Fignolé Told Only the Army and the Elite Count, and Newsweek’s Verdict): Magloire…

1950, October 8–10: (The Election of Magloire: Papa Legba Gets Three Votes, Fignolé Told Only the Army and the Elite Count, and Newsweek’s Verdict): Magloire’s only serious opposition — fierce but limited — came from the communists marshaled by Néré Numa and Georges Petit. Even Fignolé, fire-eater though he was, knew which way the wind was blowing: when he began to spout about the will of the people, Magloire cheerfully replied in Creole that in this country there were only two forces that counted, the army and the elite. The sole opposing candidate, an obscure architect running as Estimé’s executor, never had a chance against the confidence and bonhomie that radiated from the handsome, broad-shouldered soldier circulating about the country in well-cut civilian clothes. With Church, army, elite, and very discreetly the American embassy behind him, Magloire could hardly lose. On Election Day, despite rains that flooded towns and roads, people trudged through mud or rode burros to over 600 polling places strictly supervised by the army under the 1930 rules that had served so well. Returns from Port-au-Prince told the story: Magloire 25,679, Fénélon Alphonse 7, Papa Legba 3. On October 10, Magloire was pronounced winner by ninety-nine percent of the vote — Estimé’s men, most of whom had boycotted the polls, muttered predictable recriminations. Newsweek observed that there was little doubt the one-sided result reflected popular opinion, that Magloire was far and away the most popular man on the island among all classes, and that he seemed even to have transcended the rivalry between the Negro masses and the mulatto aristocracy which was the traditional dividing line in Haitian politics. The three votes for Papa Legba — the lwa of the crossroads, guardian of thresholds and opener of paths — constituted perhaps the most theologically precise ballot ever cast in a Haitian election: at the crossroads between military rule and civilian governance, between noir populism and mulâtre restoration, between the Caribbean Cold War and the ancient imperatives of Haitian sovereignty, someone in Port-au-Prince understood that the decision belonged not to generals or politicians but to the lwa who stood at every gateway.