Intimacy, hostility, and state politics: François Duvalier and his Inner-circle, 1931–1971

ABSTRACT

The historiography on the François Duvalier regime in Haiti (1957–1971) tends to focus on Duvalier's wanton use of violence and generally overlooks questions of governance, stressing or inferring that Duvalier was a solitary despot. This article is resolutely revisionist and argues that Duvalier (1) did not govern alone; (2) relied primarily on an inner-circle for governance; (3) and that personal identity and intimacy, not ideology, determined the composition of this inner-circle. Paradoxically, membership in the inner-circle offered no guarantee for safety, as relations to Duvalier could shift from intimacy to hostility with staggering speed. This article's scope and methods are historiographic while using several anthropological notions on interpersonal relationships. It thus examined the bonds that shaped the composition of Duvalier's inner-circle in the course of four decades, from 1931 to 1971.

KEYWORDS:

• Haiti
• Duvalier
• anthropology of the state
• inner-circle
• intimacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Acknowledgements

Researching a historical subject with few archives makes the contributions of dispassionate observers key. My deepest gratitude goes to Elliott Roy, Francis Charles, Dominique Blain, Hervé Denis, Frantz Désvarieux, Margaret Désinor, Simone Duvalier, and Kenzo Jacques. As always, Michèle Oriol, Eddy Cavé, Guiton Dorimain, and Rodrigo Bulamah provided key insights and bibliographic advices.

Notes

1 On noirisme (‘blackism’), see Nicholls 1974, 1996; Sénéchal 2006; Dash 1981; Péan 2007. Specific to Haiti and distinct from the less radical negritude, as Dash (1981) noted, noirisme is an essentialist and racialist ideology –both Nicholls (1974, 670), and Péan (2007, 95) describe it as racist. In policy terms, noirisme advocates political power and government jobs to the country's black middle class rather than to mulattos (Smith 2009). Importantly, for several prominent scholars (Fatton 2007; Dupuy 2014; Sénéchal 2006; Péan 2007), the term noirisme, even if formally coined in mid-twentieth century Haiti, covers ideas and actions present throughout the country's history and is therefore not limited to an intellectual and political reaction to the mulatto-led governments during the U.S. occupation of the country (1915–1934), although that situation did exacerbate racial tensions. One of the main differences between Duvalier's noirisme and earlier forms of noirisme resides in its biologization, turning it into a ‘hegemony of naturality’ as Sénéchal (2006, 24) noted.

2 He was then replaced by his own son, Jean-Claude, 19 at the time, who ruled until 1986.

3 As is known, anthropology has historically contributed to the anthropology of the traditional, pre-capitalist, and pre-industrial state, since Evans-Pritchard’s 1940 classic African Political Systems and other landmarks such as Gluckman’s Headman (1949) or Marshall Sahlins’ work on chiefs (1963). I am restricting the scope of my study to the modern state.

4 See Bouchard (2011), and Thelen, Vetters, and Benda-Beckmann (2014), for two extensive surveys of anthropology of the modern state.

5 See Lacey (2019), on Franklin Delano Roosevelt; O’Donnell 2015, on J.F. Kennedy; Khlevniuk 2008 and Fitzpatrick 2015 on Stalin; and Read 2003, on Adolf Hitler. For O’Donnell, ethnic fealty was a crucial component of the relationships to Kennedy.

6 See, e.g. Bulamah 2013; Lowenthal 1987; Marcelin 2012; Métraux 1951; Mintz 2010. Haiti's best memorialists interestingly also focus on sociality rather than events: e.g. Cavé 2011; Auguste 2001.

7 The way my Haitian informants treated me made me realize something beyond the sheer gathering of information. They could not stay informants but thrived to develop an interpersonal relationship. The attention, the tolerance, the warmth, they manifested towards me personally eventually revealed something anthropological about sociality. I owe them not just data, but to a large extent my argument and theories.

8 A bi-semic term, complicité means either complicity (participation to a crime) or an interpersonal relationship so close and symmetric that both individuals understand each other's thoughts without needing to talk. It confers immediacy in mutual understanding.

