1963, February 10 – April 26: (Caca Doc, the Honorat Plot, Turnier Left to Decompose on the Parade Ground, the Month of Gratitude, and Barbot’s First Blow — …

1963, February 10 – April 26: (Caca Doc, the Honorat Plot, Turnier Left to Decompose on the Parade Ground, the Month of Gratitude, and Barbot’s First Blow — The Attack on the Duvalier Children): On February 10, 1963, the day the constitution prescribed for elections, foolhardy students distributed anti-Duvalier leaflets and scrawled Caca Doc on Port-au-Prince walls — some thirty students and relatives, including university professors, were arrested, beaten, tortured, and several, after personal interrogation by the president in his basement room, were executed. Under new levies, peasants were taxed on rice and on the homemade chairs in their huts; macoutes turned ferociously on each other in Gonaïves, the battered bodies found with genitals stuffed in mouths profaning the church portals where Delva had celebrated Bois Caïman. In early April, Colonel Lionel Honorat’s plot was betrayed on D-day and Duvalier struck first — five leaders made it to the Brazilian embassy, but Charles Turnier, a handsome soldierly noir from Jacmel, was arrested, beaten all night under the command Fè pye li pèdi tè, and shot through the head the next morning, his remains left to decompose in the hot sun on the parade ground for a week. Duvalier dismissed sixty-nine officers — roughly one-third of the officer corps — and began systematic arrests of retired officers and their families as hostages in Fort Dimanche. About April 15, Clément Barbot slipped out of his house and went underground. On April 22 opened the Month of Gratitude during which the Haitian people were called upon to express their gratitude to François Duvalier. On April 26, Barbot struck his first blow with characteristic precision: as a palace limousine delivered Simone, fourteen, and Jean-Claude, eleven, at the Collège Bird, another car slowed alongside and three shots were fired, killing the driver and two macoute bodyguards — the children, who ran inside the schoolyard, were not fired on, for Barbot loved children and knew the Duvalier youngsters well.