Famille Nucleaire
(It is there; after clicking the thumbnail, scroll down and a little bit right
to find it and expand the picture; it lookssomehow like an African family - Elle y est; allez quelque peu vers le bas et vers la droite pour la trouver, après avoir cliqué le petit croquis, et pour agrandir)
L'ENFANCE INITIALE - EARLY CHILDHOOD
Ma naissance survint durant le regne d'Estime, apres la faillite financiere de la maison commerciale des Qualos. Je ne sais pas encore dans quelles circonstances que ma mere rencontra mon pere, car elle qui est encore en vie est reluctante a raconter l'histoire familiale et se mefie de l'internet qui serait trop public. Tout ce que je sais est que celui qui devait etre le futur president d'Haiti, avant ma naissance, le respectable citoyen Dumarsais Estime venait, tous les soirs, jouer aux cartes - le "Bezig" - a la maison familiale en compagnie de Grand-Pere- le citoyen Leonce Qualo, des citoyens Daniel Theard et Jule Simon et de Watson Telson, pour ne citer que ceux-la. Mon pere etait, probablement, a cette epoque, un officier ou un cadet de l'armee d'Haiti ou il aurait suivi, dans la profession, son frere aine Pierre et c'est, probablement, parce qu'il etait charge de la garde du president qu'il a pu faire la connaissance de ma mere. Jeune homme cultive, courtois et elegant, il ne tarda pas a seduire celle qui fut la plus elegante des demoiselles Qualos (elles avaient ete cinq). Le renversement precoce d'Estime et la presidence d'Haiti ayant ete assuree par une junte militaire, dirigee par le general Paul Eugene Magloire, fut deconcertant pour la famille et Grand-Pere ne tarda pas a succomber a un cancer intestinal, laissant l'officier Roger Rigaud qui etait monte, tres vite, en grade, sous Estime, tout d'abord, puis, un bout de temps, sous Magloire, comme principal acteur de la suite de ces relations initiales. Ce qu'il me semble est que mon pere faisait de son mieux pour rester dans le courant tumultueux de la politique haitienne, et ce ne fut qu'a la chute de Magloire et a la defaite consecutive de son candidat Clement Jumelle qu'il y perdit definitivement pied pour laisser d'autres camarades comme Antoine Herard avec qui il avait dirige la Radio Port-au-Prince", l'organe de presse de support du candidat Francois Duvalier
L'ENFANCE TARDIVE - LATE CHILDHOOD
(follow up)
Hi Robert,
This is an informative note for you, but it will be uploaded also on the internet as a page of my Memoires to be red by the public. It has no political goal; it is only informative. It is personal and may have some mistakes. It will also be translated in French as soon as I found me the available time. I urge you also to read my Mobiles Inconscients and my Unconcious Motives so that you can be aware how much needed is democracy in this country, but the leaders have to be magnanimous and not being clung to money. Finally, let me add that many Haitian presidents have been also similarly hostages of their partisans in this small and poor country where an elite lives on public revenue and do not like any change of governement.
1957
Duvalier was far the most popular candidate. He has participated in a campaign of eradication of the yaws' epidemics in this country and was well known among the peasants who were by far the most numerous class; the other three classes were the upper, middle and lower urban classes. Duvalier was at the head of the Public Health Department under the beloved president Dumarsais Estime who was overthrown by a military coup which led Magloire to power. Duvalier was also lightly dark skined but married a mulatto nurse from the South*. Most of the Haitians are dark skined and while there was no true racism in this country, the color of the skin had often mattered there**.
Dejoie was the most popular candidate after Duvalier and had the support of the literate Haitian elite which included a large number of mulattoes (this division was created by the regimen of slavery before the indepedency of Haiti). The mullattoes were confident they would win the elections since most of the blacks (mostly peasants) were illiterate and could not vote, but Dejoie was unpopular in the North where stands a large part of the black elite and the North had a far larger population than the South.
