Intimacy, hostility, and state politics: François Duvalier and his Inner-circle, 1931 – 1971 Jean-Philippe Belleau 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 o ff ered 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 Che i lieti onor tornaro in tristi lutti Dante, Inferno , Canto 13 Preamble In a regime that had neither a real political party nor a prime minister organizing govern- ment meetings, François Duvalier ’ s o ffi ce in the Presidential Palace was the prime location of governance. There, Duvalier sat behind a desk that had six drawers, three on the right and as many on the left. The top right drawer had a pistol. The middle one had notes he took on people and lists of supporters and informants classi fi ed by regions. The third right drawer had stacks of bills for visitors. Duvalier was right-handed; the left drawers were opened less often. The top of the desk was untidy as books, dossiers, pictures and even fl owers com- peted for space. This desk epitomized Duvalier and his rule: insecure, chaotic, and relational. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group CONTACT Jean-Philippe Belleau jeanphilippe.belleau@umb.edu Anthropology, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125-3300, United States HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2020.1762587 Introduction François Duvalier (1907 – 1971) governed Haiti for 14 years. He was elected president on 22 September 1957, after a brutal presidential campaign (Pierre 1987, 39 – 139; Moïse 1990, 320 – 367), running on a platform based on noirisme and nationalism. 1 He ruled until his death in 1971. 2 The historiography (e.g. Burt and Diederich 1969, 1986; Diederich 1970, 2016a, 2016b; Rotberg 1971; Nérée 1988; Hector 1989; Trouillot 1990; Nicholls 1996; Abbott 2011; Pierre-Charles 2013; Dubois 2012, 320-349), oral history, and cultural production (e.g. Graham Green ’ s The Comedians ) tend to focus on the regime ’ s brutality, notably the uncanny episodes of repression that punctuated the regime – massacres, executions, personality cult – and the two institutions associated with it – the military and Duvalier ’ s militia, the Volontaires du Service National (VSN), known as Tonton Macoutes However, we know surprisingly little about Duvalier ’ s mode of governance and how his administration functioned. The same historiography generally stresses that Duvalier gov- erned alone. The opposite was true. Duvalier did not and could not have done it alone. He relied on an inner-circle and beyond it on a vast web of followers. Duvalier ’ s ministers, formal and informal advisors, friends, family members, and other intimates played a crucial role in orienting and implementing the president ’ s views, policies, and decisions. Anthropological studies of the modern state 3 have focused on a wide array of topics, from welfare service (e.g. Thelen, Vetters, and Benda-Beckmann 2014) to local bureaucracy (e.g. Gupta 2015) to coercion (e.g. Trouillot 2001; Das and Poole 2004) to the state ’ s embeddedness in local communities and civil society (e.g. Krohn-Hansen and Nustad 2005) to, quite often, the normativity of state power (e.g. Scott 2009) and, maybe less often, to how this normativity is negotiated between stakeholders and bureaucracies (e.g. Middleton 2015). 4 What the French-speaking world calls gouvernement – what Sahlins (1968, 6) calls ‘ the ruling authority monopoliz[ing] sovereignty ’ – and more speci fi - cally the presidency in a modern state seems a topic often studied by political science and less by anthropology. Both the analytical unit and the historical-ethnographic site of this article are the inner- circle of an authoritarian ruler. When I started to study Duvalier ’ s governance, I assumed to fi nd politics, ideology, and above all autocratic decisions at the centre of the state. Instead, I found a world immersed in interpersonal relationships. The innovative works on the state by Thelen, Vetters, and Benda-Beckmann (2014) argue for a relational perspective – for an analysis of state actions that focuses on social relations, and more precisely on how state employees interact with the public. I am concerned here with the interpersonal relation- ships within the state and more precisely within a presidency. ‘ Inner-circle ’ usually designates a relatively exclusive group of trusted advisers a ruler typically relies on. As historians have shown, both democratic and authoritarian rulers assemble such groups; with di ff erent personalities and agendas, their members compete for attention and positions; their relationships to the ruler are often de fi ned by devotion, personal ambition, ideological belief, or a combination of the three. 