1958, April 30 – July 28: (The Road to the Sheriffs’ Coup: The Mahotières Bomb Factory, Déjoie’s Flight to Cuba’s Oriente, the Jumelles in the Maquis, and th…

1958, April 30 – July 28: (The Road to the Sheriffs’ Coup: The Mahotières Bomb Factory, Déjoie’s Flight to Cuba’s Oriente, the Jumelles in the Maquis, and the Molly C Sets Sail from Marathon Island): More newspapers were bombed or raided; Georges Petit was jailed for the sins of his L’Indépendance, as was Jacques Alexis. On April 30, the loud bang of another bomb factory in a hut at Mahotières near Carrefour galvanized the government — Déjoie and the Jumelles were publicly condemned, and on May 2 the legislature voted Duvalier a state of siege, curfew, and press censorship. Déjoie reached safety in the Mexican embassy and eventually settled in Cuba’s Oriente province among 120,000 Haitians whom he set out to recruit; the Jumelles really did hide in the maquis. In midsummer 1958, rumors reached Port-au-Prince through overseas informants that a Florida-based filibustering expedition of Déjoieist or Magloirist provenance might soon head for Haiti. On the night of July 28, the fifty-five-foot Key West fishing boat Molly C, outward bound from Marathon Island, lay off the inlet at Délugé just north of Montrouis, carrying three former Haitian army officers — Alix Pasquet the leader, his brother-in-law Phito Dominique, and Henri Perpignand, all high-flying young mulâtres with records of past intrigue — accompanied by five American soldiers of fortune retained at $2,000 apiece, including three ex-deputy sheriffs from Miami and Buffalo. Sixteen friends in Miami were simultaneously loading weapons for 150 men aboard a World War II airplane, but no plan survives contact with the enemy: the Miami doings were closely observed by U.S. customs officers staked out on a tip, the landing party had been reported to the chef seksyon by an alert peasant, and a three-man patrol was heading for Délugé from St. Marc.