Fignole was the less popular of those three influent candidates and was virtually unknown by the peasants, but he had the support of the lower urban classes in the big cities, mostly Port-au-Prince. His popular crowds terrorized the city and took away of him the support of the Haitian middle class. If he was elected, I assume that he would have built a militia like Duvalier did to crush any tentative of the militaries to return to power. But the militaries were well aware of this threat to their power; so they agreed that Fignole be chosen by the electoral college to head a provisional government. Whether or not Fignole wanted to consolidate his power and to keep himself definitively at the head of the country, I do not know, but, after a few days , he was overthrown by the militaries under the accusation that he wanted to do that. He was then expulsed from the country and was out of the electoral race.
On May 25 of this year, I was at my window, in the morning, when a soldier urged me to close the window and to stay indoor. Clamors were heard on the streets and gunshots also. At noon, canons' gunfires detonated in the capital, Port-au-Prince. There was a fight between some mulattoes military men who, since Petion, a companion of arms of Dessalines***, have held the artillery (the black militia could not use it by then) and who were partisans of Dejoie and some black officers who were not sustaining Dejoie (that is the only hint I have of this event). Except for Father Roland, we were all - Joujoue, Ricame, Man Yeye, Maman Lolotte and me - in this loose family, hiding under the beds to protect ourselves against stray bullets that could have come through the slim walls and roof of our wooden house, and I had a diarrhea. After some black officers got behind the lines of the mutinees and killed some of them, the fight ended and the artillery gunfires ceased. By this time, Duvalier was almost certain to win the elections. There was two stories on him for this day; one said that he turned himself into a cat, another said he went to hide himself, but Duvalier was a very intelligent man and would use later, at his own benefit, the powerful myths of this population.
On September 22 of this year, the elections were held. In every electoral district of the North, Duvalier won and also in most of the districts of the South. Many illiterate people might have voted illegally, but the victory of Duvalier was so crushing in the big cities that Dejoie had to concede victory to him. But the mulattoes were not ready to accept this defeat although Dejoie had had also some support of the U.S. embassy which would have preferred a mulattoe president. (When the U.S. came to invade Haiti in the 20s, they put a mulattoe candidate at the head of the governement, since they could not trust the blacks and since there was also a racial policy in the U.S..) Nevertheless, since there was a politico-social stability in Haiti at this time and since Duvalier was such a popular leader and would not deal with the communists or the Castrits, they choosed not to intervene. Till today, the U.S. denied that the elections of 1957 were a democratic election because either Duvalier became a dictator, or because he criticized sometimes the U.S. policy against Haiti, or because he builded a black militia that the U.S. distrusted, or because it was done at a time of political turmoil, or at last because there were no international observators to verify how trustful was the voting (ballot).
Duvalier broke soon with the catholic clergy in Haiti which included, by this time, many mulattoes and some white clergymen, but he did not break with the catholic church, even after he was excomuniated by the pope, and he is known as the first president to put in place, in this country, a black clergy which would reflect the composition of the local population. However, many black Americans did or do not like Duvalier because he was a dictator, he was catholic and he was supported by the folk religion of this country which is vodoo. Neverthelss, the militia, not the vodoo, was the power of Duvalier and stopped effectively the militaries and democracy, but the Christian fundamentalists are not ready to admit it and there are just so many today.
