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1971-Apr.

1971-Apr.: Hereditary Transfer to Jean-Claude Duvalier: François Duvalier died in office after naming his nineteen-year-old son, Jean-Claude, as his success…

1971-Apr.: Hereditary Transfer to Jean-Claude Duvalier: François Duvalier died in office after naming his nineteen-year-old son, Jean-Claude, as his successor for life. Despite predictions of immediate chaos, the transition of power was accomplished smoothly with the support of the military and the United States. This transfer formalized what Trouillot describes as the culmination of the “formalization of the crisis”: the transformation of an authoritarian presidency into a hereditary republic (Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier, 238) Significance:The 1971 succession completed the transformation of Haiti into a dynastic regime. Executive power became hereditary, and the republic effectively ceased to function as a competitive political system. Nuance: This was not a sudden break but the logical result of earlier centralization and repression. The hereditary transfer formalized a system already structured for permanence. ( Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Haiti: State Against Nation (1990) p162.