9 The personal dimension of governance usually evokes studies on patrimonialism. I chose not to go in that direction for, as Weber explained, patrimonialism is a type of legitimacy, not a type of regime. In addition, contrary patrimonialism, most members of Duvalier's inner-circle were not from economically or politically powerful families.

10 In the late 1980s, the archives of the Duvalier presidency, called ‘the Duvalier library’, were transferred to the officer's mess in the Pacot neighbourhood (itself a house appropriated from an executed opponent); from there, they were later either sold to a third party, dispersed, or destroyed. In addition, the practice of public administrators, ministers, and military officers to ‘privatize’ the archives they produced while working for the state has dispersed public archives. After years of investigation, I located in 2016 the abandoned, unclassified and literally decomposing archives of the Haitian Armed Forces in the infernally hot attic of the Bel-Air location of the National Archives; they are unusable.

11 The Journal of Haitian Studies, the main academic venue on Haiti, has not published any piece on the Duvalier regime, save reviews of literary works. Many of the historiographic works referenced here tend to be general. The Duvalier regime is a gigantic academic blind spot.

12 This include an unpublished, 13-page document by Oriol (2018) on the compositions of all administrations under François then Jean-Claude Duvalier.

13 This article is an offshoot from an ongoing anthropology of the state under Duvalier. I use data from interviews collected for that project. In particular, I use the testimonies provided by five officers who served in the Presidential Palace in the 1960s: Elliott Roy (’59), William Régala (’59), Abel Jérôme (’59), Francis Charles (’59) and Prosper Avril (’59) –the first four were all, at some point, personally close to Duvalier himself. (The year after an officer's name signals the year he graduated from the military academy. Graduation years are, I believe, a crucial marker of esprit de corps among officers from the same batch.) I also use the testimonies of children of members of the inner-circle, who were also able to observe the presidency, especially Hervé Denis, Frantz Désvarieux, Maggie Désinor. I interviewed Simone Duvalier, Duvalier's youngest daughter, in January 2019 (not to mix with her mother, Simone Ovide Duvalier). I also use the personal communications from two scholars of the regime whose fathers were members of it: Michèle Oriol and Daniel Supplice.

14 This is a point made by the young officers in the presidential guard (Elliott Roy, p.c 2019, Francis Charles, p.c. 2019, William Régala, p.c. 2016) and by Supplice (p.c. 2016) and Oriol (p.c. 2016).

15 Frantz Désvarieux (p.c. 2017), who as a child used to play with the young Jean-Claude Duvalier – his father, Frédéric Désvarieux (1924–1975), was, with Clovis Desinor, the main organizer of Duvalier's National Unity Party – could only talk of the latter by imitating his voice, as something incredibly funny. Michèle Oriol (p.c. 2018), who also witnessed Duvalier talk, said that it was like hearing ‘an overused piece of iron screech on a black board’.

16 See Moïse (1990, 320–350), Florival (2008, 86–88), and Pierre (1987).

17 Pierre (1987, 51–69), an early and devoted member of the inner-circle, describes astonishing scenes of lethal bomb-manufacturing as early as 1956. The group of ‘bombists’ (sic) included Clément Barbot, Fritz Cinéas, Windsor Laferrière, and Alphonse Lahens (Moïse 1990, 346 & 382; Supplice 2014, 181, 439, 445; New York Times, ‘Haitian Ambassador: Terrorist?’ 14 March 1983, 9; see also Diederich 2016a, 62–3); they later were rewarded with various positions within the government (Oriol 2018).

18 Fattier (1998, 489) noted in her linguistic survey of Haiti that the expression Corps de famille is used in both Haiti's French and Kreyol (although Fattier does not provide the Kreyol spelling of it; I personally never heard it uttered in Kreyol). Oriol (2005, 8) and Desquiron (1993) apply it to political families and their allies.

