Latinnews Archive
Latin American Weekly Report - 15 September 1972
Haiti: a shaky truce
The departure of Marie-Denis Duvalier after a nine-day visit, without any changes in the government, suggests that Luckner Cambronne has for the moment beaten off efforts to oust him.
Four months ago Luckner Cambronne said in an interveiw that he would 'never' allow Papa Doc's ambitious daughter Marie-Denise or her husband Max Dominique, the former ambassador in Paris, to return to Haiti. 'They only want to carry out reprisals,' said the interior and defence minister of the pair he sent into exile 13 months ago. But two weeks ago she was back, and the situation seemed ripe for Cambronne's fall. The de facto 'prime minister' has steadily continued to make enemies over the past year. Ulrick St. Louis, who in June burst into Cambronne's office with a revolver and threatened to shoot him, was suspended from his post as president of the national assembly and exiled. The house of secret police chief Luc Desyr was ransacked by Tontons Macoutes, apparently sent by Cambronne; and the influence of men like Roger Lafontant, titular consul-general in New York, has continued to grow with the Duvalier family.
A more serious sign that things were going wrong for Cambronne came two weeks before Marie-Denise's return when a number of people, many of them retired army officers, were arrested. Most, including former Port-au-Prince police chief Daniel Beauvoir, who returned from exile last November after making his peace with the regime, were allies of Cambronne. But the wily minister struck back a few days before Marie-Denise landed with his own wave of arrests, after the brief kidnapping of the teenage son of trade and industry minister Lebert Jean-Pierre. Cambronne named the ringleader of the kidnapping as Jean-Robert Lherisson, recently returned from exile in New York, and claimed that it was all part of a 'vast communist conspiracy'. Since then more than 100 people are reported to have been jailed, among them the military commanders of the nord-ouest and centre regions, Colonels Jean Beliote and Gerard Louis, Colonel Monod Philippe, an ally of the Dominiques, and several junior officers. Although Cambronne seemed to have made some kind of peace with Marie-Denise (he saw her off at the airport with the president and Mme. Duvalier, while only her mother and Luc Desyr had greeted her on arrival), the extent of the arrests is the most serious trouble the 'continuers of the Duvalierist revolution' have faced since Papa Doc died.
Meanwhile, as Cambronne was boasting in private that a hard core of 6,000 Tontons Macoutes was in training, and that in a few years time he would have 'tens of thousands' of well-trained militiamen at his disposal, his political allies have left the country in significantly large numbers over the past three weeks on long official missions. This gave weight, in the Byzantine atmosphere of Haitian politics, to reports that his dismissal was still very much on the cards. The absent supporters included information minister Fritz Cineas, called away for a month's 'information visit' to the United States, Gerard Martelly, Cambronne's chief ministerial aide, and Colonel Gabriel Brunet, his ally in the air force. Ulrick St. Louis has also managed to return with impunity. A further blow to Cambronne's prestige was the report last week that the United States had rejected Haiti's request for up to ten million dollars worth of military aid, in spite of Cambronne's noises about the threat of 'communism' (see Vol. VI, No. 33). The Duvalierists may now turn for the arms to France, which is likely to oblige as it has done elsewhere in Latin America.
Yet while contradictons have sharpened internally, there has been some respite for the Duvaliers. In an interview in the Paris daily Le Monde Alphonse Lahens, mastermind of the last major plot against the Duvaliers in April 1970 and now a leader of the moderate Resistance Haitienne (the most important exile opposition group), said the Resistance was ready to cooperate in a government of national unity with those who had worked under Duvalierism, except for the top half-dozen leaders. Finally, President Jean-Claude Duvalier last month managed an unprecedented five-day tour of if it was accompanied by scores of arrests along the way, some 500 Tontons Macoutes and members of the Leopards anti-subversion corps, and two helicopters guarding the skies above him and his entire cabinet.
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