5 Duvalier ’ s inner-circle was composed of individuals assembled mainly through three periods of his life: kin of his father ’ s friends and colleagues; writers and scholars he met and bonded with during a long intellectual period running from 1931 to the 1950s; and individuals aggregated after the start of his political career in 1946. These were individuals with very di ff erent personalities, interests, competencies, and ethics. The common 2 J.-P. BELLEAU denominator was that, in almost all cases, intimacy preceded the political relationship and was the condition for it. The scope and methods of this article are both historical and anthropological. I link authoritarian politics to interpersonal relationships to show, fi rst, that personal identity determined entry into Duvalier ’ s inner-circle and, second, that interpersonal relationships primed ideological beliefs. Relationships within Duvalier ’ s inner-circle, and especially dyadic relations to Duvalier himself, were ‘ born ’ intimate rather political, to the point that we may think of his inner-circle as a space where politics were ‘ domesticized ’ , and not just privatized, from inception. In addition, the primacy of the relational tended to make the bond to Duvalier almost unidimensional. For that reason, relationships were more likely to unravel for reasons having to do with a ff ects rather than political agendas or competing ideas. Considerations on interpersonal relations are built on the extensive ethnographic litera- ture on Haiti ’ s social world, which emphasizes the centrality of social bonds, intimacy, and family in many aspects of social and public life. 6 These studies reveal a social world that is intensely ‘ relational ’ , an adjective I use throughout this article to cover the ability to wave meaningful relations rather than simply interact with people, and a tendency to turn even transactional relations into meaningful relationships. 7 I use ‘ intimacy ’ simply to refer to interpersonal closeness. Yet, that closeness is di ffi cult to gauge in absolute terms. Feldman (2011), Candéa et al. (2015) and Pina-Cabral (2017) di ff erentiate between a simple human connection and a rich interpersonal relation. The French term complicité 8 captures a bit of that richness, as it names a bond of intelligence in a dyad. I also use Caillé ’ s (2020) distinction between interpersonal and impersonal relations. Interpersonal relations take place within primary sociality (family, friends, neighbours), while impersonal relations belong to secondary sociality (workplaces, the law, the market). This distinction echoes classical oppositions between private and public spaces and between the individ- ual and the person (e.g. Dumont 1986; Da Matta 1991). However, neat conceptual opposi- tions between, on one side: distance, public, formality, o ffi ciality (and functions thereof); and, on the other, intimacy, private, a ff ects, and close personal bonds may struggle beyond the con fi nes of Western states and not fully render the relational ‘ nature ’ of Duva- lier ’ s inner-circle. Applying anthropological notions of relationships usually moulded for private contexts to the very public and political space of a government is this article ’ s task. Indeed, Duvalier did not have impersonal relations strictly framed by professionalism, bureaucratic rules, the sens de l ’ État , or other considerations. He did not accept in his inner- circle and government someone he did not have an inclination for. The relation was not limited to trust, which was of course required, but comprised an appreciation for the person. All members of his circle without any exception were people Duvalier knew per- sonally. Individuals were di ff erentiated according to their family ’ s closeness to the person of Duvalier or to his family and only then could they become ‘ members; ’ they almost always knew each other beyond the world of government and politics and as often knew their respective families. This may sound contradictory: how can a brutal despot be personable? This is what this article explores. One would assume that intimacy created solid political relations, that political relations based on established social bonds – often increased by family alliances – led to quasi-unbreakable ties between the ruler and members of the inner-circle and between these members. The opposite was true: intimacy did not prevent hostility; sometimes it even increased the possibility of disgrace. I HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY 3 therefore link two subjects: the thickness of interpersonal relations and authoritarian governance. 9 My choice of methods is informed by the lack of primary sources on the François Duva- lier regime. 10 Possibly for this reason, there has been very little scholarship on the regime. 11 Hence I use three sources: the existing historiography; 12 the few primary sources available; and 14 in-depth interviews with individuals who were either close to Duvalier or who were able to observe his presidency. 