19 Auguste (2001, 83–85) talks about ‘headquarters’ and ‘target-homes’ to name the homes of families to whom others would be socially attracted. This offers a twist to Meyer Fortes’ (1949) notions of ‘household’ and ‘house societies’, where the domestic realm is distinct from kinship; in the Port-au-Prince neighbourhood of Bas-Peu-de-Chose, one's domestic realm aggregated other people's families. What Auguste also conveys is that one's social life in early twentieth Century Port-au-Prince develops not outside one's family but within it and within other people's families.

20 Godfathers and godchildren can have the same place as affines while godmothership and godfathership can be typically exchanged. See Bulamah (2018).

21 Le Nouvelliste, 18 August 1931, 6; Le Moniteur, 20 août 1931, 4.

22 Abbott (2011, 62) believes they were kin, without giving any specification. These family names actually do not appear for at least three generations above Duvalier, and since the Duvaliers were estranged from the family of François Duvalier's mother, who died at 17, the Raymond and Désinor were most likely ‘allies’ rather than kin (Belleau 2019).

23 On Louis Raymond, see Supplice (2014, 624).

24 When they died in 1968, under Duvalier's rule, both Louis Raymond and Marceau Désinor (1891–1968), who were very minor historical figures, received national funerals (Supplice 2014, 224, 624).

25 We should also link the political dimension of the term allies and the notion of a corps de famille to Fatton’s (2002) paradigm of Haitian politics: state offices are conceived as the main way to acquire personal wealth. Government positions thus become one of the very few means for social mobility. Fatton calls this phenomenon belly politics.

26 This is precisely the trajectory of members of the inner-circles explored by Khlevniuk (2008), Fitzpatrick (2015) and Read (2003). Kennedy's ‘Irish’ allies were not his childhood friends but came later in his life O’Donnell (2015).

27 Unless otherwise specified, my information on Désinor are from his daughter M. Désinor (p.c. 2016), her husband F. Désvarieux (p.c. 2016), Supplice (2014, 223), and Abbott (2011, 143–167). On the Raymond family, I use Supplice (p.c. 2016), Régala (p.c. 2016), Michèle Oriol (p.c. 2015), Blain (p.c. 2017), Dorimain (p.c. 2016) and Supplice (2014, 623–4). On their official functions in the Duvalier administrations, I used Oriol’s (2018) document.

28 I chose not to treat Louis Diaquois (-1932) and Lorimer Denis ( -1957), Duvalier's close friends and colleagues from this period because they died early and never exercised political functions. Denis, an expert on the voodoo religion, cosigned several of Duvalier’s (1966) texts.

29 Jean-Baptiste George once hid Duvalier from the police, then became his minister of education (Abbott 2011, 75, 129; Florival 2008, 71; Oriol 2018). Frédéric Duvigneaud (1895–1969) was the ultimate cheval de retour of Haitian politics from the 1930s to the 1960s. He was a minister in the Vincent, Lescot, and Estimé administrations before becoming a hard-liner and a minister in the first five Duvalier administrations (Smith 2009, 35, 41; Péan 2007; Supplice 2014, 260). A novelist and playwriter, Dorsainville (1911–1992) came from a family of civil servants and scholars and had known Duvalier for years before becoming active in his 1956–1957 campaign; he served Duvalier as his ambassador until 1965 (Florival 2008, 77–9; Moïse 1990; Smith 2009, 109 & 224; Supplice 2014, 242). Dorsinville (1985) later wrote a mea culpa of sorts about his involvement. On Antonio André, I used information from Péan (2007), Eddy Cavé (p.c. 2019), his colleague at the National Bank, and Simone Duvalier (p.c. 2019). On Jacques Fourcand, I used Supplice (2014, 297) and Florival (2008). A surgeon trained abroad, Fourcand became Duvalier's close confidante throughout the 1960s. His 7 July 1965 speech, available on the International Red Cross website (ref. V-S-10025-A-04), is one of the most explicit calls for total destruction in the overpopulated twentieth century annals of mass violence.

30 This point was made to me by Michèle Oriol (p.c. 2019). See Table 2 for the impressive number of lawyers among Duvalier's inner-circle.

