1977, November – 1978, early: (The Press Crackdown, the Beating of Luc Nérée, Delva’s Bull Sacrifice with Carter’s Picture, Gédé Turns His Back on the Duvali…

1977, November – 1978, early: (The Press Crackdown, the Beating of Luc Nérée, Delva’s Bull Sacrifice with Carter’s Picture, Gédé Turns His Back on the Duvaliers, Processions of Sacrificial Animals, and the Church Warns Against Satan’s Dance): The regime subscribed to the Herald too and quickly tacked. Acting on instructions from the president, a working group including the Minister of Defense Aurélien Jeanty and Minister without Portfolio Henri Bayard sought to deal with what Duvalier referred to as intolerable attitudes of the so-called independent press. Two newspapers in Port-au-Prince — Oedipe and Regard — were closed, the first as it prepared its inaugural issue; in the provinces, away from the international spotlight, VSN members had resumed old habits, beating schoolchildren, extorting money, and creating what Jeune Presse had the audacity to call a climate of insecurity. Retribution was swift: with his son in Europe, Jeune Presse publisher Luc Nérée — the Baptist preacher who had corresponded with Jimmy Carter — was set upon, beaten, and left for dead by macoutes acting on orders of the Interior Minister. Nérée had been summoned several times by Jeanty, who had warned him to soften his articles; though in a coma after the attack, he stirred enough to encourage his congregation to demand his transport to the Hôpital Général, came to the next day, and was sent home for a slow convalescence. Son and associate editor Bob Nérée quickly returned from abroad and fed daily health bulletins to the international community, recognizing that in publicity lay immunity; in Washington the Black Caucus canceled a visit scheduled for December. Le Petit Samedi Soir warned bleakly of the possibility of other accidents befalling those who inquired too closely about the regime’s affairs; Jeune Presse suspended publication. Prevented by international watchfulness from taking further overt action, the government turned to homegrown remedies: Zacharie Delva, feared boko and pro-consul of the Gonaïves region, very publicly ushered in 1978 by presiding over a Vodou ceremony at which a bull bearing Jimmy Carter’s picture was sacrificed. For good measure, light-skinned members of Jean-Claude’s cabinet who had incurred the wrath of various dinosaurs were targeted too, leaving little doubt that the recourse to magic had been ordered by the chief dinosaur herself, Simone Duvalier. She believed that Gédé, long the protector of the Duvalier family, had turned his back on it — a view shared by increasing numbers of Duvalierist stalwarts, the oungan and manbo who had so long formed the backbone of regime support. Only drastic measures could propitiate the angry Gédé. In the first weeks of the New Year, processions of goats, pigs, and bulls dressed for sacrifice were sighted throughout the Artibonite, Northwest, and North; an upsurge of thefts of sacred objects — chalices and consecrated hosts — from parishes moved the Church to warn priests to exercise special vigilance to prevent those practicing Satan’s dance from obtaining holy objects for use in black magic.