Duvalier had many partisans who were armed with guns while Fignole had them armed with machetos. The partisans of Duvalier were able to defend successfully its political office, in Port-au-Prince, when it was attacked by the crowds of Fignole. Whether or not the Duvalierists got their guns from the army, more precisely from Colonel John Beauvoir, an enemy of my father, I do not know, but, at the beginning, they were armed simply with pistols. They were also able to defend their president against an invasion made on July 29 of the year 59 by an handsome of patriots, among them Perpignan and Pasquette, and some Americans who seized the pincipal military barrack of Port-au-Prince--Casernes Dessalines, but the invaders could not trust the soldiers. Therefore, after having neutralized the main corps of the army, the patriots asked their partisans, the "Dejoists" who were mostly citizen of the higher class to take their cause to the streets; nevertheless, none of the Dejoists follow their order while the "Duvalierists" armed with pistols came, in great number, to the National Palace located nearby to defend their president, and they had been able to crush this invasion. An uncle on the side of my mother was among the partisans of Duvalier while my father and my mother, living in the U.S., who knew probably about the plan of the invasion, were against Duvalier. I remembered also a father of a friend - Leslie Ti Babal - having told he sent a bullet through the buttock of the last invader.
Increasingly, Duvalier and his partisans, mostly those like Barbo, became intolerant and began to terrorize people at night, hiding their faces with hoods like the Ku Klux Klan members. They were then known as the "tonton macoutes". At the beginning, many of the "tonton macoutes" were of the middle class and were not a well organized militia. While during his electoral campaign, Duvalier looked like a small, timid and pacific candidate (looking even better than the present day's president Aristide) he began to show signs of nervousness and seemed even to loose sometimes his head. It was soon known that he was suffering of a severe form of diabetes mellitus, but that could not excuse his increasing cruelty. Many Haitian citizen, mostly of the elitic class began to leave the country and it is at this time the Haitian colony began to build itself in the U.S.. Many officers of the regular army were killed for good or bad reasons, some even without any trial. One execution was public and about a dozen of them were executed before the unique cimetery of the capital.
Duvalier then founded a well organized militia whose members were mostly of the middle and lower classes and many of them were peasants. They were consequently dressed with rude clothes in blue, like the local peasants. A huge part of the population, perhaps 25% of it, became members of this militia and many of them were women--the "fillettes lalos", but most of them were not cruel. Duvalier had, then, the grasp over the whole country. The students, who had, in the past, often launched political protests and who had played a role in the overthrown of the precedent dictator, the general Paul Magloire, were silenced. One of them, Roger Lafontant, who was at the unique school of medicine of this country began to recruit members for the militia of Duvalier. The veiled precedent discrimination at this school against people of the lower classes then ended and many peasants were then able to send their sons and daughters to this school.
The leadership of Duvalier looked like a people revolution and governement, like the Marxist-Leninist was, but, with the increasing public malversations that followed, it was soon shown that it wasn't. Duvalier was also anti-communist, probably because he feared U.S. intervention or probably he was closed to the U.S., when he worked as a simple doctor with teams of the "Alliance for the Progress" to crush the yaws' epidemics in this country or probably he considered Castro and Guevara as harebrained youngs. Those sent, later, thirty five guerilla men to throw him out, but they did not have the support of the population and this invasion was soon crushed by the Haitian army. Anyway, Duvalier was insisting on the word "autodetermination" in his public speechs and, at the U.N., his envoys were always against outside political interventions. A young patriot, Riobé, of the higher class, succesfully launched a guerilla revolt in the mountainous area of Kenscoff surrounding the capital, where many people of the higher class went to spend their Summer, but his patriots and he were overnumbered by the militiamen of Duvalier whose many died (A friend, Patrick Lemoine, in his famed novel, Fort - Dimanche, Dungeon of Death , relating the cruelty of the regimen, has more on that).
1959 - 1961
In the building had beem living also a friend of my mother, Stael, whose son, Lionel (Benjamin) (Franzi), invited me and a cousin Yves (Benoit) on the side of my adoptive family the Lafontants and/or of my natural grand-mother Francine (Lacroix) at a a park nearby to play baseball. It had been my first contact with this sport but I had enjoyed the game well and, later in my life, I went to Shea Stadium to see the Mets with Tomi Agee (I forgot the spelling) win the championship. With my mother had been living a cousin Marie Carmelle (Bordes) whom Lionel has some loving eyes upon, but nothing had been concluded. That year, I would have had also visited the Brooklyn Zoo, the first zoo I had known which would have spurred later and still now my interest in Nature and in everything related, like the evolution of the living beings and the theory of Charles Darwin. Every Sunday, I still follow the programs on Nature given bty the New Jersey Chanel - 13.
