Élie Lescot
Antoine Louis Léocardie Élie Lescot (; December 9, 1883 – October 20, 1974) was the President of Haiti from May 15, 1941 to January 11, 1946. He was a member of the country's mixed-race elite. He used the political climate of World War II to sustain his power and ties to the United States, Haiti's powerful northern neighbor. His administration presided over a period of economic downturn and harsh political repression of dissidents. Early life Lescot was born in Saint-Louis-du-Nord to a middle-class mixed-race family, descended from free persons of color in the colonial era. He traveled to Port-au-Prince to study pharmacy after completing his secondary education in Cap-Haïtien. He settled in Port-de-Paix to work in the export-import business. After his first wife died in 1911, Lescot entered politics. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies two years later. After a four-year stay in France during the United States occupation of Haiti (1915 to 1934), he returned and held posts in the Louis Borno and Sténio Vincent administrations. Four years later he was named ambassador to the neighboring Dominican Republic, where he forged an alliance with President Rafael Trujillo. He moved to Washington, D.C., after being appointed as ambassador to the United States. Wartime election His close political and economic ties to the United States helped lay the groundwork for his ascendancy to Haiti's presidency, and he received the State Department's tacit backing for his campaign to succeed Sténio Vincent in 1941. Prominent members of the Chamber of Deputies opposed his candidacy, arguing Haiti needed a black president from a majority African ancestry. Taking the advantage of Trujillo's influence, Lescot was said to buy his way into power. He won 56 out of 58 votes cast by legislators. Deputy Max Hudicourt claimed the margin of victory was due to intimidation and beatings of legislators. Lescot quickly moved to consolidate his control over the state apparatus, naming himself head of the Military Guard and appointing a clique of white and mixed-race members of the elite to major government posts, including his own sons. This action earned him great disdain among Haiti's large majority of ethnic Africans. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Lescot declared war on the Axis Powers and pledged all necessary support to the Allied war effort. His government offered refuge to European Jews on Haitian soil in cooperation with Trujillo. In 1942 Lescot claimed the war required the suspension of the constitution and had the parliament give him unlimited executive powers. Political opponents were subject to physical harassment and surveillance by security forces. Failed rubber cultivation program As an Axis blockade cut off rubber supplies from the East, Lescot's administration began an ambitious program, in cooperation with the United States, to expand wartime production of rubber in the Haitian countryside. The Export-Import Bank in Washington granted $5 million in 1941 for the development of rubber plants in Haiti. The program was called the Société Haïtiano-Américane de Développement Agricole (SHADA) and managed by American agronomist Thomas Fennell. SHADA