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Magloire's plan also calls for agricultural schools, a county-agent system, cooperative use of tractors, a farmers' bank, reforestation and grain storage. Construction of 300 miles of new roads is an important corollary, raising hope for the time when a peasant can send more to market than his wife can carry down a mountain trail. And because three-R learning is basic to all up-to-date farm technology, Magloire's modern Black Magic includes new schools: 74 have been built, with room for adults as well as one-third more children than ever before.
FOA & FAO. Impoverished Haiti draws valuable technical aid from the U.S. and the U.N. The FOA and FAO (the U.S. Foreign Operations Administration and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization) are among seven alphabetical agencies helping in Magloire's plan. One man leads a Brahma bull through the country to help breed good Haitian cattle. Another patiently instructs peasants in the use of the wheelbarrow. Another explains what a plow is, and how to guide oxen. One group of U.S. technical experts set up several dozen credit unions to fight usurers lending to farmers at 20% a month; others showed how to grow 1,600 Ibs. of rice on an acre that formerly gave 280 Ibs.
The technical aid men's biggest achievement has been in health; the loathsome, running-sore disease of yaws, which once infected 62% of Haitians, has been almost wiped out by the injection of one massive shot of penicillin into each of 2,623,141 peasant rumps. 'Now Magloire and FAO are tackling malaria, venereal disease and tuberculosis. The U.S. has spent $5,959,000 in technical aid for Haiti, the U.N. $617,800. Haiti has matched these contributions with $8,200,000.
Magloire's be-kind-to-mulattoes policy has not slowed the cultural tempo of Estime's authentique movement. Over Francophile opposition the President has made Creole the beginning language in schools rather than French; formerly children entered school to be confronted for the first time with a language that, however admired in diplomacy, was gibberish to them.
The greatest flowering of Haitian self-expression, the primitive painting that bloomed in Estime's time, goes on. This explosion of art, the most spectacular since Mexico's, has made painting one of the best-paid professions in Haiti and planted colorful pictures in fine collections from Paris to Beverly Hills.
Supply & Demand. Most of the elite still cannot bring themselves to hang this peasant art in their homes. Nor has the extravert President Magloire much time to puzzle out its moody meanings. He has other worries. He knows that the cold historical odds are against his serving through the end of his term in 1956; only twice has a Haitian President been on hand to smile a welcome to his legally chosen successor. And not every citizen is singing. "He can stay in the palace as long as he wants!"