13 This article ’ s fi rst part focuses on the inner-circle ’ s formation. Duvalier came to adult- hood with a ready-made social circle provided by his father and grandfather. A repertoire that places the extended family at the centre of the social universe helps us analyze the personal dimension of the bonds, which I examine in the following section. A political bond was most and foremost a personal one; as a consequence, intimacy primed ideologi- cal beliefs, the subject of the third section. In the fourth, I analyze the sometimes unten- able tensions within the inner-circle and in the fi fth and sixth the compartmentalization of people and tasks, with the main actors of governance. The fi nal section examines Duva- lier ’ s ambiguities towards inner-circle members, whose relationships were both convivial and fl uid. The intriguing diversity, possibly unmatched among twentieth century dictatorships, of his inner-circle re fl ected Duvalier ’ s multifaceted personality: a poet, a scholar, a journalist, a physician, an ethnographer, a minister of health, a politician, a ruler, and a man who ordered and sometimes led tortures and killings. Yet, I tried to avoid the pathologization of Duvalier too often found in a sensationalist historiography. Duvalier was capable of empathy. He was paternal towards younger individuals, advancing their careers, giving them advice; 14 he repeatedly expressed fi lial recognition for his father and grandfather (Belleau 2019); the relationships with his consanguines and some of his oldest friends seem to have been genuinely caring. Duvalier also accepted contradictions – depending from whom and the moment. However, the brutal dimension not just of his regime in general, but of his mode of governance transpired in his relation to his inner-circle. Indeed, being a member of the inner-circle o ff ered no safety; rather, it seemed to increase the probability of demotion, exile, prison, or execution. Inheriting recruits How could someone who, by all accounts, had limited personal charisma secure the unlim- ited devotion of so many? Dictators ’ personal magnetism is often causal to the start of their careers, before the lure of rewards granted from the use of state ’ s resources can rally even more followers; not with Duvalier. His face was stern, his eyes expressionless and hidden by thick glasses, he was of average height for his generation; when talking, he had the high-pitch tone of a child doubled with a screeching feeling, which must have been rather counter-productive for someone eager to impress. 15 His personality and conversation were so unimpressive that he was constantly underestimated. 16 Yet, Duvalier raised legions of followers, some willing to kill for him even before he was elected president. 17 Duvalier had qualities that not only cannot be apprehended in terms of charisma but also contradict his image as aloof and crazy: his relational intelli- gence and his ability to fashion friendships were central to his fellowship and to the devo- tion to his person. Yet, this type of qualities is not uncommon and certainly not enough to 4 J.-P. BELLEAU launch a successful political career and, later, domination. Actually, it was not something Duvalier was or did that generated his inner-circle. The expression corps de famille refers in Haiti to a group larger than the extended family, yet structured by it, a group that includes friends and their own kin, thus tying within the same ensemble several families, a supra-family group without an identity but with a con- scious idea of itself and certainly with its own ethics. 18 In such a social con fi guration, a close friend would therefore be not one in a dyadic relation but an outsider henceforth integrated to a larger clan, someone accepted by and with access to elders and kin. 19 The bonds with non-kin within this corps can be as strong as with kin and cover several generations. In addition, the border between kin and non-kin is relative within the same corps 20 When entering politics, a candidate would have to rely fi rst on a corps de famille to launch a career, as it provides men to carry out all kinds of tasks. This web of alliances, obfuscated by the preeminence of kinship within it, evokes Carsten ’ s (2000) concept of ‘ relatedness ’ , which appears more operative here than the less supple ‘ kinship ’ . Relatedness is ‘ more ’ than just biological connections and encompasses forms of relations beyond kin, a system that precisely does not discriminate and hierarchize between blood ties and others. Duvalier ’ s early corps de famille was composed of very few Duvaliers, as neither he nor his father had any siblings (Belleau 2019). However, it was populated by other individuals and families, preeminently among them the Raymond and Désinor families, whose sons would be among the most important and longest-lasting members of Duvalier ’ s inner-circle; four would become ministers in Duva- lier ’ s governments. The 1931 obituary of Duvalier ’ s grandfather, Florestal Duvalier, o ff ers fascinating information about Duvalier ’ s corps de famille when he was unknown and 25, by naming these families: Mr. Florestal Duvalier ’ s widow, Mrs. Alice Duvalier, Duval and François Duvalier, Mr. Emmanuel Valmé, Mr. and Mrs. Louis Raymond and his family, Mr. and Mrs. Marceau Désinor and his family, Mr. and Mrs. Roland Duverneau and his family, as well as all other relatives and allies, painfully announce the death of Florestal Duvalier, their husband, father, and allies, who died yesterday at the age of 73. ( ... ). 