Clémard Joseph Charles, the former banker and ally of Duvalier who with the aid of George de Mohrenschildt secretly pursued ambitions to replace him, eventually aroused the suspicions of the justifiably paranoid Duvalier. Preparing to fly to Washington to meet with President Johnson's people to make his case again in 1967, he was challenged about the purpose of the travel by Duvalier himself. Charles said he was having a medical procedure done there. Duvalier asked what the procedure was. Charles said he was having his tonsils removed. Duvalier asked what was wrong with having Haitian doctors perform the procedure. Before long Charles was on a table in a dirty operating room in Port-au-Prince having an operation he did not need. Soon he found himself in Fort Dimanche prison, which put an end to his plotting for the rest of Papa Doc's days. Released from prison after 10 years he surfaced again in 1981 as the author of an op-ed piece in the New York Times writing as chairman of the Federation for the Liberation of Haiti on behalf of the "Boat People" trying to flee to the US by sea from the Haiti of Duvalier's son, Baby Doc and being imprisoned for the attempt to score political points for another celebrity American president. Nearly a decade later, he was back in the news in 1989, having had his name removed from candidacy for president of Haiti on the basis that he was wanted in New York on charges of bank fraud. Charles died in Haiti sometime after, never having achieved his ambition to be president.
For a time following Kennedy's death in Dallas, George de Mohrenschildt, now residing permanently in Port-au-Prince as director of the Haitian Holding Company he'd started with Clémard Charles, this putative employee of François Duvalier amused himself on social occasions by dropping into conversations his connections to both Jacqueline Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald. But almost from the start, his association with Oswald caused him problems. He and his wife Jeanne were by his own account, among the first to sign the book of condolences for Kennedy at the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince, but were subsequently "ostracized" by the Ambassador, and de Mohrenschildt learned through back channels that someone with authority in Washington had warned Haitian officials against him and urged them to fire and deport him-- vainly as it turned out. Originally, de Mohrenschildt disavowed a close relationship with Oswald, and, proffered the opinion that due to his mental state Oswald had acted in ways that pitiably might never be understood. By Joan Mellen's account he would publicly deliberately misspell or mispronounce Oswald's name as "Osval" in a show of indifference. In April 1964, de Mohrenschildt came to Washington to testify before the Warren Commission, and reportedly met several times with former CIA director Allan Dulles while in town.
In 1966, he and his wife Jeanne left Haiti and returned to the Dallas area to live. In 1967, he was interviewed by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison who was prosecuting Clay Shaw as a conspirator in Kennedy's death. Garrison came to believe that de Mohrenschildt's role was an unwitting one, and that de Mohrenschildt felt Oswald had been framed. In 1976, de Mohrenschildt and his fourth wife Jeanne divorced, though they continued to function as a married couple. That same year, de Mohrenschildt completed his memoir of the de Mohrenschildts' friendship with Lee and Marina in Dallas from the summer of 1962 until April 1963. The narrative makes a passionate case for Oswald's innocence, primarily on the basis of his character, which de Mohrenschildt paints as sincere, principled, highly unconventional, but intelligent and consistent. The Oswald of de Mohrenschildt's memoir, bitter though he is about the American political system, has no motive to kill a president he considers flawed but decent. In the memoir, de Mohrenschildt also describes the difficulties the notoriety has engendered, causing him to lose business and reputation. He even offers an explanation for the storied 14 month Latin American walking tour taken with his wife at the end of 1960 through 1961: it was a way of handling grief over the death from cystic fibrosis of his infant son with third wife Wynne Sharples. The title of the memoir was taken from what were reportedly Oswald's last words, a sentiment that de Mohrenschildt the memoirist endorses: "I am a Patsy! I am a Patsy!"
In 1976, the slow motion fraying that had marked de Mohrenschildt's life since the assassination had become an unravelling. He complained of visions and voices and became paranoid about being pursued by the CIA and "the Jewish Mafia." His now ex-wife had him admitted to a psychiatric hospital. He was out by the end of the year. By 1977, he was employed as an adjunct professor of French at small historically black Bishop College in Dallas. Gaeton Fonzi, an investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations made inquiries. de Mohrenschildt had given indications on several recent occasions to various journalists and interviewers that he wanted to tell everything he knew. Money could not be ruled out as motivation, but the committee was interested in his story. At the time, de Mohrenschildt was in Manalapan, Florida, visiting his step-daughter form an earlier marriage. de Mohrenschildt indicated to Fonzi his eagerness to meet and ultimately to testify. He was dead the next day of what the coroner said was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Jeanne de Mohrenschildt remained skeptical that her gun-phobic ex-husband could have killed himself in that way. (Don't ask Bill O'Reilly. He wasn't there.) It was March 29, 1977. George de Mohrenschildt was 65 years old.
