1960’s: Consolidation of Totalitarian Apparatus: Urban middle classes and rural elites provided provisional consent, allowing Duvalier to establish centraliz…
1960’s: Consolidation of Totalitarian Apparatus: Urban middle classes and rural elites provided provisional consent, allowing Duvalier to establish centralized authoritarian control. Significance: Consent — even if temporary — enabled the institutionalization of repression. The regime gained time to entrench itself. Nuance: Trouillot emphasizes ambivalence. Many Haitians outwardly accepted the regime but morally rejected it. The regime’s power rested partly on silence and strategic accommodation rather than genuine ideological unity. ( Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Haiti: State Against Nation (1990) 199)