21 The term ‘ allies ’ used here characterizes individuals and families, most notably the Désinor and the Raymond, who were not kin of the Duvalier. 22 The bond was between families and not simply between individuals. Material sacri fi ces or political capital spent by one for the bene fi ts of another within the same corps were expected. This anthropological phenom- enon was likely correlated to many scales of scarcities and precariousness, including jobs, and obviously created a body, possibly an institution, between the family and society, with potential con fl icts of allegiances. Louis Raymond (1899 – 1968), a close friend of Duval Duvalier, was also personally close to Dumarsais Estimé, who became president in 1946. He facilitated the entry of Duval Duvalier ’ s son, François Duvalier, then 39, into Dumarsais Estimé ’ s government as Director of the department of public health in 1946. 23 Such bonds of trust were not motivated by the ideological or political framework Duvalier later designed, although certainly not against it. To assume that personal bonds contradicted political beliefs would be simplistic; a strong patriotism was shared by the Duvaliers, Ray- monds and Désinor and was certainly part of the ‘ glue ’ that tied them together. 24 ‘ Allies ’ also politicizes a family ’ s relations to the public space, in a Realpolitik way; inter- actions with the public realm are conceived as a struggle, and a struggle that had to be HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY 5 fought with a group. 25 It suggests that relatedness, a social con fi guration that aggregates people beyond the family, at some point stops aggregating to meet other people ’ s relat- edness. As Carsten (2000) shows, relatedness is therefore not about social stability, as a Durkheimian and structuralist-functionalist anthropology would have it, but potentially about competition. In addition, what Caillé (2020) calls primary sociality both turns out to be a resource for, and populates, secondary sociality. The close (and private) interper- sonal relationships that Feldman (2011) and Pina-Cabral (2017) explore become useful in (public) politics for that reason – meaningful relations carry trust. This situation points – maybe too easily – at an hypertrophied private sphere, a point made by Da Matta (1991) about Brazil, who added that the public space was shaped as an extension and at the image of the private space. Or rather, it suggest that the classic distinction between public and private spaces and socialities may not capture how politics is, in this case, immersed in sociality from inception. Long before he started to rule, even before he started his medical and intellectual careers, François Duvalier had a ready-made circle provided by his small family. This extra- ordinary anthropological feature distinguishes Duvalier ’ s political trajectory and govern- ance from many rulers who more typically aggregated disciples and peers during their political career. 26 The two main individuals from Duvalier ’ s corps de famille who would later play prominent political roles in his inner-circle were younger than him: Claude Raymond (1930 – 2000) and Clovis Désinor (1914 – 2001). 27 With Claude Raymond, Duvalier had a formidable ally. A military o ffi cer since 1953, Raymond had access to discussions, allegiances and intrigues within the factionalized Armed Forces (Pierre 1987, 119 – 120). The day after Duvalier was sworn in, on 22 October 1957, Raymond was nominated chief of the Military House, which would become the Presidential Guard in December 1958 (Pierre 1987, 130; Supplice 2014, 623). Raymond lived in the Presidential Palace for years, remained physically close to Duvalier, and often accompanied him to functions outside the Palace. Raymond was the only member of the military who could take part in decisions regarding civilian a ff airs. He was also François Duvalier ’ s godchild. The bond was quasi- fi lial. After Duvalier ’ s death in 1971, Raymond became Secretary of Defense in Jean-Claude Duvalier ’ s administrations, while his brother, Adrien Raymond became Secretary of Foreign A ff airs (Oriol 2018, 6). Clovis Désinor would become a Sec- retary in 11 of Duvalier ’ s 20 