(See Cover)
Cinnamon-skinned girls in Dior dresses, starchy diplomats and officers sparkling with gold braid gathered one night last week in the majestic, tile-floored great hall of the Presidential Palace in Portau-Prince. The occasion: a ball in honor of Jamaica's visiting Governor Sir Hugh Foot and Lady Foot. Just at 10, the orchestra blared out a march, and Lady Foot entered the room on the arm of a huge, kingly-looking black man resplendent in white tie, tails and full decorations. His Excellency Paul Eugene Magloire (pronounced mah-glwar), President of the Republic of Haiti and host of the evening, stayed on until 2, ceremoniously dancing with each guest in the order of her husband's rank, gravely bowing to Lady Foot's parting curtsy.
The ceremonial public appearances of Paul Magloire are always kingly. Usually he is in one of his uniforms (cost: $300-$1,000 each), which variously employ the old-fashioned trappings—the plume, the spurred boot, the epaulet and the aiguillette. His manner, too, is regal; one aide carries his special, seven-inch cigars in a leather box; another stands ready to hold his gold-headed cane like a staff of office. A vast, burly man—he stands six feet and his chest measures 44 in.—Magloire carries off his formal appearances with unerring dignity. When on parade he is being what he knows many lowly Haitians want in a President: a father-king, a national bon papa of regal mien. Loving it, they sing:
He gives us jobs and money—oh! oh!
oh!
He can stay in the palace as long as he
wants!
In the palace, between ceremonies, Magloire puts aside fancy dress and operates as the kind of detail-cracking, eleven-hour-a-day executive that any topflight Detroit industrialist could understand. He rises in the dawn cacophony of his capital's unbelievably numerous roosters, and hops on an exercise machine. After a rubdown, he breakfasts in bathrobed comfort on fruit and cafe au lait. Then, in a suite filled with alabaster busts, stuffed pink cranes, Empire clocks and pictures of himself and other Haitian heroes, the President reads reports and mail, takes a thoughtful second look at work saved over from the night before. At 7:30 he showers and dresses, usually in grey gabardine or white linen, a silk tie with a gold clasp, grey suede shoes. Soon he is sitting at a cluttered desk in a smallish office conspicuously free of ornament.