1971, July – 1972, March: (The First Crisis and the First Year’s Balance Sheet: Marie-Denise vs.

1971, July – 1972, March: (The First Crisis and the First Year’s Balance Sheet: Marie-Denise vs. Cambronne, Ti Pouche Douyon as Procurer and Banker, Late-Night Drag Races with the Chief of State, 90,000 Tourists and $8 Million in Aid, the Dominique Christmas Snub, and Cambronne’s $1.5 Million Arms Shopping List at the Pentagon): Without Papa Doc to regulate the flow of power and patronage, infighting was not slow in coming. In late July — with the old man dead barely three months — Cambronne pounced, arresting Max Dominique’s cousin on charges of passport counterfeiting. Marie-Denise Duvalier, asserting her position as Jean-Claude’s private secretary, demanded the release of her husband’s kinsman as well as Cambronne’s ouster. Presented with his first crisis, Jean-Claude sought advice from his mother and heeded it — a glum-looking Marie-Denise and Max Dominique soon left for Paris, where Dominique resumed his ambassadorship. Marie-Denise’s functions were filled by Duvalier’s St. Louis de Gonzague classmate Auguste (Ti Pouche) Douyon, a loyal and gifted raconteur who knew his friend’s limits and came quickly to handle all manner of personal errands — from procurement of women to banking. The young president, increasingly confident, began to resume his forays from the palace, lightly guarded if guarded at all. In those years it was not uncommon for the driver of a sports car on the Pétionville or Delmas roads to find himself in a late-night impromptu race with the Chief of State at the wheel of one of a rapidly expanding stable of muscle cars; a wave or blink of headlights usually signaled the end of the contest. He needed the relaxation — years later he confided that within a year of assuming office he had an ulcer. Attentive to his mother’s advice, Duvalier grudgingly acceded to her demand that he study law; tutored in turn by three of Haiti’s most eminent lawyers, he would quickly doze off while his professor continued his monologue, a secretary appointed by Simone as insurance against radical ideas taking notes, the tutors leaving promptly whether their charge was awake or not — his stock line for foreign journalists was: not a night passes that I don’t fall asleep with my books. As Year XIV of the revolution came to a close, Simone Duvalier must have breathed a sigh of relief: a record 90,000 tourists had come, including such glitterati as Arthur Ashe and Muhammad Ali; aid including the $750,000 Knox had lobbied for had reached $8 million; the foreign press was being appropriately objective. Seeking a family Christmas, Simone summoned Marie-Denise and Max Dominique from Paris, but Max found the climate of Acapulco more salubrious than that of Port-au-Prince; one of the first acts of the New Year was to strip him of his ambassadorship. As the young president read in flat tones set pieces prepared for him in stilted oratorical French, raced motorcycles, hunted, and tried to enjoy being a twenty-year-old, Cambronne — Richelieu behind the throne — was busier than ever, shuttling back and forth to Miami, now only ninety minutes away by jet. In March, Cambronne, Foreign Minister Raymond, and Finance Minister Francisque made the rounds of official Washington on what the New York Times described as a self-initiated goodwill mission; offered lunch on succeeding days by Secretary of State Rogers and the Pentagon, the visitors pressed Haiti’s case for increased aid. The team’s visit coincided with articles in the Times detailing Cambronne’s relationship with a Miami-based company called Aerotrade, which had been designated Haiti’s agent for purchasing arms in the United States and had hired ex-Marines to train the Léopards. In response to press inquiries about exporting arms to a country under U.S. embargo since 1962, Foggy Bottom quietly revealed that the embargo had been lifted without fanfare by President Nixon in late 1970. Cambronne’s presence at the Pentagon therefore surprised no one in the know, nor did his request for an evaluation team to assess Haiti’s military needs — eerily reminiscent of the minuet Papa Doc had danced with Washington in 1957 — accompanied by a detailed shopping list for some $1.5 million in ordnance that Haiti had been starved of for over a decade. The Nixon administration was disposed to give favorable consideration; not only Washington but Ottawa, Paris, the World Bank, OAS, and Inter-American Development Bank were all quietly engaged in conversations with Port-au-Prince, seeking appropriate development vehicles to showcase their largesse.