successive governments. He had received his fi rst government position under Estimé, in 1948 when he was chosen to be the ministry of public health ’ executive general secretary, a position held earlier by Duvalier (Supplice 2014, 223). His children grew up within the regime, often going to the Presidential Palace after school, where they met other children of members of the inner-circle. Duvalier, who rarely left the Presidential Palace, would dine with his wife at the Désinor residence, where they had lengthy conversations beyond politics (Désinor, p.c. 2016). Historically, a second group was composed of personalities from the capital ’ s intellec- tual sphere. In the 1930s and 40s, Duvalier was combining a medical and an intellectual career. He published regularly in newspapers and journals, joined the Bureau d ’ Ethnologie , an institution that carried out research on Haitian folk traditions, and co-founded its main publication, Les Griots , an ethnographic journal of cultural and political signi fi cance. Several scholars, especially ethnographers and public intellectuals, joined Duvalier ’ s circle: 28 Lamartinière Honorat, Léonce Viaud, Jacques Oriol, Michel Aubourg, Paul and Jules Blanchet, René Piquion, René Chalmers, Arthur Bonhomme, Max Antoine, and 6 J.-P. BELLEAU Lucien Daumec who later became his brother-in-law; thirty years later, all would hold o ffi cial positions in Duvalier ’ s regime. This period of Duvalier ’ s life is well-studied (e.g. Nicholls 1974; Dash 1981; Stieber 2015, 2020). Interestingly, his medical career did not feed his political circle as much, possibly re fl ecting his lack of interest in the profession, with the exception of Aurèle Joseph, who would become Duvalier ’ s minister and Simone Duvalier ’ s godfather. A third, more political group of Duvalier ’ s inner-circle was built during or after 1946. That year, the ‘ 1946 revolution ’ , brought Dumarsais Estimé, a champion of the black middle class to the presidency (Smith 2009, 71 – 148). The allegiance to Estimé, as both a person and a political movement, was a horizontal bond. As Dominique Blain (p.c. 2018), daughter of a Duvalierist o ffi cer, put it, it was ‘ what united all these people, those from la classe (the urban black middle class) ’ . The decade that followed saw the politicization of Duvalier ’ s trajectory. Frédéric Desvarieux, Frédéric Duvigneaud, Fa. Jean-Baptiste George, Hugues Bourjolly, Raymond Roy and Roger Dorsinville joined Duvalier ’ s inner-circle during that period. Gérard de Catalogne, head of propaganda (Stieber 2012, 2020), Antonio André, director of the National Bank, and Jacques Four- cand, a surgeon whose career fl ourished in the 1960s joined the inner-circle after his elections. 29 Most members of the inner-circle did not join at once on a speci fi c date through a deci- sive encounter; rather, most appeared fi rst in a web of relations before moving closer to Duvalier, sometimes over several years. The inner-circle was formed through realms of both primary and secondary sociality, to use Caillé ’ s (2020) distinction, the corps de famille being only the closest part of a much more extensive web of relations made of neighbours, colleagues, friends, former classmates, and acquaintances. Importantly, there were other accelerators of sociality between groups with di ff erent a ffi nities through- out the three decades of Duvalier ’ s adult life prior to 1957. One was the law. The Port-au-Prince ’ s law school was ‘ a central feature of the black petite bourgeoisie ’ 30 It provided an accessible higher education without requiring speci fi c scienti fi c competencies, o ff ering night classes for four years, and allowing students to work during the day. Legal professions were a milieu that fostered relation-building within the same social sector while allowing for social mobility. In the 1920s, Louis Raymond, Marceau Désinor, Georges Honorat (1888 – 1976) 31 and Duval Duvalier were all members of the barreau de Port-au-Prince : the formers ’ sons would later join the latter ’ s son ’ s inner-circle. Paul and Jules Blanchet were also lawyers – and would become prominent law professors under Duvalier (Supplice 2014, 113 – 4). Another was the Bas Peu-de-Chose neighbourhood, ‘ the stronghold of the black middle class ’ (CIAT 2017, 9) and where Duvalier was born. 32 An astonishing number of individuals who appeared at one point or another in Duvalier ’ s trajectory resided or worked in this neighbourhood. This included the Désinor, Raymond, Cinéas, Honorat, Dorsinville, Trouil- lot, Pierre-Paul, Aurèle Joseph, Borges, and Salomon families, as well as Louis Mars, Gérard Constant, Windsor Laferrière, Carl Brouard and, from 1941 to 1946, Dumarsais Estimé (Auguste 2001, 23). 