The Umbrella Man, Louie Steven Witt, died in Dallas on November 17, 2014, at the age of 90.
In March 2016, President Barack Obama made the first visit to Cuba by a sitting US president since Calvin Coolidge in 1928. During the 3 days, Obama met with Raul Castro (President of Cuba since 2008 when his brother Fidel bequeathed the office to him) to reestablish relations between the two countries, arrange to exchange prisoners, and relax restrictions of travel and business. Former president Fidel Castro, who had openly expressed skepticism about the move on the basis that he did not trust the US, did not meet the American president but he did send a message that Cuba "has no need of gifts from the empire." (Did Trump subsequently undo some of the agreement? Of course.) Castro died November 25, 2016. He was 90.
In the Dominican Republic, Ciudad Trujillo was restored to its original name, Santo Domingo, following the dictator Rafael Trujillo's assassination in 1961.
In December 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest who had directed a major protest movement against Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier before the younger Duvalier was driven into exile in 1986, won what is considered the first truly democratic election in Haiti's history on a reformist platform. His attempts to put restraints on the military were met with a coup in September of 1991. In an effort to pressure the coup leaders to step aside, the international community imposed an embargo on Haitian goods. President George H.W. Bush negotiated an exemption for American corporations doing business in Haiti, ensuring that the embargo mostly hurt Haitians. Only when Bush's successor, Bill Clinton had pressured Aristide in 1994 into accepting a US occupation of Haiti and abandoning economic reforms, requiring him instead to sign onto International Monetary Fund programs of loans granted on condition that Aristide impose austerity measures in order to repay them, did he make good on a campaign promise to restore Aristide to office. It was not the last coup, occupation, revolt, policy imposition or contested election in Haiti.
On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 Earthquake, the worst in Haiti in 200 years, killed more than 100,000 and left 1.6 million homeless. An international relief effort headed of course by former US President Bill Clinton descended on the country to direct relief and reconstruction. As could be expected, the Humanitarian Coalition privileged International Security forces and Corporations over non-profit medical and humanitarian relief organizations for the resources and services it controlled. Later that year, as a cholera outbreak claimed the lives over 10,000 more, it was discovered that a UN Peacekeeping base had leached contaminated fecal waste into the Artibonite River, a major source of water for the Haitian people. Although at the time, the UN denied it could have been the source of the epidemic, it has since apologized without acknowledging responsibility or liability for compensation purposes.
As regards the post-Duvalier years in Haiti, Joan Mellen has observed:
Not much, it seems from reports, has changed up to today. It seems so obvious ... that the one alternative not yet pursued is a Haitian economy by and for Haitians. And yet…the problem may not be Haitian at all, but the absence of disinterested leadership in countries outside Haiti that involve themselves with Haiti.In 2014, the Haitian government made an international demand for reparations for the misery of slavery, over which its forebears triumphed to make it the first black republic, and among the first independent nations in the history of the world, in 1804. In contrast to the reparations Haiti was forced to pay to France for the loss of its plantations and slaves in 1824, Haiti's demands are not expected to be honored.
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Selected Bibliography
Abbott, Elizabeth. Haiti: The Duvaliers and Their Legacy. McGrawHill, 1989. (Later edition: Haiti: A Shattered Nation. McGrawHill, 2011.)
de Mohrenschildt, George. I am a Patsy! I am a Patsy! (unpublished work, later published in edited form (by Michael A. Rinella) as Lee Harvey Oswald as I Knew Him. University Press of Kansas, 2014)
Dunham, Katherine. Island Possessed. Doubleday, 1969.
Greene, Graham. The Comedians. The Bodley Head, 1966.
James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. Vantage Books, 1963.
Marcelin Brothers (Philippe Thoby-Marcelin & Pierre Marcelin). Canapé-Vert. Farrar & Rinehart, 1944.
Marrs, Jim. Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy. Carrol & Graf, 1989.
Mellen, Joan. Our Man In Haiti: George De Mohrenschildt and the CIA in the Nightmare Republic. Trine Day LLC, 2012.
Pfeifer, Julia. 'The Loa as Ghosts in Haitian Vodou', from Ghosts - or the (Nearly) Invisible: Spectral Phenomena in Literature in the Media, Maria Fleischhack and Elmar Schenkel Editors, Peter Lang AG, 2016.
Rodman, Selden. Haiti: The Black Republic. The Devin-Adair Company, 1954.
von Tunzelmann, Alex. Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder and the Cold War in the Caribbean . Henry Holt and Company, 2011.
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Umbrella Man:
Part 1: Ayiti
Part 2: Bèl Gason
Part 3: The Émigré
Part 4: The Opening
Epilogue & Selected Bibliography
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