1957, June 16 – September 22: (The Aftermath of the Rouleau Compresseur: 50 to 1,000 Dead, Kébreau’s Ironhanded Siege, and the Electoral Field Sorted Out): A…

1957, June 16 – September 22: (The Aftermath of the Rouleau Compresseur: 50 to 1,000 Dead, Kébreau’s Ironhanded Siege, and the Electoral Field Sorted Out): All night and into the morning furious battles took place throughout the lower city. Finally, as the army gained the upper hand, trucks began picking up littered corpses and the pompiers, after wetting down fire-desolated areas, hosed away whatever blood and guts the dogs had left. The official casualty list gave 50 dead and 250 injured; Maurepas Auguste put the toll over 500; in Papa Doc, Diederich and Burt estimated 1,000. Kébreau thereupon invoked an ironhanded state of siege, which continued without further disturbance until Election Day, set at last for September 22, 1957. Whatever else six months’ chaos had done to the country, it had sorted out the electoral contest: Fignolé was gone, Jumelle had been skillfully discredited however attractive his qualifications, and Déjoie, though campaigning and intriguing with equal vigor, was on the defensive. At center stage, Duvalier (with an ally in command of the army and a growing Duvalierist cell among the officers) was also discreetly propagating the notion that he had American support. Isolating the oligarch Déjoie from the majority, Duvalier went to the people with a farrago of nationalism, mysticism, Estimé racism, and they-against-us demagoguery, delivered in rambling nonstop sentences where Kreyòl fused with sciolistic French.