Haiti: A Warning to Renegades

The government pamphlets circulating in Port-au-Prince last week left little to the imagination. "Dr. Francois Duvalier will fulfill his sacrosanct mission. He has crushed and will always crush the attempts of the opposition. Think well, renegades. Here is the fate awaiting you and your kind." Below was a photograph of three severed heads torn from the bodies of captured anti-Duvalier guerrillas and displayed at Haiti's National Palace. Just in case anyone missed the message, "Papa Doc" administered yet another object lesson to his opposition. In a chilling ceremony at Port-au-Prince's "Ex-terieur" cemetery, he staged Haiti's first-public execution in 30 years.

The victims-were Louis Drouin, 28, a short, stocky mulatto, and Marcel Numa, 21, a tall handsome Negro, both members of a 13-man guerrilla force that landed on Haiti's southern coast four months ago. Operating independently of other scattered bands in Haiti, they ambushed troop columns, encouraged peasants to defy their Duvalier overseers. Papa Doc had no trouble finding out who they were; in tiny Negro Haiti, the word gets around fast by telediol grapevine.

In retaliation, Duvalier's secret police slaughtered whole families and even distant relatives of the rebels. Drouin's family was marched naked through the streets of their home town and "removed" at a nearby army barracks. Meantime, Duvalier's rag-tag army was killing off the miniature force one by one. The government bragged that only Drouin and Numa remained.

To guarantee an S.R.O. crowd for their execution, Duvalier ordered all businesses closed and schools let out; backlands peasants were trucked into Port-au-Prince. As TV cameras recorded the scene, a black and white Jeep pulled up to the cemetery, and out stepped the two victims. They were tied tightly to two pine stakes. "Traditional proceedings were scrupulously respected," announced Le Matin, a government newspaper. "There were three volleys of Springfields, and submachine guns, and three coups de grace." After which, the crowd was marched to the National Palace, where Duvalier, acceding to its "solicitations," appeared on the balcony "to smile and wave."

Still at large in Haiti's hills is another band of guerrillas, which landed last June and linked up with other fighters already there. Papa Doc had won a battle, but the war went on.