1957–1970: (The New Marronage: 80 Percent of Professionals in Exile, More Haitian Physicians in Montreal Than in Haiti, 150,000 in New York Alone, and the Af…

1957–1970: (The New Marronage: 80 Percent of Professionals in Exile, More Haitian Physicians in Montreal Than in Haiti, 150,000 in New York Alone, and the African Diplomat Who Wished He Had Never Won Independence): By 1965, Duvalier had survived and prevailed — but the face of Haiti remained little changed. Time reported in 1966 that phone service was dead, lights winked fitfully, roads were pot-holed or buried in muddy ooze, and business was grinding to a halt. A visiting African diplomat confided that if in fifty years his country was in such a condition, he would wish they had never won their independence — Duvalier could have fairly rejoined that Haiti had never enjoyed the advantages of being colonized. The only ways of escape were those open to slaves in bygone Saint-Domingue: suicide or marronage. The new marronage was exile — by 1970, close to 35,000 Haitians were in the Bahamas, and by 1976, 150,000 were in New York City alone with large colonies in Montreal, Chicago, and Washington. Rotberg said that by the mid-1960s, eighty percent of Haiti’s qualified professionals were in the United States, Canada, or Africa — over a thousand Haitian professionals were in the Congo, Colonel Paul Corvington was a senior officer in Mobutu’s army, and over 300 specialists had been hired through the UN for jobs in the Congo, Dahomey, Guinea, Togo, Rwanda, and Burundi. By 1970 there were more Haitian physicians in either Montreal or New York than in Haiti; Montreal had ten times more Haitian psychiatrists than Port-au-Prince; of 246 medical-school graduates from 1959 to 1969, only three could be found practicing in the country in 1969. With the lowest per capita income and literacy rate in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti was nonetheless contributing more technicians to the UN Technical Assistance Program than any other Latin American nation.