31 Lamartinière Honorat's father.

32 It is located in the capital's historic centre, south of the Presidential Palace. Its surface is 35.6 hectares (or 1.3 square km) and comprises today less than a thousand homes (CIAT 2017). It took me 8 min to walk from the former Raymond residence, 36 rue Cameau, to the Duvalier home in the 1940s and 50s, at 23 ruelle Roy. Not all the black middle class which, according to sociologist Pressoir (1950), totalled 38,000 individuals, lived there, but probably a significant number. Sociality is thus highly correlated to locality, a point made by Pina-Cabral (1991) and Lambert (2000) about social institutions, family, relatedness.

33 Louis Mars was Duvalier's Secretary of foreign Affairs in 1958–59; George Salomon, an official in the Estimé (1948–1950) and the Duvalier governments; Max Pierre-Paul (1916–2005), a member of parliament from 1961 to 1970; Carl Brouard (1902–1965), a close colleague of Duvalier at the Griots and a major intellectual figure of twentieth century Haiti (see Stieber 2020); Sony Borges, an officer in Duvalier's Presidential Guard and one of his henchmen; Aurèle Joseph, a Secretary (minister) from 1959 to 1971; Hénock and Ernst Trouillot were noiriste scholars whose careers flourished in the 1960s – Hénock Trouillot received a paid government prize in 1963. Windsor Laférrière wrote vitriolic noiriste pieces in Le Souverain, which helped recruit supporters for Duvalier (Moïse 1990, 329). He was arrested in 1957 by the police for having placed a lethal bomb in December 1956 (see Supplice 2014, 439). Duvalier appointed him first under-Secretary for the Economy in Duvalier's first government (Oriol 2018, 1), then mayor of Port-au-Prince in 1958. As one of the regime's hard-liners, he threatened personally those who opposed Duvalier ‘with a punishment they’ll remember for half a century’ (Burt and Diederich 1986, 112).

34 In Clesca 2019, 8. Supplice was born in 1950. His father, André Supplice, had known Duvalier since 1947 and would later be a member of his regime.

35 I do imply here that political bonds preceded matrimonial ties. Instead of the political implications of kinship alliances, as Lévi-Strauss (1949) would have it when examining structures of indigenous societies, we have here the marriage implications, no less, of already-existing political relationships.

36 For information about the individuals in this paragraph, see Table 2. These unions were mentioned during interviews (notably Elliott Roy, p.c. 2019, Blain, p.c. 2017, Véronique Roy, p.c. 2019, Oriol, p.c. 2016–2019) and confirmed by the biographic sketches of Supplice (2014). Duvalier was Best Man at the wedding of Victor Nevers Constant and Marie-Claude Honorat (Haiti Sun, 1 December 1957, 15). Endogamy within the same social sectors deserves a separate study. Oriol (2005) astonishingly shows that Haitian rulers from independence to 1957 (the first presidential election through universal suffrage) fit in two genealogical trees. In moments of crisis, members of the same families could have contradictory allegiances –to Duvalier or to their kin. Such moments happened often since Duvalier turned recurrently against members of his inner-circle. However, an individuals was not always punished for his kin's deed. When Lionel Honorat (’45) led an aborted plot to overthrow Duvalier in early April 1963 and rushed into exile (See New York Times, 14 April 1963, 44), his family remained untouched, including his brother Lamartinière, Duvalier's close friend. When Lucien Daumec was executed, his brother and cousin, Gérard and Marcel Daumec, remained in the government and Duvalier's inner-circle – but his step-son and uncle were also executed. When Col. Kesner Blain was arrested for conspiracy and imprisoned in Fort-Dimanche, where he would die, his wife continued her career as a Duvalierist diplomat (Dominique Blain, p.c. 2017).

37 About corruption within the Duvalier regime, see Moïse (1990, 386), Florival (2008, 233–6 & 251) and Abbott (2011, 145), with Péan’s (2007) book the most authoritative and detailed source on the subject. Henri Siclait, head of the Régie du Tabac and Luckner Cambronne were central characters of corruption schemes. The fact that members of Duvalier's inner-circle had their own kind of inner-circle who needed to be rewarded, encouraged venality.

