1962–1963: (The Terror: The Watchman Swathed in Barbed Wire, the Crucified Watchman, the Iron Maiden in the Palace Basement, Dife Nan Kay La, and an Economic…

1962–1963: (The Terror: The Watchman Swathed in Barbed Wire, the Crucified Watchman, the Iron Maiden in the Palace Basement, Dife Nan Kay La, and an Economic Miracle — Living Without Money and Eating Without Food): On the night of Boukman’s dread anniversary in August 1962, the president had presided over a Cérémonie Bois Caïman at which the cabinet and leading macoutes gulped warm blood from a chalice to whose rim stiff hairs from the slaughtered pig’s throat still adhered. The two years ahead were to be among the bloodiest in all the blood-drenched annals of Haiti. At first the terror seemed random and formless: a watchman at the Travaux Publics was found swathed in a cocoon of rusty barbed wire, hung up in the night to bleed to death outside his shack; another watchman in Pétionville was crucified beside the cemetery wall; Jean Chenet, a lively intellectual who loved chess, was gunned down on his doorstep while Major Franck Romain prevented his American wife from moving the body until next day. The OAS Commission on Human Rights asked permission to visit Haiti — the first request was simply ignored, to the second, Foreign Minister Chalmers brusquely replied that any such probe would violate Haitian sovereignty. The government commenced harassment against foreign welfare agencies — consuls abroad refused shipping documents for food destined for starving peasants, CARE and Church World Service shipments spoiled on the docks, clothing collected at Marine bases was banned as unsanitary. To an American friend, a Haitian confided that Duvalier had performed an economic miracle: he had taught them to live without money and eat without food. Exit visas went directly to the president’s second-floor office, where in his own spidery hand Duvalier crossed out the names. In the palace basement, with its direct side entrance opening ironically toward the Place de l’Indépendance, was the macoutes’ receiving and interrogation room — its floor and walls painted rusty brown, a color that does not show bloodstains, its antechamber containing a coffin-shaped Iron Maiden spiked with stiletto blades. The grim atmosphere was heightened by nightly blackouts during which shots and outcries could be heard, or sometimes the unforgettable tonton macoutes alert-signal, the song Dife nan kay la — House afire!