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.