1955–1956, May 17: (The Slide Begins: Hazel’s Aftermath, the Term-Expiration Controversy, the Lycée Insurrection, and the Duvalier-Linked Strikes): Throughou…

1955–1956, May 17: (The Slide Begins: Hazel’s Aftermath, the Term-Expiration Controversy, the Lycée Insurrection, and the Duvalier-Linked Strikes): Throughout 1955 events moved downhill. Blasted by Hazel, the coffee crop was the worst in years; complaints of graft mounted as the regime ebbed; The Nation began to afford a foreign mouthpiece for the enemies Magloire had earned among the left. Then, as in the days of Simon Sam and many another outgoing president, controversy erupted over when the president’s term lawfully ended — Estiméist foes claimed Magloire should leave either in May or at the latest in December 1956, while Magloire, taking departure from the 1950 Bellegarde constitution, said May 1957. From May 1956 on there was no peace. On May 17, lycée students at Les Cayes and Jacmel surged into the streets, as did those of the Lycées Pétion and Toussaint Louverture in Port-au-Prince — the latter became the scene of a student insurrection, with barricaded entrances, furniture pitched from windows, stones and inkwells hurled, schoolboys and teachers fighting police from corridor to corridor shrieking À bas Magloire. The city was suddenly flooded with tracts from a Comité Révolutionnaire. Magloire proclaimed a state of siege. Later in May, various unions including the increasingly muscular Syndicat des Chauffeurs-Guides — originally fostered by Dr. Duvalier — staged strikes. Police chief Prosper blamed Duvalier for the disorders; two leaders of the Comité Révolutionnaire, both Duvalierists and communists, were arrested along with some fifty others. Beneath the surface calm there was also intense politicking — even so, Magloire remained confident enough to visit the United States in September for a medical checkup and then to preside over the national homage for Jean Price-Mars on his eightieth birthday.