38 Charles (2009, 151), Simone Duvalier (p.c. 2019), Véronique Roy (p.c. 2019). Officers on duty, such as E. Roy (p.c. 2019) and Charles (p.c. 2019) noticed how the Duvalier children called the members of the regime.

39 The term was appropriated from an eponymous French right-wing terrorist organization in the 1930s, another example of the influence of the French far right on Duvalierism (See Stieber's 2020 authoritative work) . The ‘bombists’ of the 1956–1957 campaign were the cagoulards’ embryo.

40 Daumec was also at ease with corruption. Raymond Cassagnol (2003, 165–174), a sawmill owner, gives a detailed account of his encounter with Lucien Daumec in August 1960. Daumec openly attempted to racket Cassagnol, asking him 15% of the sawmill's benefits for the VSN's ‘philanthropic works’. Daumec first sent two thugs to Cassagnol's house in the central Plateau to invite him to his home in Port-au-Prince. Cassagnol obliged and was received by an affable Daumec. Daumec then engaged in innuendos, lining both potential rewards and veiled threats of expropriation before bluntly demanding 15% of the benefits. Cassagnol went into exile.

41 Abbott (2011, 122–123). One of the most dramatic testimonies I collected on the regime was about the day Daumec was executed. Eliott Roy (p.c. 2019), then a lieutenant in the Presidential Guard was de faction in front of the Duvaliers’ private apartments. In the late afternoon, Duvalier arrived and engaged a conversation with him. It was June 64 and an insurgency in the south had put the regime on the defensive. Duvalier insisted that everybody had to do his share, that too many were lukewarm; he stated he was returning from Fort-Dimanche where he had just executed ‘my own brother-in-law’. He said he had grabbed his aide's rifle and shot Daumec through the cell bars. That Duvalier could initiate a conversation after having just executed his brother-in-law and long-time friend stupefied Roy. Duvalier continued with a strange sentence ‘Fok tout moun met tout bra-yo nan terrine san’ (one has to put their whole arms in a terrine (sic) of blood). Roy understood that Daumec had not been shot on the Fort's execution ground but in his cell.

42 For sketches on these individuals, see Diederich 2016a. Rosalie Bousquet, also known as Mrs. Max Adolphe, was the warden of Fort-Dimanche where she led executions and tortured prisoners. See Diederich 2016b, 18–19; Abbott 2011, 142.

43 There is already an important critical literature on the structures of authoritarianism in Haiti (e.g. Fatton 2002, 2007; Dupuy 2014; Trouillot 1990).

44 During the wedding ceremony of Duvalier's daughter Nicole in December 1966, U.S. ambassador Timmons was surprised not to see Gracia Jacques standing as usual behind Duvalier (Diplomatic cable Embtel 752, 19 December 1966). See also Florival’s (2008, 241) portrait of Jacques as a young, affable transit policeman in Cap Haitian.

45 Kenzo Jacques is Gracia Jacques’ grandson and was raised by him.

46 The spatial organization of the Palace was entirely rearranged after the 1958 failed Coup. The entire ground floor hosted soldiers and VSNs. The Duvalier family was housed on the north wing of the second floor. In front of this apartment was a small antechamber with a military officer as a guard. Adjacent to it was Duvalier's secretary's office and immediately behind was Duvalier's office, the entrance of which was guarded by another military officer. The second floor's centre held the Executive Secretary's office, and a waiting room guarded by two officers. The entire southern wing had officers who would rotate, sleeping there on camp beds in turn at night. In interviews, children of members of the inner-circle provided revealing details: after school, a dozen or more children would gather on the palace's ground floor to play various games such as baby-foot, ping-pong and sometimes soccer with soldiers and VSN as their playmates.

47 The main exceptions were Duvalier's successive private secretaries, a position held first by Lucien Daumec then by Pierre Biamby until 1971, which compelled its occupants to manage phases of repression and schemes of corruption. In August 1964, Pierre Biamby headed a Presidential Commission in Jérémie during a vast counter-insurgency operation. This position should not be confused with Duvalier's ‘personal secretary’, a position held by France Saint-Victor for most of Duvalier's rule.

