Events

The Mutiny of the Haitian Coast Guard

On April 21, 1970 as a lieutenant assigned to the Presidential Guard, I was in the officer's dormitory when the telephone rang. I lifted the receiver and heard the duty officer at the Department's office saying: "By order of the Department commander, all dormitories must be evacuated immediately; we will soon be attacked by the Coast Guard! Pass this message to everyone!" Without hesitating I passed on the word to the other officers who thought, at first, that I was joking. I told them that the orders were serious and we quickly went down to the courtyard.

It was certainly no joke. Colonel Gracia Jacques, our commanding officer, needed little time to evaluate the situation and give the necessary orders. He informed us that Colonel Octave Cayard had just announced that he was going to attack the Presdential Palace to force President Duvalier to step down. From the National Palace observation post one could notice the GC-10, the largest unit of the Coast Guard, maneuvering in Port-au-Prince Harbor. The Palace defenses were therefore put at the ready.

In less than 15 minutes, the first shell was fired. Passing over the Palace, it exploded on the Champ de Mars, killing a female pedestrian. A second shell fell short of the target, close to the Petion mausoleum. Immediately, every army man knew that the next shot could hit the target. Effectively, the third projectile hit the west wing of the Palace. The gunner, Ensign Wilson Desir, knew his job well. The Coast Guard was in rebellion against the government.

What were the reasons for this mutiny? Everything hinged on the initiative of one officer, Colonel Kesner Blain, the commander of the National Penitentiary. Through his office and through personal connections, he had learned certain details about the state of Duvalier's health. According to the rumors, the President was suffering an incurable disease and did not have long to live. With that information, Colonel Blain decided to organize a coup to be carried out on the supposed day of Duvalier's death. One reason for the action was that the Consititution enacting the President-for-life had not provided any legal mechanism to fill an unexpected Presidential vacancy.

Colonel Blain secretly contacted other officers to prepare a team for quick action on 'D' day in order to take control of events and to put in power a banker, Clemard Joseph Charles, who had agreed to finance the operation. For his part, Mr Charles, who approved the plan decided to consult a friend of his, Dr Jacques Fourcand, one of the Presidential family doctors, to confirm if Duvalier's state of health really was terminal, and especially to gain his cooperation in the audacious project.

Doctor Fourcand smelled danger in the plan. He advised Mr Charles to report the details to Duvalier. In principle, and however Colonel Blain explained it, he was hatching a plot, and Clemard Charles, a shrewd politician, understood the situation. He accepted Fourcand's suggestion and, together, they went to the National Palace. Nevertheless, Duvalier, as soon as he was informed of the details, ordered the arrest of Mr Charles who was in the waiting room. He also ordered the arrest of Colonel Kesner Blain and every military officer contacted by him about the matter. A Commission of Inquiry was set up in the Dessalines Barracks to investigate it.

On the evening of April 20, 1970, Duvalier was in conversation with an officer, considered one of his best friends, Colonel Octave Cayard, commander of the Haitian Coast Guard, when a request arrived to summon two officers of this unit, Lieutenants Serge Denizard and Fritz Germain to the inquiry at the Dessalines Barracks. Quite naturally, Colonel Cayard asked permission to accompany them before the Commission the next morning. It was already ten o'clock in the evening. Duvalier gave his approval. This was the starting point of the April 21 mutiny.

Immediatly after leaving the Palace, Cayard went home and quickly put his family under the protection of an embassy in Port-au-Prince. Then he returned to the Coast Guard Headquarters where he summoned his officers. By seven o'clock in the morning most of them were present. He then informed them that he had received from President Duvalier a list of Coast Guard officers to be brought before the Commission of Inquiry, and that, instead of obeying the order, he had decided to enter into rebellion to protect his men. In addition, he told the officers that he had already contact some foreign embassies, and had been promised support in his action against the regime. This assisatance, naturally, would be forthcoming once the operation began.

Since the officers appreciated Colonel Cayard's concern to protect the lives of his subordinates, they approved the project. Then the commander of the ship GC-10 received the order to get underway. Preparations intensified. The sailors who were asking questions about the reasons for such excitement were told that the GC-10 was going on a mission ordered by President Duvalier. That was sufficient reason to engender the soldiers' enthusiasm. Any job ordered by the President at that time usually meant that there was an opportunity for the sailors to gain some small financial benefits.

Meanwhile, other officers continued to arrive at the base. Some of them, without asking questions, joined the others. When the GC-10 commander declared that everything was ready, the men were surprised to observe Colonel Cayard himself coming on board. It was not often that the Base Commander when to sea. Officers who had not attended the morning meeting wanted to know what was happening. Thy were told to wait for explanations from the Colonel himself.

