Duvalier died in the home of Joseph Baguidy, Jr. Who is Joseph Baguidy, Jr??

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Reading that Jean-Claude Duvalier died at the home of Joseph Baguidy,
Jr., I think it would be useful to explain just exactly who Joseph Baguidy, Jr is…

my 2012 book PARAMILITARISM AND THE ASSAULT ON DEMOCRACY IN HAITI (Monthly Review Press) sheds some light on the role of Baguidy in rightwing political violence in Haiti. This is information that took a lot of digging and primary & secondary source research to piece together (see extensive footnotes in the book).

Baguidy was a behind-the-scenes leader of the putschist FLRN/ex-FAdH
paramilitary insurgency that targeted the national palace, police
offices, government infrastructure, Péligre dam, and Lavalas
supporters during the early 2000s.

Previously living in exile in the DR, he was the prime suspect in the
1987 assassination of Yves Volel. Under the democratically elected
governments (prior to the 2004 coup), duvalierist/military leaders
like Baguidy were not able to escape justice for direct participation
in assassinations and massacres.

As my book documents through US embassy cables (signed off on by the
U.S. Ambassador): major Haitian business leaders financed the
paramilitary insurgency which was led behind-the-scenes by Baguidy,
Judy C. Roy, etc (with Guy Philippe as the media's poster boy).

During the regime of Francois Duvalier it was Baguidy's father, Joseph
Baguidy Sr, who procured weapons abroad for the Duvalierist regime &
headed some of its domestic campaigns of persecution.

Pg 29 of my book
[Francois] Duvalier’s close confidant Joseph Baguidy was made both
education and foreign minister. An anti-leftist crusader, Baguidy
spread fear of a communist insurrection in the country, helping to
unleash a high-stakes campaign of vilification and launching harsh
repression upon the regime’s critics (while earning the support of
U.S. hawks during the Cold War).67 Baguidy’s son, Joseph Baguidy Jr.,
would, at the turn of the twenty-first century, play a little-known
key role in helping to unify rightwing Haitian paramilitaries.

In regards to Baguidy Sr, see footnote on Pg 351: 210:
Former Time magazine correspondent Bernard Deiderich and Miami Herald
editor Al Burt, in their book on François Duvalier and his henchmen
(Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2005) write: “Duvalier dispatched one of
his top aides, Joseph Baguidy, to Italy with money collected from the
National Rehabilitation Fund.” He “returned with 150 tons of war
material, including arms, ammunition, and three American light tanks
left over from the Second World War. Duvalier already had six similar
tanks which had been given to Haiti during the war under a US military
grant.... The new purchase swelled Duvalier’s arsenal to about 600 M-1
rifles, some air- cooled machine guns, .60mm. mortars, and Browning
automatic rifles. With these he had an air force of four Mustang
P-51s, eight AT-6 trainers, and two DC-3s” (128).

Back to Baguidy, Jr.:

Pg. 159-160
Judie C. Roy tells how the paramilitary insurgency had formed: "I was
involved with everything from the start. I had the ideas and the
money. At the beginning I had a friend named Wynter Etienne who helped
coordinate. Together I started it with Colonel Baguidy. I planned the
political aspect, and Baguidy, living in the Dominican Republic,
planned the military aspect. I traveled to the Dominican Republic four
times. I even sold one of my houses to finance them. I met with all of
them: Ravix, Dragon, Philippe, Tyson."200

Pg. 161 of my book:
According to Roy (one of the financiers of the FLRN paramilitaries in
the early-2000s) former FAd’H colonel Joseph Baguidy Jr. played a key
early role in organizing the anti-government conspirators from the
Dominican Republic, a point also made in U.S. embassy cables, as well
as by Alberto Despradel, a former Dominican diplomat who served in
Haiti.217

The former commander of Haiti’s Recherches Criminelles, Baguidy Jr.
was a prime suspect in the 1987 murder of the widely admired
presidential candidate and anti-Duvalierist activist Yves Volel.219 In
1991, under Aristide’s first administration, a summons had been issued
for Baguidy for his role in the murder.220 But Baguidy, who by 1991
was serving as military attaché at the Haitian embassy in the
Dominican Republic, refused to return.