My first meeting with the the American cousins of New Jersey might have happened this year, I was only 11 years old, or two years later, in 1961, during my second trip to the U.S.. I met there uncle Lawrence on the side of grand father Leonce and he gave me my first Bulova watch whic had been probably my fisrt good watch. There, would have been present almost all the New Jersey cousins I know actually - Michele, Loise, Linda, Dorothy, Fey and Lyne, but I remember well having had a conversation with Michel(e) who is the oldest one; the others were just following her and among them I remember well the presence of Lois(e), browner than Michele. For me it had been thus my first meeting with a white girl,; however, Michele had also black blood in her veins and is therefore a mulatto, the name of the metis in Haiti.
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* Who is a mulatto? A mulatto is the union of a white person with
a black one. The mulattoe gets half of its genes from the white
parent and half from the black parent. Because, for the skin
pigmentation, the inheritance is polygenic it is the degree of
presence and of abscence of the characteristics that sets the
difference between the mulattoes. Consequently there are many
types of mulattoes. Some mulattoes may present more
characteristics of the white parent while for others it may be
the inverse; but they are all mulattoes. Therefore, many "colored" but light skinned people are mulattoes. The marabout
is also nothing less than a dark skinned mulattoe, having the
characterisics interesting the texture of the hair rather than
the color of the skin. There are people who say that there is no
pure race; they are the scientists and geneticians and they may
be right (whther or not the "street man" disagrees). In U.S.A.
where racial discrimination has been prevalent for a longer time
than in Haiti, the light skined "colored people" are considered
as negroes and never as whites; the very light skined "colored" people may be taken, with good reason or withouth any good
reason, for whites, but they have to hide their mixed origin.
** The opposition between the blacks and the mulattoes goes back to the period of slavery where the society was divided into four to five classes: the white farmer, a rich man, who possessed many slaves, the poor white of the city, the mulattoe (he was a free man), the freed black and the slave who formed the majority of the population of the island. At times, during the colonial period, the blacks had been betrayed by the mulattoes. When Toussaint came to conquer most of the island for the Frenchs, Rigaud, a mulattoe, was ruling the South, a small part of the island. Toussaint, probably overconfident because of his military success, had an ambitious project. He wanted to liberate all the Carribean islands and wanted to set these as French provinces where all his congeners (the blacks) would be free under one protectorate, his; so he decided to crush Rigaud and he did. Bolivar followed only his path but succeeded for Latin America; nevertheless, Bolivar followed the counsel of Petion who had been a lieutenant of Toussaint then of Rigaud and liberated all the slaves in the colonies where he was fighting. Napoleon disturbed the plans of Toussaint. But, Toussaint did not want really to fight the French troops. At this epoch, there were plenty of places in the island to fight a guerilla warfare and he would have the support of the population, mostly freed slaves. (Yayou did it before being toppled down by Dessalines.) Toussaint was a regular soldier of the French army and wanted to stay so. Dessalines, also a lieutenant of Toussainta, was a harsh man but a bold, very disciplinated soldier and a very active cavalryman who had been present in many fronts, rallying the blacks (the slaves liberated by Toussaint) and haranguing them to fight till the last (an example is the battle of Crete a Pierrot where a handsome of fighters under the command of Dessalines resisted the entire French expeditional army). A very dark skined man, he was used by the other officers (blacks and mulattoes) to motivate the black soldiers to fight the war of the Independency. Since he was illiterate and crual, none of those officers wanted him really to be their ruler.
*** a The short, heroic, and strange career of Dessalines gave rise to a myth among the followers of the vodoo cult. However, identifying Dessalines to a god (a vodoo "loa") might be a grave mistake since it justifies not only heroism but also violence.