Duvalier keeps the concentration and changes the owners

The dictatorship left the concentration of Haitian commerce intact while shifting ownership away from foreign firms toward domestic families, and monopolies became the standard payment for those who worked with the regime. The authors list industries made monopolies by presidential decree across the 1950s and 1960s, including mineral and petroleum exploration, television stations, the planting and processing of kenaf, sesame and ramie, guano processing, chocolate manufacture, fertiliser, casinos and hotels, a sugar factory and improvements to the telephone system. By 1985 roughly nineteen families controlled near-exclusive import rights over much of what Haitians consumed every day, while a further twenty or thirty households held licences covering another ninety-two items. This is the structure their model then puts under threat: democratisation directly endangered the rents these families drew from restricted competition.