Pg. 176
According to one US embassy cable to the State Department: “Two
separate, trusted contacts recently warned that a movement led by
political party leader Judie Roy and former FAd’H colonel Joseph
Baguidy [identified as the ‘directors’ of recent ex-FAd’H violence in
the Central Plateau] had recently gained strength and could act soon,
perhaps against multiple targets in the provinces.”71 One embassy
contact, whose identity was “strictly” protected, confided to an
embassy official “that the ‘business community’ had recently thrown
its support behind Roy and Baguidy, solving the money problem that had
until recently hampered the movement. . .

Pg. 177
Curran, in April of 2003, cited another source who said that based on
his conversations with ex-FAd’H members in Gonaives, he believed final
preparation were being made for a coordinated attack in Petit Goâve,
Gonaïves, Cap Haitien, and the Central Plateau.74 “The ringleaders of
the operation were Judie Roy (in Haiti) and former FAd’H colonel
Joseph Baguidy (in the Dominican Republic).”Roy “had ‘directed’ the
ex-FAd’H attacks in the Pernal region of Central Plateau, as well as a
less-visible operation in Petit Goâve.”75
Embassy officials suggested that it was possible Roy and Baguidy had
at their command a network of 1,200 men, many of whom were in the
Dominican Republic, and that “it looks like the French are supporting
Roy,” while some “significant” people within the police were working
closely with Guy Philippe.76 The “significant” people appear to have
been the clique close to Dany Toussaint, whom Philippe later
acknowledged he was in com- munication with throughout. Roy was
working more closely with Ravix and the people around him—the most
violent of the paramilitaries. At this point, Guy Philippe was more
involved in coordinating from afar, communicating with his ex-FAd’H
friends in the Haitian police and with Dominican officials in Santo
Domingo. Embassy contacts continued to report there was growing
momentum behind an ex-FAd’H movement led by Roy and Baguidy... One of
the embassy’s informants, focusing specifically on Roy, credits her
“with hav- ing managed the violence in Pernal,” explaining that,
“Roy’s ‘success’ in Pernal had ‘brought her a lot of support. . . .
Roy had proved herself a com- petent leader . . . and now support for
her movement was ‘flooding in.’”77 The report to Washington continued:
“The Haitian ‘business community’ had made a decision ‘a few weeks
ago’ to fund Roy’s movement, and that now ‘it appeared that the
resources problems are over.’”78

Pg. 181
Following Guy Philippe’s [brief] arrest in the Dominican Republic,
Ravix’s group “distanced itself—at least to a degree—from
Philippe.”102 Revealing more on the divisions within the paramilitary
forces, Moreno wired to Washington that “the ex-FAd’H leadership—to
include Joseph Baguidy, Ernst Ravix, Jean-Paul Michel Hector, former
FAd’H General William Regala, and former colonel (and Jean-Claude
Duvalier bodyguard) Christophe Dardompre—blamed Philippe’s boastful
indiscretions for his arrest, and excluded him from the movement.”103
At the time, the paramilitaries argued they were undergoing a
reorganization, even though eventually they would work together again
with Philippe. However, “Philippe continues to plot on his own . . .
and counts on significant support within the police. Most of (the
former) SWAT is now with Philippe,” even “former Northern Department
Police Director Carlo Lochard,” prior to Lochard’s sudden recall to
Port-au-Prince in May 2003.104 U.S. officials concluded that
“Philippe’s movement was now less threatening than Baguidy’s.”105

How can justice exist in Haiti as long as people like Baguidy,
Chamblain, etc, walk free in the country? Just as disturbing is that
CIA station chiefs that sponsored these killers will never see
justice, but instead find nice jobs with Booz Allen Hamilton and the
like: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-kambourian-pmp/13/673/539

On a final note, during early research for my book in the summer of
2005, I interviewed Sandra Honore (current UN rep in Haiti) who at the
time was serving as chief of staff of the executive office of the OAS.
She explained in the interview that the OAS never once communicated
with or called-upon the Dominican government to stop allowing Haitian
paramilitaries from using Dominican territory as a base for launching
violent assaults into Haiti during the early 2000s. (see pg 154)
She said the "political will" did not exist.

For more details see: http://monthlyreview.org/books/pb3003/
Photos here: http://jebsprague.blogspot.com/2013/01/paramilitarism-in-haiti-photo-montage.html

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