In Port au Prince 10,000 citizens of the hemisphere's only black republic waved palm fronds, danced the meringue to the beat of native drums, and shouted "Down with Lescot—le tyran!" After four days of paralyzing strikes, and fighting in which at least 14 had been killed, the Army had gone over to the revolution and Haiti had a new Government. On the hill overlooking the sail-flecked harbor, the handsome residence of President Elie Lescot lay empty. The President had fled the country. (Early this week he deplaned in Miami.)
The military junta was not yet sure of keeping power. As the chanting and dancing in the Grande Rue went on through the night under a mellow tropical moon, the leftish United Democratic Front organized a committee of public safety and demanded a date for popular elections and the reopening of the student newspaper whose suppression by Lescot had touched off the explosion.
Easy Aces. Whatever happened, it looked like the end of Lescot's political career. His impenetrable affability had been equal—till last week—to all occasions. A suave dictator behind a constitutional façade, chubby, pleasure-loving Elie Lescot had always paid his way with charm. As Ambassador to the U.S.. his easy style of living almost got him into trouble. When his Government sent him $60,000 for arms purchases, he squandered $35,000 before a gun was bought, was saved only by a check from Dominican Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.
One Meal a Day. Elected President in 1941, Lescot fitted smoothly into the prevailing Haitian pattern of power. In the poorest, most overcrowded of Latin American republics, a wealthy mulatto elite ruled an ocean of pure blacks. Lescot ran the country under martial law, throttled the press. But even among the elite his popularity began to fade when he allowed his sons too flagrantly to acquire expropriated German property. The elite moreover became convinced that he had lost official U.S. favor. He was also identified with the ill-starred, U.S.-financed rubber-production scheme, which fizzled out in Haiti before war's end. Living costs trebled, the average peasant was eating only one meal a day. Tight, teeming Haiti was ready for a change.