48 Gérard Daumec never occupied a major official function; yet, he is said to have had considerable influence not only on Duvalier but also on other members of the inner-circle (Supplice 2014, 203). Florival's book (2008) is as much about Gérard Daumec as about Duvalier, where he appears as the archetype of the intrigant de palais.

49 See Oriol (2018, 1–2).

50 Boyer was married to Geneviève Blot, daughter of a prominent politician and writer (Supplice 2014, 129); Blanchet's father-in-law was a prominent lawyer.

51 From October 1967 to November 1968, he was minister of agriculture (Oriol 2018, 4).

52 Several wealthy individuals who had been executed or forced into exile had their estates, bank accounts, and properties legally appropriated. The complex financial implications were managed by André. This was true of Paul Magloire and his siblings, Arsène and Fernand, whose properties were seized and then manage by a fund created by a law passed in March 1958. See Supplice 2014, 49–50.

53 The only time in his life that, I believe, Duvalier was without his family and friends occurred during the 1944–1945 academic year when he studied at the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan at Ann Harbor, with a U.S.-government grant. Its archives show that Duvalier dropped out after a year and returned to Port-au-Prince without having notified his advisor (Belleau 2019).

54 This was also true for Duvalier's decision to execute innocents. See Charles (2009, 155).

55 This relational and conversational world is the very matter of Florival’s (2008) book. Intended to be a political biography of Duvalier, the book actually says almost nothing about Duvalier himself, about political developments, the regime's brutality, or the political beliefs of the regime's protagonists. Instead, it focuses on personal relationships: between Duvalier and Clément Barbot, Duvalier and Gérard Daumec, Daumec and his friends (Boyer, Siclait, etc.), Duvalier and his daughter Denise, Luckner Cambronne and the Duvalier family; and on the competitions and endless intrigues among members of the inner-circle. In Florival's a-moral account of the inner-circle, relationships are described as both emotional and non-political. Audain’s (1976) disjointed account leaves an almost identical impression: the constant intrigues and trajectories within the inner-circle are related as strictly interpersonal matters.

56 These names appear in Florival (2008), Charles (2009), Audain (1976), Supplice (p.c. 2019), E. Roy (p.c. 2019).

57 On the other hand, Lévi-Strauss (1966, 172–216) contends that naming is above all symbolic and classificatory, highlighting structures. Pina-Cabral (2017, 12, 75–6) magisterially shows how nicknames can be negotiated in a ‘relation of profound affective mutuality’.

58 As I wrote these lines, I realized I was given several nicknames while doing fieldwork in Haiti. Assigning a nickname appears as both a gift and an intimation to intimacy, as if an interpersonal relation could not be without this intercession.

59 Régala later became Jean-Claude Duvalier's chief of secret services and in the 1980s a prominent member of Haiti's National Councils (military junta) from 1986 to 1990.

60 ‘I practiced him a lot’ (je l’ai beaucoup pratiqué) is a literal translation. The meaning is akin to ‘I had a practical knowledge of him’, or ‘I dealt with him up so frequently and closely that I knew him extremely well’.

61 The italic, which is mine, intends to convey Régala's own intonation during the interview.

62 Chancy was an important communist leader and Marxist intellectual.

63 Roy went to Paris and obtained political asylum but did not notify the Haitian government. When he was expected back in Haiti, in early 1966, he sent the message that he was actually sick, too afraid to admit he was in exile. Duvalier, then, did send his personal physician to check upon Roy – who did not return to Haiti until the late 1990s.

64 Conversations are a good example. Although usually correlated by social sciences to civil association, bond-making, gifts, and sociality (e.g. Thomas Scheff 1997), historians of Stalin's inner-circle Khlevniuk (2008) and Fitzpatrick (2015) showed that conversations were a feature of this regime of terror, with topics switching eerily from governance, to family matters, to repression.

65 See endnote 5.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported CLA Dean's Research Fund at UMass-Boston [grant number 2019].