1957, October – 1958, March 12: (Consolidation: The Strike Broken by Zinglins, Barbot’s Cagoulards, the Hakim-Rimpel Kidnapping, and the Thirteen-Gun Sacking…

1957, October – 1958, March 12: (Consolidation: The Strike Broken by Zinglins, Barbot’s Cagoulards, the Hakim-Rimpel Kidnapping, and the Thirteen-Gun Sacking of Kébreau): The new regime was hard-pressed on every front — the treasury was empty, tourism had dried up, coffee production was down forty-three percent from 1956, and American aid programs had shut down. Before October was out, Déjoieists called a general strike, but the weapon turned in their hand: Duvalier activists — muscular noirs with dark eyeglasses and pistol bulges under their jackets — persuaded shopkeepers to stay open, and in a few cases cutting tools opened steel shutters while police invited shoppers to take their pick under a law authorizing redistribution of merchandise to needy persons. The business strike would not again be used while Duvalier held the palace. Using those same noir toughs — outcasts of the Port-au-Prince slums whom Soulouque’s Haiti would have recognized as zinglins — the regime was counterattacking in all directions. Within two months at least a hundred political prisoners were in the pénitencier or Fort Dimanche, an equal number in hiding, and asylees were slipping into embassies. At the center was Barbot, steely-eyed, pitiless toward the elite and their foreign clergy whom he perceived as exploiters no better than slave-holding colons. Barbot’s men — whom the elite were already calling cagoulards — had in January 1958 chilled both elite and journalistic communities by kidnapping, beating, and sexually abusing Yvonne Hakim-Rimpel, a feminist editor and activist. Kébreau, who had put Duvalier in office, seemed unaware of rising tensions — in early March, Duvalier pointedly underscored to the New York Times that he was constitutionally and in fact commander of the Armed Forces, then transferred twenty of Kébreau’s key officers to Hinche, Cerca-la-Source, La Gonâve, and Banane. At 5:30 on the afternoon of March 12, 1958, while driving up the Pétionville road, the general was startled to hear Fort National’s battery — at the thirteenth gun, the salute ended, and there could be only one explanation. Kébreau quickly ordered his driver to cut across to the Dominican embassy, reaching Ciudad Trujillo on Trujillo’s safe-conduct, where he received a decoration, a Mercedes-Benz, and other emoluments. Kébreau was succeeded by Colonel Maurice Flambert. The sacking was widely and correctly interpreted as a sign that the diminutive president intended to maintain civilian supremacy over the military.