Jacques Stéphen Alexis writes to Duvalier and asks whether he may live in his own country

On 2 June 1960, from Pétion-Ville, the novelist Jacques Stéphen Alexis wrote directly to François Duvalier. He had moved house on 31 May; the following evening police surrounded the Bourdon home he had just left. He told Duvalier the police plainly knew where he now lived, near the prefect’s own house, and read the raid as intimidation. He weighed the three things it might be meant to achieve (drive him abroad, push him underground, or make him police his own movements) and refused all three, citing his family’s roots, his descent from a founder of the country, and his medical practice among the rural poor. He asked for a plain yes or no on whether he was free to live and work in Haiti. Duvalier’s men killed him the following year.