33 Jacques Oriol lived in Bolosse, at the immediate periphery of Bas Peu-de-Chose (p.c. Michèle Oriol 2019). This neighbourhood had its own soccer team, Victory , cofounded in 1945 by Ernst Trouillot. Claude Raymond and Clovis Désinor played in it (Alexandre 2006). It was also an intellectually vibrant place, ‘ an intellectual Monaco ’ according to Auguste (2001, 5), with a magazine, Le Souverain , published there, HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY 7 and two clubs which, with strong intellectual and social ambitions, were important meeting places. The Law School and the Medical school were also located in Bas Peu- de-Chose. Port-au-Prince in the mid-twentieth century must indeed have felt like a small place for the middle class. Relatedness and taxonomy The above section mentioned individuals; they often came as siblings. The high number of fratries also distinguishes Duvalier ’ s inner-circle from other rulers ’ in modern states. As Table 1 shows, there were at least six fratries within the inner-circle. Cultural reproduction rather than nepotism may explain this phenomenon. If one ’ s identity is de fi ned by the person ’ s position in a web of relations, as some of the ethnographic literature on the subject has shown (e.g. Métraux 1951; Bulamah 2013, 2018), then trust is conditioned by personal relations and less by ideological concordance or mutual interests. In other words, social identity provides the entry into the circle. To be ‘ the son of ’ or ‘ the brother of ’ identi fi es the subject. Daniel Supplice summarizes it well: ‘ For Duvalier, I was André ’ s son ’ 34 His fi liation was the determinant. Duvalier ’ s inner-circle was therefore a tax- onomy – all inner-circles probably are. Consciously or not, Duvalier indexed, organized, classi fi ed, and hierarchized persons – and their allegiances, ideology, administrative com- petencies, and likely skin colour – through their relationships to him and to one another. If, as Strathern (1995, 12 – 15) argues, via Meyer Fortes, we use social relations to conduct analytical relations, that is, that relation-making is causal to knowledge-making, then Duvalier ’ s inner-circle was thrice relational: because taxonomies re fl ect a classi fi cation through persons; because persons constituted precisely the knowledge that was being classi fi ed; and because they were indexed through existing personal relationships. Besides fratries , matrimonial strategies were framed by the social weight of these webs of relations; it might even have a ff ected attractiveness. Hence the intriguing number of relations of kinship among members of the inner-circle. Duvalier and Lucien Daumec married sisters. Elliott Roy ( ’ 59) and Marcel Daumec also married sisters, who happened to be the siblings of Kern Delince ( ’ 54), a military o ffi cer close to Duvalier. Jean-Claude André, an o ffi cial of the regime, married Clovis Désinor ’ s elder daughter, Marie-José; Victor Never Constant married Lamartinière Honorat ’ s sister, Marie-Claude; Fritz Cinéas married Jean Auguste Magloire ’ s daughter, Gladys; Aurèle Joseph married Max Pierre- Paul ’ s sister, Yolande, also the daughter of a senator; Duvalier ’ s daughter Nicole married his personal secretary ’ s brother. 35 In such a social organization, power does not fl ow from the ruler to society solely through institutions of governance, but also through families, which are themselves connected through myriads of bonds. 36 Table 1. Brothers in Duvalier ’ s Inner-Circle. Father close to the Duvalier Brothers in Duvalier ’ s Inner-Circle Jules, Louis, Paul Blanchet Gérard, Hervé Boyer Fritz, Alix Cinéas Lucien, Marcel Daumec Louis Georges Honorat Lamartinière, Lionel, Jean-Jacques Honorat Louis Raymond Adrien, Augustin, Claude Raymond Hénock and Ernst Trouillot 8 J.-P. BELLEAU Personal bonds and ideology The reasons that motivated an individual to join Duvalier ’ s circle may have been as numer- ous as the human soul is vast. Ambition, beliefs, venality, or fascination for power are just some of them, and these are not ideal-types with neat limits. They mixed and evolved during one ’ s career in the inner-circle, sometimes within a single day, often in reaction to Duvalier ’ s fl uid behaviour. However, once the person was inside the circle, the alle- giance was a personal bond, as Supplice (in Clesca 2019, 8) explained: ‘ [Duvalierism] is not a doctrine, or a political philosophy. It ’ s a man ’ . Rewards were also an evidence, in the follower ’ s eye, of the love provided by the ruler. However, for Duvalier, intimacy primed ideology, as proven by the presence of political opposites in his circle: Maurassians (far-right) such as de Catalogne (Stieber 2012) and Duvalier himself (Nérée 1988; Péan 2007) and communists such as Daumec, Hervé Boyer, Paul Blanchet, and Jacques Oriol. Such political diversity may have no equivalent in political annals and prove that, contrary the historiography, Duvalier was not a dogmatic person. Of course, he did have a