1964, June–October 26: (The Camocains, Jeune Haïti’s Eighty-Three-Day Anabasis, the Last Stand at Ravine Roche, and the Jérémie Massacres — Tiny Stéphane San…

1964, June–October 26: (The Camocains, Jeune Haïti’s Eighty-Three-Day Anabasis, the Last Stand at Ravine Roche, and the Jérémie Massacres — Tiny Stéphane Sansaricq’s Eyes Wiped with a Lit Cigarette): In June 1964, Père Georges organized the Camocains — twenty-five elite youths and former FAd’H personnel who landed at Lagon des Huîtres east of Saltrou, led by Captain Fred Baptiste. Taking to the Forêt des Pins and the rugged Morne la Selle, the Camocains eluded and ambushed pursuing forces and executed rural TTMs, but were driven back to the Dominican Republic because the people, near starvation, could not feed them and their smuggled weapons from New York were intercepted by a Haitian communist cell. On August 5, 1964, thirteen young men of Jeune Haïti — mostly mulâtres from Jérémie, all elite — landed at Cap Dame-Marie. Their leader, Gusle Villedrouin, twenty-four, son of Colonel Roger Villedrouin killed in the May 1963 carnage, had been associated with the CIA but the agency’s estimates were so pessimistic that every effort was made to dissuade them. Jeune Haïti’s eighty-three-day anabasis was the most hard-fought guerrilla campaign since Péralte and Batraville — the brave thirteen marched east along the spine of the southern peninsula through the fastnesses of Goman and Siffra, sweeping to both coasts, evading and ambushing government forces in at least ten engagements, shooting down a strafing aircraft, and marching over 200 miles through Hurricane Cleo. The last stand took place on October 26 at Ravine Roche near l’Asile — Villedrouin, Roger Rigaud, and Réginal Jourdan stood off the attackers to the last round, then fought with rocks until they were cut down. Their heads were chopped off, delivered to Duvalier, and photographed for the front page of Le Matin. Duvalier simply gave over mulâtre Jérémie to the noir milice — whole families were slaughtered: Villedrouins, Drouins, Guilbauds, Laforests, Sansaricqs. The Drouin and Sansaricq families were stripped naked and herded through the town to execution. When tiny Stéphane Sansaricq asked in tears to faire pipi amid the slaughter of her family, Captain Borges said he would wipe her eyes and did so — with the hot end of a lighted cigarette, then slashed her to death with a dagger. At least a hundred prominent Jérémiens died — Peter Benenson of Amnesty International said hundreds — in what the government called nationalization.