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1971, January–February

1971, January–February: (The Council of Regents: Cambronne at the Head, General Raymond, Adrien Raymond, Hervé Boyer, Marie-Denise with a Submachine Gun, and…

Haitian

1971, January–February: (The Council of Regents: Cambronne at the Head, General Raymond, Adrien Raymond, Hervé Boyer, Marie-Denise with a Submachine Gun, and the Decisions Taken Behind the Plebiscite): Even as the plebiscite was in progress, more consequential decisions were being taken inside the Palais. To guide the young leader and prepare him for his new responsibilities, a council of advisers was named. Headed by Luckner Cambronne, the regents included General Claude Raymond, his brother Adrien Raymond to advise on foreign affairs, Antonio André of the Banque, and Hervé Boyer. There was no need to specify Mme Duvalier or her strong-willed daughter Marie-Denise — who since 1969 had superseded Mme St. Victor in the secretary’s office and could be seen striding about the palace with a submachine gun cradled in her arms. On March 16 there was another brief appearance: Duvalier’s face was pinched, his features sharp under a skin of taut dark parchment, his brow creased as if by constant pain. A few days later — the date is uncertain — the blinding headache returned. This time the president lost consciousness. Like Christophe, when he came to, one side was paralyzed and he could hardly speak. But there was no silver bullet for his .357 Magnum. The regency council — a bagman, a godson-general, the general’s brother, a banker, and a communist, supervised by the dictator’s wife and a daughter who patrolled the palace corridors with an automatic weapon — constituted the apparatus through which fourteen years of absolute personal rule would be transmitted to a nineteen-year-old boy whose preparation for the presidency consisted of having been born to the right father, the hereditary republic’s first succession unfolding exactly as the structural logic of Haitian presidentialism predicted: power concentrated so completely in one man that its transfer could only be managed as a family affair.

Source HT-WIB-000612