When they were at sea, Colonel Cayard addressed the officers and sailors assembled on the bridge of the vessel. He told them he was launching an offensive against the government in reaction to an order from Duvalier to surrender two officers of his unit to the political police. In his speech, he stressed his duty to protect the men under his command against arbitrary abuse of power, and announce that his action was designed to overthrow the government. Shocked by this information, and not convinced that the action was justified, several officers asked for further details. However, it was already too late. The ship's 40-mm. cannons were aimed at the National Palace and ready to open fire. At 10 o'clock in the morning the shells began hitting the imposing national building.

President Francois Duvalier, for his part, decided to reject the mutineer's ultimatum. Accordingly, he abandoned the Presidential office, which was too vulnerable, and went to a command post urgently set up on the ground floor of the Palace. There he summoned his Minister of Defense and the military chiefs in order to face the rebellion. Around noon, the artillery section went into action against the mutinous ship. Batteries of 105-mm. cannons were arrayed close to Saint Anne Square and troops were deployed along Port-au-Prince Harbor to prevent any landing of Coast-Guard riflemen. Soon, the first shells begun to splash into the water near the rebellious vessel. The situation worsened for the mutineers when a P-51 Mustang of the Air Corps flew at high speed over the GC-10, with it hail of bullets provoking panic on the ship. The sailors, realizing that their vessel was endangered, headed out to sea.

Aware of the danger of his position, Colonel Cayard disengaged. The support that had been promised to him was fiction. The mutineers then sailed to Puerto-Rico. When they arrived at that island, certain officers, distressed at finding themselves involved in a mutiny without their consent, asked and obtained from the Puerto-Rican authorities permission to return to Haiti. When the Haitian government approved their request, those officers were able to return home safely.

What was the real basis of this mutiny? According to trustworthy testimony from former Coast Guards officers, two weeks earlier the two officers whose the presence was requested by the Commission of Inquiry had told Colonel Cayard, their superior officer, about their conversation with Colonel Kesner Blain. So that report linked them to their commander.

Later, when the two officers were summoned to appear before the Commission, Mr Cayard therefore realized that he was trapped. To surrender the officers was equivalent to confessing his complicity. Consequently, he was forced to adopt the only remain solution: to take to sea while disguising his escape as a planned rebellion against the government.

Indeed, everything about Mr. Cayard's behavior indicated that he was part of the plot hatched by Colonel Blain. Besides, according to Dr. Georges Rigaud, he had been conspiring since 1963, having been, since then, the principal promoter of the 'Vonvon Radio', a clandestine radio station that was broadcasting subversive programs from New York against the Duvalier regime. "With Cayard gone, there was no more possiblity of continuing the fight", Mr Rigaud confided.

Although no Army personnel had lost their lives, the mutiny of the Haitian Coast Guard caused great concern within the Army. Once more, the institution had been shaken by a revolt against authority and furthermore, it immediately lost more than a 100 expert officers and skilled technicians. The mutiny also helped to intensify the atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust by the civil powers against the military, thus worsening the state of fear, or even of panic, permeating the Army.

In addition, a large number of officers - among whom Carl Michel Nicolas, Wilthan Lherisson, Jean-Claude Guillaume, Smith Medor, Jean-Claude Delbaeau, etc. - were unjustly imprisoned, accused of planning an alleged attack against the National Palace in support of Colonel Cayard's rebellion. Captain Augustin Toussaint and I transferred at the Dessalines Barracks to command the companies formerly led respectively by Lherisson and Guillaume after their arrest, were given the mission of assessing the extent of the conspiracy among the troops and of making appropriate recommendations tot he military command.

Upon receiving our reports, President Duvalier was surprised to find that our investigations concluded that the accusations about the two former company commanders were false, and he order their release. Undoubtedly, this is what led him to free all the officers who had been unjustly imprisoned, and to restore them to their functions.

Nevertheless, the negative impact of a military unit opening fire on the National Palace of their own country and the hasty and unjustified imprisonment of the above-mentioned officers, had widened the deep wounds already suffered by the Haitian Army. Mr Clemard Charles was freed from jail two years later, in 1972, and was one of the presidential candidates in 1988; as for Colonel Kesner Blain, he would never return home. According to Patrick Lemoune, he passed away on February 17, 1976 in the Fort-Dimance prison.

Finally, the mutiny led to the dissolution of the Haitian Coast Guard. Nevertheless, five months later, by a decree of the government the 'Haitian Navy' was created to take its place. President Duvalier understood the overriding need to protect the country's coasts and territorial waters. However, this one action was not enough to repair the damage. After all these traumas the institution had fallen to a very low level. What it cost, a lot more was necessary to stop the collapse and to strengthen the Haitian Army. That was attempted after 1971.

Source: From glory to disgrace: the Haitian army, 1804-1994