doctrine – noirisme - and had a nationalist discourse. But the bonds that tied his followers to him had a crucial a ff ective dimension that, I believe, the historiography has overlooked. And at the same time, venality was often a factor indeed, even among the noiristes 37 Duvalier gave cash to many visitors in his o ffi ce, and let members of the inner-circle pro fi t from their pos- itions, which con fi rms again Fatton ’ s (2002) argument about belly politics. From intimacy to hostility If Duvalier had intended to shield his family and his private life from politics, he failed. There was little separation between the private and the public. Members of the inner- circle could move from the spheres of governance to Duvalier ’ s family circle and vice- versa. The more one grew in political importance and the more likely he would then inte- grate Duvalier ’ s private sphere – and taxonomy. Several members of the inner-circle such as Clément Barbot, Honorat, Blanchet, Désinor, and Daumec, were called ‘ uncle ’ by Duva- lier ’ s children, following the custom of metaphorical kinship. 38 Being an intimate of the Duvalier family after having ‘ started ’ in governance was less a ‘ reward ’ than the conse- quence of the domestic world ’ s hypertrophy. Luckner Cambronne exempli fi es these tra- jectories. Used for low-level political tasks in the 1950s (Péan 2007; Diederich 2016a) he was trusted by Duvalier to accompany his two daughters on a trip to Europe in April 1961 (Burt and Diederich 1986, 164), and became a government minister in 1963 (Oriol 2018, 3). When I interviewed Francis Charles (p.c. 2009), a lieutenant in the Presidential Guard from 1961 to 1971, about life and work in the Presidential Palace, he depicted recur- ring anecdotes where Duvalier would approach a young o ffi cer on duty, start a conversa- tion on a random subject, then invite him to lunch with his family – the e ff ect of which was to galvanize his allegiance, as commensality was conceived as a gift from the president. Duvalier ’ s ability to foster intimacy was often mentioned by informants. However, intimacy and being integrated into the private sphere o ff ered no guarantee of safety, as Clément Barbot and Daumec experienced. Barbot and his wife had once been so close to the Duvalier that both couples some- times dined together. A leader of the Duvalierist Cagoulards (the hooded ones) 39 , a group that used violence during the 1957 campaign and after, Barbot became chief of HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY 9 the VSN. After he may have showed political ambitions of his own, following a stroke that incapacitated Duvalier for weeks in 1960, Barbot was imprisoned for 18 months in Fort- Dimanche. He went underground after his release and became Duvalier ’ s ennemi juré before he was eventually hunted down and killed (Diederich 2016a, 229 – 39). Until Decem- ber 1963, Lucien Daumec (1922 – 1964) was considered the most powerful man of the inner-circle, a member of both the political and the family circles. Daumec had been a communist in the 1940s and a writer for La Ruche , a student publication that was instru- mental in the 1946 revolution. He became Duvalier ’ s brother-in-law when he married Lucia Lamothe, Simone Ovide Duvalier ’ s sister. He was Duvalier ’ s adviser on political, literary, and intellectual a ff airs and his con fi dante on private ones. He had been Duvalier ’ s ghost writer during the 1957 campaign (Smith 2009, 175). Right after his election, Duvalier placed Daumec at the head of his Private Secretariat, a position he held until November 1958: most of those who wanted to meet Duvalier had to go through him. He held various pos- itions for the regime after 1958. 40 In 1963, as Duvalier ’ s fi rst term was expiring, Daumec may have contemplated running for president. Duvalier claimed Daumec was conspiring and had him arrested on 25 December 1963, together with his stepson, 17 at the time, and his uncle, Datho, a senator from the Plateau Central. They were incarcerated at Fort Dimanche for several months until they were executed in June 1964. 41 Meanwhile, Lucia Lamothe obtained a divorce from her husband and continued to live with the Duva- lier (Supplice 2014, 203) in the northern wing of the presidential palace (Roy, p.c. 2019). As Table 2 shows, being a member of the inner-circle was a rather precarious situation. Disgrace within the inner circle was often, if not almost always, unpredicted as the passage from intimacy to hostility could be crossed with staggering speed – in a matter of hours sometimes. Yet, con fl icts within the inner-circle did not emerge from diverging political ideas but from broken interpersonal relations – and almost always from rumours reported to Duvalier by other members. In an astute comparison, Nicholls (1971, 76) argued that in despotism, contrary to totalitarianism, the