1988, September – December: (The Avril Paradox: Valedictorian of the Last Académie Militaire Class Before Duvalier Shut It Down, Trained at Quantico, Joined …

1988, September – December: (The Avril Paradox: Valedictorian of the Last Académie Militaire Class Before Duvalier Shut It Down, Trained at Quantico, Joined the Garde Présidentielle in 1969, Profited from Weapons Procurement, Managed the Duvaliers’ Overseas Portfolio, His Wife the Duvalier Family Nurse, a Sworn Enemy of Lafontant, Restrained Unlike Namphy and Without the Blood Lust, Pledges an Irreversible Democracy, Williams Regala and Jean-Claude Paul Retired, Franck Romain Denied Safe-Conduct, Some Prisoners Released, Investigations Promised into the Jean-Rabel and Election Massacres, and François Benoit — Whose Family Duvalier Had Killed — Named Ambassador to Washington): Avril was no stranger either to the corridors of power or to the United States. He had been class valedictorian of the 1961 class at the Académie Militaire — the last class to graduate before François Duvalier, considering it a hotbed of sedition, closed it down. He had attended training courses sponsored by the ill-fated U.S. Naval Mission, traveling several times to the Marine Corps Officers School at Quantico, Virginia. He joined the Garde Présidentielle in 1969 and was consequently in a key position to profit from the shift of power from François to Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1971. He profited handsomely from weapons procurement and other programs in the 1970s and was entrusted by the Duvaliers with management of much of their overseas portfolio. His wife, a captain in the Army Medical Corps, became the Duvalier family nurse after Jean-Claude’s marriage in 1980. He was a sworn enemy of Roger Lafontant. A more thoroughly Duvalierist product would be hard to imagine — yet unlike Namphy, he was restrained in his personal life and did not have the blood lust that seemed to possess so many of the macoutes. Briefly, despite Avril’s antecedents, the auguries seemed favorable. After pledging to take Haiti on the road to an irreversible democracy, the new government got to work. First business for any incoming regime was a reshuffling of the army — Williams Regala, Jean-Claude Paul, who had gone unpunished for his June indiscretions, and several other officers including Cecilio Dorcé were retired. Avril refused to give Franck Romain the safe-conduct he sought to reach Santo Domingo. Some prisoners were released and the death squads reined in. Avril even promised investigations into the Jean-Rabel massacre and the violence surrounding the aborted elections of the previous year. In one of those ironies with which Haitian history is replete, Avril named sharpshooter François Benoit — whose parents and relatives had been killed by an enraged François Duvalier a quarter century earlier — as his ambassador to Washington. The Avril opening — a Duvalierist product pledging democracy, retiring drug-tainted officers, naming as ambassador the son of Duvalier’s most famous victim — illustrated the peculiar alchemy of Haitian political transitions: each new ruler compelled to repudiate just enough of his predecessor’s legacy to secure international recognition while retaining just enough of the apparatus to maintain power, the democratic promise always calibrated to the minimum required to unlock foreign aid, and the appointment of Benoit serving simultaneously as a gesture of reconciliation and a reminder that in Haiti the children of the persecuted and the children of the persecutors had always ended up governing together.