ruler is solely focused on duration and unconcerned with how citizens live their lives as long as they do not question his rule. That one of his aides had political ambitions of his own seemed to free Duvalier of ethical inhibitions created by interpersonal relationships span- ning decades. His ruthless and a-ideological will to stay in power, rather than the implementation of a political agenda appears as the paradigm of his rule. Compartmentalization I have so far left out one category of people within the inner-circle: the henchmen. Because Duvalier compartmentalized his governance, repression was carried out by speci fi c individ- uals who played little to no role in other publics a ff airs. Their infamous names have charac- terized the regime in the popular imagination: Clément Barbot, Luc Désir, Jean Tassy ( ’ 56), Franck Romain ( ’ 56), Zacharie Delva, Rosalie Bousquet, Elois Maître, Astrel Benjamin. 42 They appear late in Duvalier ’ s trajectory: during the presidential campaign or in the course of the regime. They were part of another sort of inner-circle. They were rewarded, they were necessary to implement a regime of terror but were essentially con fi ned to repres- sion and had little to no participation in civilian a ff airs, which is my main subject here. 43 As institutions, the military and the VSN were signi fi cant actors of repression during counter-insurgency operations and several o ffi cers, notably Gracia Jacques, Gérard Constant, 10 J.-P. BELLEAU and Pierre Merceron, were highly visible during the entirety of Duvalier ’ s rule. Yet, their par- ticipation in civil governance was minimal and I will not treat them either. Visibility and responsibilities under Duvalier were not correlated. Gracia Jacques, a soldier of humble origin who rose through the ranks to become a general with Duvalier ’ s backing, appeared Table 2. A deadly turnover. Members of the inner circle Profession Ideology in youth Highest position during the regime a Fall from grace Clément Barbot Teacher VSN Chief Executed in 1864 Pierre Biamby Soccer player Executive secretary Kesner Blain O ffi cer Colonel Died in prison Jules Blanchet Lawyer Communism Paul Blanchet Lawyer Left-wing José ‘ Sony ’ Borges O ffi cer Major Executed in 1967 Hugues Bourjolly Lawyer President of parliament Rosalie Bousquet Librarian Fort-Dimanche Warden Hervé Boyer Economist, Lawyer Communism Demoted in 1966 Luckner Cambronne Gérard de Catalogne Writer Maurrassian Dir. of propaganda René Charlmers Lawyer Secretary of foreign a ff airs Fritz Cinéas Physician Noirisme Under-Secretary Brie fl y demoted in 63 Gérard Constant O ffi cer Chief of Sta ff Demoted in 1970 Victor Nevers Constant Journalist Secretary of Tourism, Agriculture Demoted in 1969 Gérard Daumec Writer Director at the Institut de Bien- être Social Demoted in 1968 Lucien Daumec Intellectual Communist, Noirisme Executive Secretary, brother- in-law Executed in 1964 Marcel Daumec Secretary of Public Works Demoted in 1965 Jean David agronomist Senator Fled in exile in 1957 Clovis Désinor Lawyer Secretary of Economy Demoted in 1970 Zachary Delva Shopkeeper VSN Chief Frédéric Desvarieux Lawyer Center-left Secretary of Labor, Party chief Demoted in 1961 Max Dominique O ffi cer O ffi cer, son-in-law Exiled in 1967 Roger Dorsinville Writer Noirisme Diplomat Went into exile Frédéric Duvigneaud Lawyer Secretary of Defense Demoted in 1962 Rameau Estimé Lawyer Secretary of Justice Imprisoned, Tortured, died in prison Jacques Fourcand Surgeon, Professor Director of the Institut de Bien- être Social Jean-Baptiste George Priest Secretary of Education Went into exile, opponent Lamartinière Honorat Ethnologist Secretary of Public Works Demoted Lionel Honorat O ffi cer, Lawyer In exile Aurèle Joseph Physician Secretary Jean Julmé Land Surveyor Secretary Imprisoned, tortured Windsor Laferrière Intellectual, Henchman Noirisme Under-Secretary Demoted in 1958 Alphonse Lahens Lawyer Noirisme Member of parliament Arrested in 1960; exiled Jean Auguste Magloire Lawyer Secretary Elois Maître illiterate VSN Max Pierre-Paul Lawyer Member of parliament Demoted in 1970 Pressoir Pierre o ffi cer Military o ffi cer Sent in exile in 57 Adrien Raymond Physician Under-Secretary Claude Raymond O ffi cer Chief of sta ff , 1970 Frank Romain O ffi cer Colonel Henri Siclait Accountant Directeur Régie du Tabac Harry Tassy O ffi cer Major Executed in 1967 André Théard Lawyer Secretary, ambassador Léonce Viaud Scholar, ethnologist Noirisme University chancellor a A ‘ Secretary ’ was a minister. HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY 11 to Duvalier ’ s side in many, o ffi cial pictures of the dictator, as Figure 1 shows. 44 Duvalier made him a general and Jacques felt a debt towards him, swearing on Duvalier ’ s deathbed to protect his children in all circumstances (Kenzo Jacques, p.c. 2019). 45 Yet, Gracia Jacques